Jason's BATs & Tutorials

[SC4BOY 20]

OK thanks.. I'll upload some pic's to show what I mean too. The small station is on a Major League stadium and has fairly low usage, but the big jasoncw one is by my university and should be getting a fair number of transfers... THe "normal" SC4 station is a few squares away and is getting good traffic. I don't see why the big one should not be also. I've been awake all night so hopefully tonight I'll do the pics for ya.. this will either expand on what I mean or supplement whatever you have a chance to find.. A pic from me willl help show what I am talking about.. I am not good with pics, but I need to LEARN ... lol.. so I may as well fumble around now while I am trying to communicate..

[Jasoncw 11,840]

To be honest, I didn't test to see if the traffic was working properly with them since they're just your basic train station.

What it sounds like to me is that you use two tracks, and only one of the tracks has a train station on it. You're saying that the traffic from the track that the train station is not connected to is jumping into the train station? Whatever the case, I'll leave it to T Wrecks to find the problem, since even if I figure out what's wrong I don't have any idea how to fix it! lol

Thanks for reporting it here. One time someone made a thread somewhere else about a problem, and it was only from luck that I found it.

And thanks to everyone for the nice comments. I'm actually really sick of these train stations now, so I don't want to turn them into light rail stations right now. Even though the tracks might not line up, anyone else can feel free to turn it into a glr station.

[T Wrecks 10,209]

I've tested all three stations in the RH Tutorial city today, and I didn't find anything abnormal, but I'll wait for your picture and see what's up.

[Jasoncw 11,840]

I think this might get more attnention here.  What do y'all think about the roof?  Too plain?  If so, what should I add?  It has 5 stories of mechanical floors, so there can't be anything too big.

[vester_DK 477]

It's roof like that a bit darker?

It looks too plain, but can't figure out what you should add.

The building itself looks great.

[ACEfanatic 7]

Maybe some piping? .01m for electrical, gas, etc.

And definately a dirtier roof texture. Dirt, water stains, etc.

-ACE

[Odd from Sweden 129]

...and of course you need to add the little window-washer crane thingy on the rails! Otherwise a great model!

[JBSimio 152]

That looks really good, Jason!  I really love those giant fans up top.  I'm not sure what it is, but they look great.  (Sometimes, I'm just too simple, I guess.)

I wish I had some ideas to spice up the rest of the roof, but I really don't.  Sometimes the roof is just boring... but I know that kind of answer doesn't usually fly around here.  Good luck coming up with something.

JB

[Jasoncw 11,840]

Originally posted by: Odd from Sweden ...and of course you need to add the little window-washer crane thingy on the rails! Otherwise a great model!quote>

ah!!  You knew what that is for!  Actually, it's hiding behind the mechanical penthouse. 

JBSimio, yeah, I kinda thought that too.  btw, I think the fans are air conditoner fans.  I think they blow the hot air out, and I think the vents next to it suck the air in.  I'm not sure.

I made the roof dirtier.  I'm not sure if I want to add piping, because that might be confusing with the window washer tracks.

[Andreas Roth 607]

I was about to comment this one earlier, but didn't have a chance to do so yet... Anyway, the new texture looks a lot better; there's hardly a clean roof other than on a brand new building. The mechanical penthouse is quite huge indeed, but that might be the case for the original building as well. I guess you could lower it about a meter without "breaking the link" to the original building, though. How large are these fans? Compared with the window washer gondola (I'm really glad someone actually remembered to add something like this), they must be some 5 meters in diameter! Looking at the original building in Google Maps, there are some "dots" and a few boxes cluttered over the roof, so you might add some vents and such to make it perfect.

[SC4BOY 20]

Sorry to be so long in this issue, but I have looked at the stations in MANY situations, and I find hardly any placement that behaves what I would call normal. Now admittedly I would be .. umm.. presumptious it to say it is BROKE, but it clearly has odd behaviours relative to "bleeding" traffic. Unless one specifically moves the station at least two (and I have even had it act preferentially as far as 5 spaces away) there is something funny.. I am not saying JCW is IN ERROR. This may be just the nature of the beast in the way SC4 transit enabling (TE) behaves. 

First let me say that I probably SHOULD have taken out all traffic mods to do this test, but I did not do that. I have the PerfectPath/2x capacity/10x speed and roadtop stations (which I don' t use often due to their odd behaviour as well.. but they solve certain specific problems nicely )

I am not qualified in any way at this point to critique MOD's. (hopefully your class will fix that.. hehe)  But in "layman's" terms, I'd say that all squares on the station seem to be "undirected" in its rail TE.. what I mean by that is that a "square" of the building seems to be unselective in which side it admits or passes on rail traffic.. (It WILL NOT accept pedestrians or cars from an "end" piece contact.. which of course seems to be intentional and proper given the design) 

Also, in MOST cases, the MATH seems not to work, leading me to also think something odd is happening. I am unable to specifically identify an algorithm that repeatedly predicts the math "error".

 

I have taken MANY pictures over the last couple of days, but the volume is probably not needed. I will illustrate my point with one series of pic's on a single station. This behavior is representative tho. Hopefully you will be able to see what I am talking about and say "AHA!!"

I am learning using pic's in my messages so I hope you will forgive my rather amateurish work. 

This is a series of pics showing the traffic on a single station on "pause" from various points along the siding track (where the station is) and along the "bypass" track (which is intended for bypass traffic in order not to accumulate "Station saturation" which cripples stations along a track segment).  Unfortunately I don't  know how to put them side-by-side instead of vertically.

EDIT: I'm working on it.. lol.. the thumbnails won't "expand" so I deleted them while I figure out how to properly do it.. Pfft.. I'm just putting the pics in for now.. I'll work on thumbnails and nicer presentation later.. LOL 

p://imageshack.us]

This shows the  MAIN LINE as it should be bypassing the staion.. yet it shows a group of trains entering the station, and only freight as bypassing

This shows the segment of track ENTERING the station .. the portion which in my mind should contain ALL TRAINS entering/leaving the station from this end. Notice also that a portion of freight traffic goes through and a portion goes around the station.. Dunno why.

This shows the segment of track LEAVING the station .. the portion which in my mind should contain ALL TRAINS entering/leaving the station from this end.

This shows the segment of track PAST THE MERGE so should contain ALL TRAINS either bypassing the station or entering/leaving this end. It of course DOES NOT contain traffic terminating or eminating from the other end.

This pic is what is seen if one clicks the station itself.. note that traffic is entering and leaving from 4 of the 5 track segments touching the station. The 5th segment (if one clicks it beside the power tower) shows empty except for the freight traffic bypassing the station.

This pic is my attempt to show the "total" in a single view.

[Jasoncw 11,840]

That's really werid SC4boy.  I'll go and see if I can recreate the bugs, and maybe I can offer some advice, but I don't think I can be too much of a help here.

Also, T Wrecks, someone is having a problem where the large station's capacity is only 6.  I think someone else had that problem with one of the origonal versions.  Do you remember if there was a solution?  The person having the problem has already emptied their plugins folder, except for the most recent NAM.  https://www.simtropolis.com/stex/index.cfm?id=13965  <- is the origonal station, and it looks like the problem then was the capacity was 1.  However, I noticed that DaRaddishman (the new person having a problem) uses a mac, and the person with the first one was named "macman" so it might be a problem with the mac version of sim city after all.  Other mac people have also been having trouble with train stations.

I looked at google maps towards the begining and thought, "the roofs really empty!".  That picture also reminds me that I put those slotted vents on the top myself, which means that's not where the air is sucked in.  Maybe one fan sucks in and the other blows out?  I don't know how it can suck in without getting full of pigeons though.  Maybe that's why they're so big?

anyway, I added some more grit, and I added more pigeon nests--I mean, vents than you can shake a stick at!  Are there too many vents or not enough?  I also added the box that is shown in the satelite picture.  Before rendering, I'll be adding a door on the back of the mechanical penthouse so that people can get there, and I'll be adding in the basket for the window washer crane, since I noticed I forgot that, but I might not show that side here again unless I think it should look better.

[cammo2003 20]

SC4Boy: unfortunately, that's normal. If the simulator didn't do that, the small Maxis station wouldn't work.

So unfortunately, it can't be corrected.

[SC4BOY 20]

The real reason I am "complaining" is about the "short circuiting" of the bypass track... It should behave as the normal station and not take traffic from bypass tracks.. The overloading of stations leads to STATION CHOKE as I call it where the capacity of a station on the track becomes the cap for the track due to station's behaviour on "over capacity". There is a thread on this issue somewhere and I am very careful in city construction so I avoid this.. I use rail a lot and it becomes a city-killer..

I just got "into" the station behaviour as I played around with them and noticed the oddities.. And I think the "answer" to the issue will be interesting and maybe didactic as well, leading to better insight to the TE lots and rules.

Originally posted by: cammo2003 SC4Boy: unfortunately, that's normal. If the simulator didn't do that, the small Maxis station wouldn't work.

So unfortunately, it can't be corrected.quote>

   

What small Maxis station? All the Maxis stations I use work flawlessly. Is there one I don't know about? Further I hardly see why "hopping traffic" is needed for proper function of any station. As I understand the TE function, it is directional and traffic-type aware. Of course, as I said, I am FAR FROM an expert on TE lots..  For example.. it has no problem rejecting CARS from the end of the station and yet allowing it from the adjacent side of the same tile piece. Why is train traffic different?

PS: Sorry about the messaage edit, but you apparently posted as I was writing that message ..

[ACEfanatic 7]

Originally posted by: cammo2003 SC4Boy: unfortunately, that's normal. If the simulator didn't do that, the small Maxis station wouldn't work.

So unfortunately, it can't be corrected.quote>

   

What small Maxis station? All the Maxis stations I use work flawlessly. Is there one I don't know about? Further I hardly see why "hopping traffic" is needed for proper function of any station. As I understand the TE function, it is directional and traffic-type aware. Of course, as I said, I am FAR FROM an expert on TE lots..  For example.. it has no problem rejecting CARS from the end of the station and yet allowing it from the adjacent side of the same tile piece. Why is train traffic different?

PS: Sorry about the messaage edit, but you apparently posted as I was writing that message ..

quote>

 

Rail traffic moves to the station from any adjacent tile of rail.  For the standard stations, it moves from the rail to the station.   Here, however, it jumps to the station and onto the other rail.  The same bug exists with the in-game Grand Railway Station if you look...

-ACE

[T Wrecks 10,209]

YOu cannot compare this rail station with the default ones. The default ones are placed next to the track and have no transit-enabled tiles.

These stations, meant to be placed right on the tracks and transit-enabled on all their tiles, behave differently.

Grater has once written a loooong article about sims taking odd shortcuts. For example, he made a zig-zagging road and placed bus stops in every curve. What happened is that the sims walked to the first stop, took the bus to the second, got out, then re-entered a bus to the third, got out, etc.

This behaviour has to do with the entry cost property, which is set to zero on all default stations. This means that a station beams commuters right through all its tiles in no time, making it the fastest commute path.

I have a city where an EL-rail track separates a residential from an industrial area; like a fence, so to speak. Now the sims went to the EL-rail station, walked through it, emerged on the other side and continued to commute to their jobs. When I built a subway line in a 90

[SC4BOY 20]

Thanks for all your notes.. love sitting over the cracker barrel..

I am quite familiar with Graters "short cuts" and "congestion blocking" threads. They are in fact why I use bypass tracks.. A congestion-blocked station will bring an entire city's transportation to it's knees. I was also familiar with his "transit cost" investigations. What I didn't know.. was "out of SC4" for too long a gap, I suppose.. was that he never was able to resolve it.. Thanks for your new old info ..

Yes, I see your point about TE lots and their proximity to bypass tracks. I had played with this considerably in my own games and had arrived at a "workable" approach, at least for my game-play. These stations with TE "tracks" immediately adjacent to the station and its bypass tells me that I simply have to either not use the station or use it differently than I do the Maxis station.. kind of too bad as a great feature of this one is its size.. tho of course it has other "niceties".. As long as I am informed about the situation, and understand it in my own mind, I can design transit solutions that "work".. and THAT was my whole reason for initiating this thread. (or this branch of the thread anyways.. )

And I am familiar with the "math" of the station and of the point you make.. and I also know that you really can't use the "traffic flow" inquiry to find every detail of what is going where.. that is why I said it "seems" to have a problem.. in each case that I have examined the errors were in the single digits even for heavily-used stations. Without writing some kind of auxiliiary program to measure events in more detail, I'll just have to leave it at that..

I also at NO POINT EVER suggested that ANYONE modded anything wrong... In fact quite the contrary, I most clearly pointed out that to the degree that there was a "problem" that it was likely the "nature of the beast".. I just like to stare the beast in the nostrils so I know the enemy..

Thanks for any work you have had to do. I didn't intend any work on anyone's part other than my own.. and whatever time it would take to "show me" the situation so that I could anticipate and avoid it where practical.

I find it rather an interesting situation myself.. I puzzle mentally over just why there is no "penalty" that works for this "short circuit" issue.. The transit algorithms must balance on a pinhead.. lol...

Do you know if the issue we are discussing here will exist regardless of the "TE path"? ie.. if there were a lot with a single rail thru the middle of a 3-wide lot, would the outter edge still have the property you mention of "sucking in any touches" from various lot edges? Are other travel modes.. ie pedestrian, auto/bus/etc all the same? Why don't car/stations exhibit this situation? Is it only because of the "capacity" situation that we care at all that this happens? Do buildings/lots behave like a "singularity" in that they exist at all points the same (that is an "entry" is a "total transit" independent of the lot geometry? I note that the parking lot used in the Airport "SWAP" package has an airport parking lot that is 6x6 or 5x5 (I forget) and I can put a train station next to it and the pedestrian traffic seems to "LEAP" to any destination at any point touching the parking lot. Do you know if this is the same phoenominon in different form? I know in old SC3000U there was a "gimmick" to transport all across the map with a single piece of road by simply assuring that the zones were never broken.. ie a "Industrial" zone spiraled from center out and never interupted would transmit an auto from a road at the center of the map to a road at the edge of the map instantly..

[Odd from Sweden 129]

Sorry if I turn this building thread into a traffic/modding thread, but why not simply change the capacity of those stations to, say 50.000 passangers per day? Then the simulator could just count all the travel-through sims and be fine off anyways.

[T Wrecks 10,209]

Whoa, much to answer!

@ SC4BOY: No sweat, I didn't take anything as an attack or as a complaint about bad modding. If there is anything wrong, it is my interest to find it and fix it. And if I messed up somewhere (has happened more than once - for example, the first Central Plaza lots grew on stage 6 medium density!), it is my interest to see what I overlooked or what I wasn't aware of in the first place so that I know better the next time.

Funny how you mention a 3 tiles wide station with a single track through it. I have had the same thought, and I guess it would behave similarly. My guess (and it's only a guess, nothing more, or maybe 'female intuition', lol) is that it is the transit switch property that causes this "touched=reached" behaviour, i.e. the fundamental ability to convert train commuters to pedestrians and vice versa, not the actuyl transit-enabled tiles.

The default station has no tracks through it, so you cannot simulate through traffic and bypass traffic. The standard station only has bypass traffic. But this bypass traffic can "jump off" the rail track (which is not even a part of the non-TE'd station) and get onto the station lot, so I guess if you made another rail line that passes through the station, things wouldn't change as far as the bypass track is concerned.

One configuration to get the train station to work without any odd behaviour is by placing it on a single line (thus risking congestion when there is much through traffic; here Odd's suggestion would kick in), and this is the use I had in mind when I looked at the stations. They look absolutely urban, and they are space-saving. Hence, if anybody asked me about my idea for these station, I'd answer "To plop them onto moderately used inner-city lines". I guess this is also why many people request GLR conversions: The stations would be fine for that purpose, and GLR stations rarely have bypass tracks. Smaller inner-city lines, not main inter-city lines, although these two are phonetically identical for Americans.

Another configuration would involve either a wider turn to the station track in order to overcome the transit cost issue. If 6 tiles bypass is more expensive than e.g. 5 tiles station line + 2 tiles station, then the line through the station must be longer, and there must be at least 1 tile between station and bypass track.

IIRC, Grater has found something similar for monorail stations. A configuration like this:

          

       __[station]___

______/______________\_______    

...without any additional spaces between through and bypass wouldn't work, even with adjusted entry cost. The only working configuration he found was with an additional curve, like this:

                    __

       __[station]_/  \_

______/_________________\_______

What also works is a Y-configuation, where the lower end of the Y is our station and the upper "arms" of the Y branch off to the bypass track. While very clean and efficient in SC4 terms, this solution is pretty unrealistic in most cases, though.

It's really sad that Maxis didn't program these things in a better way. For all rail lines, the simple rule "passengers can only be converted if they are on a transit-enabled tile within a lot, and any transit-enabled rail tile inside a lot costs e.g. 1.2 times the time to get through than a "free" netweork tile,  would have helped enormously, and a decent entry cost regulation as well.

With regard to that SWAP car park, I guess it's the same phenomenon: The lot is probably transit-enabled in some way, it has the "Mass transit switch" property, and as such, it has an entry and travel cost of zero, i.e. all points on the lot are treated as if they were one: As soon as a pedestrian has entered on one sid, he's out of the other. These transit-enabled lots are actually little teleporters...

@ Odd: Well, I felt that it's a rather cheap solution, but of course anybody can feel free to fire up SC4Tool and change the capacity to his/her liking; the entire operation shouldn't take more than 30 seconds.

[Jasoncw 11,840]

Cogeo sent me the following message about the capacity problem:

"Hi Jason,

About the problem with your train stations on the Mac, please check - this thread -. Plase let me know the results.

Please backup your files before performing the opeatrion described, as sometimes iLive may corrupt the datfiles.

Regards"

[nofunk 1,933]

Oooh, 1 Woodward!! It looks fantastic, Jason!! I don't remember you mentioning that you were working on this.

Seriously, I think you are single-handedly keeping the Barry Sanders Project alive at this point. Once I get through your BAT school hopefully I can pitch again... that is, if you haven't BATed all the buildings downtown!

I was working on the Cadillac Building a while back... got one wall almost done (and since 3 of the 4 walls are pretty much identical...) but I haven't worked on it in at least a year. Maybe once I get a little better at BAT.

[Jasoncw 11,840]

I remember lurking the BSP thread seeing your cadillac tower, thinking, "wow, that's looking really good!"  I haven't seen those screenshots in a while since the thread is so huge, but I remember them looking good.

Thanks .  You'll be making something soon, and I'm figuring JBSimio will be making a BSP BAT sometime too, since he's gotten good at it.  Maybe if we're lucky Wolverine will pop in with something BAT too.  But even if no one else was making BATs, I'd still be doing it.

[bixel 1,223]

Wow very very nice.

[josefmayor 8]

How's your theater comming along? I can't wait for it!

That new building is spiffey too.

[DaRaddishman 0]

JasonCW, just a heads up, that fix that was done for the Macs with your train stations worked like a charm. Cheers on all the help!

[SimFox 802]

Hi, Jason!

your texturing is really superb!!!!

[jacqulina 162]

nice work

[Jasoncw 11,840]

Thanks everyone

The theater is still where it's at, except I've added roof junk since the last time I talked about it.  The roof for the theater part needs to be redone, and I'm going to add some ribbing like in adecilas picture, and I need to make a better texture for that part (and since then I've actually gotten better at making roof textures, so I think that will be possible).

It's good to know the fix worked, thanks to everyone who helped!

One Woodward Avenue hasn't been worked on much since the last update (of course it hasn't been very long since then anyway).  I added in the door and the window washer basket (coincidentally, here in Detroit some window washers got stuck in their basket when the crane stoped working in a different building) and I added the door.  I started working on the night lights, but since I'm not very good with them, I've been looking for a tutorial that I ran into once.  It has all of the different parameters for the lights explained.  I've looked all across Simtropolis and Sim City Central, but I haven't been able to find it.  If anyone has seen this missing tutorial, please contact your local authorities.

Someone said that they'd take pictures of the 211 West Fort street parking entrance, but it looks as thoughthey might have forgotten.  If so, I'll just make it up.   Today I might be able to look at in person, but I don't really know.  Whatever the case, no one has any pictures of it, and no one seems to have a detailed description of it, so I don't think anyone will notice when the parking garage entrance looks slightly different than it's supposed too.

[Jasoncw 11,840]

I got the picture of the parking garage entrance, and I also have a picture of the front, so I started the base.

No matter what, the fountains will be props, but the question is, should I make it so that the shadow from the building falls on them, or should I not do that?  I think including the shadow looks nice, since to me they stick out if I don't.  But if I don't include the shadows, then someone else can use them as props in their own projects.  I have a similar dilema with the parking garage entrance, but I'll give you the details of that later when I work them out.

so the question is, shadows, or no shadows?

btw, the pictures above were edited in photoshop, I didn't actually render it, and the lot editor doesn't really have shadows like that.  Just so no one get's confused, lol.

[brtim2 11]

What other props are going to go on the lot? Just because the fountains are shadowed doesn't mean the rest of the props right there will be, and wouldn't that look really wierd? There are somethings darker, but others are lighter...

But then again there is a sense of realism that comes with the shadows.

So really, it's up to you. I think it's one of those things that you notice if it's there, but doesn't bother you if it's not because it doesn't stand out in the SC4 enviroment.