Shigatsu
Welcome to Shigatsu! This map is inspired by Japanese artist Kashiwa Daisuke[kashiwadaisuke.com] and his works. More specifically, it is mainly inspired by his song April.#02. Shigatsu means April in Japanese, and because of the name of the song, I decided to release this on the 2nd of April.
This song comes from the homonym album[kashiwadaisuke.bandcamp.com], which also inspired the thumbnail for this map.
I highly suggest watching this interview, which explains quite a few things. In the video, Kashiwa talks about how he uses the world around him as an inspiration for his songs, so I tried to reverse the process, and let the songs inspire the world you see in the map.
Also, I tried to apply the KISS principle (Keep It Simple, Stupid) to this map: as you can see, the map is very basic. There is not too much unnecessary detailing and only what’s available in the base game is used.
Other songs I suggest you check out are Sons and Rabbit’s Quartet.
The map has been completely handmade in the editor, but the topography is loosely inspired by Tokyo and its surrounding areas, as well as a few other places in Japan. So while it’s far from being a 1:1 recreation, you’ll find many similarities such as the bay of Tokyo, Mt. Fuji and various rivers, islands and peninsulae. Also, while creating the terrain, I tried to take tiles into consideration, so most tiles will have a decent amount of buildable space and you won’t have to buy and entire tile just to unlock a very small piece of land next to your city.
I tried to keep the tree count as low as possible, and despite the large amount of land, I was able to keep tree count below the vanilla limit (a small area hidden between some hills and the edge is mostly empty). There are however 242 069 trees, so you may need a tree anarchy mod if you think you may go over the limit in your build.
There are 4 highway and rail connections, as well as 3 shipping routes and 4 air routes.
In the screenshots you see above I used the Colorful Summer Day LUT.
Kind of inspired by what Anoupou did in his Mobolo-Bolo map, there are many Jizo statues scattered across this map. You can either look for them or watch the interview above for the solution 😉
Also, since we’re already in Japan, I thought I’d also put a small nod to Boom Boom Satelites and their song Lay Your Hands On Me. Let’s see if you can find it!
This one is probably my favourite project (so far), so I hope you’ll have fun playing on this map as much as I did while building it!
