HayMan Springs

[HayManMarc]

The city journal of HayMan Springs begins 4 posts down.


Update:
Hello citizens! These first two posts started this city journal with a town called "Two Lakes". I didn't get very far with the Two Lakes build and here's why.

One night, I was playing and adding a ton to the city. It was all going great until the power went out. I had lost all my progress and it killed my desire to keep going. Fast forward 9 months later and I started a new city on the same map. This time I'm starting from the beginning as you'll see a few posts down. Also this time, I have autosave enabled.

If you want to see Two Lakes before it died, I'm keeping the posts here in spoilers.

Spoiler

Hi, citizens!

I'm new here, and relatively new to Cities: Skylines, but not new to city building. I've always loved SimCity and Tropico. I've been playing skylines for a couple weeks now, and I'm so very hooked. I can't seem to do anything else. It's bad. Sleep, work, play Cities: Skylines. Sleep is suffering.

Anywho, I just wanted to share a screenie of my little city project of "Two Lakes". I custom built a boreal map, a very mountainous region with hardly any level land area. A small lake in the northeast starts a river that winds down to a medium-sized lake near the center of the map, which then outlets to another river that winds on down to a larger lake in the south. There's only one freeway in the southwest corner of the map that connects to a state highway that feeds traffic to the center starting square. (I'll post a pic of the map if the community is interested.)

Here's a nice shot of the downtown area at night.

Two Lakes started with only residential and commercial zones. It went forever without demanding industrial. I finally forced a forestry industrial district (with Industries DLC, my only DLC), and that was when I noticed the budget turn to red. (Strange.)
The town is struggling, but after slashing the budget and jacking up the taxes, it's turning a profit again. lol

I'm having so much fun with this! I made a "High School Football Field" custom asset and it turned out great!

Thanx, Paradox! And special thanks to all the asset and mod makers out there. What a fantastic community to step into. I'm amazed and overjoyed.

 

[HayManMarc]

A few more pix of Two Lakes...

Spoiler

Here's the whole view of Two Lakes. So far.

Two Lakes is a fictitious town deep in the mountains at the end of "Highway 99" somewhere in the Pacific Northwest. Probably Washington state, but could be Idaho, Montana, or perhaps even Oregon. The terrain and climate could just as well be in Canada, but since I'm American, so is Two Lakes.

Highway 99 comes in from the south, rounds past the "LowImpact Industrial District", which is home to Two Lakes' original power substation, garbage incinerator, and sewage processing plant. A few small generalized industries and offices fill in the empty space that was left over. Highway 99 runs straight through downtown Two Lakes past the old courthouse. The mountain town of Two Lakes rests along the shore of the middle lake. The Two Lake area actually consists of three lakes, but the locals consider the upper lake a "pond", even though it's a small, deep lake. A boardwalk runs behind the lakeside shops on the lakefront, past the park, ending at the Pines Motel. The forestry district is north of town on the other side of the hill, and the start of a farming district is just to the west, where apple orchards are being planned. On the east side of downtown is the town's main residential neighborhood with the new high school at the end of town. Expansion is planned north of the high school with a connecting road over the backside of the north hill to the forestry district. There's also residential projects starting up the north hill past the old water tower. It would seem the number crunching on the budget is working to our favor.

Here's a nice night shot of the Two Lakes High School, its parking lot, Gym, and Football Field.

This looks like break time at the Logging Yard's night shift...

Here's a night time aerial shot from a distance, showing off the the snaky river feeding into and draining from the middle lake...

And one final shot of the town at dawn (in game, it's actually dusk, but the sun is setting in the east???). Maybe you can see some growth if you compare with the pic from the first post?

Hope you enjoyed the tour. I'll be sure to keep you informed of any major developments in the future. I hear the water supply is nearing its limits and there's talk of a pump going in upstrream. How exciting!

Strange that there are no docks or boats. What's wrong with these people? (Whoops, forgot this obvious detail. Will be addressing this next.)

 

[guillec87]

subbed

 

[HayManMarc]

Restart

It's been a long time, but I'm back on this. I had to restart the map, for reasons. I wanted to remake the train line to follow the gradient, and smooth out the highways a bit. Also wanted to start the map with stuff a little more spread out, but that didn't happen.

Anyway, I'll start adding screens and story soon.

 

[HayManMarc]

Making the Map - HayMan Mountains


Ok, let's get this ball rolling.

So as I said, I've restarted this map. I really liked the way Two Lakes looked and felt, but there were just some things I wanted to do differently. When I started Two Lakes, I only had the Industries DLC. But then I got sidetracked with life and quit playing the game.

About a month ago, I stumbled onto a Biffa video and it made me want to play again. I went for broke with the last sale and got Park Life (because I wanted camping, duh!), Mass Transit (Cable Cars and Blimps!), Snowfall (Trams!), Campus (it was on sale), Green Cities (pollution be damned!), Natural Disasters (not sure why I got this), and even After Dark because why the hell not? Now I could not only make camping sites, but a whole national park up past the town!

So, I've been playing and building and have a pretty good sized town happening. I'm calling it HayMan Springs. But let's start from the beginning...

To start things off I'll show the map.

HayMan Springs Map (HayMan County?)

I wanted a rugged, mountainous map that I'd be forced to design around the terrain. I created this from a blank, flat new map. It took a long time to get the little rivers flowing correctly and keep water levels consistent, but it seems to be working well. Resources include forestry almost everywhere, some farming areas, and a few, small ore deposits scattered around. There is no oil on this map.

In the southwest corner, you can see the outside connections. (That's right, only 2. I wanted a dead-end mountain city.) An Interstate freeway cuts across the corner of the map accompanied by a rail mainline. There are also 2 airplane routes, one going north-south and the other going east-west. No ship lanes, the river is too small.

Highway 42 exits the Interstate and makes it's way over the fertile farmland past the lower lake. It then climbs up a pretty steep grade to the middle lake where the starting square of the map is located. The rail line, however, follows a slow gradient path winding up the mountain sides on the western edge of the fertile land.

Instead of having the rail line go on around the mountains and either cutting through or tunnelling, I chose to build a bridge to cross the valley. The rail barons must have deemed this to be really important timber country for such an expensive rail line, eh?! But hey, it also looks neat, so why not?

The rail line runs under the highway overpass near the middle lake and ends, where a cargo station will be placed.

There's a broken dock in the lake and an old, run-down, broken house tucked away in the trees down there. (I've also hidden an archeological site on the map, but you'll need the 81 Tiles mod to find it.)

I also did a little bit of flattening on this map since Two Lakes. I flattened the northern shorelines on the middle lake a touch and the area between the water and the hillside. I also flattened down the fertile area a little bit and removed some vegetation to allow more fertile area in the map's starting square.

As you can see (or not see since its out of view - haha), the rail line is outside the start square, so you'll have to start without a rail connection if you play without mods. (My intention was to play this map with 81 Tiles and start with a rail connection and a timber industry, but you'll see how things played out.)

So that's it for now. I'll go ahead and list the mods and game settings I'm using:

Spoiler

Map Theme: Realistic V1.2.13 Boreal

Total Workshop Assets (per LSM): 1250 --- mostly vehicles, i think (vanilla vehicles are crap!)

Options:
Display: 16:9, 1920x1080, Fullscreen, Every V Blank.
Preferences:
Color Correction: Scotland Tom - Clear and Bright
Depth of Field: Normal, about 10% with about 5% film grain. (This gets messed with from time to time.)
Quality Settings:
Medium Shadows, Medium Textures, High LOD, Far Shadows, Anisotropic enabled, AA disabled (Render It! mod)
Day/Night cycle is usually off, but I'll turn it on from time to time to get some cool night screenshots.
Weather usually stays off.
Disasters are turned off. No wrecking my city, stupid mother nature!
Fire spreading disabled.

Mods: (in subscription order)

1. Find It! 1.5.4 (So I can find all the stuffs I gots.)
2. Clouds & Fog Toggler (So I can see the game I'm playing.)
3. Network Extensions 2
4. Adaptive Prop Visibility Distance
5. Advanced Vehicle Options (just realized I need to unsubscribe and get the Industries version)
6. Move It 2.6.0 (because I'm persnickety sometimes.)
7. Prop Snapping
8. Prop & Tree Anarchy
9. Extra Landscaping Tools
10. TME 10.20 (I love the smiley face there, so I'm leaving it.)
11. Camera Positions Utility
12. Less Steam
13. Realistic Walking Speed (so much better now)
14. Parallel Road Tool 1.3.0 (Haven't even used this yet.)
15. Plop Growables
16. Surface Painter (not sure how much I like this yet. It's fiddly)
17. Prop Remover
18. Prop Line Tool
19. Ploppable Asphalt (haven't used this yet. Might get rid of it.)
20. Tree Fire Control (had to go back one save to remedy fire destruction in one part of town while I was building in another. Never again.)
21. Klyte's Fine Road Anarchy 2
22. Klyte's Fine Road Tool 2.0.3
23. Render It!
24. Shadow Strength Adjuster
25. Ultimate Eyecandy 1.5.2
26. American Roadsigns 2.2.0
27. Catenary Replacer (Ain't no electric trains around here, no sir! (Trams aren't trains.))
28. Extra Vehicle Effects (Train assets)
29. Net Picker
30. Roundabout Builder (Haven't used this yet - starting to think I won't ever use it. I'm oldschool - I hate roundabouts, but I totally understand that they can help the traffic in this game sometimes.)
31. Loading Screen Mod (skipping about 35 buildings, 47 vanilla vehicles (replaced with workshop assets), and 76 props - mostly billboards. Plus a ton of European style assets, but unsure if that helps.)
32. 81 Tiles (Fixed for C:S 1.2+)
33. Vehicle Effects 1.8.1b (Train assets)

Other mods from content manager that don't show up in the options column:

1. Rotors FlipXZ (Blimp propellers.)
   
2. AnimUV Params
3. Better Budget
4. Decal Prop Fix
5. Mini FPS Booster 1.0
6. More Beautification
7. Network Tiling
8. No Deathcare (It just got annoying)
9. No Seagulls
10. Pause On Load (now I can go do something else while my game loads)
11. Prop Precision 1.0.1
12. Relight
13. Sun Shafts
14. Toggleable Whiteness
15. Trailer Variation Loader

Other settings:

Hard Mode disabled
Unlimited Money disabled
Unlimited Oil And Ore disabled
Unlimited Soil enabled
Unlock All enabled

 

[guillec87]

love the map

 

[HayManMarc]

@guillec87 -- Thanks, man. Glad to see you still around after 9 months - haha! If you want a go at the map, let me know and I'll fix it up and upload it to the workshop. (I used the "no catenary tracks" asset on the map before I found the mod that removes them.) I will eventually fix and upload it anyway, but it's not in the current plan time frame yet.

So, continuing the story of HayMan Springs....


Road Layout and Important Start Buildings


Another reason I wanted to restart this map was that I didn't much like the name "Two Lakes". I never did, and I was really trying to force it. This time I was able to give it some thought and came up with HayMan Springs, which I like much better. It sounds natural, it has my username in it, and it fits the topography of the map. Whatever kind of town or city HayMan Springs turns into we have yet to discover, however I'm pretty sure it will be centered around forestry and leisure. I'm also planning for apple orchards and ranching (cows, maybe sheep, if sheep are in the game). I didn't want to have grain fields since this is supposed to be a higher elevation where grains don't grow well, but for the Industries DLC production chain to work properly, I might have to plop some grain farms.

So, let's start laying some roads.... ...and this was how it started.

Nice little grid there to come into town with, but I absolutely hated it. I wanted the highway to be a continuous road thru town like it was with Two Lakes, but I still wanted my main downtown to be at the head of the lake this time. So after a restart I managed to get things more to my liking.

That's better. The highway continues nicely through and we still have a nice little grid for a downtown area. I liked the look of the commercial zoning in Two Lakes along the northern shoreline, so the downtown can spread in that direction if it needs to, but for now, the shoreline will be for residential zoning. I'm leaving space between the road and the lake to hopefully get some lakeside parks in there. Farmland to the west, power and forestry industry in the southwest, and cargo in the southeast with room for warehousing and more industry if needed.

I flattened the terrain in places, but left the difference in elevation within the downtown grid. Might be challenging, but I think it adds some character. That little building there is our beloved County Courthouse.

I really like this building asset. This is "County Courthouse" by bigmoodenergy. This creator was smart to have the road connection positioned on the side of the building. This way I can make a yard or a parking lot in the "front", as I did here with a plaza and parking.

This town needs power! I want HayMan Springs to be a town that was founded on the timber industry, but with a keen eye focused on environmental protection. After all, this is a mountain community nestled in the depths of nature. The folks in these parts love the healthy vegetation, the clean water, and the crisp mountain air and desire to keep it as pristine as possible. Naturally, when they left the state's power grid to create their own, they went with solar energy.

Anyone visiting HayMan Springs won't be able to help but notice the technologically advanced power plant as they enter the city limits. It becomes a monument in its own right as its prominence and presence alone proclaims the will of the community to preserve the beauty and life of the region. This location for the facility is as practical as it is ideological as it will provide guaranteed power to the nearby timber industry while keeping a respectable distance away from residential areas.

Finally, we have our railroad freight station. (sigh)

This time our choice of location provides much more practicality than ideology, mainly for reasons provided by the railroad. The land in this area was heavily modified to accommodate the space needed for the station as you can see by the bumpy terrain encroaching onto the shoreline. They had to move that dirt somewhere and that was the most logical (aka: cost effective) place to push it in order to level the area and prepare the lot. Some residents complain that the whole thing is a bit of an eyesore, as it spoils the horizon from the other side of the lake, but others maintain that the railroad is a necessary evil and the town is stronger by having it. It is definitely a topic of much debate in HayMan Springs.

The detractors want to at least move it out of town and let the trucks travel a little further. Others who appreciate its proximity would like to see a passenger service come to town.

"We're not big enough a town to warrant a passenger line!"
"But it would bring tourists and their wallets, boosting the economy!"
"It would wreck the environment and bring crime and chaos!"
"No, it wouldn't!"
"Yes, it would!"
"Nuh uh!!"
"Uh huh!!"

It seems our beloved courthouse may have a colorful future.

Despite the grumblings and disagreements of city politics, the citizens of HayMan Springs are still united by the nature that surrounds them, and the ties of community among them are a bond as strong as family.

Population: 0
Bank Balance: 540,490
Custom assets/mods used: 1246

 

[guillec87]

thanks! I'd appreciate it a lot if you could upload the map

 

[HayManMarc]

Link to Map Download

Here be the map! Fixed up and uploaded to the Steam Workshop...

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1996235486&searchtext=

I'd be thrilled to see screenshots by anyone using this.

 

[HayManMarc]

Zoning and City Services


We've added the zones and some services! The town is coming to life!

I zoned the northern shoreline for residential and it didn't seem like it was going to be enough, so I added some roads up the hillside. People love living on hills and next to lakes, so I thought this would be pretty swell.

I mixed some dense and light commercial in the downtown area and I'm hoping that works out okay. I even zoned a little bit of office space near the courthouse.

I painted some industrial districts - one for farming and the other for forestry. I threw down some industrial zones for district-based generic industry just to get things going until I have the population to start an industrial chain.

A water pump is placed near the freight station and an Eco Water Treatment Plant placed at the river outlet of the lake. The treatment plant is great as it is producing next to zero pollution (even after the city has grown).

Here's a better view without all the zoning grids in the way...

Looking pretty sparse, but buildings are being built so that's a good sign.

Butted up against the hillside right there in the middle of that screenshot is our first grade school.

I placed KingLeno's "American Main Street" down by the lake. This building has a nice small town (or old town) feel to it and it's another one of my favorite workshop assets. I guess that means the street closest to the lake is Main Street.

Oh look, a new building is going up behind the courthouse.

Here are some city services, located right downtown...

As you can see, I really like using workshop assets. There in the middle is "Fire Station No. 31", again by KingLeno. He's got a great video showing how he made this. Across the lumpy parking lot to its left is the "Ambulance Station" by DieHardHunter. We have one of these in the small town I live in (about 1600 population) and it looks almost identical, in general. This building works like a hospital, so I won't need to add a hospital or clinic for a while. Finally, the little brown building further left is the "Small Police Station" by ChrisAusDemKlo. Great little building that looks like a small town sheriff's office. Perfect for now until the town grows bigger, then I may need to upgrade to a larger station.

The Forestry Industry is zoned but nothing building yet.

But this looked like the best place to process garbage with a Recycling Center.

I went ahead and plopped down a Small Warehouse for commercial zoned goods.

It might be too soon for this warehouse, but I wanted to get it into place before I forgot about it.

It's important that cities or towns have iconic places. When I stumbled onto the asset "Mounties Restaurant" by 220hertz, I instantly had to have it because it is one of those kinds of places.

In HayMan Springs, Mounties Restaurant is that quirky, iconic place that has always been there. It has become a traditional stop for tourists and a mainstay for the locals. They have the best burgers in town, and it will always be that way.

Right next door is the "New Small Farmer's Market 5x5" by Alfred de Musset using various Soldyne's Fruit Stand assets. Very nice.

So here's HayMan Springs off to a nice, homey start. However, I happened to look down and see the weekly profit at -4754! I was losing money fast and I'd be broke and the city would be dead if I didn't turn it around.

If I remember right, I turned down all the services budgets as far as they'd go (fire, police, health, education), and the rest (power, water, garbage) as much as possible without going into the red. Raised taxes to 12% across the board. It was a struggle for a while as the town grew, but I was eventually able to turn it around and get some profit.

The road now carries on past the town and into the mountains along the river. That's where everyone likes to go camping.

Speaking of leisure, I wonder when we'll start seeing boats? After all, there's a whole lotta lake around here.


Population: 94
Bank Balance: 370,256
Custom assets/mods used: 1262

 

[HayManMarc]

Struggling to Grow


The zones in HayMan Springs are filling in quite nicely. I turned on Unlock Everything so I could have access to dense zoning. I don't see why a small town wouldn't have apartments. Besides that, it helps keep the town/city from sprawling out so much, which I need on a map with confined space like this one. So even with a population of only 700 we've already got some taller buildings to admire and some apartments and condos with great views of the lake.

Our downtown is shaping up nicely as well...

We've zoned the curve, here, up front, to hold dense residential and it looks like people can't wait to move in. Between them and the courthouse is now all zoned for office. All other downtown areas are zoned commercial. I started with all light commercial, then changed to a mixture of light and dense, then I kept changing things around -- where those light and dense places should be. I tried to make all buildings nearest to the road that leads straight on to the highway face the side streets. This way when receiving truck shipments, they won't be in the way of the traffic that I assume will be taking over that main through street. Then I put the dense zones down on the lower streets trying to keep traffic away from that main through street.

At the lower right of that screenshot you can see I plopped a church/crematorium for deathcare. Later on in this city build, I adopt the "No Deathcare" mod because I was getting annoyed with deathcare issues popping up all the time. I felt it was a little ridiculous that I needed 2 or 3 crematoriums in a city of 2-3000 in order to pick up the dead before complaints. So, no more deathcare gameplay. The deathcare mechanic of this game could use a good overhaul, imo.

Still no forestry industry out by the power plant. I think it's a bit too far away (besides the fact that industry isn't a large demand yet), but a couple of little farm fields popped up close by.

This helps the Farmer's Market make a little more sense. I eventually want to see apple orchards, but I'm going for forestry first, so we'll see how long this takes.

At this point, I'm trying to make sure I include parking lots. In the past playing this game, I was always having to destroy places to add in parking lots. I want to stay ahead of that this time. Besides, it seems more realistic that some of these places would already have them.

That little parking lot on the corner has an ugly dumpster on it. I hid it with a tree. Thank you, Move It mod and Prop Anarchy!

So here's the ending shot as our little town struggles to grow and survive. Luckily we started with a large bank balance since our weekly income is still difficult to manage.

I'm hoping to get some camping areas put in up the river past the town. The undeveloped area past the lakefront residential is begging to be developed. I'm thinking a high school, or save it for a college, or just expand the residential and add some nearby shops. We'll see what the citizens are demanding in our next chapter.


Population: 684
Bank Balance: 302,985
Custom assets/mods used: 1194
Weekly Income: -1872
Happiness: +36

 

[HayManMarc]

Investing for Growth


HayMan Springs was really struggling to make money, so while we had a surplus bank account, it was time to take a leap of faith and try to expand and grow the population. I'm thinking the lack of population is our problem, here.

So say hello to our new district, of which I don't have a name for yet. I haven't even painted it as a district yet.

These look like the makings of some pretty posh neighborhoods. This might turn into the ritzy part of town.

I moved the fire station down here, you can see it at the lower left on the main road. Also moved the little police station down here, in the middle of the district on the main road. Housing, both light and dense, are scattered on the hills at the base of the cliff side. I tried to put the dense zones in the back with the light zones up front in an effort to maintain nice vistas for everyone. The rest of the open space along the main road is reserved for more commercial. Right smack in the middle we plopped down another grade school with it's own parking lot.

Those parking lots have been a pain to get flat enough to look okay. Many times I've had to destroy and rebuild roads to terraform the areas. Same with getting the roads and intersections to look right. Also, I'm starting to get into the habit of moving trees instead of just building over the top of them, so if you were looking really close you'd see there are places with trees now that didn't have them before.

Such a major expansion was a little scary, hoping I was making good choices, but I'm liking the way its developing.

We made some changes downtown, too...

The first thing you probably see is the new HayMan Springs High School, but we'll come back to that.

We moved the little police station, so I thought I'd better do that upgrade I was talking about earlier. In it's place is the horrendously ugly vanilla police station and I absolutely hate it. But, it will have to do until I find a replacement in the workshop with the same stats. (Which I do, eventually.)

I was pleasantly surprised by the appearance of a second iconic landmark/location -- the teapot-shaped, growable, commercial building "Tara's Teapot" by niis-ku. I instantly made this a historic site, though its location is a little weird.

I added a larger parking lot down by the Mainstreet Markets building, anticipating more shops in this area and a park area in the future.

And since we moved the fire station to the new area in an effort to make it more central for the residential, I felt we still needed coverage for downtown and other areas on this side of town. So we plopped down the Ghostbusters Fire Station!

In the workshop it's called "Nightlights updated! Firestation Ghostbusters" by Feindbild. This is nice and small. Its small 1x3 footprint and architectural style works very well among downtown commercial and office buildings, and, well, it's the frickin' Ghostbusters! How can you not love it! I believe this is when HayMan Springs began its love affair with Science Fiction.

The HayMan Springs High School (HSHS), gym, and football field is a welcome addition to town.

"City High School" and "City High School Gym" by KingLeno are fantastic likenesses of the type of schools I grew up with. If you hadn't noticed, KingLeno is one of my favorite workshop creators. He's got a great eye for style, while simultaneously keeping things simple. Thanks, @kingleno ( <--if this is indeed you) for your wonderful buildings!! I'll buy you a beer soon, I promise!

The football field is a custom asset I made using KingLeno's "Football Field Decals", and the "Small Shed" by Avanya. I used other various props that I'll have to look into for information, if anyone wants to know. The red benches, the lights, the fence, and possibly others I'm forgetting. Anyhow, it turned out to be a pretty good high school field, so I just keep using it.

I mentioned that parking lot by the Mainstreet Market building down by the lake shore.

If you look at a screenshot of this area from a previous session, you might notice some landscaping going on. I came to the conclusion that I couldn't sacrifice any downtown real estate for park area, and by now I decided I really wanted the waterfront to be all park. So I made more land space and moved the shoreline out a smidge. (Unless I'm mistaken, I think I do this again for just a little more room at a later time.) A major city park is coming, folks. Rest assured.

Speaking of parks, I don't think I've added ANY to the town yet. I better fix that soon.

The forestry area finally took off, so I was finally able to start my Timber Industry district (Industries DLC).

I haven't played the Industries DLC enough to know how to plan this out yet, but no more messin' around. This is why this town exists. Right up front we have the Forestry Main Building. The city council has deemed the "Old Broken Farmhouse" as a historic site and landmark, so it is preserved for posterity and remains unmoved and unchanged. Next door is the Log Yard and space for a future saw mill. Finally, since the game can't seem to recognize vast forest land to extract trees from, there is a tree farm packed full of mountain conifers to round out the operation and get it off its feet. At last! We have our Timber and Forestry Industry.

Amidst our time of expansion shortly after the rise of our timber industry, we happened to notice trucks stacking up at the freight station. It was a pretty easy fix to install a parallel road and make one-way traffic in front of the station.

You can see how happy this made our visiting trains.

Another "finally" I was able to get around to this time was extending the main road up into the mountains past the town.

For our citizens, this road had been here forever, it seems. The road follows the river up to "Spring Lake", the upper lake. This road has seen trappers, fishermen, hunters, and miners from days long past. These days, it hasn't changed much as folks travel up into the woods for fishing, hunting, and camping, and maybe even a little gold panning. There are various turnouts along the way where folks have created their own camp sites.

Finally we reach the end of the road (for now)....

The road ends here at "Badger Falls" for us, but our cims know the road extends on up to Spring Lake. Our cims also know there are offshoot roads venturing up the mountain sides to places deep in the forests. They will be revealed in time, as will the great "HayMan National Park".

The future is bright, as long as we foster growth and practice patient planning within our city.

HayMan Springs has taken a huge leap forward with this chapter of our story. Most of the townsfolk are excited about the new developments and are generally welcoming of the modern world, however many remain nervous that our city planners may be overreaching as our city coffers are growing thin. Still others, the old guard, are not pleased with any growth at all and want to keep things the way they always were. These are tough and exciting times for HayMan Springs.

The nostalgia of the past has a tight grip, but the inevitable approach of progress is as sure as the changing seasons.

Population: 1282
Bank Balance: 98,805
Custom assets/mods used: 1194
Weekly Income: -2186
Happiness: +11

 

[HayManMarc]

Slow Growth and a Few Details


It was during this session that I realized I hadn't pushed my taxes up to 12% yet. No wonder I wasn't making any money. No matter how much I adjusted city services budgets, I could not reduce spending enough to turn a profit. It finally dawned on me that I hadn't increased taxes to 12% from the game start where it was riding at 8 or 9% (whatever it is, I can't remember). I mentioned earlier that I did it then, but I was mistaken. This is the save that I labeled "taxes". Big Derp Moment.

The bank account is running quite low now at 18,355. We'll need to be a bit more selective and careful with spending.

Here was something our town was missing. HayMan Springs can now join the rest of the world. We can now send and receive mail.

The empty lot the old firehouse used to sit on is now home to our new Post Office. So go ahead -- write some letters! yay!!

We've also added a small section of dense residential on the south side of town.

Pretty close to workplaces with a nice view of the lake and shoreline and also close to shopping. Pretty nice for south side. I wonder if they know their land value will jump up considerably when the city park finally makes its debut? I'm sure they've heard rumors.

We've also added some more residential zones up the hillside above the high school.

I'm guessing that the Timber/Forestry Industry has sparked a demand for workers, which in turn sparked a demand for more residential zones. Hopefully we can meet those demands and grow the industry and start turning a profit in this little town.

Oh, what's that down by Mounties Restaurant?

Are those pedestrian shortcuts? Why yes, yes they are. These are actual paths the cims can take just like using a sidewalk. It's a wonderful asset called "Hiking Trail" by Czardus. Oh look, there's some more over by the grade school.

I was able to place a trail coming down the ravine behind the school. It's perfect.

I love these trails. They are smaller than a normal path, and they stay kinda hidden from view. They make perfect, "unplanned" shortcuts that are often created by kids. I've seen actual shortcuts in real towns and cities become adopted by the city and developed into legitimate pedestrian pathways. I'll be using more of these as the city grows, I'm sure. And some of these may indeed become improved pathways in the future.

Lookie here --- we have some boats!

What lake doesn't have boats on it? This one, until now. This is our first attempt at making a park, without making a park. Leave it to a bunch of city officials to totally get it wrong. The little marina is nice, don't get me wrong, but sharing a boardwalk with vehicle traffic is just not cutting it. (A sneak peek into the future tells us that the only thing that survives here is the general layout of the pathway. Don't get too attached, it'll all be different soon.) So, hey guys, when we say "city park" we mean an actual city park, okay?

We added a Worker's Barracks for the Timber Industry and a second Recycling Center to accommodate the rise in population.

So, not too exciting this time around, but some definite changes and positive growth.

Population: 1661
Bank Balance: 18355
Custom assets/mods used: 1198
Weekly Income: -441
Happiness: +30

 

[HayManMarc]

New District - North Hill


Satellite view of HayMan Springs.

Behold, a new, major addition to our town -- the North Hill District!

I felt like the last new district addition at the base of the bluffs, now known as the "Northgate District", started feeling too far away from the major commercial area of downtown. Also, I've been aching to expand city offices and commercial on the backside of this hill since the beginning.

We've got great plans for a Science Fiction Memorial Park at the top of the hill overlooking the city. It will feature a huge statuesque replica of the original Starship Enterprise of Star Trek fame. As it turns out, HayMan Springs happens to be the hometown of a successful movie effects artist known for their work in many Science Fiction TV shows and movies. To show our support for the genre, and celebrate the success of our hometown celebrity, park and museum projects are in the planning stages.

Most of the townsfolk are excited and can't wait to see the Enterprise Park, but the old grumblers keep vocalizing how the modern era is ruining our community. Change is really hard on some people.

Anyway, here's the North Hill District's humble beginnings. The upper grid is reserved for parks, offices, and commercial zones. Most of the rest that you see here, some places already developed, is residential. Dense residential on the main road into the district overlooks the river, offering a great view for their tenants. Light residential fills in the neighborhoods offering great housing options for our residents.

An old, backroad has been improved to create a new road connection to this area over the backside of the hill.

Planning is already in the works for more residential areas along this route. Also, the National Forestry Department is demanding we add watch towers for all the surrounding forested areas, and the top of this hill is one of their desired locations. Seems that our little town is progressing and growing more behind the scenes than we realize.

One more little item of interest related to this new district is the new gas station on the corner that binds and segues the Northgate district to the North Hill district.

The "Pristine Red Rocket Gas Station" by kurtus_mob. Another iconic place in our town serving as a local monument. For our cims, this station has existed for years, ever since the space race in the 60's. It was the "last stop" for fuel, snacks, and ice for your coolers before leaving civilization for the seclusion of the forested mountains. HayMan Springs wouldn't be the same without it. It has been awarded 'historical status' by the HayMan Springs Historical Society, and is a protected landmark of the city.

I've added a city dump because it seemed like we were having garbage collection issues.

Unfortunately, I think this was a mistake. After I placed it, we continued having problems. Upon further investigation, I found the budget had been turned all the way down. I fixed the budget and we kept the dump site. And without further ado, this concludes our second Big Derp Moment.

We added some generic industry to the warehouse district.

The initial plan was to add Tech Industry to this area, but it turns out that idea belongs to a different universe. So these places have their own district with ecological policies in force. The citizens are adamant about low pollution standards and setting restrictions for industry.

Cars on people paths. Shake My Head. I just can't abide by it.

This has got to go. There's just no way I can accept it. Moving on...

Here's a nice shot of Lakeside Blvd at night.

Not sure what the post office is doing out so late, but must be important, no doubt.

And one last thing I noticed...

This first intersection into town is starting to show signs of traffic issues. Traffic is still flowing very well throughout the little town, but I'll have to remember to keep an eye on this as we move forward.

It's nice to finally see the weekly income colored green instead of red. That was a struggle to achieve, but we've finally hit positive returns with our city budget. Just in time as we're down to 10,000 from our starting capital 0f 750,000 (I believe it was).

Anyway, big changes, big plans, big ideas, and another big blunder for this chapter of HayMan Springs.

Population: 2319
Bank Balance: 10263
Custom assets/mods used: 1201
Weekly Income: +1014
Happiness: +24

 

[HayManMarc]

Lakefront Park, Police Stations, Fire Towers, and a Strange Anomaly!


This is quite possibly the most "eventful" year yet for HayMan Springs. I say "eventful", but others would probably say "crazy". So much has happened and it's hard to decide where to start. Well, not that hard, actually. Let's start with what resulted as the citizens' favorite accomplishment. The Lakefront Park Project.

We did it! We finally did it! The city of HayMan Springs has finally implemented Phase 1 of the Lakefront Park Project!

Oh my, was it a mess and a chore to get through the construction phase of all this, but it seems to be paying off as most of our citizens are overjoyed with the results. The marina has been moved, the old, broken dock has been removed and replaced with a park pier, parking and parking lot access has been upgraded, and several access gates have been placed for convenient entry from any location.

Let's start off our tour with the new parking lots and the frontage access roads.

Well, that dumb Winnebago is blocking the entrance with its poor parking skills, but right there is a two-way entrance/exit for the North Side parking lot connecting to Lakeside Boulevard, just behind the Mainstreet Market building. On the other side of this lot is another two-way entrance/exit connecting up to Main Street. Off of this street, is a one-lane, one-way street that leads past the park's main gate and parking lot then continues on behind the high density apartment buildings to the South Side parking lot. This last parking lot has it's own one-lane entrance from Main Street on this side of the lot, but it has a two-way entrance/exit on the far side.

This was a lot of work to get laid out. Those "Parking Lot Roads" by Badi_Dea are awesome, but they are a pain to get level and add stripes to (or perhaps I just need more practice with the tools). Anyhow, I'm really happy with how it all turned out.

Hopefully, we have plenty of gateways for entry and exit to the park itself.

Here's the Main gate with a side gate connecting from the North Side parking lot near Lakeside Boulevard.

Here's the South Side gate.

And here's the Lakeside gate.

Oh, look, up the street there... Looks like Larry's Hobby Shop is getting his shipment of little die-cast cars today. Sweet!

A city-wide poll was conducted (as best they could) and a vast majority of our citizens were in favor of removing the old, broken-down dock on the southwestern shore. It's been the cause of many accidents from broken arms to broken boats, and has even been blamed for the death of a local resident decades ago. Many wanted the dock removed back then, but the old guard who hates change and progress won that battle declaring the historical value and significance of the ages-old dock. Safety measures were set in place back then by adding a fence barricade to the old dock, and the dock stayed in place ever since, until now.

That old guard of sameness and anti-progress still exists, though now in fewer numbers, and they are not happy campers at all. During construction of the park, they organized protests and bothered locals and tourists alike for petition signatures to stop the removal of the old dock. They were even able to organize a sit-in on the dock itself as the crew was preparing to tear it down. After a stand-off that lasted 9 hours (from about 10 am to around 7:45 pm) and with the help of state and local law enforcement and city officials, the protesters gave in as they realized they'd been beaten. Coincidentally, just minutes before they bowed out, a hot dog truck pulled up and started serving German sausages to the onlookers. That hot dog truck made good money that evening.

The whole ordeal was quite a show attracting news teams from the nearest TV stations. HayMan Springs was famous for a day. The city council and the mayors office were full of mixed feelings by all the attention. The protests and controversy seemed to shine a negative spotlight on the town, but the newscasts were full of images of the surrounding area, highlighting the beauty of nature and the town's catering to the outdoors, which could very well give the economy a boost by a surge in tourism.

At any rate, as you can see in the above photo, a nice, brand new, covered pier took its place and it gets used daily.

The small marina dock was relocated to this side of the lake as well, which seemed to ease the protesters even more. They were even allowed to give the new marina the old dock's name. They named the new marina "Old Broken Dock Marina".

The Lakeside Park Project has plans for Phase 2 to expand along Lakeside Boulevard up to the Northgate district. Phase 3 will expand the park the rest of the way to the north end of town ending at Red Rocket Gas Station. This will connect all the lower districts together with a beautiful pedestrian path and a city wide park for the whole community to enjoy.

In other park news, the Women of Lakeside Society organized the creation of "Lakeside Dog Park".

Lakeside Dog Park sits between the Lakeside district and the Northgate district. The local newspaper featured a front page write-up on the "generous efforts of the Women of Lakeside Society" in making the Dog Park a reality.

The Northgate Women's Club is furious.

Meanwhile, the US Forest Department has effortlessly raised two watch towers for the area.

North Hill Tower watches over the forest to the north and northwest. This tower was the first to go up. Construction was swift and efficient. Their second tower was constructed directly afterwards by the same crew.

Timberline Tower, on the western hill above the Timber Industry, oversees the greater industry area. This tower is complete with an outhouse and storage shed (not shown in this photo).

HayMan Springs also received a grant from the Forest Service to aid our fire safety budget. The city used the funds for two new firehouses.

One was built next to North Hill Tower to service the North Hill District, as seen in the previous photo of the tower.

The other one was built in the Forestry district to service both the forestry and the small farming industrial areas closeby. This is "K's Forest Service Station" by Lieutenant A.Kouassi.

You'd think this would bring comfort and a sense of safety to the community, but strangely enough it seemed to cause a case of heightened anxiety to many of our residents. People are strange and wondrous creatures, that's for sure.

We've also been playing musical chairs with our police departments. No wonder why we're running out of money.

Our downtown district got a new building. "Police Station [Re-Upload] {AD}" by N v K is a rework of the original work by NGON. (I was going to link to NGON, but I can't find the person.) Anyway, nice looking building. Looks like Thomas Magnum is paying a visit.

Northgate got the short straw.

It's okay, though. I've got a few ideas for a replacement when the time comes. However, the Northgate Women's Club think it's adorable.

The Women of Lakeside Society is furious.

Finally, the North Hill district gets the small station, and they're just fine with that.

Last, but most certainly not least, two small campground parks were recognized this year, just outside of town upriver.

The furthest one out is a nice little campground, and even stocked with some old, scrap lumber for firewood donated by our Timber industry. Those are some pretty swell guys.

The closer campground park is a whole other story altogether. I'll do my best to explain what happened, to the best of my knowledge.

Just after the hoopla of the dock protests calmed down, a short, thin, young man wearing glasses, probably in his 30's, showed up in town. He seemed kinda weird, but only in a harmless, nerdy kind of way. He was generally nice to people and didn't bring much attention to himself. Next thing we know, THIS was happening in that campground park closest to town.

Yes, those trees are floating, 20 to at least 50 feet off the ground! Also affected by the anomaly was the nearby swingset and picnic table. Thank goodness nobody was hurt!

It turns out that a local resident (who wishes to remain anonymous) claims that this visitor, who we only know as "Doug", had said he was some kind of scientist who works for the government. Apparently he was conducting some kind of experiment with what he called "gravity waves" and a bunch of other "sciency mumbo jumbo" that our anonymous resident can't even remember. This photo was taken at the scene, but anyone who sees it says it's a photoshop fake, even with alleged witnesses corroborating the story.

Anyway, before we knew it, the whole place was back to normal and this "Doug" guy just vanished from the area, never to be seen again. Inquiries to federal agencies are met with dismissal and denial, saying they have no idea what we're talking about and it sounds like conspiracy theory stories made up by attention seekers.

So to this day, it remains an unsolved mystery and has quickly become the town's "hometown ghost story".

Yep, it's been a crazy, crazy year for HayMan Springs, for sure. Fortunately for us, we have the most spellbindingly beautiful sunsets to ease our minds and bring peace back into our souls.

Long ago, a waitress at Mounties Restaurant found a napkin at an empty booth with some pretty neat doodles drawn on it. In the lower, right-hand corner was written, "I'll never see more stranger things than the things I've seen in HayMan Springs." She had submitted it to the local paper in a letter to the editor. It's been a standard catch phrase here ever since.

Population: 2607
Bank Balance: 16780
Custom assets/mods used: 1219
Weekly Income: +1649
Happiness: -48

 

[HayManMarc]

Building Up The Bank Account


It would seem that the last episode was just too much excitement for HayMan Springs. We pretty much stopped doing anything for 14 years. The city had started turning a pretty nice profit, so we just sat back and raked in the dough. Now we're sitting pretty at $1,263,456 which means we'll be able to expand easier now.

We didn't just sit on our hands, though. In that 14 year span, many buildings had leveled up, which in turn generated more traffic, apparently. Plus, somewhere along the way I noticed the traffic zig-zagging through the downtown instead of using the main road that curves and connects Downtown with Lakeside. I can't remember when I did it, but I put speed limits on all my streets in an effort to direct thru-traffic and keeping them on arterial roads. It worked and the traffic is sticking to the main roads now.

The Downtown street that connects to Highway 42 was getting extremely busy, so we upgraded that section to a 4-lane.

Since we were upgrading streets, we finally upgraded the gravel streets in the Northgate district to pavement.

One developer liked the new pavement so much she bought up all the plots on the north end and built matching apartment buildings. Turned out kinda neat, I thought.

Up past Northgate, the North Hill district is patiently waiting for its time to shine.

We've started a wind power initiative to supplement our power grid on cloudy days and long nights. We were experiencing some brownouts in areas, but this has solved our issue, for now.

If you squint your eyes, you can see that we moved the fire station that was near the North Hill Tower closer towards the North Hill district. We're still trying to fix the landscape for this poor building, but for now, a few parking spaces will have to remain at poor, hillside angles. Watch those door dings, people!

Our Timber Industry has been making use of their space.

A Sawmill, an Engineered Wood Plant (I think that's a Lumber Mill, in layman's terms), and Saw Dust Storage along with some office buildings and a few more generic industrial sites closeby have all been added over the past 14 years. Also, there's now a new, small grove of conifers back by the Worker's Barracks. The big building on the right is the new Forestry Maintenance Building to help take care of all the new facilities. This shot has a nice view of the steep road that snakes up the hill behind the industrial park up to Timberline Tower.

Not much action with our residents over the last decade. It's been a nice, quiet time for HayMan Springs. However, there's a growing feeling that things are about to change in a big way.

There's been some grumblings about HayMan Springs' rising unemployment rates. Even with the additions to the Timber Industry, residents cite the lack of higher education and a lack of employment opportunities for the less educated. With a surplus budget burning a hole in our pockets, these issues are likely to be addressed fairly soon.

Population: 2797
Bank Balance: 1,263,456
Custom assets/mods used: 1235
Weekly Income: +2076
Happiness: +12

 

[HayManMarc]

Higher Education and North Hill Growth


As predicted, HayMan Springs has introduced its citizens to higher education within our own city.

The city has chosen to cater to technology as we've opened our Modern Technology Institute. This is a stand-alone college needing no Campus DLC redistricting. We've finally reached the south side of the tracks (and the lake) which opens up more options for future growth. However, local officials and city planners are stating that the area is being reserved for future growth for a University district.

A spacious parking lot has been built for the college and the land between the college and the railroad has been zoned for dense residential, to house the influx of students. There are also small commercial zones nearby.

Just after construction, the highway overpass was flooded with pedestrian traffic. City officials immediately deemed it unsafe and quickly implemented a solution. Our Department of Transportation built a pedestrian path and bridge that connects Downtown to the new college district. The pathway rises up over the truck route that leads to the railroad freight station and also over the railroad tracks themselves, making travel easy and uninterrupted for both pedestrians and traffic, vehicle and railroad alike.

Before the college was built, the Science and Technology Association of HayMan Springs somehow came up with the funds to build the HayMan Springs START Program (Science and Technology Association Radio Telescope) at the top edge of the North Hill district. Many point to this as the catalyst that sparked the construction of the MTI college.

This workshop asset is "Telescope Dish" by GCVos. It provides university education for up to 50 students as they study radio signals emanating from planets, stars, nebulae, and even galaxies. It's a perfect fit for HayMan Springs as they prepare the surrounding empty lots for the long awaited Sci-Fi parks and memorials.

Also built in part for preparation of the upcoming sci-fi parks is the short cable car ride connecting the top of the North Hill district to the junction of Lakeside and Northgate districts.

Many folks were unsure about the success of such a specialty case transit system, but it has become widely popular and gets a great deal of use by our residents and tourists alike.

All of this new growth brought a huge jump in population adding even more traffic to our streets. Again, we've upgraded some of our streets to accommodate this increase, including the highway leading into town. We've extended the 4-lane upgrade in our downtown area over the overpass a short distance past the college. We've also installed our first two traffic light intersections.

Our first traffic light went in here, at the intersection of Highway 42 and Industry Road at the northern base of the highway overpass.

The other traffic light was installed here at the intersection of Highway 42 and Market Street.

Both of these intersections were clogging and backing up heavily before these lights were installed. This was another great improvement by our Department of Transportation. Well done, people!

Due to a few fires that sprang up and started eating our trees, we felt the need for a Fire Helicopter Depot.

This time, our residents responded with a sense of relief instead of a sense of added anxiety. Perhaps seeing the choppers in action averting a disaster directly after it was built helped in the matter.

Finally, on a local, private sector note, we see a nice improvement to a dense housing area in the Hillside district (above the high school connecting to Lakeside).

An area was cleared behind these apartment buildings for a nice parking lot with path access. Before this, parking was quite a problem for this area.

So, some nice improvements all around as our little town is becoming not-so-little anymore. We haven't heard much from "the old guard" since the 'old, broken dock' incident. Perhaps they've given in to the fact that change is inevitable, or perhaps they have moved on to greener pastures in every sense of the phrase. Whatever the case may be, we must all hold true to our city forefathers' love of nature, as did our 'old guard' friends, as we take our bold strides into the unknown and exciting future.

Population: 4255
Bank Balance: 1,026,650
Custom assets/mods used: 1227
Weekly Income: +1761
Happiness: +28

 

[HayManMarc]

A message to you


Hi, Skyliners!

If you've been reading and following along with the story of HayMan Springs, I'd love to hear from you! I've noticed the view count keeps increasing so it seems I have some readers, but it's so quiet.

Please, tell me what you think, what you like, what you don't like, suggestions, comments, etc. It would be great to hear from you.

---HMM