Light rail modding help

[the7trumpets 10]

Daeley, you have no idea how much easier that makes things for me

It basically cuts down the ammount of textures and paths needed by half, and cuts out most of the annoying override rules. Now if we can only get them to look right

[threeswept 12]

I about cried when I came across this thread. What an incredible breakthrough!! I have to agree that two cars would be maximum. In most European cities, as well as American cities like San Francisco, one would rarely see more than two cars attached. You would see more cars for special events (New Year's, parades, sporting events, etc) because of capacity needs. Undergrounds will frequently have up to 10 cars attached, though.

About turning radius...trams can make tight turns, but not at 90 degrees. You may be able to see this in the attached photo. The tram has two units and an accordian-like section between the two that allows it to pivot right or left, but not as much as 90 degrees.

[Daeley 46]

well it's not exactly 90 degrees, but it's close enough...

I agree that a tram can never follow a tight 90 degree turn on a small road, but it's enough to follow the curve of wider avenues and intersections.

[the7trumpets 10]

Thanks for the picture. I'll have it do psudo 90 degree turns at avenue intersections, but not 90 degree turns within one tile. Anotherwords, it will be basically like the existing rail networks, but it will be able to follow along a wide avenue doing a 90 degree turn.


A word of caution about using the ANT for this:

For some reason, the ANT really doesn't like traffic. It's probably because the coding for the ANT in the exe is incomplete, or just not thoroughly checked since it wasn't implemented. In any case, what I mean about it not liking traffic is that with even one person traveling along it, the congestion goes to blood red. This could be a problem if the same thing occurs (and probably will) when it is integrated into other networks. The only surefire workaround is to make eltrain cars which are using the ANT not cause any congestion. The downside to this is that el-trains can no longer be overcrowded.

It's not 100% conclusive, but I just wanted to give everyone a heads up on a possible compromise we might have to make.

[threeswept 12]

Daeley...right, and for the purposes of this game, I think that whatever is enough to follow the curves of wider avenues, as you say, is absolutely great. This is really exciting!!

PS...I neglected to mention in my previous post that the photo is of just one car turning. But, frequently you will see two attached. Also, fewer cars allows them to manoeuver through smaller city blocks without causing traffic to back up.

[Daeley 46]

okay, I increased the number of cars spawn by each station. This way, a station will occasionally spawn a two car vehicle and very occasionally a three car one.

 

I did get lucky with this picture as most of the time the trams are still one car... but I do think this is a bit of an improvement. 

[trigonalmayhem 0]

re: 90 degree turns

while you might be able to get that working, in real life most trolly cars have an accordian hinge in the middle which I doubt you can replicate in the game. They take sharp turns by bending, but the model for the tram you have I don't think can do this, right?

Just thought I might mention that.

[mikeseith 469]

Daeley,
Your work has been nothing but brilliant. Fantastic! Do you think it possible to only spawn 2 cars everytime? Or maybe if we are using something like the passenger train already, we could have a front car as the engine and one passenger car as the back car of the tram.

I know with a little effort I might be able to make that look right with the model and textures. The trams I used for the textures are actually trams with the grey accordian piece in the middle...without the grey. I know this would be more work, and it could look great or be alot of extra work for nothing. I'll leave it up to Daeley to decide if it's worth the effort(or even possible).



On the E.T.A. of this light rail project...I'm not sure about that just yet. I think we could have a beta version (using only transit enabled lots) up and ready to try in about 2 weeks. Now this is only a wild guess and dependant on many variables, but I will be shooting for 2 weeks (or so).

The version using the ant or being included in the transit mod is so far in the distance that it would be foolish to hazard a guess (from me anyway).

[theyeti2001 0]

Well this is looking like it is really starting to take shape. well done to all involved and thanx for all the hard work. Trams/light rail here in Melbourne are either one or two cars long if they are old style (as shown below) and can turn at a road intersection (slowly) .

 

 

Or the new ones have double accordians for a single car and quad accordians for an oversized as shown in the pics below.

 

 

 

 

 

I prefer the modern trams over the older ones. Do you think if you have the time or the inclination you could do a set of modern trams please?

 

Yeti.

[theyeti2001 0]

Also, I just had another thought. You could make some stops like the one in the second from bottom pic in my last post. Just a signpost and a barrier/fence, that way you could make larger stations easily by just extending the length of the barrier and adding more route signposts like they do here on on most tram (on road) stops and use shelters for light rail (off road) stations. Then if you wanted to make a larger light rail station, you could extend it out a tile to get a more relistic look.

 

Yeti

[Daeley 46]

hmm... The thing is, when you set it to spawn two cars everytime, chances are it just spaws once car in every direction. And when one of the cars dissapear (because of end of line for example) only one will respawn... so basically you'll get one car trams most of the time... even with spawning three cars actually.

 

I've been thinking about trying to create them with an engine and cars like the normal trains, but for now I don't really see a way to distinguish the tram cars from normal train (or elevated train) cars, so this might lead to a tram engine with normal cars... I'll still have a closer look at this, but I think chances are slim.

[Daeley 46]

ok, the bad news is i wasn't able to figure out how to make them function like real train cars... I thought the source building property may have had something to do with it, but this didn't turn out like I had hoped...

 

I did fix up a few nice menu icons though

[qurlix 20]

Is it possible to use the LUA 'trailer' property to fix this? That's how I envisioned you had done it all along. If you don't know what I'm talking about there's a note about the property in one of the LUA template or definition files. It was a bit confusing as to what syntax it had or where to place it, though.

Hope that helps...

[mikeseith 469]

yeti,
I like those modern trams alot. I will try to make a set a.s.a.p. First I will have to get to my long neglected assignment that the7trumpets gave me. I have been so excited about my whole idea being doable that I haven't started yet.

daeley,
Those menu icons look nice. I tried out the new version you sent over and it works perfectly. No trams at the train station and no trains at the tram station. If you can't work out the 2 car system, thats fine. Things are still looking better than expected.

Here are some teaser pics. Note that I host all my forum pics. off site so as not to gum up the works at simtropolis.

[mikeseith 469]

the7trumpets,
FSH 0x08031500 seems to be another road texture. I am not sure about the size of the el tracks. I can't find the FSH file for it either. Unless you tell me otherwise, I'll start by using tracks the same size as the ones I'm using now. But I'll hold off a day or two and wait for your answer.

[Andreas Roth 639]

I'm following this thread from the very beginning, and I'm at least as excited as I was when discovering the Network Addon Mod. This is a great project, and I wish you luck that everything works well.

@mikeseith: I noticed you also made some German taxis - do you live in Germany by any chance?

[mikeseith 469]

Andreas Roth,
No, I don't live in Germany. I live in southern Florida, On the east coast, so I didn't have to deal with hurricaine Charlie.

I was starting to make a set of european cars to replace the simcity 4 default cars for all the europeans out there. I also think european cars are the best. I simply did a Google image search on Berlin taxis and got all the info I needed to make the German taxis in the pictures.

Thanks for the intrest and I am excited about this too.

[threeswept 12]

I'm still very excited about this new mass transit mod!!! Those screenies look great!! And, thanks for all the extra car props you've also created!

I don't mod, so I don't know if this SC4 mod might have some useful-type info. It's from a Japanese site from another thread I'm into.

http://www1.megaegg.ne.jp/~tokitoko/lot.htm#Train

[DuskTrooper 316]

I am STILL waondering if the tracks are an overlay texture....

Anyway, will you consider making the MetroRail cars from the Houston Light rail system? The cars are manufactured by Siemens, and they are a nice sleek contrast to the squarish railars of other cities.

[Daeley 46]

about the track width... it seems to me when I lay down a strip of el rail and a strip of rail next to each other that the track widths are identical... or at least about the same.

[+Guest]

hey great job on the mod!

i am really impressed with this mod it looks awesome. is the mod out or going to be?

great job hope to see more impressive work from ya

[xannepan 514]

This is sooooo great!!! Can't wait for this to be released.
I have a few questions I didn't get, although I read through the whoile thread.

Does this still use the train-network? Or can we have both trains and lightrail?

What happens at crossings? How do you prevent this red traincar to travel on a green line when both lines cross?

Here's a (maybe stupid) idea; I know you cannot place 2 transit enabled lots next to eachother. But if we create a 16x32m propery with the proper base texture in BAT, and place it on a 1 tile transit-enabled lot, then the prop would extend the transit enabled lot, just far enough to border the next transiteanbled lot. This way you can have powerlines and base texture along the whole line. (U just make the BAT created prop cover the base texture) Off course you would have to plop them all and off course you would have to design a seperate prop for corners crossings etc... But I've tested such an approach for cobblestone overlays (draft version) and it works fine...
(I have also posted a thread on this, specifically for the cobble stone possibilities, in the BAT open discussion thread).


Finally, some other questions? Can you add vehicles such as buses/trucks etc etc... I know that with a single transit enable lot you can turn a road into a bus lane. If you can add a vehicle, than together with the BAT overlay lots, it may be possible to even turn roads/streets into differently appearing networks.

aahhh... so many ideas and so little time...

Anyway... keep up the good work!!

-xannepan

[Daeley 46]

for now, this still uses the train network. It doesn't override anything though, so the normal train network and the light rail can co-exist . Also, there is no way to define certain pieces of line as red or blue, so when a red and a blue line intersect, you can have red trams on the blue line and blue trams on the red line... unless you cross them perpendicular, as a train cannot make 90 degree turns.

 

Haing overlays stretch beyond the lot seems like a good idea and should certainly be looked in if T7T doesn't succed in using the ANT as light rail.

 

and to your last question: yes, you can attract/create buses or trucks with lots.

[xannepan 514]

Thanks Daeley!

One additional question. Can you also create ADDITIONAL vehicles such as buses/trucks etc.. ?

Wouldn't it be possible to prevent the red/green/blue lines to mix if the crossing coulde be plopped with a transit enabled lot? No idea if transit enabled crossings are possible but as Tropod also succeeded to finnaly make transit-enabled diagonal lots... who knows..

[Mickebear 2]

I am just so happy to see this thread - some very very intelligent people working out there - and all this for the passion of the game! Amazing work!

Mickebear - Brussels

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EDIT: forgot to include a picture from tramway cars in my native Helsinki, Finland:

Old tramway car

[vil 3]

Aaaaaaa! Incredible! Color coded lines and trains still work! Release please! Release now!

Its probably ok that the lines mix on stretches of track... why should they not

Are color coded passanger train lines possible then? Different trains depending on which station is plopped?

[Speedy 0]

I see progress... Thats just great... I'm just so in love with the pictures shown so far

Good luck with the further modding guys...

 

Come Visit

The Region of Cape Pearl in The Pearl World  

[Daeley 46]

xannepan: yes, one could make additional vehicles that function like buses and trucks etc. Actually I suck at modelling, so someone else has to do it... but once the model is complete it can be transformed into a functional vehicle. Actually, my next idea is to make these trams UDI drivable.

 

and no, you cannot prevent cars of a certain color with TE lots, you can only prevent the vehicles by one of the big categories - cars, trucks, peds, commuter train, freight train, elevated train, monorail. In other words, the different categories you can see with the route query tool.

 

vil: actually anything can be color coded as long as you want to put up with all the icons in your menus you can have color coded buses, taxis, cement mixers, monorail... as long as someone is willing to make the models for them of course...

 

[the7trumpets 10]

Date:8/17/2004 9:29:04 PM
Author:mikeseith

the7trumpets,
FSH 0x08031500 seems to be another road texture.  I am not sure about the size of the el tracks.  I can't find the FSH file for it either.  Unless you tell me otherwise, I'll start by using tracks the same size as the ones I'm using now.  But I'll hold off a day or two and wait for your answer.

quote>

 

In retrospect, it's probably good that you haven't started on it yet.  I have done a lot of experimenting and learned tons about what is and is not possible with the ANT over the last few days.  Because of what I've learned, we'll need to ammend our strategy a little, if this is going to work.

First of all, to answer your question, 0x08031500 should be the straight (north-south) texture for eltrain tracks, so I'm not sure why you're seeing it as a road texture, but don't worry about doing those textures until we get the issues this huge post brings up sorted out.

 

There are some things about how the ANT works which will require us to take a slightly different approach, I'll try to explain the issues in detail, but in simple terms:

 

RUL end definitions.

The way the network drawing works is that each type of tile edge (going straight, curving left, curving right, different types of curves, etc.) is assigned a value.  Each tile has four of these values, one for each border of the tile.  When you draw a network, the exe determines which type of tile edges it needs based on where you started your draw, where you are ending your draw, and what tiles of the same network are intersecting with your draw.  It then goes to the RUL files and finds the appropriate tiles, and assigns them to the space.

Unfortunately, it seems that the code in the exe is drawing road type tile ends instead of rail type tile ends for the ANT network.  This has a coupple of implications, but for the most part, it means that the curves will have to be slightly tighter than the other rail networks, and we will end up having to draw a few more textures than previously thought because we won't be able to borrow as many from other places.  I'll explain more about how tight the turns would have to be later on in this post.

 

The Width Problem

In order to fit these tracks in the median of avenues when going diagonally, without widening the avenue or shrinking the width of the car lanes, we would have to whittle the distance from the outside rails of the two tracks from the current 49 pixels down to about 17 pixels, which is just barely the width of one set of tracks right now.  However, it would be doable to narrow the avenue lanes, since we would have to redraw the textures anyway to put in the tracks in the middle.  It will just be more work since we will be doing more than just plopping in rail tracks into an already existing texture.

 

Turns

In order to create larger radius turns with road type RUL ends, the tracks will need to be slightly closer together.  Take the picture below as an example:

 

Each letter is a game tile.  If the rail line comes in straight at the northern border of G and the southern border of D, it would have to curve such that the outer (left) track crosses the border between D and E, and does not extend into grid space A.  This is in contrast to the current rail lines which start the curve a little bit into grid square G and C.  The reason it would have to be done this way is that the RUL tile edge for two sets of tracks exiting a tile on the same edge simply doesn't exist for the ANT, so there can only be one set of tracks crossing each side of the tile.

As a side note, 45 degree turns from going straight to diagonal against the grid would either have to have a small S bend in them, or they would have to be slightly tighter than the turn shown above, curving into the middle of tile border DE instead of the norther edge of it, and continuing toward the middle of border EB, etc.  This may not be a killer though, because if we can get the tracks close enough together, the turn will look less tight.

 

Intersections

Because of the way the game is coded, there is a hard limitation of two network draws occupying the same grid square.  This means that if you had an avenue going north/south, and a oneway road crossing it from east to west, trying to draw the ANT along the avenue through the intersection would return a red 'not suitable' network draw and not allow it.  Intersections with other avenues would be okay, but intersections with any other networks other than subways would be tricky.  There are only two known workarounds.  We could make it so that when you draw a lightrail along an avenue up to an intersection on either side, the appropriate tiles automatically appear, but you still could not draw the lightrail ANT through the intersection.  The second workaround would involve creating these intersections in the highway menu, and you could select which intersection you wanted and plop it from there.  Both of these workarounds would create fully functional intersections, the only disadvantage to doing it this way is that it wouldn't be very user-friendly.

 

Junctions

What are junctions?  They are the little red button and green/grey arrows which pop up when using UDI on rail networks.  I'm unsure of whether the ANT will recognize these junctions or not, I just haven't had a chance to test it.  If it doesn't recognize these junctions, UDI will be impossible along these light rail ANT lines.  If it does, UDI will be flawless along these tracks.

 

Route Querry

In my testing so far, the route querry of the ANT network when being used for mass transit has had somewhat interesting results.  Basically, the arrow goes from the first MT station to the network tile bordering the station, directly to the next station, reguardless of where the track goes.  I'm not entirely sure why this is, but it is odd.  It's only a cosmetic setback, and all commuting occurs correctly, but it is a consideration for whether we want to use the ANT for this purpose or not.

 

Workload

As you can probably guess, redrawing textures, creating exemplars, and editing path and RUL files for this would be a large project.  I'm up to the RUL and path coding it if you guys really want this, but I want to make sure you understand the limitations of the ANT network.

 

Another Option

Since you guys have been successful at spawning these particular trams on the rail network, we could simply go that route.  Most of the RUL coding is done for us, but there would be some texture making and RUL/path coding we'd want to do.  For instance, right now, a diagonal rail track cannot be drawn very close to a diagonal oneway road.  Also, for some reason, an diagonal oneway road cannot cross a orthagonal (straight along grid) oneway followed by a orthagonal rail and another orthagonal oneway.  We could concentrate our efforts on expanding the rail network so that these options are available.

Another potentially cool thing we could do, is change these cars so they are classified as el-trains.  That way we could have a rail to el-train conversion, and only these trams would be able to go up to the eltrain tracks, the passenger rail and freight trains would not be able to go up it.  The eltrain cars could come down, so you may not want that, but it is a possibility.  Especially if you expand this color coding to the eltrain stations, we could have a red line which consists of eltrains on the rail network pieces and eltrains on elevated rail track, all in one circuit.  It would also let us individually control the speed of these trams and passenger trains, instead of the two of them being tied together.

Using this approach, it may be possible to draw the rail network along oneway roads and avenues, like my concept was when using the ANT network.  The unrealistic and weird result of this is that if someone wanted to, they could draw a heavy rail line which is driving along a oneway road with cars.  Still, it would be possible.  The ammount of work, for drawing new textures and coding RUL and path files would be the same, and the Intersection limitation and applicable workarounds would still apply, but the route querry, turns, and junction problems would be removed.

Last but not least, we could touch up some of these textures so that at least the tracks between two oneway roads look more 'urban' with concrete bases, etc.  Depending on how crazy we got, there would be no way to guarantee that the urban rail pieces don't show up on heavy rail lines, but if we limited it to rail pieces between two oneways, it shouldn't get too crazy.

 

Personal Notes

To tell you the truth, I am a little sad that the ANT may not be our best option, especially after being one of its biggest proponents for use with a surface light rail system.  However, my ultimate goal is to create something which most people can use and enjoy, and if using the heavy rail tracks is a better option, that is what we should do.  Right now I'm leaning toward using the rail network, simply because most of the work at least to get it up and running is already done for us.  As stated above, there are many improvements we could make, but most of the work just to make it run is already done.  I would highly suggest, if possible, that we change the classification of these trams from passenger trains to eltrains.  That way we could create a tram to eltrack transition in the future, as well as individually control the speed of trams and passenger trains on the heavy rail tracks.  The expandability of this option (integrating rail tracks into oneways and avenues) seems to be the same as the ANT, with less limitations.

For all those reasons, I vote that we continue to use the rail network, but change these trams to be classified as 'eltrains', and then steadily improve the rail network, especially when it is drawn diagonally next to road networks.  Because this would involve changing properties in the traffic exemplar and network RUL files, it would need to be bundled with the NAM (network addon modd).

 

Whew!  Did you make it through all that?  Here's a bunny .

mikeseith - don't worry about textures until this is settled, obviously.

[Daeley 46]

well sounds to me like working with the current network will mean more output for less work, so I'm for this option... I was also thinking it would be nice to have some sort of transition lot... uhm... network piece that would connect eltrain and tram together, that would certainly make this project even more worthwhile. I'll do a few modifications to my files to see if I can get those trams to work as eltrains.

 

 

on a sidenote, I tried to use the trailer property to make several cars appear at once, but it seems this property only works for road vehicles... thanks anyway qurlix for bringing this up, I had totally overlooked that property.