Embre

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Author: Ingenium

Last revision: 6 Jun, 2021 at 18:45 UTC

File size: 12.92 MB

On Steam Workshop

Description:

Minor Update 06.06.2021: Ventru highlighted in the comments that there have still been instances of the classic grey rocks which I replaced with sandy grey rocks –> I have found and replaced the forgotten classic grey ones. Sorry for any inconvenience.

Welcome to Embre, a scenic mountain coast map.

The Italian Riviera around Genua and the Alps in general inspired this map. It does not follow a real location, but the heightmap is stitched together of nine different real-life samples, which have been blended using GIMP, Wilbur and the in-game tools. I hope to release a how-to guide in the future. I have roughly spent 150 hours creating this map from January up to now and I hope that you enjoy it as much as I did creating it.

If you are looking for a map to create a huge and sprawling city, this map is NOT for you. The building space of this map is very limited and rather suited for smaller cities built into the valleys and bays of the terrain. You might check out my workshop for maps with more space.

Since ancient times, the bay of Embre has been a trading hub and a port in the Mediterranean. Ruins of the old castle overseeing the valley prove the importance in the middle age. When a new sheltered harbour was created in the 17th century, a huge fortress was built for protection of the precious goods that were shipped. Later, the industrialisation led to the creation of an engineering miracle: The railway pass, which allowed transporting ores and precious metal mined in the mountains to the harbour. Recently, this old railway is linked with a new high-speed railway along the coast, running parallel to the highway. Furthermore, a new road tunnel which was created in a public-privat partnership has been opened last year to reduce the traffic on the old road pass.

The original road layout of this map consisted of a highway along the coast and one along the nothern valley connected via the pass road or the base tunnel, which are thus forming a H-shape. This would lead to heavy dummy traffic in your start square region. Therefore, you can find two "magic tunnels" which connect the free ends of the H-shape to ease the gameplay. (H-shape transformed into sth rather B-shaped). All road gradients are within real life examples.

The railway was a massive inspiration and motivation for the creation of this map. I wanted to have a difficult to build mountain railway according to real life limitations. All gradients and curve radii are within realistic ranges. The maximum gradient is 2.5% (or climbing 1m over a length of 40m – 1:40) and the narrowest radius is not lower than 200m, which corresponds for example to the Semmeringbahn in Austria. Other sources of inspiration are the Furka-Oberalp Bahn and the Gotthard Bahn in Switzerland. Overall, I have spent 20h only on this railway. To have a contrast and show how requirements lead to different design, I added a modern "high-speed railway" to show concepts like joint routing of infrastructure (rail + highway), avoiding narrow curves (radii > 1km) or the need to separate the line physically with fences.

A one-click collection is available here
The map uses the Intersection Marking Tool and the Node Controller. Both are not strictly required to have a functional map, but they are highly recommended to achieve the best look.
I decided to name Network Skins as a required mod as all railway cateneries will be missing without this mod. (strictly speaking, you do not have to use this mod)
A Theme Mixer 2 setting is saved and part of the collection. Use it to have Laviante 2.0 as a basis with Alps Dolomite as Oil (= Snow) and the ruined texture of SCT NATURALRESERVE

I recommend using Relight and the Relight Natual LUT.

The map uses some props of the After Dark DLC. It is not needed, but the props from this DLC will not show up if you don’t have it(boats in the marina).

First of all, I need to thank my beta-testers. Without you, the quality of the map would not be at this level! Be sure to check out the workshops of those talented creators!
– dreadfuldark
– HypoSim
– Snakus
– Random5
– quirkygeekgirl

Second, I have to thank for important ideas and inspirations:
– dreadfuldark for pointing out that the national road intersection needed to be replaced and other ideas which really added to the overall design of the map
– HypoSim for the inspiration to improve the intersections. Your intersection design is next level! Looking forward to your next releases.
– Sidai for the idea how to create the rockfall gallery (a reproduction of Sidai’s River Maze one). Well, if you use custom maps, you most probably have seen Sidai’s work 🙂

And last but not least: The guys over on BonBonB’s discord server[discord.gg] and BonBonB for all the general discussions about map making and constantly exchanging constructive criticism about maps.

First of all, thank you for your interest in this map. The creation of this map required a lot of time and effort. In addition much of the look and the functionalities (e.g. intersections) would not be possible with a pure vanilla version and hence require a tremendous rework. Unfortunately, I do not have enough time and not enough motivation to invest the needed work. I’m sorry, but I hope for your understanding.

I’m sorry to hear that it is not working for you. However, I can assure you that a map will never break your game, but missing network assets or mod conflicts can. Please be sure to have subscribed to all required mods and networks. If it is still not working, consider to unsubscribe from everything to have a vanilla game and to re-subscribe to this map and the one click collection. It has been tested by six different persons that the map and used mods/assets will load up correctly (*05 June 2021; future patches might cause problems with mods)

Including everything, it sums up to 150h over six months. The mountain railway took about 20h of this and bug fixing another 20h. The general terrain work was performed in about 10h. The video editing took 5h. Detail areas like the rockfall gallery or the fort took about 2h each (without bug fixing).

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