Arcadia, Oregon - A HL2 Cityscape

[cur_sed]

Alright - so, considering the fact that my old Arcadia thread appears to have been lost in the ether, I'm gonna go ahead and post a brand new one.
A bit of an intro first - I've been working on Arcadia, or a city by that name, on and off for about a year now. The plan for version 1 included a vast metro area, a set of freeways, a massive downtown etc etc. Anyway, I ran into some technical troubles with the original version, so I took parts of version one and translated it into version 2 - the small, dense island of highrises you see today.
All of this is done in the Half Life 2 game engine, using the freely available modding tools that developer Valve release for anyone with HL2. Unfortunately, there will be no fragging in Arcadia any time in the near future, as I've had to make the whole thing at an impossibly small scale, to the point where a regular human is over 70 metres tall... I've experimented with putting enourmous baddies in the map, but it really wasn't very much fun.

Anyway, on with the city!

Arcadia, Oregon is a city with a metropolitan population of 2.5 million people. The city's central business district is situated on a small (around 650*850 metre) rectangular islnad, connected to the mainland by a tunnel at what is, in real life, Newport, Oregon (On the coast, South-West of Portland). Arcadia was established in 1874, and has 9 buildings over 500ft (plus 2 with antennas that put them over 500ft), as well as (if I recall correctly) around 50 buildings over 300ft.

Now, I've actually got a hell of a lot of info about Arcadia - a fairly exhaustive history, key information for most buildings over 300ft, information on important figures in the city's history - what can I say, I've gone a little overboard.

At any rate, I'm not gonna dump all that stuff one you at once, so I'll start out with a few overview pics to give y'all an idea of what Arcadia looks like...


A view from the water, looking approaching Arcadia Harbour. From here, you can see many of the city's tallest buildings - the bright blue UrbanStyle Tower, MRP House - with its distinctive pointed crown, the Chrysler-esque Ansonia Tower, the Rockerfeller centre-esque AH Building, and a few more besides.


A view from the air, highlighting the density of the North of Arcadia Island


A similar shot, but this time taken from the top of Arcadia's tallest building, the Ansonia Tower, and giving us a view of the 2nd (or 3rd, depends if you count the antenna) tallest, ArcadiaLife Tower.


An aerial view of the whole city - here, you can see the grid pattern of the streets, intersected by the 2 diagonal avenues - this shot also illustrates well the row of huge towers along the East (top) edge of the island.

Well, that's about it for the photos (for today at least - there's plenty more where those came from ), but I thought I'd post the first section of my History of Arcadia for those of you who're interested -

Founded in 1874, the city of Arcadia takes its name from Arcadia Island, situated just off the Oregon coast at current day Newport. The first settlers of the area were a group lead by John Lewis Fremont – immigrating to the West from Illinois, approximately 100 settlers followed entrepreneur Fremont towards the Pacific Ocean, establishing a settlement at Newport, Oregon in 1868.

Anyway, I'd love to hear any comments, critiques, suggestions, thoughts, ideas y'all have.

[Derek]

looking good


i like the road pattern from the sky

[Dear Leader VI]

Forgive my ignorance, but what is HL2? The city looks amazingly detailed, by the way.

[cur_sed]

HL2 = the PC game Half Life 2 - for which it is possible to create your own maps and content.

[foxmtbr]

Wow, this is absolutely stunning!

[Patrick]

I'm lovin the Ansonia Tower and the AH Building.

[cur_sed]

Alrighty, a little more info and another couple of pics for y'all.
This time around, I'll focus on the 2 massive skyscrapers that dominate the island's South - Ansonia Tower and the AH Building.
First, a few vital stats -

Originally Posted by Ansonia Tower

Ansonia Tower : 76 stories, 277 metres to roof, 312 metres to tip. Originally built for Ansonia Automotive, this tower is the tallest in Arcadia. The tower is still owned by Ansonia, but nowadays, much of it is leased out. The building is primarily offices, with a restaurant and bar, the Sky Room, occupying the 72nd and 73rd floors, and a penthouse apartment taking up floors 74 and 75 (76 is a mechanical floor). Between 1st and Church streets, 3rd and 4th avenues. Built 1931

Originally Posted by AH Building

AH Building: 64 stories, 258 metres, Built as the HQ of Allied Holdings, The company founded (as Arcadia Holdings) by businessman and Arcadia pioneer John Lewis Fremont. Still the largest building in Arcadia by floor area, Allied Holdings, which has diversified from its roots as a ferry company into a transnational infrastructure corporation, still has its international headquarters in this building, and occupies the vast majority of floors. The roof (as well as floor 64, directly below) was recently opened to the public as an observation deck, and boasts arguably the best views in all of Arcadia. Built 1925

Pictures!


The 2 biggies from the South, looking over the historic/civic district.


Looking West from the open air observation level on top of the AH building - the AH building was the city's tallest for 6 year, until Ansonia Tower was built literally across the road. (oh, and you can ignore the fact that the spire appears to be detached from the top of the Ansonia Tower. cough.)


Now here's a glamour shot for y'all - standing in the middle of the narrow road between these 2 giants, you get an idea of their scale - AH probably looks taller from this perspective - but that's only because it doesn't have any setbacks in this direction.

Last but not least, today's Arcadia history lesson - part 2.

Originally Posted by Arcadian History

In the first several years of settlement in Newport (which today is incorporated as part of the city of Arcadia), the small island off the coast remained largely untouched. Mapped by original settler and surveyor Reginald Anderson in 1869, the island was then largely neglected for some time. In the early 1870s, John Fremont's friend and business partner, James Earl McLaren, took to spending time on the island with his family, rowing out to the its natural harbor to get away from the pressures of life in Newport. It was McLaren's wife, Amy, who is said to have first used the name Arcadia, after the mythological rural paradise of Greek and Roman poetry. James McLaren also built the first structure on the island – a log cabin north of the present day harbor. The decision to establish a settlement on Arcadia Island was made by John Fremont – the harbor in Newport wasn't deep enough to accommodate shipping traffic attracted by the region's burgeoning timber industry, so a dock was established on the island, where barges would ferry goods back and forth between Arcadia and Newport.

[Patrick]

Ohh I like, especially the AH Building.

[Derek]

interesting crown on the taller one there


looking very nice

[foxmtbr]

Wow!!

[cur_sed]

Alright, another update - I thought that, seeing as I'm lucky enough to be using a real-time engine to render my city, it'd be a waste to just post pictures - a video would do a better job of showing of Arcadia. Anyway, I just banged something together in about half an hour - quick and dirty work for sure, but I wanted to post a bit of an overview of the city, so here it is - Arcadia Flythrough #1 - I'll probably do a few more of these in the future, showing various parts of the city. Enjoy.

[Patrick]

Woah that was cool, I could only dream of flying through Staunton like that!

[Derek]

sick video

[foxmtbr]

Nice! I really need to do another video one of these days...

[Tanster]

wow the video is pretty cool
i was thinking of making a video for Gotham but maybe later

[cur_sed]

Wow - I'm not sure why I haven't updated this in so long - I've had some shots just sitting around for months now, so I might as well let them out of the bag - same version of Arcadia as all of the other shots, but this time we're getting in amongst the towers...

















And last but not least, something from street level - to show how much improvement my street level needs :p


That's it for pictures for the time being - dunno when I'll get to work on the city again, but I'm sure there'll be more updates with time - until then, another couple chapters of the history of Arcadia - hope y'all are following this, there's gonna be a test at the end!

Fremont and his sons held a near monopoly on business in Newport and Arcadia through the rest of the 19th century, and John Fremont held the office of mayor from the town's establishment until shortly before his death in 1904. Arcadia became a base for a variety of businesses during this time, from manufacturing to commercial salmon fishing. With the savings incurred by basing operations on the island (rather than ferrying goods back and forth on barges), Arcadia gradually gained primacy over Newport as the region's primary settlement, culminating with the establishment of the city of Arcadia, incorporating both Arcadia Island and Newport, in 1888.

Arcadia City Hall, built in 1892, was one of the world's tallest freestanding structures at time of completion (behind only the Eiffel Tower and Washington Moment), and announced to the world that Arcadia was a city to be reckoned with. Business in Arcadia continued to flourish, and the Fremont clan continued to wield enormous power in the city's affairs. By the early 20th century, the Fremont family had consolidated their businesses under the banner of Arcadia Holdings, the company originally established by John Fremont to administer the passenger ferry route between Newport and Arcadia Island. The Fremont's dominance of Arcadia would remain unchallenged until well into the 1920s.

[foxmtbr]

Very nice!

[Peter]

Your city is amazing

[Mocholate]