Network Widening Mod (NWM) - Development and Support

[Ganaram Inukshuk 906]

52 minutes ago, jeffryfisher said:

Awesome! I'll give it a try on one of my surviving TLA-7 diagonals next time I can play. 

BTW, I apologize for calling the TLA-7 "completely broken". I should have said "of very limited usefulness" while acknowledging that it's a beautiful ribbon pavement. Adding function to form will make my day! It'll also be fun to see what wandering automata do with all of those exit paths

No need to apologise (I'm no longer involved in NAMdev, either); features like that have been chronically missing, anyway. Also, that fix is not authorised by the the NAM Team, so even if it works, use at your own risk.

[jeffryfisher 2,176]

22 hours ago, jeffryfisher said:

I'll give it a try on one of my surviving TLA-7 diagonals next time I can play.

Fix_2 solves the lot access problem, so it's a big improvement. Automata seem to move in three lanes, plus some enter and leave the road for nearby lots.

The traffic heat map still shows one hot diagonal instead of spreading the load to the wide cells, so this triple-wide is the equivalent of a double-wide on diagonals. That's unfortunate but not debilitating.

Something I noticed when viewing the automata: The morning commute heat was going one way, but the automata were almost all going the other way, as if displaying the evening commute all year. Just eye-candy, but puzzling.

[abuildersim 0]

Hi, is there a transition piece that can go from owr-4 to 2x owr-2? If not how would you go about making something like this? Can someone point me to a guide on making a transition piece?

[Tarkus 6,932]

5 hours ago, abuildersim said:

Hi, is there a transition piece that can go from owr-4 to 2x owr-2? If not how would you go about making something like this? Can someone point me to a guide on making a transition piece?

First off, welcome to Simtropolis!

There is a way to transition from OWR-4 to two OWR-2s, but there is no puzzle piece for it--it's fully draggable.  Just end the OWR-4 at a stub, then start dragging two OWRs out from a stub just on the other side, similar to what's shown here.  It'll convert to the desired transition.

-Tarkus

[robdragon 167]

I think I got the right place. Not sure as nothing been posted since Feb. Anyway I think I have a problem with road-6 intersecting with a street (see pic)

I have this same problem with a road also. But it's fine with ave-4.

Am I missing something here as in a puzzle piece for this? I looked but couldn't find.

[matias93 7,535]

Looks like an unsupported intersection. If I remember clearly, Tarkus once mentioned that T intersections are harder to code, and hence, less commonly supported than full cross intersections.

Maybe replacing the street section with a road would fix it? In real life that would be a very reasonable situation, as that big road wouldn't normally end on such small street without some mitigation done around it.

[Tarkus 6,932]

The reason that intersection is not supported is due to the number of lanes on the ending roadway vs. the number on the thru roadway.  The RD-6 has 3 lanes approaching the intersection, whereas the Street has only 2 lanes total, so traffic on 1 of the 3 lanes on the RD-6 approach has nowhere to go.  There's just too many lanes on the approach of the ending network for the intersection to make sense. 

The reason the base Avenue network supports ending at Street is because the Avenue would only have 2 lanes approaching the intersection, thereby making the math work out (2 lanes on thru network, 2 lanes on approach of ending network).

In general, we don't support T-intersections in which the lane math doesn't work (save for a few essentially non-functional "placeholders" that are necessary to provide support for override networks where the math does work).  Some guidance on the lane math with NWM intersections (and general NWM network capabilities) can be found in the "Network Capabilities" section of the NWM Feature Guide in the NAM Documentation, which is located here.  The "T-End Min" and "T-In Max" are the values to watch.

T-End Min: If the given network is to end at a T-intersection, this value is the minimum number of total lanes that needs to be on the cross network. For instance, while an RD-6 (T-End Min = 3) can end at an ARD-3 (3 total thru lanes), it cannot end at a Road (2 total thru lanes). Center lanes on TLA networks do not count toward the overall figure (i.e. the TLA-5 would be considered to have 4 lanes total in this instance).

T-In Max: If a cross network ends at the given network in a T-intersection, this value is the maximum number of lanes on the cross network heading inbound to the T-intersection (half the network, in the case of a two-way network, the full network if one-way). For instance, an AVE-2 can have an Avenue or RD-4 end at it (AVE-2 T-In Max = 2, while the Avenue and RD-4 have 4 lanes total, 2 heading inbound to the intersection), but an OWR-1 cannot (T-In Max = 1). Center lanes on TLA networks do not count toward the overall figure (i.e. the TLA-5 would be considered to have 4 lanes total in this instance).

In short, you'll either need to convert the RD-6 to something narrower, or convert the Street to something wider in order to make the T-intersection.  It's worth noting that while the math does work for RD-4 ending at Street, there currently is no support for any multi-tile NWM network ending at a Street--mostly as such intersections were deemed a lower priority, considering that there's only two such networks (RD-4, and TLA-5 if you don't use the center lane) that would make sense with the lane math.  (They would not be difficult to add, however.)

Converting the RD-6 to a RD-4 and the Street to a Road would work, as would RD-6 to Avenue.  The RD-6 does have draggable transitions available to both the RD-4 and the Avenue--the former is a "stub-to-stub" setup, while the latter is a "direct connection" transition.

Widening the Street to an ARD-3 or NRD-4 would allow the T-intersection to be made with the RD-6, though you'd then have to transition ARD-3/NRD-4 -> Road -> Street (and the NRD-4 (Thru) x RD-6 (End) T-intersection isn't the most stable on the overrides--it requires starters on both sides to stabilize).

-Tarkus

[jeffryfisher 2,176]

I recommend TLA-5. Its centerlane not only grants access to lots on both sides from each direction of travel, but it also acts like a series of intersections, effectively increasing its capacity. That means that it paradoxically has more capacity then the RD-6 with its greater number of lanes (capacity is based on the underlying roads, not the number of lanes).

I use TLA-5 all the time, and I am sure that it makes a T with road. If you T a TLA-5 with 4 cells of road, then you can drag streets from the road's stubs.

[APSMS 1,892]

I thought that RD-6 also had DIPs to increase the capacity of the network over both Avenue (-4) and the RD-4 network. 

So TLA 5 and RD-6 both have the same capacity. 

[robdragon 167]

@matias93

I did attempt to intersect with a road instead but that wouldn't fly either as @Tarkus mentioned. I have since transitioned from RD-6 to RD-4 to ave then to road that worked. After @Tarkusand you mentioned I finally understand whats going on and makes perfect sense. Thanks Alex!

@jeffryfisher I do use TLA-5 and TLA -7 quite a bite especially in this region, but also use RD-6 and RD-4 and some TLA-3 and ard-3.

[APSMS 1,892]

I think you can just cap the avenue with a street. You don't need to transition to a road unless you want that for your setup 

[robdragon 167]

1 hour ago, APSMS said:

I think you can just cap the avenue with a street. You don't need to transition to a road unless you want that for your setup 

Brain cramp! You're right!

Sometimes I wonder about myself!

Thanks!

[Wiimeiser 444]

On 12/06/2018 at 8:22 AM, robdragon said:

I think I got the right place. Not sure as nothing been posted since Feb. Anyway I think I have a problem with road-6 intersecting with a street (see pic)

I have this same problem with a road also. But it's fine with ave-4.

Am I missing something here as in a puzzle piece for this? I looked but couldn't find.

One thing you can do is downgrade the RD-6 to AVE-4, upgrade the street to a road, then briefly upgrade that other street to a road and have it S-curve into the avenue intersection. That would lessen a dogleg and remove a nasty bottleneck, as well.

[LightSkinnedPisces 71]

can someone explain all the abbreviations in NAM road stuff such as ARD, what's that? and what do they do exactly? 

 thanks, 

B

[Ganaram Inukshuk 906]

2 hours ago, LightSkinnedPisces said:

can someone explain all the abbreviations in NAM road stuff such as ARD, what's that? and what do they do exactly? 

 thanks, 

B

You can always hover your cursor over certain NAM-related terms to see what they mean. There's no easy way to do this on a mobile device, though, but there's a list of definitions here:

In general, most of the content in the NWM is aimed at providing larger, high-capacity variants (and smaller variants) of the existing roads in SC4. Basically, the roads in the NWM are the following:

• TLA - Roads with a turn lane median; sizes are 3, 5, and 7 (no such road exists in the game)
• OWR - Basically larger one way roads (sizes are 1, 3, 4, and 5 to complement the 2-lane one way road already in the game)
• AVE - Basically larger avenues (roads with medians; sizes are 2 and 6 to complement the 4-lane avenue already in the game)
• RD-4 and RD-6 - Basically larger roads (sizes 4 and 6 to complement the 2-lane two-way road already in the game)
• NRD-4 - A special variant of the RD-4 that fits within a one-tile footprint instead of 2 tiles
• ARD - Asymmetrical roads; only available size is 3 (a 2+1 road; typically used as climbing lanes for roads going uphill)

[Tarkus 6,932]

Just a little heads up for everyone regarding NWM development . . . I've started sketching out a code revamp for the NWM, using the same structure as the Project 57-Mark IV improvements that came to the RHW last year, and also making use of the Draggable Road Viaducts expansion code I wrote for NAM 38.  The goal with this is not only to make some pretty massive improvements in terms of network stability, but also to get everything ready for the "next big thing" in NWM development: the long-awaited diagonal intersection and crossing functionality.

However, one of the major issues I've encountered in the initial groundwork is that there's some notable inconsistencies in terms of how certain intersections are rotated.  These issues are, oddly enough, most prevalent with the single-tile networks, with the ARD-3--arguably the most unstable of all the NWM networks--being the biggest offender.

Unlike the original "Project 57" plan with the RHW, I am not planning on embarking on a widescale re-IIDing of everything in the NWM, and in fact, plan to keep the IID scheme for the NWM in tact, as it (mostly) works.  This will potentially mean, however, that should I reorient the various intersections to be consistent, it would be necessary to rebuild these intersections (generally just a simple single click over/near them with the appropriate network tool) in order to bring them over to the proper (new) rotation.

To that end, I want to see if there are any significant objections to this prospect before I proceed.  Thank you all for your thoughts and continued support of the NAM and the Network Widening Mod!

-Tarkus

[youngwii 74]

Recoding the NWM sounds like a great idea; I am wondering if this code revamp could also pave the way for elevated NWM networks.

[matias93 7,535]

It sounds like a fully acceptable cost...

[Tarkus 6,932]

What do we have here . . . ?

-Tarkus

[CaptCity 4,752]

Ooooo...! That's looking good... 

[AsimPika3172 1,136]

Oh yeah! Diagonal NWM version! Waiting for elevated NWM in coming soon!

[Tarkus 6,932]

As shown in the "Show Us What You're Working On" . . .

Also, here's a bonus pic of of some new-and-improved base diagonal textures:

-Tarkus

[Tarkus 6,932]

Back with more transitions.

The Avenue version (AVE-4-to-6):

Finally giving the NRD-4 its first diagonal transition (still needs a little bit of overhang work):

And this transition already exists in puzzle form . . . but it and its TLA-7 counterpart have now been converted to being fully draggable, with the intent of soon making all of the existing NWM puzzle-based transitions obsolete.  (Not sure what all happened with the color correction on this one, as it's oversaturated on the RD-6 side, and is the same way on the puzzle version).

In short, we're getting quite close to a world in which NWM functionality will be available across the board without needing to use traditional puzzle pieces, with everything either draggable or FLEX-based.  Wild stuff.

-Tarkus

[Tarkus 6,932]

The triple-tile beasts now have pathing in place:

And the NRD-4's diagonal transition repertoire has been built out.  Still need to get the overhangs (and pathing) in place.

-Tarkus

[AsimPika3172 1,136]

Cool!  More diagonal NWM mods!