Lake Struggles

[DinoTown]

Hey guys!

I'm interested - who here has a lake on their island? Was making your lake easy or difficult?

I have a lake on mine and while making it wasn't exactly difficult, it certainly didn't come out the way I intended it to.

I wanted to have a lake in the shape of a large dinosaur footprint, which connected to the main river on my island. It... didn't turn out great. I'm still debating what to do with it, because I just cannot figure out how to fix it and make it look right/the way I want it to, so I may just have to remove it entirely and figure out something else for that area. There's nothing up there right now - I cut down every tree to make room for the lake since I didn't know how big it would end up being.

 

[LittleMissPanda]

The lake I have isn't fancy. It's actually more like a pond, but still a pretty good size. It's located in my cedar forest of wonders.

At first I wanted to go for a heart shaped pond in the middle of an orchard but as I was constructing I realized I like the natural look of a forest much more, where things aren't perfectly shaped and symmetrical. In my forest I even have branches and pinecones laying around here and there to give the area a natural, messy look, just like a real forest.

Just experimenting around with shapes/sizes and see what looks the best to you. Go with your gut instinct!

 

[Katzenjammer]

I plan on putting one in with a long pier of land to fish from as part of my remodel. I also will be doing a small cat-head shaped pond heehee =^.^=

 

[TheSillyPuppy]

I have two heart-shaped ponds in front of my and my S/O's houses.

Personally, I find that a lot of terraforming and waterforming comes down to trial and error until I make a happy mistake that I wind up liking. XD Unfortunately, the autosaving feature makes this process a lot more time-consuming than it needs to be.

 

[Venn]

All I have is a few small ponds. I think I tried to make something bigger like a lake, but it never came out well. In my experience, the smaller the better.

 

[Leela]

I had an oxbow lake but I removed it for more land space. Now I have two small, sad ponds which will probably be cleared to make one that looks nicer.

 

[supernerd]

I had an oxbow lake but I removed it for more land space. Now I have two small, sad ponds which will probably be cleared to make one that looks nicer.

You don't have any pictures of your old lake do you? I don't know what an oxbow lake is but it sounds super neat to me.

 

[Hypno KK]

I tried to make a lake and ended up with a tiny amount of water (like 1-2 tiles wide) around an island. I'll probably just make the lake somewhere where I've got more space instead, which is a shame because this spot was perfect for it.

I don't know how to make lake shapes (I prefer a more natural look) but maybe adding a tip to the "toes" using the smallest water tiles would make it more footprint-shaped? I'd probably also vary the width along the main part of the "foot", if you look at dinosaur footprints they have a narrower part and widen out. I'd also consider making the toes on the sides a bit more diagonal but I can see how that could be hard to do.

 

[psiJordan]

A dinosaur track lake sounds like such a clever idea! I would recommend looking up pixel art of a footprint and maybe copy that, otherwise I would try to make it a bit bigger so you can add more detail

 

[sleepydreepy]

I recently entered into an "experimenting phase" on my island and I currently have a giant lake with a dock on the north side of my island. Here is what it looks like on the map:

Here are some pictures of the actual landscaping in the spoiler below:

Spoiler: pictures

The lake was kinda hard to make because it is so large (so I spent a lot of time prepping/clearing the area), but adding the dock made it a bit easier. Right now I am struggling with the area directly south of the lake (cliff) and trying to figure out how to blend it in with the lake. But anyways, I like my lake, I think its really cool and great for my island since I wanted to have a "fisherman's village" type neighborhood.

 

[Bluebellie]

I struggle with ponds. I have removed them from my town until I can figure out how to make them look nice.



Less fish to fish