Show Us your Highways!

[Thin White Duke 4,072]

That's a good tip, but I'm afraid it's too late. They're all gone, replaced by another gas plant.

[raynev1 1,887]

I had to Re-Work my first complex interchange I submitted earlier in this thread ,  now I likey .   Looks much better with six lanes , and the overpass to the loops . Oops , please excuse the grid ,I just noticed it . 

  Edited November 16, 2015 by raynev1  
Updated pic

[Compdude787 916]

I would suggest using the 7.5m (L1) overpasses instead of the 15m (L2) ones. Those will look a lot better and more realistic and you won't need as long of an earth ramp as you have right now.

[raynev1 1,887]

I would suggest using the 7.5m (L1) overpasses instead of the 15m (L2) ones. Those will look a lot better and more realistic and you won't need as long of an earth ramp as you have right now.

Thanks for the input , but this a done deal for now . For my future projects I will keep this in mind . Thanks again .

[Thin White Duke 4,072]

Thanks for the input , but this a done deal for now . For my future projects I will keep this in mind . Thanks again .

Also, though this is pretty much a detail thing, this setup with two loops in that configuration causes a bit of weaving. Cars going here and there and everywhere. Try making a trumpet or T-interchange next time. Other than those tiny little things, it looks great.

[Haljackey 17,398]

Highways everywhere

 

 

 

[Haljackey 17,398]

Busy offramp. Time to upgrade!

 

2 lanes now:

[chriss 28]

Everyone's highways are so pretty and well designed--where are the bad ones? I know in SC4, it makes sense to do the highways first, then the city. However, I like to envision how the city was before building the highway and take that into account. The following is a rather extreme example. 

The following picture is a close-up of the Metronomy Central Expressway as it cuts its way through the city near downtown. Due to the built environment, Metronomy had to use extensive use of eminent domain, as well as replacing Augusta Street with the highway. Portions of the Maine Streets neighborhood were condemned as blighted to effectuate the takings. The highway was built in the 1960s, and the engineers were told to "build it cheap and fast" in order to limit overall costs. Hence, eminent domain was used only as completely necessary and the engineers kept this portion of the highway at ground level, cutting the neighborhood into two; a scar that remains to this day (none of the roads were arterial due to the rail yards, so the loss of connectivity wasn't considered a problem). Health problems from pollution stemming from the highway are also still a problem. 

[matias93 7,535]

I'm pretty sure many windshields have been broken with things thrown from those windows. It has the signature of an ill-fated 1960s vial project.

[Haljackey 17,398]

I have a city that has 2 tiles in SC4... guess its good way to compare the old with the new

 

 

 

[Samerton 833]

Been working with @Bipin on a new network retexture project.

[_Michael 2,681]

23 minutes ago, Samerton said:

Been working with @Bipin on a new network retexture project.

Looking brilliant! What networks will this project cover?

[Samerton 833]

Just now, michae95l said:

Looking brilliant! What networks will this project cover?

To begin with it'll just cover Project Symphony/Maxis Highway Override, in the future I might get the RHW networks done but it'd be a huge project.

[Compdude787 916]

Wow, so if this attempt at concrete RHWs is successful, that's going to be quite great! It seems to be hard to get them to look right.

[Bipin 3,403]

1 hour ago, Compdude787 said:

Wow, so if this attempt at concrete RHWs is successful, that's going to be quite great! It seems to be hard to get them to look right.

I've wanted this for nearly five years. It's going to happen, one way or another... @Samerton and I both agree that our current iteration on the texture (we've changed it a few times since the last post) is pretty close to the final product.

[Bipin 3,403]

Sorry for the double post, but I think it's warranted:

This is the latest iteration between @Samerton and I. The broken concrete in the median may go, or it may stay. You can help decide! Comments and suggestions would be much appreciated!

[matias93 7,535]

I would largely prefer the broken concrete, because of the RL difficulty in keeping grasses well trimmered in a highway median. In more urban scenarios, wealthification could fade that to a more ordered look.

[TakemeThere 5,834]

On 2015-12-30 at 0:39 PM, Bipin said:

Spoiler

Sorry for the double post, but I think it's warranted:

This is the latest iteration between

@Samerton and I. The broken concrete in the median may go, or it may stay. You can help decide! Comments and suggestions would be much appreciated!

I'm torn in between the two. I really like how the grassy texture is coming along, but where I live(not sure if this is the case else where) it's rare to see concrete highways outside of urban area's and tall center walls/jersey barriers are the norm.

[NielsC007 499]

I prefer the broken concrete one, it looks a lot more like real life to me.

[RipRap 4,400]

The broken concrete one fits exactly where I live in and fits the majority of concrete highways I have been in.

[matias93 7,535]

This is what I see when talking about concrete highways: a narrow, rural road with a lot of tire and oil stains caused by trucks.

[raynev1 1,887]

@Samerton and @Bipin  You guys have done so much to make our game much , much more interesting . These new textures look great , both of them .

   But , the roadgeek that I am , would hope that whichever texture you guys decide to pursue will be an alternative to the blacktop and not a replacement . I like the fresh asphalt personally . That was my profession for nearly twenty years , and I paved several hundred miles of roads over three states . The only road paving I can do now is in SC4 . And rural highways were always my favorite to pave . It felt good to drive over my work , and tell people I participated in that smooth ride . 

   Keep up the great work , you guys are awesome . You have kept SC4 alive for several years now and I hope for several more . And I thank you for it .

[Sabretooth78 808]

It's a shame that it's not possible to get the black shadow striping to work properly on these highways.  As I'm aware, there's no way to ensure that it shows up on the downstream end of the white stripes, especially on curves.

I agree with the poster who mentioned typically seeing these types of highways in urban areas.  My experience seeing these types of highways in rural areas is that the travel lanes will be concrete but with asphalt shoulders.  The shoulders don't take the same pounding as the travel lanes and therefore some cost savings can be achieved with a lighter section.

One other critique; would it be possible to work in [at least the illusion of] a longitudinal joint at the centerline as well as some lateral joints?  If so, offset it either side of the broken line striping - it generally isn't good practice to stripe long-way over a joint.  Or maybe it's the RRW "shine on the rail head" sort of thing where it's simply not visible at that zoom level.

And for some semantics, at least in my experience these "concrete" highways are referred to in the engineering profession as "portland cement concrete" or "PCC" to differentiate from asphalt which can also be referred to as "asphalt concrete."  Doesn't really matter since we all know what you're talking about, but just to add a little back story.

[Bipin 3,403]

Thank you everyone for your replies. It's this kind of stuff that Samerton and I (though really, any modder) find helpful! That goes to your especially, @raynev1. It's kind words and personal stories like your own which keep us BATing.

To respond, in no particular order:

• Expansion joints will likely be added, and can easily be offset. These will be filled with bitumen.
• The current grooves/ribbed texture may be made enhanced, so it is more noticeable in-game.
• These will generally be urban highways, since they are part of the MHW, which is more compact in contrast to the aptly named RHW (rural). Therefore, concrete shoulders will remain. However, I'll keep these lighter than the road surface which sees heavy, constant traffic. Samerton and I had gone into this with the intent of creating a completely new set of textures anyways.
• This brings up the next point; since we are only modding the MHW, the RHW will remain as asphalt.I'm sure Samerton will agree with me in that a transition texture between MHW/AVE-4 and MHW/RHW-4 can be made.

Finally, a question for you guys. Over at SC4D, several people wanted tire marks to be added in conjunction to the stains within the lanes' centers. These are seldom that visible (look at the screenshot from @matias93 ). I have been conflicted about adding these to the texture, and haven't really talked to Samerton about it yet. What are your thoughts?

[matias93 7,535]

I suspect that random tire marks would be inserted in the same way maxis added signals in the MHW, using a prop. Anyway, if that implies an important increase in workload or disk space, I would prefer to keep it aside, maybe as a later add-on to your mod.

(Just as trivia: here in central Chile, most hills are mainly formed of pozzolana, while we don't have any fossil fuel resources, so concrete is always more economical than asphalt; hence, asphalt paving is unusual and of bad quality: the roads 'melt' easily, with many undesirable results)

  Edited January 5, 2016 by matias93  
trivia

[HookerHeels 309]

On 1/5/2016 at 6:32 PM, Bipin said:

Thank you everyone for your replies. It's this kind of stuff that Samerton and I (though really, any modder) find helpful! That goes to your especially, @raynev1. It's kind words and personal stories like your own which keep us BATing.

To respond, in no particular order:

• Expansion joints will likely be added, and can easily be offset. These will be filled with bitumen.
• The current grooves/ribbed texture may be made enhanced, so it is more noticeable in-game.
• These will generally be urban highways, since they are part of the MHW, which is more compact in contrast to the aptly named RHW (rural). Therefore, concrete shoulders will remain. However, I'll keep these lighter than the road surface which sees heavy, constant traffic. Samerton and I had gone into this with the intent of creating a completely new set of textures anyways.
• This brings up the next point; since we are only modding the MHW, the RHW will remain as asphalt.I'm sure Samerton will agree with me in that a transition texture between MHW/AVE-4 and MHW/RHW-4 can be made.

Finally, a question for you guys. Over at SC4D, several people wanted tire marks to be added in conjunction to the stains within the lanes' centers. These are seldom that visible (look at the screenshot from @matias93 ). I have been conflicted about adding these to the texture, and haven't really talked to Samerton about it yet. What are your thoughts?

I wouldn't do tiremarks, as its not possible to be random, and it would look strange.

 

And not to steal Sam and Bipin's thunder, as they're my friends and I wouldn't do that... but here is this old mod I'm thinking about reviving.

 

[andix 33]

On 5.1.2016 at 0:32 AM, Bipin said:

• This brings up the next point; since we are only modding the MHW, the RHW will remain as asphalt.I'm sure Samerton will agree with me in that a transition texture between MHW/AVE-4 and MHW/RHW-4 can be made.

Hmm, I'm using Project Symphony and I like it exactly how it is now (asphalt lanes with barriers). I will not use any concrete highways because where I live there are nearly no concrete highways anymore neither in urban nor in rural areas. I'm also not a fan of this huge grass strips between the lanes. Here we have barriers as dominant feature between the lanes (and sometimes bushes grow between them). This huge grass strips between the lanes are also the reason why I don't use the RHW. They look unrealistic everywhere, but especially in urban areas.

So does that mean that I cannot update the NAM anymore when this new mod comes online? Or is there a possibilty to use the current version too?

[Bipin 3,403]

1 minute ago, andix said:

Hmm, I'm using Project Symphony and I like it exactly how it is now (asphalt lanes with barriers). I will not use any concrete highways because where I live there are nearly no concrete highways anymore neither in urban nor in rural areas. I'm also not a fan of this huge grass strips between the lanes. Here we have barriers as dominant feature between the lanes (and sometimes bushes grow between them). This huge grass strips between the lanes are also the reason why I don't use the RHW. They look unrealistic everywhere, but especially in urban areas.

So does that mean that I cannot update the NAM anymore when this new mod comes online? Or is there a possibilty to use the current version too?

Nope. After this mod is released, the NAM will systematically transition into concrete... concrete... CONCRETE! I'm afraid your only choice is to uninstall the NAM completely, or SC4 all together, in utter disgust of the decisions we have made for you.

 

I'm kidding of course. We'd never do such a thing - mandating a change this massive and revolutionary. If that's how the NAM team rolled, all the European folks in our community would be stuck with silly yellow lines on the inside of their lanes. If you don't like it, don't download the concrete texture pack - it's that simple! I have to ask though, what country doesn't have at least a few concrete roads/highways?  

[andix 33]

I'm glad that I can go on with playing SC4.

And I'm happy that PS exists. The only missing feature is the hard shoulder, then it would be perfect. But I assume there's not enough space for them because of the dimensions of the original MHW.

"all the European folks in our community would be stuck with silly yellow lines on the inside of their lanes"

But indeed I have the problem that the ramps for the highways -built with the MIS- have these yellow line. I remember that I tried all sort of texture mods and options to get rid off these yellow lines but nothing worked.

I'm from Germany and of course we have concrete autobahns. But it really depends on the region and the specific autobahn. And I like the asphalt lanes more.

[Bipin 3,403]

1 hour ago, andix said:

I'm glad that I can go on with playing SC4.

And I'm happy that PS exists. The only missing feature is the hard shoulder, then it would be perfect. But I assume there's not enough space for them because of the dimensions of the original MHW.

"all the European folks in our community would be stuck with silly yellow lines on the inside of their lanes"

But indeed I have the problem that the ramps for the highways -built with the MIS- have these yellow line. I remember that I tried all sort of texture mods and options to get rid off these yellow lines but nothing worked.

I'm from Germany and of course we have concrete autobahns. But it really depends on the region and the specific autobahn. And I like the asphalt lanes more.

 

Maybe something changed during the last few years, but when I used to use the Euro NAM mod, I didn't have yellow lines anywhere. Perhaps the texture mod was not installed correctly? If the original NAM files with yellow lines load after the Euro textures (even though there shouldn't be any North American textures while using the Euro mod) you will get a mish-mash of Euro and North American textures.