Part 2: The map
Last time I showed you guys an overview of what the current state of the project was and where I was going with it. This time we're going to take a look at one of the first steps that I took to re-create Chernobyl in Cities:Skylines, and that is the map.
I chose the exact location using terrain.party – thanks to it’s Cities:Skylines optimized grid I was able to tell how much of the Zone would fit onto the map (I used the default 18x18 km grid). I was happy to see that I can fit both city of Prypiat and the Chernobyl town on one map. The area between those two is filled with the most iconic sites in the Zone. I only regret not being able to squeeze in the Buryakivka (former) vehicle graveyard, which is now converted into this cool radioactive waste disposal facility.
I didn’t import the heightmap generated by terrain party – the land around Chernobyl is nearly completely flat, and the heightmap generated by terrain.party was slightly glitchy (terrain was deformed where brighter reflections from water and the New Safe Confinement were)
Instead, I redrawn the shape in Google Earth Pro, exported the image and laid it over in C:S with the OverLayer v2 mod (I set the .png to about 70% opacity, so I could see the roads being drawn.
I also use OpenStreetMap because it offers a great deal of detail not available from satellite imagery or Street View
I recreated the road layout with as much accuracy as I could, mostly using the Mass Transit two-way highway, as this is the primary type of road in the Zone. I won’t be releasing the map on the workshop, as I feel it’s not a very good base for a fun gameplay – the vast amount of work like smaller roads, canals, cooling pond, foliage and detailed rivers are done in the game, not the map editor.
I also used the unlimited connections mod because the in-game limit is nowhere near the real life situation. I think I have around 13 road connections on the map. This created another challenge: the dummy traffic. Even if we imagine Chernobyl to be a live, habitable zone, the traffic simulation made it look like there was a huge city off each border of the map. IRL the zone barely sees any traffic, except for some tourists and small amount of cargo. I found the Configure Outside Connections’ Limits mod to be extremely helpful. By setting dummy traffic on every road to 5 (down from 500) I was able to recreate the feeling of desolation that is present in Chernobyl. (Later on, the traffic is still quite too dense to my taste, but I will talk about it in another update)
The map uses the vanilla base theme (European), but that may change in the future.
This is how the map currently looks in the game:
I went for Russian instead Ukrainian for the naming scheme, as I try to imagine the region somewhere in the early 90-s, like it was never really abandoned (but still slightly overgrown), and as if the Soviet Union never dissolved. I would love to hear from some Russian players – I need help correcting and translating the names that I was not able to find reference of (I don’t speak Russian or Ukrainian).
If you're curious of what mods I use in this project, hop on to the Mods section (there are 64 of them!)
Cheers!
I chose the exact location using terrain.party – thanks to it’s Cities:Skylines optimized grid I was able to tell how much of the Zone would fit onto the map (I used the default 18x18 km grid). I was happy to see that I can fit both city of Prypiat and the Chernobyl town on one map. The area between those two is filled with the most iconic sites in the Zone. I only regret not being able to squeeze in the Buryakivka (former) vehicle graveyard, which is now converted into this cool radioactive waste disposal facility.
I didn’t import the heightmap generated by terrain party – the land around Chernobyl is nearly completely flat, and the heightmap generated by terrain.party was slightly glitchy (terrain was deformed where brighter reflections from water and the New Safe Confinement were)
Instead, I redrawn the shape in Google Earth Pro, exported the image and laid it over in C:S with the OverLayer v2 mod (I set the .png to about 70% opacity, so I could see the roads being drawn.
I also use OpenStreetMap because it offers a great deal of detail not available from satellite imagery or Street View
I recreated the road layout with as much accuracy as I could, mostly using the Mass Transit two-way highway, as this is the primary type of road in the Zone. I won’t be releasing the map on the workshop, as I feel it’s not a very good base for a fun gameplay – the vast amount of work like smaller roads, canals, cooling pond, foliage and detailed rivers are done in the game, not the map editor.
I also used the unlimited connections mod because the in-game limit is nowhere near the real life situation. I think I have around 13 road connections on the map. This created another challenge: the dummy traffic. Even if we imagine Chernobyl to be a live, habitable zone, the traffic simulation made it look like there was a huge city off each border of the map. IRL the zone barely sees any traffic, except for some tourists and small amount of cargo. I found the Configure Outside Connections’ Limits mod to be extremely helpful. By setting dummy traffic on every road to 5 (down from 500) I was able to recreate the feeling of desolation that is present in Chernobyl. (Later on, the traffic is still quite too dense to my taste, but I will talk about it in another update)
The map uses the vanilla base theme (European), but that may change in the future.
This is how the map currently looks in the game:
I went for Russian instead Ukrainian for the naming scheme, as I try to imagine the region somewhere in the early 90-s, like it was never really abandoned (but still slightly overgrown), and as if the Soviet Union never dissolved. I would love to hear from some Russian players – I need help correcting and translating the names that I was not able to find reference of (I don’t speak Russian or Ukrainian).
If you're curious of what mods I use in this project, hop on to the Mods section (there are 64 of them!)
Cheers!