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Howling Head Islands Map

Map statistics

2 / 4 incoming road connections used
2 / 4 outgoing road connections used
2 / 4 train connections used
4 / 4 ship connections used
4 / 4 plane connections used

31780 / 250000 trees used
1060 / 50000 props used

Suitable area for building: 30%

Design choices and general info:

• Realism was never considered, stuff are designed look real but aesthetics ruled my choices
  
• Designed for natural disasters and Industries DLC. Access to underwater resources, breaking point disasters for certain areas in certain situations
  
• Limited access to land-based transport (Just 1 highway and railroad connect) to encourage use sea based transport and other alternatives
  
• Extensive ship paths, should in theory cover the whole islands
  
• Starting tile is the biggest for fast and easy start. It should be easy to get all milestones. The island's last milestone ist around 33-34k
  
• Made for smaller island communities rather than one big city
  
• Kept the area you are able to build to only a third of a 25 tile map. Was designed to work with just the default 9 tiles but user feedback have makes me to recommend to use 25 tile mod which I tested most in my playtesting. 9 tiles is a subpar play experience on this map.
  
• Different areas are susceptible to Tsunamis and flooding. Starting area is located on a gentle slope at higher altitude and naturally protected.
• Rocky Island which is rich in oil is suffer below sea level areas(Risk/Reward). The howling head island is very flat and near sealevel. Floody mountain is as it namesake, it floods naturally in periods and more so if you install a dam. So you better be aware ;)
  
• A plug and play 1600w dam, for fun and profits at the Floody mountain. I did not really had room or some way to fit in dams in my design. So designed floody mountain to fit in my map design without giant floods running through my map and to have at least one place that uses max altitude
  
• I designed special harbor staging areas with quays if people want use them. This mostly that I get little tears in my eyes just think that people would smack down cargo harbors on top my shallow long beaches. Also as it is reminder that boats are cool on map with more water than land.
  
• Features the world's largest round about inside a volcano. This is mostly that always wanted a place where you naturally would build ring like city area
  
• Optional moat in the volcano(See guide video how to install it). This was personal thing I want for myself. But I knew it would not be for everybody
  
• So much trees everywhere, well I was inspired by Polynesian islands. There is alot of trees.
  
• Three volcanos, I went overboard after this map was partly inspired by Aogashima( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aogashima ). The only town in the world living inside a volcano. So yeah, my map three times cooler. ;)
  
• Only using in main game assets for decorating with help trees, rocks and props. To avoid introducing diffrent experiences for diffrent map users. I humbly considered that most people just happily pave my beautiful arranged design without a thought and just be annoyed that they got 3 new versions of a tree when they already have a preferred version

Recommended themes and mods

Vanilla Tropical theme
This works very well, it just look different

Mossy Mountain
I used this halfway through the map as main theme.

Purchase it!
Allow you to buy tiles in any order and at any time

All 25 Areas purchasable
Allow you to buy up to 25 tiles instead of vanilla 9

Daylight Classic
In vanilla the game has to warm(yellow) colors and is awfully bright. For purists, it could be worth mention that this mod just make the game look like it did before After Dark DLC

My Youtube series about this map

Sunesha's let's create map series, creating Howling Head Islands
Sunesha playing on Howling Head island

About the map Author and how this map came to be

I always wanted to record a cities skylines playthrough for my YouTube channel. The problem was there was no map that really inspired me to record.

So after I browsed around steam and read MrMiyagi's map guide. I also played his excellent maps. This convinced me that I was able to actually create map. My old modding skills consisted of creating textures in 1998 for Quake. My resume was doing all textures for Ninja Quake and a lot clan skins. Lets just cut it short, it was pain to do that in 98. I actually did a lot work by painting stuff pixel per pixel, considered torture by most people. We had throw rocks at pixel per pixel, 256 colors, black was my favorite color. Number 0, so I didnt have to buy new 20 kilos computer screen. Filters where called eyecandy and nerds was not cool. OK enough the nostalgia.

So I had brilliant idea, I will document and learn about map making and share it with my viewers on my channel( https://www.youtube.com/Sunesha ). This is like creating 2 things at same time. Then I play the map on my channel.

So it my in my framework reference modding creating a map for skylines is easy but probably very time consuming. I estimated it would take 100 hours to create a hand crafted map from scratch. I was stupid, looking back, 300 hours uncounted hours something. Yes it is easy, but it took a lot more time and knowledge that never thought I needed. Everything is easy if you have time and patience.

Documenting my progress and what I learnt of map making on my channel has been reward in itself too. Simply this map was made for my extremely small viewership at YouTube. But I thought I should let other people chance to play it too.

To create something for nothing from nothing, that is something you can never buy, can only be shared.