Road Top Mass Transit (RTMT) - Development and Support

[gtx 2]

Okay thanks  

[chris0101 8]

I haven't been playing Simcity 4 in a while now, so I probably will need to refresh my memory. I stopped playing in September 2009, but now I've restarted somewhat. Out of curiosity, what happened to the original RTMT v4 project? I remember that it had some big ideas that would change mass transit in simcity pretty

Reading above, it seems that you've had some setbacks.

[z1 566]

No real setbacks as such. On one hand, we released the v3.60 Add-On Pack in October, which wasn't in the original plan. But I also got tied up with RL and the NAM traffic simulator, along with the Traffic Simulator Configuration Tool, the last two of which took far more time than expected. (Actually, so did RL. ) Right now, the RTMT Team is hard at work putting full FLUPS and Underground Rail intersection support into all RTMT stations. So RTMT V4 has simply been pushed back a bit due to shifting priorities, but it is still very much planned, and no difficulties have been encountered there.

To see some of the things coming up with the FLUPS support, you can check out this thread.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

This hasn't been asked recently, although it may have been in one of the earlier 250 posts I didn't wade through.  With the combined subway/bus stops on road-top, the route query operator doesn't give you the subway trace.    I can get along without it because I can use the traffic display to see my subway separately, but it would be nice to pick up the subway trace along with all the other stuff you get with route query.

Will you be doing this in a future release?

[z1 566]

This works fine for me - I just double checked. Please try temporarily emptying your plugins folder of everything except RTMT and the NAM, and then please try this is a newly built city.

We have no way of controlling the output of the route query tool, so something else must be unintentionally interfering with what it's doing.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Thanks.  I'll give it a whirl.  If it works, I'll try to identify the plugin.  I don't have very many.

POST HOC: 04:42 PM

No soap.  I took everythiing out except the NAM and RTMT directories.  Maybe it has to do with the fact that I am running on Linux, but regular subway stations work.  (Oh, and the extra cheats .dll was present because it comes from another directory.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

New question:

What plans are there to integrate the RTMT with the NWM?  I would dearly love to have some road top bus/subway stations for MAVE-4 and MAVE-6 roads.  I have one very much loaded high-rise downtown situation where I would like to put in at least a MAVE-4, but need the road top subway stations on the currently whacked out avenue.  I don't have any land for space taking stations on this particular road.

[z1 566]

Full support for all the NWM roads will be present in RTMT v3.70, but that's still a number of months away.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Sounds great.

And now for a new thing that has been bothering me for some time.  The RTMT on-road tiles seem to affect the eight grid squares around them.  I suspect there is a slight overlap of some kind.  For example, today I wanted to put down a monorail station on the three tiles just south of a road top bus stop.

S

RM

RM

RM

Where S is the RTMT stop

R is the Road

M is the Monorail station.

When I tried to hook up my monorail tracks I got an "Unsuitable grade for ..."

I got curious, and move the Monorail station one tile east, and then I could hook up the tracks.  So, I bulldozed the station, tracks and the bus station, repaired the road and put the monorail station back in its original location.  Lo and behold, I can now hook up the tracks.

I have discovered that sometimes it is a matter of ordering, with the possibly overlapping tiles, including ped mall tiles, coming last.  If they are already there, take them out, and put them back after you have finished the other engineering stuff.

I hope you will be able to overcome this.  Having a tile fit exactly is an old error that people who use the lot editor encountered some time ago with the BAT.  If your BAT model fits exactly to tile boundaries, it can't be placed, but if you shrink the model just a tad, all is well.  It is a great shock the first time you find this out after working with the BAT for hours and days to get the model just right.  I found this out on my first attempt at an exactly 2x2 model.  Rather than fix up my BAT model, I changed the lot size in the LE to be 3 x 3 and added some nice props.  If this is what you are encountering, I am afraid all your models may have to be revisited.  Fitting all this into a 1 x 1 tile can be a real problem.

[CaptCity 4,868]

This could have more to do with the terrain. RTMT stops flatten terrain, so they may not be willing to "move" if something around them attempts to vary the terrain. Try the same setup on a flat surface. Just a thought...

[z1 566]

CaptCity is correct. The buildings in all RTMT lots are exactly centered and not near any edges; they form the signs you see in various data view. The stops themselves are just props. This is not anything that is fixable on our end, but if you level the terrain enough, you can generally get things to work.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Hi guys.

    I had a major crash and lost everything including my archives.  I searched the stex, even with google, I couldn't find all the pieces I need for RTMT.

Would you please give me the links?  Thanks, muchly.

Never mind, I found it on the LEX.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Oops, I missed something.  After installing what I thought was the complete RTMT 3.50 with the 3.60 update, I now have brown boxes on my farms.  Any idea what I did wrong?

[z1 566]

Brown boxes on your farms? Are they on RTMT stations there? If so, could you please show a picture?

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Originally posted by: z1

Brown boxes on your farms? Are they on RTMT stations there? If so, could you please show a picture?quote>

No, there are no RTMT stations on the farms.  The brown boxes seem to have replaced the farm field props.  The nearest stations are a street or so away.  However, I am also having a problem with some of the graphics in the new version of wine, so I just wanted to be sure that I hadn't missed anything when I did my reinstall.  I had a complete wipe out type crash and lost everything on my disks, so I had to start over.

There is so much stuff to get from the BSC Lex to go with this stuff, then the update has to be installed manually, and I wondered if I had missed somehow.  If nothing occurs to you, forget it.

There was one thing that happened, and it may well have been a wine glitch (I am testing a beta).  When I used the traffic flow display at one point I got the display you get over road top stations scattered across some unallocated terrain in a kind of array.  It disappeared when I switched the flow display off then back on.

Because of the kind of testing I am doing for the winehq guys, it is possible that all of this is bogus.  Don't sweat it.  I am just making sure I have crossed all the t's and dotted all the i's before I made a bug report that could get me into a regression test with the operating system.  On my machine, the base compile for the wine compatibility layer takes about three hours, and I have to do that at least once when I start a regression test to get a base version.  Then I have multiple versions of wine, so I can play SC4 on one version and hunt for problems in the rest, all at the same time.  Fun, huh?

[iowndiscti 141]

Can i please be provided with the link to the most current verison of the RTMT? i didnt see it on the front page of this topic.

thnx in advance

[z1 566]

The base version of RTMT for PCs, which is v3.50, can be found here.  There is also the RTMT Add-On Pack V3.60 and the RTMT Interim T-RAM Stations, both of which contain valuable additions to RTMT.

[heitomat 156]

I was thrilled when the RTMT lots for El-Rail over Road were released. However, they seem to have a quite unrealistic side-effect.

It looks like any RTMT stop under El-Rail over Road (!) also functions as a el-rail station? At least I remember seeing my trains make a short stop at each of these lots, and - if I remember correctly - the lot query also calculated the el-rail usage. I'm sorry that I'm not able to provide a more describing picture, but I discovered this a while ago and I actually haven't used these lots ever since, just because of this. Figured it was about time to ask someone about it..

Of course, this could be intentional. I just find it strange for a el-train to pick up and drop off passengers where no platforms are present.. It seems unlikely that they'll just dump the passengers down onto the bus stops.. 

If it's intentional: Is it because of limitations in modding? I'd love to use RTMT lots under my el-rails, but I don't want them to act as elevated stations as well..! I have separate, more suitable lots for that..

I love the RTMT, though, and it's great news that lots for the NWM are on their way! 

[z1 566]

The fact that the trains stop above these stations is essentially a game bug; stations that handled multiple travel types in situations like this were not part of the original SC4, so this issue never came up then. However, no passengers get on or off the el trains at these stops; you can verify this with the Route Query Tool. Only the automata are affected by this bug, which cannot be fixed by us.

[heitomat 156]

Thank you for your answer, z. In the name of realism, it often happens that trains do have to stop for a short wait now and then after all, even in between stations. The most important thing is that passengers don't get on or off. Thank you again for your answer, it was very clarifying. 

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

This has been bothering me for some time.  IN the zone display, I can see things like street top bus stops but can't bulldoze them when I want to replace them with an equivalent roat top items, and the road top items won't override the strett top item.

The other displays are masked by high-rise buildings surrounding the intersection and no view of the intersection is available from any direction.

In the zone display, the only thing you can bulldoze is the subway tracks.  This clearly needs some work.

Meanwhile, is there a work-around that I can use to replace this stop which is forcing the intersection to be street when it needs to be road?  I really don't want to knock down one of my high buildings to pot this bus stop.

[z1 566]

Originally posted by: A Nonny Moose

This has been bothering me for some time.  IN the zone display, I can see things like street top bus stops but can't bulldoze them when I want to replace them with an equivalent roat top items, and the road top items won't override the strett top item.

The other displays are masked by high-rise buildings surrounding the intersection and no view of the intersection is available from any direction.

In the zone display, the only thing you can bulldoze is the subway tracks.  This clearly needs some work.quote>

This is a fundamental limitation of the Zones view which cannot be overcome.  There is no way to bulldoze ordinary props and lots in this display.  For some reason, the game allows you to make an exception for subway stations, and we take advantage of this; subway stations in their entirety can be bulldozed from the zones view.

Meanwhile, is there a work-around that I can use to replace this stop which is forcing the intersection to be street when it needs to be road?  I really don't want to knock down one of my high buildings to pot this bus stop.quote>

Yes!   This assumes that you have the RTMT v3.60 Add-on Pack installed.  Go into the Traffic Volume Data View, and you will see signs lit up for all RTMT stations, including ones that are hidden behind buildings.  Hover the bulldoze tool over the sign of the station you want to demolish, and the sign will turn red.  Click on the sign, and the station will be demolished, even if you can't see the station itself.

If you know where the station is, you don't even have to go into the Traffic Volume Data View to do this.  Just move the bulldoze tool around until you find the station sign, and click on it.  The station sign always appears right where the station would be if you could see through the buildings.  If you're not sure you've got the right one, you can always go to the Zones view to locate it first.

It turns out that you can use this property of RTMT stations to demolish arbitrary lots, regardless of how deeply they're hidden.  Please see the thread How to Demolish Lots That Are Hidden by Buildings on SC4D for a complete tutorial on how to do this.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

You guys are just great.  thanks.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

The RTMT requires several additional things from the LEX.  Please review the readme and other documentation (the download page) for a list of all the plugins you need.  You will need to join SC4Devotion (free) and the LEX (also free) to download the stuff you need.

[AND93 10]

 RTMT isn't working how it should be. Here is the pic with the maxis boxes.

If you know what is the missing plugin, please tell me. Thank you!

[AND93 10]

thank you but i've just solved the problem, and i simply had to uninstall and follow all the instructions again

[Bizzaro 0]

Do you really need DAMN and SAM? And thanks for the update

[CaptCity 4,868]

Originally posted by: Dr.Bizzaro

Do you really need DAMN and SAM? And thanks for the updatequote>

No, DAMN and SAM are not required to install the RTMT v3.6 update. If you don't want to use them, just remove the DAMN and SAM folders from the 3.6 update folders and install the rest as per instructions.

[Bizzaro 0]

But on the 3.60 page it says i need DAMN and SAM as Dep.. So are they IN the 3.60?

[CaptCity 4,868]

Originally posted by: Dr.Bizzaro

But on the 3.60 page it says i need DAMN and SAM as Dep.. So are they IN the 3.60?quote>

Yes, the files for using the DAMN and SAM are included in the 3.6 update, and if you want to use them, they would be dependencies. But if you don't have DAMN or SAM installed, you wouldn't need those in the 3.6 update and can just remove those folders from the 3.6 folder.