Real Highway (RHW) - Development and Support

[qurlix 20]

If you are new here, disregard the following section and go to the bottom. In fact, I don't even know anyone who really needs this chunk, but might as well keep it anyways... Begin old, outdated, material:

Quote

This thread is an essential continuation of One Way Highway Puzzle Pieces, but I thought it would fit better under a new title, seeing as this network is draggable.

The purpose of this thread is development and discussion of the ANT Rural Highway Mod (henceforth RHW, because that's what I named all my files). It is currently under development by myself (qurlix) and nooneatall.

The mod is dependant on the NAM, as it makes use of the ANT network. It replaces the normal ANT with a rural highway system. So far, the project is in its early stages, but we've made a good start:

One thing about drawing...you build each half separately (and can make the sides go different ways), so it is much more customizable than a normal highway.

 

 

 

Now that the historic post has been preserved...

This thread is for planning, development, and general discussion of the RHW mod. If you are new to the mod, it is a modification of the DirtRoad network that was left incomplete by Maxis. This mod changes it into a functional 2-lane-per-direction 2-tile-wide highway that are found in many places all around the world. Feel free to ask any questions, requests, etc at the end of the thread.

Links:

For links to download the Real Highway Mod, see the Network Addon Mod documentation.

So enjoy!

[kassarc16 4]

Thanks for taking my request to the next level!

 

Overpasses will be just a matter of adding a puzzle piece to the other networks, but what about on-ramps and off-ramps?

[codyg1985 0]

Looks great qurlix.

Would there be a way to merge two rural highway lanes together? In other words, could you take one side of the rural highway and drag another side into it to create a ramp?

[jeronij 13]

Looking great !!!. I suscribe from now on to follow this thread !!! Fantastic idea. When will something be downloadable  ?

[LBII 3]

Wow! Sounds like a promising project! I am impatient to be able to download it!

But it would be very interesting to add shoulders too, to make it more realistic!

[Ryan B 35]

quirlix - Great work.  These may just replace the regular highways in my region.  Have you thought about connections ( i.e. ramps, interchanges, etc. )?

[xiziz 11]

yey, this is perfect very nice, some fences and interchanges and voila... haha, no not really that simple is it

Are you going to have it 2 lane/dir or keep the standard 3/lane? ive seen both in rural areas, though i guess the 2-lane version is more common.

Cheers
//Sim

[nooneatall 6]

A few questions about interchanges and shoulders:

I've just spoken to him about the width of the highway, because if it is two lanes per direction, I find this much more useful (we already have a three-lane expressway in-game). Doing this also allows us to have room for a paved shoulder, and a tiny bit more room for interchanges, etc.

As for the interchanges themselves, I believe that they are going to be done as would a normal highway interchange, just this would require either making all new models and then implementing them, or, I'm not too sure about this, retexturing some in-game ones, making new PATHs... Maybe I should talk to him about this too

[jt_144_2004 0]

Just what i wanted, and shoulders would be a nice realistic touch there also should be a solid yellow line on the inside and a solid white one on the outside....very good work

[Johnnyman7 0]

This would be TIGHT if it could be pulled off. Seperated highways with a large median?! Shoulders?!?! Are we talking SimCity 4 or SimCity 5 here???

Great, great idea.

[dhoppeii 12]

Yes, I too will be eagerly following this thread.  What a fantastic idea.

I would agree that a two lane piece would be the way to go.

 

Great job so far guys.

[nooneatall 6]

Johnnyman7: This MOD will alter the ANT network so that it acts as a rural highway. To get it to work, you need to drag each side of the highway at a time. This means that the median can virtually be any size that you wish! There are no constraints on space the way we plan to do this.

And, there's one more thing that I've been thinking about:

We should try to have either generalised/ universal textures, or we should try to design this MOD so that we can easily replace the textures for different regions. Bottom line is that we should be trying to make universal textures. And, I'm not exactly sure how having an inner yellow line would work, as I remember experimenting with this once, and no matter what, the texture stayed on one side. It would not change depending on which way you dragged the network, as far as I remember.
Any clarification on this would be welcomed.

[jacqulina 162]

fantastic idea

[vester_DK 477]

Keep up the work. Looking forward for this mod.

[debussyman 1,348]

Great. This looks exactly ike the highways in my city.

[greenlemon44 2]

Hello all,

Good idea but would it more be like a glorified avenue with a higher capacity? Actually that sounds like the motorways of my homeland Ireland, our neighbour Britain and most of Europe but exclusively in rural areas. Well, here are some pics of rural motorways:

This one is in Northern Ireland>


This one is from the UK>


Here's a German one>


And here are some very good ones from Ireland which show the very rural setting>








Oops, sorry I went a bit overboard! I just love motorways!

[Johnnyman7 0]

Well if you think like that, then isnt EVERY freeway just a larger version of a street? Of course it is! But that doesnt make it any less cool.

 

Nooneatall: I like the idea of variable-width medians. It just gives you one more layer of customization to your rural areas.

 

[qurlix 20]

First thing I'd like everyone to know is that this project started this morning at 10AM, so it is in very preliminary stages. As for other stuff:

kassarc16: Some on-ramps and off-ramps will be able to be automatic, but others may need to be special pieces. Still others may not be possible at all, but pretty much all of the basic ramps will be made. The only problem is that they may have to be designated what side of the road they're for (the game doesn't really know the difference between the two sides of the highway...we have to trick it)

Edit: Now that I reread your question, that really wasn't what you were asking, was it? My new answer is: We might use the puzzle-piece ramp idea that is being discussed for the NAM (breaking ramps up into little pieces)

codyg1985: In response to your question, I am going to make an important announcement: (I have a feeling questions about this will continue arising otherwise)

Dear Everyone:
The game cannot tell the two lanes
of the highway apart. For this
reason, many ramps and interchanges
will not be draggable. They will
still be available to use in the
menu.


jeronij: The final won't be for quite a while (a lot of combinations to make) But a basic alpha might be done by the end of the week.

LBII, xiziz, dhoppeii: I'm pretty sure it is going to be a two-lane highway. I had started work before talking at all with nooneatall (who is the one doing the textures). I simply copied the normal highway textures. Noone has some two lane textures done, with shoulders...so expect to see that.

jt_144_2004: Basically because of the absence of lane distinguishment (what I was talking about in my bold box), I don't think the line thing is possible. Sorry!

The first alpha will contain (I hope ...)
-basic draggable RHW network with orthogonal and diagonal tiles.
-draggable conversion to avenue
-draggable conversion to ground highway
-draggable conversion to one-way


ciao -qurlix

[Mickebear 2]

fantastic idea - this is what the game has been lacking so far!!!

[newyorkrunaway1 110]

wow, this is my first time seeing this project!!! great work so far!!!

[debussyman 1,348]

Well, I see this is a very early stage but I have 1 querstion, is it possible to make the RHW intersections perpenticular? like if it was an avenue, no ramps or special lanes, just a road connecting the highway.

[greenlemon44 2]

Date: 8/23/2005 5:27:14 PM
Author: Johnnyman7

Well if you think like that, then isnt EVERY freeway just a larger version of a street? Of course it is! But that doesnt make it any less cool.

Nooneatall: I like the idea of variable-width medians. It just gives you one more layer of customization to your rural areas.

quote>

I'm sorry, I hope I didn't sound like I'm degrading the motorway/highway but it's just that in Europe we don't usually have more than two lanes on motorways (as seen from pics), they're usually a black colour like roads and are ground level, basically dual-carraigeways/avenues without traffic lights and junctions though I'm sure you have normal highways in Canada/USA, etc. and those enormomous 6-lane freeways too!!!

Do you suppose that an asphalt version could also be made like the european highway texture along with the usual grey one? I could get the textures...

[mcarch 15]

I just ran accross this... but um, it is a good idea... however, I remember that there is the ANT Network in the NAM.  Is their anyway that the ANT Network can be used to just go one way?  This would save a lot of time and trouble. 

I'm not sure if this could be done, but I just thought I would bring up the idea.

Oops, I should read more carefully!  Sorry for the post!

[Andreas Roth 614]

This sounds like a great project! The in-game highways are great for inner-city traffic, but there is way too much concrete for rural settings, esp. with those walls at the edge. A two-lined highway with shoulders (you're talking about emergency lanes, right?) sounds like a good idea, and since you can draw the lines into each direction separately, they will be more flexible in difficult terrain. It would also be easier to add roadhouses and resting places, since you only need a transit enabled lot with some appropriate textures.

[SamFlash 0]

What a great idea and the timing is perfect for me.  I focusing exclusively on farming and rural communities now and I sure can use something like this.  I'll be following this one closely. 

[Rymac91 15]

this looks really promising..though something to ask...are you going to recolor the textures as well?since most rual freeways are a darker shade like that highway mod....other then that these look fantastic...also..will these pieces change the trrain or will you have to do that ahead of time?

[Teirusu 38]

Ahhh, goodie!  This is something I always wanted to do with the ANT network, but never found the time to start it, sadly.  I'm very glad someone finally has found the time to make this happen! 

And Qurlix, I believe there is a way to make to make the game tell apart the two lanes.  If you look in the NAM: Developement Thread a few pages back (Sorry, I forget just how far back.) you'll see a few posts I created that demonstrated an experiment I did with the ANT network just for this reason.  (It's Page 8 actually, and somehow, some of the pictures got overridden, whoops. ^^; )

 

The general idea was to use RuleOverRides to either:

 

A.)  Detect when two drags of ANT network were next to eachother, side-by-side, then replace the textures as needed.  (The replacement textures would then have paths going in the right direction.)  The result was a 2-tile wide ground highway-like network.  Paths would line correctly and everything.  No need for special puzzle pieces to control the direction of traffic.  (Which is what I think your doing here...? )

 

B.) And detect when you were dragging from one side of a ground highway/avenue, and again replace the textures as needed so that the paths lined up correctly.

 

The nice way about doing it this way is that the ANT remains a 1-tile wide bi-direction network by default, however, by dragging two ANT's next to each other, or dragging from one-side of ground highway-avenue, it would turn into a 2-tile wide freeway or high-speed one-way road.

 

The problem with doing it this way is that quite a LOT of RuleOverRides would be required to get this to work properly.

 

Anywho, since some of the screenshots got overridden (My fault since I used such simple names. ^^; ) here's some of them again just to show this graphically.

 

 

 

 

 

And here's the code I used in the RuleOverRides File:

 

;Multi-Lane transformation
0x5e004b00,0,0,0x5e004b00,0,0=0x5fe04b00,0,0,0x5fe04b00,2,0
;
;Enforcing Multi-Lane
;
0x5fe04b00,0,0,0x5e004b00,0,0=0x5fe04b00,0,0,0x5fe04b00,2,0
0x5e004b00,0,0,0x5fe04b00,2,0=0x5fe04b00,0,0,0x5fe04b00,2,0
;
;Enforcing Multi-Lane incase of split
;
0x5e004b00,3,0,0x5fe04b00,3,0=0x5fe04b00,3,0,0x5fe04b00,3,0
0x5e004b00,3,0,0x5fe04b00,1,0=0x5fe04b00,1,0,0x5fe04b00,1,0
0x5fe04b00,3,0,0x5e004b00,3,0=0x5fe04b00,3,0,0x5fe04b00,3,0
0x5fe04b00,1,0,0x5e004b00,3,0=0x5fe04b00,1,0,0x5fe04b00,1,0

 

 

0x5e004b00 is the ANT network straight orthogonal piece.  0x5fe04b00 was my test piece with the highway texture.  In order to get dragging from one side of a ground highway/avenue to work, one would have to created special intersection pieces in the IntersectionSolutions File.  However, that bit of code up there will get option A to work.  Feel free to use it, experiment with it, etc.  If you have any questions just ask. 

 

P.S.  Sorry for the long post.

 

-Teirusu

[Tropod 144]

aarrr.........yet another attempt to change this . This is somewhat similar to what I originally had in mind way back, when sometime. I just never had the support from a texture artist to be able to go through with it .

 

 

Bi-Directional Traffic: this is one of those things I've looked at. One of the main issues with this is being able to effectively control the traffic flow (& automata) for a given situation. Since this can not really be done properly (without resorting to PuzzlePieces), careful consideration should be given I think to the whole bi-directional idea.

Anything Interchange-Base Related: would require new code, because techically it is a proper defined network (just like road,rail,etc). Using existing interchange-base items: this could be done, but additional code & other changes would be needed still if it's to be properly declared as the network of this type. Some of the very first versions of the NAM did actually have several ANT<>Ground/ElevatedHighway Ramps, but were removed at a later time (no one complained, at the time, so I can only gather no one used them). So from a personal view point; I think ANT<>Highway interchanges would be a lot better than having ANT<>Highway Ramps, though having just normal ANT<>Highway intersections may even be better (& can be done). I don't think there's really much point of having Ramps, either between ANT<>Highway or other networks; there's normal intersections for that, & considering it'd be 'rural highway' I'd think that's how it would be done. Obviously though there are pros n cons to doing it either way.

 

Universal Textures: I wouldn't do it any other way.

 

I think personally, now anyhow, I wouldn't mind seeing it changed so that it's a one tile two lane highway (if 4 lanes could fit on the diagonal on the one tile, well I'd go with 4. It may be possible though still to have 4 lanes on diagonal, split across two diagonal tiles). And have ANT<>Highway Transitions (like Road<>Avenue), plus some others, & just use the existing normal ANT<>NonHighwayNetworks Intersections. anyhow

 

 

[kujoe 0]

Man, I'm going to keep an eye on this, this is VERY useful to me

[negative352 1]

Awesome idea! This is exactly a big thing that they left out in Sim City 4 that should have been added. This kind of highway is far more common in real life than those ground highways with the annoying jersey barriers. This is definitely something you would see on any major US interstate. This rural highway could be useful for interstates.