Is there going to be any more development of the Maxis highways?

[poshbakerloo 186]

Is there going to be any more development of the Maxis highways?

There are custom interchanges that have been out for a long time and some re texture things. Would the NWM ever add highways? Will we ever roundabout interchanges, express-local lanes, etc.

I know a lot of people use the RHM but I'm not a fan as it takes ages to build anything big etc

[Jazzmaster 716]

Right now it seems that the Maxis highways aren't seeing any huge improvements or developments by the NAM team or similar. The interchanges require a huge amount of time to make and debug...as you've seen, the custom ones we have work and look ok but still leave a lot to be desired. Not sure about the NWM adding highway functionality, though.

I do share your pain somewhat on the RHW, I use both the MHW and RHW with the MHW in much denser areas because I just don't have the space to make even the most compact interchanges in a downtown setting. The RHW works well though, provided you plan to use it ahead of time so you don't run into problems with space etc.

[Lucario Boricua 7,050]

I at least haven't switched fully to the RHW, even if I have it among my downloads. Even so, I do use the Maxis Highway with NAM stuff to create some nice stuff. You'll have to make heavy use of one-ways, and spend some time checking the added side ramps--those are the ones that allow exploiting a lot of juice from the Maxis Highways.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

There is much to do on the NWM, and I suspect that they have run into a snag trying to get good curves to work properly. MHW are good enough for me, but I have used multiple parallel NWM roads in places where I needed a short stretch of heavily loaded road.

RHW is just too much civil engineering for me, but if I were doing a CJ, I would most certainly use it, since appearance is more important in a CJ than petty engineering annoyances.

[cammo2003 20]

I often use the MHW to cross important avenues over rivers (the idea being there'll be no need to upgrade later). I also use them in hillier regions (as the side barriers act as an additional safety feature).

Senatoria doesn't have many hills, so the use of the MHW is pretty much limited to being used as avenue bridges in certain locations, short "quasi-freeways", as tunnels for the RHW in certain situations, and a few situations where things are too tight to use the RHW.

[sneakeypete 16]

While i wouldn't mind seeing a upgraded maxis highway that was say, 3 tiles instead of 2 tiles wide, had wider lanes, at least shoulders on the outisde, and less suicidial offramps, (in general style of the RHW, but more compacy inner city-ish) however i'd rather see new improved stuff for the RHW, NWM and NAM any day of the week.

[Tarkus 6,933]

There will actually be a handful of new Maxis Highway items in the next NAM release, Version 30, courtesy of Chrisim: an Elevated 45-degree Curve, orthogonal and diagonal Elevated Highway/GLR-Avenue interchanges, and a revamp of the default Elevated Highway/Avenue interchange. But new Maxis Highway content is generally a very intermittent thing. These are the first real Maxis Highway items brought to term in over 2 years. Unless andreharv reappears or someone new steps up who has the time and energy to devote to the long-term, highly-intensive process of creating new Maxis Highway interchanges and the like, the most you'll really see coming out of the transit modding community is some smaller "gap-fill" Maxis Highway items along the lines of what Chrisim created. The Ground and Elevated Highways are basically in a state close to what the software development world would call "maintenance mode".

The main reason for this is the nature of the Maxis Highways: a natively dual-tile network, whose pieces are complicated and specialized 3D models with complicated UV-mapping, and are not to the scale of the rest of the game's transit networks. While they may be unfussy for the end user, they're very fussy from the modding standpoint. The reason the RHW developed the way it did was because of the limitations of modding Maxis Highways. Before the Modular Interchange System (MIS) was developed for the RHW, the old NAM: Requests thread here was basically constant requests for Maxis Highway stuff, especially interchanges. After the MIS was introduced in 2008, those sorts of requests have become a much less common occurrence.

Regarding how the NWM fits into all of this, the original discussions amongst the transit modding community about it in 2007 involved the RHW becoming an NWM component, actually. Obviously, this didn't end up happening (had it not run into technical difficulties and lack of manpower that delayed it until 2010, it probably would have), and eventually, the NWM concept evolved to its current form--a mod dedicated to variable width non-highway road networks. The only thing you'll see related to Maxis Highways in the NWM are overpasses/underpasses, and at most, diamond interchanges with NWM networks, consistent with the "gap-filling"/"maintenance mode" status.

There are no plans to produce different width variants of the Maxis Highways as part of the NWM or any other project, mainly as it just compounds the difficulties with dealing with the existing Maxis Highways tenfold.

There is much to do on the NWM, and I suspect that they have run into a snag trying to get good curves to work properly.

Actually, I figured out the whole curve side of things quite awhile ago, though I've been reluctant to show any progress publicly to prevent us from getting mobbed. This is an internal development screenshot from 6 months ago:

The main thing is lack of time and manpower. We have a massive backlog of intersections to path. Unfortunately, development is going to be on hiatus for awhile because I'm in the process of trying to get to the "ABD" (all-but-dissertation) stage of my Ph.D. program, and the other member of the NWM development group, bighead99999 (superhands at SC4D), has also been dealing with RL as well.

-Alex (Tarkus)

  Edited April 4, 2011 by Tarkus  

[Halen Of Dania 350]

There is much to do on the NWM, and I suspect that they have run into a snag trying to get good curves to work properly. MHW are good enough for me, but I have used multiple parallel NWM roads in places where I needed a short stretch of heavily loaded road.

RHW is just too much civil engineering for me, but if I were doing a CJ, I would most certainly use it, since appearance is more important in a CJ than petty engineering annoyances.

yes ! i hope so . right now i belive there is one maxis freeway curve in nam . it would be a vast improvement over the curves that are just created by the tool itself .

[Cob92 360]

I guess the only problem with the RHW is that, despite how nice it looks, it's size and limited functionality in sizes above 4 lanes make it a headache to use ingame. It takes 15-20 minutes to build simple overpass ramps, and I haven't even figured out how to do urban Texas-style frontage roads (which were very easy to make with MHW). And it bugs me that you can't get elevated segments for anything above a 4-lane highway when 90% of the highways around where I live are 6 lanes in the suburbs and city outskirts, to say nothing of how large they become in the inner city. No elevated segments = no overpasses = no practical highway.

[Lucario Boricua 7,050]

I have to agree with Cobhris96--some crucial elements of the RHW Mod are still missing, and they're really important to have good highways. I also dlislike having to get specific elevated/ground pieces for the diagonal MIS ramps atop orthogonal or diagonal main highway. Until I don't get that, my use of RHW will be relegated to experimental use and not in my cities.

[Tarkus 6,933]

I also agree that the sort of features you guys are mentioning would significantly improve the RHW system, and developmentally, we're headed that way and you'll start noticing significant improvements in those areas in near-future releases. All widths of ground-level RHWs will have draggable diagonal functionality in the next release, including the RHW-10. We are also planning to have initial ERHW-6S/6C functionality in the next release--it'll be limited to just orthogonal overpass functionality with no ramp interfaces or diagonals quite yet, but those will eventually be added.

The main reason why the elevated stuff has lagged behind the ground-level content is, of course, because there's specialized models involved. Fortunately, those models are of simpler construction than Maxis Highway models, and are a good deal easier to put together, but it still takes time.

The puzzle pieces involving diagonals and elevated segments were primarily intended as a stopgap until we were able to solidify the draggable side of things, which has been quite difficult at times. Diagonal/diagonal setups are especially tricky with how the game handles same network diagonal intersections, but we're gradually making strides.

And given how many Texan users there are out there, you can sure bet we're eventually going to do something about frontage roads.

-Alex (Tarkus)