simmars-forum-threads Transportation Ideas

[The Great Chozo 34]

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On 3/12/2004 9:22:55 AM GouRou wrote:between the two of you, I think you have the transportation part of the game dealt with. all you have to do is just keep on doing what your doing and be patient and you'll have it done eventually. is there any way to tweak your renders so we can see the vehicles moving inside of the tubes? I'm not sure how well that would turn out, maybe windows or something else, I dunno, up to you. I've been thinking about the transitions, and how to properly deal with them, and have yet to come up with a good solution, but I'll keep on it.

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GouRou,

I got one of my files back from Redlotus, and it works pretty well. When you drag the road tool, you the construction crew, but instead of a road, the tubes pop up.

I sent him some bare pieces. I just now sent him some piece that have spiced up considerably, including the first intersection piece.

About the cars, I don't know. Red told me, and I saw it too while testing the piece, that you can't see the automata going through the tubes in the game. Because the tubes were made in Gmax (and regardless of the fact that they are transparent) without moving automate going through them, any car that enters the tube, will not be seen again until it exits. I had an idea on how to get around this problem that a good modder may want to look in to. It may (I stress the word MAY) be possible to make the automata appear as cars appear in the UDI missions behind buildings. Although the cars would be green in the tunnel, it would still give them some more life. Then on top of that, there may be a way to change that green color to a map of the cars original color. Of course this would have to be done with ever vehicle, and if the colors were changed the cars may actually appear to be driving above the tube. I know someone has an answer to that problem. In the meantime, I am going to finish editing some of these transit pieces, and then work on getting gizmo some stuff for the bridges.

If anyone has another idea on how to get the automata visible in the tubes, then please post it.

Later,

The Great Chozo

[GouRou 2]

change the style of your tunnel so that you have 'bands' of glass. you can probably use a glare effect to make it look like the glass is really there, the trick will be making the glare look correct with the vehicles driving behind. the city will look pretty dead unless we come up with something.

[Vatt3 8]

If it isn't too much trouble, I like your roundabout idea of fixing the lack of vehicles inside the tube. I guess you could do what Gourou is saying, but it would be nice to get the real thing there. Unless of course, I see an example of what she's saying that looks something like you made. I'm no BAT expert so I don't know anything about glare effects and other lighting tricks.

[Vatt3 8]

I know Gourou probably wants this in one of the design theads, but since it pertains to transportation, I'm putting it here. Plus its just a rough idea and needs to be critiqued by the people here. And yes, I don't have a scanner so I had to take a picture. (it didn't come out too bad...)

 

[DuskTrooper 314]

Beautiful!  It looks like a, rocket launcher, though.

[GouRou 2]

heh, it looks good. we cant have partial transparency, so no translucency
I like your idea though. I'm going to talk to tgc about a way to have the train visible and to be able to use a prop for partial transparency, I'm still working on that tho.

[Vatt3 8]

I've been drawing a little about the monorails, but I want to know if they should be enclosed in a tube like all the other transportation. I can easily draw in a tube so this isn't to important it would just help a little.

Oh, and that station could be fully tansparent if that would work. I was just getting a little fancy there.

[GouRou 2]

the stations obviously need to be covered, but I dont honestly think the rail lines do. the mono track has no need to be covered, and a train zipping along it also has no need to be. roads to because your relying on human control, which can be erratic in a dust storm. no, dont cover the rail line, but enclose all transit buildings.

[simmax 0]

These are great ideas!!! Why didn't I support the project? Why was I against it? I'm sure that it will be successful with so many ideas. The EL station is beautiful!.

[Vatt3 8]

Ok, I got my monorail station idea finished. Once again, no scanner, so bad quality, but I did manage to make it look a little better. I decided to make it look different than the Light Rail Station.

 

 

I'm fine with the non-enclosed rail lines, because like you said, they aren't neccessary and are a waste of resources. They should be elevated enough so as to not stir up too much dust.

[Vatt3 8]

I've got two more pictures of sketches that I drew. This first one is an elevated maglev train to subway transition. There will be a pressure bubble seperating the two since the subway will run in a vacuum. The elevated maglev my be in a tube, in which case the pressure bubble is unneccessary.

 

This next one is of a passenger station on a ground level maglev network.

 

I think that it may be wise to create transitions from Subway ---> Ground Level ---> Elevated and vice versa. That way there is more flexibility in the game, and I believe that is possible (I saw a thread in the modding section).

[jcabassa 20]

These ideas are great!

 

-jcab

[The Great Chozo 34]

I'm back. I had a winter ball baseball tournament.

 

I just read the minutes of the Chat, sorry I couldn't be there.

 

Vatt I love both of your designs, and I will design both of them in BAT and we can choose between either. I think that the first is better, becasue there is no glass in the station house. If we go with the tube monorails, then the stations will need to be pressurized higher than the tubes, so we can't have any glass in them. Actually, come to think of it, ALL the stations need to be pressurized, and completely contained due to pressure requirements for the people. In that case I will work on your second design first, because I like that X-form support you put on there. I will not make the transparent glass though, I will replace that with something else. I don't care if we go covered or not. If we need to redesign the monorail a bit, then I can take the one I made, and simply take the tube off.

 

OK, the automata problem. The only solution to this that I can think of is what I already posted. Changing the appearance of the automata, to the same appearance that they have in UDI missions. This would make them visible behind buildings. Here is the problem with the automata as it stands now. The new roads and tracks we have made are covered. The tubes are transparent but when they are rendered out, that is it. The look transparent, but anything that goes underneath them in the game, that wasn't put there in the render, will not be seen. I have been toying with the glare effect that you posted GouRou, but I don't think it will work. Anything done to the tubes will suffer the same problem. It is all done in Gmax, and once rendered out, no matter how transparent the object is, it will not show items that pass underneath it in the game. We can make glass that is 1% opaque in the BAT, but once rendered out all you will see is the clear glass and whatever is put under it in BAT. This is a problem that will not have any easy solution, and may take a lot of time to fix, but I think it can be done. Vatt keep learning that automata stuff and see what you can come up with.

 

A temporary fix that it possible, would be to cut out a section of the tube length wise. This would make a hole in the building, and would allow cars to be seen, though the integrity and continuity of the tube would definitely appear to be compromised.

 

GouRou, the only way that the trains are going to be visible is to remove the tube altogether, and I am not opposed to that. Another thing, Vatt, you have both an elevated rail, and a monorail station. I thought that we were only going to have monorail, if not then I will get to work and design a light rail as well.

One thing to note about the station design that Vatt drew. If we were to go with the connecting tube that he has for the entrance then dimensions will change. The station would need to be 3x2 instead of 3x1 to accomodate for the extra width, but it would look great. Oh, Vatt the track that I have designed already was intented to be the new monorail, but I could adapt it fairly easily to be an El-track as well.

In the chat minutes I noticed yall were talking about reskinning airplanes. Is your aim to redesign them, or to just reskin the existing jets? I think they should be redesigned, but that is just me. I won't make this a priority on my list right now, but I will write it down to tinker with when I have some downtime. Let me know about this.

I will keep working on the road and avenue covers. I have sent Redlotus all the basic pieces, but an orthagonal avenue intersection, I am currently working on that. The intersections were far more difficult to create than I had originally planned. I got the road one done, and with what I learned doing that, the avenue shouldn't be as difficult Actually here is a shot of the roads for you.:

The lights on top are actually blue, they are on the file I gave Red. I didn't change the light color when I made this preview. The lights on the inside got kinda messed up by the preview, but they will look better on the actual pieces.

GouRou as soon as you think of something to do for the automata visibility problem let me know. Vatt, if you figure something out let me know as well. In the meantime, I am going to finish the avenue intersection, work on train stations, finish some more bridges, and then maybe think about the airplanes (if I get an answer regarding what we are going to do with aviation that would help in this area).

Well, my Longhorns are playing Kansas, so I gotta finish watching that game, then I will get busy on some of these projects. If I left anything out, or I didn't answer a question or issue, then let me know.

Otherwise, I'll be back.

The Great Chozo

[The Great Chozo 34]

Vatt,

 

Very nice sketches, esp. the subway transitions. I don't know if you know it or nor, but I had already started to draft ideas for this, and the sketch you drew is almost exactly what I had started to do. (This is kida creepy https://community.simtropolis.com/assets/emoticons/23.gif>)

 

Anyway, I just saved JPEGs of all your sketches that you posted, and my plan today is to see how many of them I can get preliminary drafts on. So I will keep you posted on that.

 

Keep all sketches you make of transportation related buildings in this thread, as we ARE the transportation team. Let the other designers focus on the many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many other buildings that need to created. I don't think GouRou would mind, she might actually prefer it this way.

 

TGC

 

Sorry about the length of my post above everyone.

[jcabassa 20]

Chozo, that's increadible!!!!! Awesome work!!!!

 

-jcab

[guinea 31]

those are looking brilliant TGC keep it up ,

[The Great Chozo 34]

Incredible and Brilliant would be reffering to a way to get the cars visible as they pass through the tunnel.

 

I do appreciate your comments though, and dont' worry I will keep it up.

 

TGC

 

Quick update UT 57  KU 49     GO HORNS GO!!!!!!!!!!!

[gozman99 0]

We're going to require many different transportation systems, think up a few that wouldn't be made obsolete by the other.

[The Great Chozo 34]

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On 3/13/2004 6:28:15 PM gozman99 wrote:

We're going to require many different transportation systems, think up a few that wouldn't be made obsolete by the other.

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Gozman,

I don't think you realize how incredibly time consuming it is to edit all the pieces of just ONE type of network. We have narrowed down the necessary transit networks based on what we can do right now. The technology involved with our new transit systems is top of the line, so any new transit system will make the old ones obsolete anyway.

On another note,

This just popped into my head. For bus stops and subway stations, for now we should just use the road top mass transit mods that are already created. We would have to cover each type of stop and be able to integrate them into the road tubes, and honestly, if we already have something that works, I don't see a reason in wasting time on this when it could be spent doing other tasks. The road tops mass transit stations would be inside the tube, and we wouldn't have to worry about editing them. Anybody have any other thoughts on this?

Chozo

[GouRou 2]

in the 'effects' for the game, such as smoke, that is partially transparent. can we link something like that to a prop, then place the prop? we could make effected prop windows that are partially transparent

those intersections are looking good

[Vatt3 8]

Well I was thinking road top stations, since they would probably be easier to make, and easier to build with anyway.

 

I didn't know that you designed those early 3D structures to replace the monorail. I always thought that all forms of rail (except monorail) would become maglev in the mod. thus Elevated Rail would be Elevated Maglev and Ground Rail would be a Ground level Maglev. We would have transitions through all of them (like I said earlier. Monorails would simply remain pretty much the same. That's how I was thinking. So just to be clear, I think that Ground, Elevated, and Subway rails should be based roughly on maglev technology, and Monorails should use some sort of other (or similar) system, just be completely seperate (maybe highspeed?)

 

To make it more unique, I used three entirely different styles to make my stations. The first one (Elevated Rail) has a more tubular design, the second (Monorail) has the big X and is pretty much made up of an exoskeleton, and the third (Ground-level Rail) is a sort of hybrid between those two designs. Now we could always mix and match with those, maybe make the third one for elevated or whatever so that's all flexible. So don't feel limited just because I said that it was for Monorail or whatever I specified.

 

The intersection looks great. I'm still learning about all that automata stuff and I will be for awhile so don't expect me to start contributing in that department for awhiel https://community.simtropolis.com/assets/emoticons/9.gif>.

[The Great Chozo 34]

Vatt,

 

I like how you designed all three stations differently, and I will preserve that, because I think that will help with the differentiation of the lines. I could do one of two things:

 

1) Keep the track design I had made and use that for Monorail,  then design a new track design that would be used for the other three types of rail networks.

 

2) Use the current track I have (which used maglev technology) for the other three rails. Then design a new type of track for the monorail.

 

I have a suggestion. We group them as you said, one by itself, and then the other three together. Except I would suggest to change the rails in the groups. We should have the ground level passenger rail be the seperate type, and convert it to the super high speed network like you were talking about. Then we could have the other three be slower maglev type trains, that would use the maglev track I created (though I would tweak it some). If we did this, we could get a modder to change the speeds and capacities of the rails. The ground level rail would be the fastest and have the highest capacity, thus being perfect for INTERcity commuting. The others could be adjusted accordingly and would be the prime INTRAcity rail commuting networks. Subways, would have about the same attributes, maybe change them a bit. The new monorail would be slightly faster, with a higher capacity than the new el-train, which would be slightly faster with a higher capacity than the subway. These modifications would be easy for a modder to do, as there are already mods out there that have adjusted the speeds and capacities of the rails. (Traffic Cop could even be used here).

 

GouRou:

I hope that would you said can be done. I understand exactly what you are saying, and can visualize what it would look like, but I don't know enough of the inner workins of the game to be able to say if it is possible to do so or not. I think that question is better suited for Redlotus or DarkMatter to answer. (I hope they see this thread, if not, send either one a PM). I like the thinking though. Red said that he was busy, so as soon as he gets time to work with the new pieces I sent him and get them back to me, I will post some in game shots of the intersections. The bare pieces I got back already look good, so I know these will look better.

Chozo, The Great

[Vatt3 8]

Well since the Ground-level Rail is currently the carrier of all freight travel, I don't think it would be a good idea to make that the high-speed rail. Subways will be run in a vacuum underground tube, which will make them extremely fast for intercity commuting. Elevated maglev should be a little slower than the subway since there is air resistence, but they should certainly be faster than the ground-level rail. Then of course monorails could be that high-capacity rail we've been thinking about. Now most of these are slightly different than what you said, but ground-level rail will be used by passenger and freight trains, so I don't see it being the fastest, but then I could see it having the most capacity.

[The Great Chozo 34]

Good call.

 

I wasn't even thinking about the freight trips. What you said would work just fine then. So in that case, a ground level rail that is capable of transporting both commuters and freight would need to be designed. It should look like it is capable of carrying extreme weight from the freight, but at the same time has passengers on it as well. I will get on that. Also, while on the subject of freight, the freight stations should be redesigned as well.

 

Thanks for the counterpoint.

 

TGC

[GouRou 2]

remember that on mars, when hauling, the equation shifts toward starting and stopping a mass, not so much the weight of the object as it pulls downwards.

[Smurfer2 7]

I think Vatt and TGC can do this. Those two together plus GouRou is really moving transportation forward.

 

Edit: I almost forgot Redlotus. He knows the a lot about the abilities of the Automota. (I hope I spelled that right)

[The Great Chozo 34]

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On 3/13/2004 11:48:21 PM Smurfer2 wrote:

I think Vatt and TGC can do this. Those two together plus GouRou is really moving transportation forward.

 

Edit: I almost forgot Redlotus. He knows the a lot about the abilities of the Automota. (I hope I spelled that right)

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He also knows a lot about my road tubes, cause he has them and is modding them.https://community.simtropolis.com/assets/emoticons/10.gif> I hope he can shed some light on the automata issue, we are all trying to find solutions.

GouRou: that is very true, and starting a heavy mass on Mars won't be as difficult as here on Earth. (unless the mass is quadrupled https://community.simtropolis.com/assets/emoticons/3.gif>)

Chozo

[The Great Chozo 34]

I need feedback on this. What do you think about the color of the road tubes as they look against the new Mars Terrain (Thanks Dearnen https://community.simtropolis.com/assets/emoticons/24.gif>https://community.simtropolis.com/assets/emoticons/24.gif>https://community.simtropolis.com/assets/emoticons/24.gif>)?

 

 

 

These tubes in this shot are just quick lots I made so I could see how they look on the new terrain. I think they look allright, but I'm not going to make a final decision on the color unless other like it. So what do you think?

 

Chozo

[Sc4jeeks 35]

I think the color of the tubes should be a lighter color. Also, have you noticed the black on the inside on the tube between each peice of road? Is that gonna stay like that?

Was tubes really a good idea?

[hoonyr 0]

Wow ...
Wonderfull pics & renders
It always amazes me how talented people here are !