UPDATE MAY 2014
So, how has everybody's Easter been? Long? Drawn out? Expensive? Frustrating? Well, Bravewall hears you. I always... always hear you. And so to take your mind off the Easter craziness, here is this month's Springfield Guide rundown. All things considered this has been a pretty decent month for the guide.
We start off with the E.A.R.L Lighthouse, one of two lighthouses found on the Springfield Guide. I've been using the metal christmas tree as the other lighthouse. Supposedly it was the one blown up by Milhouse when he was driving the nuclear sub, in that episode last October. I purposely put the submarine near it, and had it repurposed as a destroyed lighthouse. But I've talked enough about that one in previous months.
http://i.imgur.com/OT7YHH5.jpg
This lighthouse on the guide belongs on a thin island west of squidport. I bought a $33,000 expansion of water just so the top tip of it could fit just right. Unlike the guide, my thin island attaches to the Squidport, because the Squidport has to be bigger than the tiny space it fits on the guide. But the thin island itself is pretty exact. I'm pretty satisfied with that.
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The first update we got for April was an episode tie in, with no new buildings for me to place. We got a whole whack of graves with Homer's face on them, which was kind of ridiculous. I tried repurposing them with my cemetery, but I don't know how long I'm going to keep it this way.
http://i.imgur.com/uB0Ck4I.jpg
Perhaps if I hadn't been so obsessed with getting the cemeteries before last Halloween, I would have saved the donuts, and instead repurposed the land with these graves. But they are meant for Homer's clones, which only makes sense with the silly episode it comes with. Same with the cremation bot that I didn't bother spending donuts on. These items make no canonical sense whatsoever. This was a dumb episode tie-in, plain and simple.
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Before I get in to the Easter event, I will show you this months big change to my map, made from scratch.
http://i.imgur.com/yjOgm1z.jpg
This is the Springfield Dam. There are a couple of examples of dams floating around the Showcase section, that have inspired me to do this, and this is my take on it. I tried to use the corresponding screencaps from the show to make it like this. It's the first time I've ever bought white fences, and so it sticks out among the rest of my town. I bought 25 fences in all. Its not as big as others I've seen, but this is about as much room as I believe I could spare.
http://i.imgur.com/22OFqVp.jpg
Most dams made like this need something in front to block the bottom part, where the 3D perspective doesn't really work, and so I moved the nearby Calmwood mental hospital in place. This allowed me a little more room to give fat tony's compound sorely needed rearrangement. It now faces north, as the front of the compound can easily look like the back of the compound. This rearrangement also potentially gives me more room to work with, if we eventually get the Stone Cutters lodge, and the Republican Party HQ. All in all, this has been some very positive changes, and I am very happy with my new dam. It was well worth the 25 donuts spent on fences.
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Only one building from the Easter event can be found on the Springfield Guide. I'm not complaining though, because at least all the buildings are Springfield buildings. They're not from Ireland, or Capital City, or some other place that is definitely not Springfield. As long as they are Springfield buildings, I can work with them.
Fireworks, Candy, & Puppydogs is found on the Springfield Guide, directly above the Springfield Retirement Castle. It is seen once, in the episode The Old man and the "C" Student, where Bart thinks he's going to do community service there, but instead the scene pans quickly next door, to the retirement home.
http://i.imgur.com/L5E1LKg.jpg
I don't have the store right next to the old folks home. To do that, I would have to have both buildings north facing, and I'd have to close off one of my streets. Instead, I put the FC&P on the street directly above the home, next to the pet store, which makes a bit more sense. Since all the pets in the pet store are flushable, I'd figure they'd tell the customers looking for puppies to go the fun place next door.
It may not be accurate to that one panning shot in the one episode it was apart of, but at the end of the day, the show accuracy is secondary to the guide accuracy. As far as the guide is concerned this works out pretty well. And let's be honest... Show accuracy? Is that even a thing? Really?
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I spent the donuts on the Crazy Cat Lady house, and like many other people, I stuck it next to Nelson's house, because they both look like the cheapest houses in Springfield, and naturally look like they belong in the same neighbourhood. Y'know... the neighbourhood that uses chain link fences instead of brown fences. We all know that neighbourhood.
http://i.imgur.com/4c9yDz2.jpg
Neither house has any definitive location in Springfield, or has any specific info listed on the wiki to help me out. It really is up to wherever you want to put the house. The guide will not judge you. I just replaced the tiny white house next to Nelson's, with the Crazy Cat Lady and called it a day.
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The Banana Dictatorship and Blocko Store are two of many stores found in the Towne Centre at Springfielde Glenne, an upper-class open-air shopping mall that has only appeared on the show relatively few times within the last 3 seasons. While it may be too new to be seen on the guide, there is also a Springfield Heights Promenade, which fits the exact same description and look as the Towne Centre, but dates back to the 15th season.
http://i.imgur.com/k4PnBD6.jpg
I can confirm that they both have the store Abercrombie and Rich. I can assume that the only difference between the Promenade and the Glenne is the name, which could easily have been changed between season 15 and season 23, in order to sound more french, and therefore more hoity-toity. So I will pair any buildings from the Glenne and the Promenade together, in the space on the guide where the Promenade exists. That will be my rule going forward.
http://i.imgur.com/D3lbgCw.jpg
So this my Towne Glenne/Prominade. It stands across the street from the Spinster City apartments. There isn't a lot of room for multiple buildings here, but I will worry about that when the time comes to fill it up. The Banana Dictatorship was the first major prize I got from this event, followed shortly by Johnny Fiestas. It is meant to be a corner building, which isn't very common in this game, save for the Nighthawk Diner. Right now, it is all I've got to place here, until I get the Blocko Store (And I damn-well better be getting that Blocko Store.) I used the Easter fences to enclose this gated community shopping center, and I also moved the Madame Chao's inside, since its a fancy restaurant, and it really doesn't have a place anywhere else in Springfield. So for now, that is it.
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Johnny Fiestas is a restaurant seen in Season 17, about a year and a half after the Last time the guide was updated. It was the episode called The Last of the Red Hot Mamas in which a large chunk of this Easter event draws content from, including Ralph and Nelson's Easter tasks, and Hugs Bunny. (Not to mention Crazy Cat Lady, and Sheri and Teri's Secret Twin Language also make an appearance.)
http://i.imgur.com/5N61tc2.jpg
While I can't give you a definite spot to put this restaurant on the guide, I can describe the part of town that Marge walks through in the episode, before she ends up following her new friends in to Johnny Fiestas. It is definitely the mid-town of Springfield with generic shops and offices. Not too poor and not too rich looking. In this setting, you would typically see buildings such as the All Night Gym, and Stu's Disco.
http://i.imgur.com/BZk1YWn.jpg
And so I look at that general area on the guide, and I see just a bit north of it a whole cluster of novelty restaurants; one of them being the Singing Sirloin. So if I had to bet, I would bet that Johnny Fiestas belongs as one of those novelty restaurants. And because of this I purchased that single $50,000 patch of land, and placed my Johnny Fiestas there. I chose this specific spot because in the episode, the restaurant is at the end of a dead-end street. Marge and her friends cross the street, and that is literally the only thing I know for sure about Johnny Fiestas: It ends the street.
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Level 40 brought two new characters, two new buildings and a generic cement wall, which I am not sure what to do with yet, but I'm sure it will come in handy when making generic 3d perspective buildings. For now, I'll just cover the important stuff.
http://i.imgur.com/5FS10Eh.jpg
The Ah Fudge Chocolate Factory is located on the guide surrounded by a bunch of other mid-town buildings. It fills the empty space of land very nicely, with room to decorate a little. Definitely my favourite building of the month. Of course this update came on the very last day of April, so I have not had any time to decorate, while getting this panorama ready for you.
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The Lotto n' Liquor is an obscure background building seen in season 23. It may not be on the guide, but there are a couple of older liquor stores to repurpose it with, including Hal's Liquor above the All night Gym, Swampy's Liquor between the Kwik-E-Mart and the grocery store, and a generic liquor store along the Junkyville boardwalk.
http://i.imgur.com/AUlYCAX.jpg
It doesn't fit on the boardwalk unfortunately, which would have been cool to have, and there is nothing much between the Kwik-E-Mart and grocery store on my map, except a large road. Its getting a little bit crowded north of my All Night Gym, but I will say that the building fits perfectly behind it. The Lotto n' Liquor makes a very nice north facing building with a matching brick texture, air conditioning and drain pipe hanging out the side. It also matches the positioning of Hal's liquor, across the street from Sprawl Mart. I think all things considered, this is a good repurposing. As far as buildings go that are only good for hiding behind other buildings, I am very pleased with it.
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That is all I have to report on the guide for this month. I will finish the Easter event in June, when we will be sick and done with Easter, and we'll be trying our best to erase all the ridiculousness from our memory. Here is to a long summer of level updates, and nothing but level updates.
I also mentioned to jkuney8 last month that I would demonstrate a way to place your buildings accurately using my guide method, when you have already bought every piece of land expansion. To do this without tearing apart my town, I will demonstrate using a sneak peak of my secret anonymous town. What is that you say Bravewall? You have a secret anonymous town? That's none of your business, and no I am not accepting friends there.
http://i.imgur.com/ZdksN1K.jpg
So lets say you want to count along the bottom left of my grid guide, which would start with the Springfield Downs on the farthest left of your town, hugging the beach in that $33,000 land expansion. Lets say you want to be able to count how far to go north to the exact position of Burn's mansion. Its a little hard to tell exactly where the top of that $600 land expansion is, when you have nothing but McBains house somewhere in between, as a frame of reference. And this is just a basic example of how hard it can be to be exact using my grid.
Well first of all, If you have a bunch of stuff in the way, don't bother to move it. Just delete all roads, rivers and cement squares in between the corner, and your destination. They're not hard to put back in afterwards. What your going to want to do next is for each four corners of your land expansions between point A and point B surround them with four cement spaces like so:
http://i.imgur.com/CL4n4Iw.jpg
This checkers the grass green and grey. The green represents the dead center of your land expansions. The center of the grey squares represents the corners. Since this is the corner of your town, you can tell that the pairs of cement spaces hugging the mountains are an edge. If the beach weren't there, you be seeing the same pairs of cement spaces hugging the shore. Instead you see the first grey squares going along the shore, three squares up from the beach. As you all probably understand, each land expansion is 4 road spaces squared. So the pattern for each land expansion going all ways should be grey, green, green, grey.
Using this method, you can count 3 land expansions in between the Springfield Downs land expansion, and the Burns Estate land expansion. And from there you can place Cletus' house 3 land expansions north, and from there, you can place fort sensible two land expansions East, and so on.
I hope that technique will be useful, Soon enough I plan to make a grid overlay, similar to the one I made for the guide, but instead it will be diagonal and could be placed on top of anyones town panorama, using photoshop. If anyone uses photoshop or a similar program, I imagine this would be less tedious than cementing all your land expansion corners. And with that, I am done with April.
