Automatic Turning Lanes

[kristoferpetit 3]

Ive seen a few videos on youtube of roads automatically putting in turning lanes. How do i do this? I have NAM but it doesn't do it... and i find doing it myself frustrating.. anyone know?

[michaeldcannaday 42]

The older NAM came with it, but for whatever reason the new NAM v31.2 did away with it... now you'll have to customize it by placing your own turning lanes instead of it doing automically

[GeometryMath Algebra 614]

Actually, you can activate the RTLs by clicking the road intersection with the one-way road tool. The NAM Team disabled RTLs from being automatic generated due to conflicts with the NWM and DragFAR.

[Tarkus 6,932]

The Road Turning Lanes (RTL) Plugin, in its "automatic" form, originated 8 years ago, sometime around NAM 19.  There has been discussion of replacing it with some sort of "semi-automatic" system since about 6 years ago, when the idea of a Network Widening Mod (NWM) began to be investigated in depth. 

 

Back when the Auto RTL came to be, SC4 was only 2 years old, and most in the mod creation community thought the game probably had another 2 years of life left in it, tops.  They didn't anticipate that we'd figure out ways to fake new networks using starter pieces, fulfilling the frequent requests for wider roads, let alone that we'd be breaking the grid by creating fractional angles.  The Auto RTL, as a result, didn't age well, and continually interfered with further development.  It posed such an issue with the Network Widening Mod--the NAM project that contains the wider roads (now directly part of the NAM itself)--that it delayed that project by 3 years.  The Auto RTL got a little bit of a reprieve as I managed to work an unwieldy workaround that mostly got it to play nice with the NWM for awhile.  But as the NWM expanded, and as we figured out how to Draggable Fractional Angle Roads (FAR), and looked to implement Draggable Elevated Road Viaducts, the Auto RTL blocked us every step of the way.  Given that the Auto RTL doesn't really improve game functionality--it was designed just for looks--whereas the NWM and FAR does add significant functionality, the 6-year debate came to a close, and we killed the Auto RTL.

 

-Tarkus

[kristoferpetit 3]

ok thanks for taking the time to reply. i guess i just need to practice building the turning lanes. 

[Lost Realist 762]

ok thanks for taking the time to reply. i guess i just need to practice building the turning lanes. 

 

Read the replies. If you click on a road intersection with the one-way road tool, the automatic turning lanes show up.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

You know, that's a bit arcane, especially for new users.  RTLs are not utterly necessary but is there some kind of notification in-game that the one-way tool does this?  I don't use RTLs at the moment, so I don't really know how they work anymore.

[Lost Realist 762]

It's in the readme. The NAM doesn't come with an awful lot of in-game documentation, so it's not like that's to be expected.

[Ganaram Inukshuk 906]

The 400 pages of NAM documentation (which really should be 1600) fails to mention anything that isn't RHW, NWM, PS, MTA, or the Alternate Components, and whatever else it does describe does a terrible job at it, since it's still based off of the archaic pre-NAM 30 documentation. I'm on a limited time schedule, so there's no way I can even redo all of it (RHW, NWM, PS, ATL, RTL, TuLEPs, RaBETs, AltComp, MTA, GLR, TIA/TOR/TOS/TIR, RuRP, HSRP, RAM/RRW, Viaduct networks, FLUPs, Pedmalls, Avenue intersections, CanAM, El Rail over Road/Avenue/RD-4, Underground Rail, Wide-Radius Curves, Fractionally Angled Networks, Draggable FAR, Rail switches, MHW Interchanges, the Automata plugins, the data view mods, UDI-able El Rail, additional network crossings, and at least 20 more things that I failed to mention) so I can only do the ones that are necessary that I can do.

[z1 566]

You know, that's a bit arcane, especially for new users.  RTLs are not utterly necessary but is there some kind of notification in-game that the one-way tool does this?  I don't use RTLs at the moment, so I don't really know how they work anymore.

 

It's very hard to do this in-game, as there's no menu item for the RTLs.  Theoretically, you could something in the OWR menu item, but who would know to look there?

 

In the installer, the documentation for the RTL option mentions how to activate them.  Unfortunately, it mentions using the rail tool in NAM 31.2; this is no longer correct.  This documentation will be updated in the NAM 32 release to describe the OWR tool usage.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Sometime, you guys need to seriously stop programming long enough to document the package.  With everything in it now, it is starting to get organic, and will eventually start drowning people.  Ganaram shouldn't be the only one to write stuff.

 

If you can't write intelligible text descriptions, you are in a bad way as a programmer.  Good communications is a prime requirement for getting things done in the end.

[Tarkus 6,932]

 

You know, that's a bit arcane, especially for new users.  RTLs are not utterly necessary but is there some kind of notification in-game that the one-way tool does this?  I don't use RTLs at the moment, so I don't really know how they work anymore.

 

It's very hard to do this in-game, as there's no menu item for the RTLs.  Theoretically, you could something in the OWR menu item, but who would know to look there?

 

In the installer, the documentation for the RTL option mentions how to activate them.  Unfortunately, it mentions using the rail tool in NAM 31.2; this is no longer correct.  This documentation will be updated in the NAM 32 release to describe the OWR tool usage.

 

 

It's kind of sounding more and more to me like FLEX-TuLEPs ought to be phased in sooner rather than later.  That'd get you the menu button.

 

-Tarkus