Road Top Mass Transit - My Improvements

[cjmarshall 0]

I've been making some changes to the Road Top Mass Transit Mod, initially for my own use, but I reckon that they're worth sharing.

Changes are :
- Visible stairs for subway stops (using a modified version of Ralphelninja's SmallSubwayStairs model).

- Stops on one way roads now usable (see readme) [NOTE : Only tested on UK version]
- Increased monthly costs to levels more consistent with the rest of the game (

[eangulus 3]

This is a great update. Makes the lots more noticable in the game and also more realistic. Good job.

[Marc Collins 36]

Do avenue stops actually work now--and not block traffic/cause sims to do almost anything to avoid them? If so, congratulations!!!!!!!!

[Marc Collins 36]

Just reading the readme...I haven't noticed this effect in my cities at all, but if all traffic passing through the stop counts towards the capacity, could that be wrecking the avenues' stops? If the bus stop itself has a similar low capacity, but the traffic volume is so much higher...it dissaudes the car traffic from using that stretch of road?

[DragonFire1380 0]

Date: 9/8/2004 8:56:32 AM
Author: Marc Collins
Do avenue stops actually work now--and not block traffic/cause sims to do almost anything to avoid them? If so, congratulations!!!!!!!!

quote>

I started a thread about this problem, tho my problem was with all the lots and not just the avenue one. It was suggested that the problem could be caused by using a pathfinding mod that also increase the speed by 10x.

While I still have some problems, I have managed to fix most of it by changing the switching cost for the lots.

[the7trumpets 10]

This looks great!

One thing you might consider, if you can get Ralphaelninja to 'rotate' his subway prop 45 degrees, we could include diagonal versions as well as the orthagonal versions. Check out Tropod's diagonal transit enabled lots (templates) on the lot exchange. The rotating of the subway stairs prop isn't necissary, but it would look cool

[cjmarshall 0]

@the7trumpets

Date: 9/8/2004 3:36:51 PM
Author: the7trumpets
This looks great!

One thing you might consider, if you can get Ralphaelninja to 'rotate' his subway prop 45 degrees, we could include diagonal versions as well as the orthagonal versions. Check out Tropod's diagonal transit enabled lots (templates) on the lot exchange. The rotating of the subway stairs prop isn't necissary, but it would look cool

quote>
It's great to know that my efforts have been noticed by one of the elite modders

Actually Ralphealninja made all the gmax models for the Ninja Boulevard station and Ninja Boulevard kiosk available in the 3D models section of the STEX (something I really wish more of the expert BAT modelers would do). I was therefore able to take the Smallsubwaystairs model, modify it slightly (removing a couple of the railing posts and resizing) before rendering it to make the SC4Model file I used for the stations. Creating a rotated prop/building would not therefore be a big problem (though my GMAX abilities are so bad I'd have to look up exactly how ). Going from Tropod's templates to new Bus stops and stations would be a bigger job so I'm not going to make any promises as to when/if I might do this. I've attached my modified gmax model though, just in case anybody else wants to have a crack at this in the meantime.

@Marc Collins

Date: 9/8/2004 8:56:32 AM
Author: Marc Collins
Do avenue stops actually work now--and not block traffic/cause sims to do almost anything to avoid them? If so, congratulations!!!!!!!!

quote>
The short answer to your question is that I'm not sure. The avenue stops seemed to work ok in my (admittedly limited) testing. Looking back through the forums though I see this is a problem you've been having since the early days of the mod, and I've not done anything in particular to address it, though putting up the capacities may help.

As I mentioned in DragonFire's thread the only thing that I can think of that would cause the sims to avoid any of the stops is that the alternative route is quicker than incurring the delays that result from passing through the stop. Some of these delays result from the 'Transit Switch Entry Cost', and is the same across all of the stop types.

Date: 9/8/2004 9:05:04 AM
Author: Marc Collins
Just reading the readme...I haven't noticed this effect in my cities at all, but if all traffic passing through the stop counts towards the capacity, could that be wrecking the avenues' stops? If the bus stop itself has a similar low capacity, but the traffic volume is so much higher...it dissaudes the car traffic from using that stretch of road?

quote>
What I forgot, until you reminded me with your question above, is that there will be extra delays on congested stops. I don't know exactly how the game arrives at these but they will almost certainly be dependent on the total amount of traffic (of all types) divided by the capacity of the stop. As I mentioned in the readme through traffic and double counting (which always occurs with the avenue stops) means that high capacities are therefore needed to prevent these occurring in an unrealistic way. (eg An avenue carrying 2500 cars and 2500 busses (morning and evening) would require a road top stop with a capacity of at least 10000 in order not to have congestion delays). The avenue stops in the transit supermod have capacities much lower than this (even the HiCapacity versions) so congestion delays are likely.

Again, as I explained in DragonFire's thread, the impact of the delays in terms of pathfinding depends heavily on the traffic speed and when using a mod that increases the speeds by a factor of 10, routes of 40 or so extra (road) tiles can be preferred even when the stops have no extra delay due to congestion. With congestion delays I've no idea what sort of alternative lengths would be chosen.

If you could answer the following questions it might shed a little more light as to whether this problem is due to delays or something else :
- Are you using any mods which change the traffic capacities or speeds or affect pathfinding?
- Which version of the Road Top Mass Transit are you using?
- Is the problem really only with the avenue stops? i.e if you replace the section of avenue with a stop on it with a section of road with a stop on it does the situation improve? (Since road is slower with lower capacity I would expect the traffic to avoid it even more. If it favours it then something very odd is going on.)
- Do the standard avenue tollbooths cause the same problem?

Beyond that could you post some detailed examples of how you're using the stops (with screenshots and notes about traffic levels). Maybe that might give me or someone else reading this some ideas about what the problem might be.

[the7trumpets 10]

Hmmm... reading all this has got me thinking that there 'might' be a way to allow car, foot, and bus traffic 'through' the lot without counting it toward the capacity of the station.  Remember the old subway station bug, where it counted all the traffic through the station as counting against the capacity, so you had to draw the subway tubes to the side of the station?  Well, this is essentially a symilar problem.  No promises, because I'm sure DarkMatter and Teirusu looked into all this a long time ago, but I might have a crack at it here in a bit.

 

 

 

Date:9/9/2004 7:48:54 AM
Author:cjmarshall

Creating a rotated prop/building would not therefore be a big problem (though my GMAX abilities are so bad I'd have to look up exactly how ). Going from Tropod's templates to new Bus stops and stations would be a bigger job so I'm not going to make any promises as to when/if I might do this. I've attached my modified gmax model though, just in case anybody else wants to have a crack at this in the meantime.

quote>

If it's the modding portion which scares you, maybe we can work together.  I'm house sitting now, so I can't even open up the gmax model, because I don't have gmax, the BAT, or the Lot Editor installed.  However, If you were to figure out how to rotate the model 45 degrees and create a prop from it, if you posted the prop, I'd be more than happy to turn it into diagonal versions.  One reason I'm excited about the diagonal versions is that they will not suffer the same 'no road connection zot' issue.  The reason is that every zone which borders a straight diagonal road actually borders two network tiles.  The roadtop MT station would replace one of these, but the other would still be a road network tile.

Like I said, if you get around to rotating the prop, I'd love to help out.  I don't have the lot editor installed, so if you want to make the lots so they look symilar to the orthagonal ones, I can just attatch the FSH textures which you'll need to use for the diagonal lots.  That way you can make the lots look like the existing orthagonal stations and I'll just turn that lot into a transit enabled station.  Just let me know what you want to do, and I'll post whatever you need

[DragonFire1380 0]

Another interesting problem Iv found and its only a problem cause its adding to the commute times...

 

[cjmarshall 0]

Date: 9/9/2004 11:41:21 AM
Author: the7trumpets

Hmmm... reading all this has got me thinking that there 'might' be a way to allow car, foot, and bus traffic 'through' the lot without counting it toward the capacity of the station. Remember the old subway station bug, where it counted all the traffic through the station as counting against the capacity, so you had to draw the subway tubes to the side of the station? Well, this is essentially a symilar problem. No promises, because I'm sure DarkMatter and Teirusu looked into all this a long time ago, but I might have a crack at it here in a bit.

quote>
I had no idea that there was even a chance this could be fixed, but if you can find a solution it'd be great.

If you're in the mood for tackling seemingly unsolvable problems you could also see if there's any way to control the tiled square that is displayed when in the subway laying view. The reason is that it affects whether to use the subway stairs as a prop or as the building for multi-tile stops (i.e avenues and diagonals if we make them). Using a building is better as it means the hover route query displays the different types of traffic, but it causes the stairs to appear in the subway view. This works fine for single tile stops, but for multi-tile ones it often means that the stairs appear to be 'floating' separately from the tiled section, depending on how the lot has been placed in game (the tiled piece appears to always be the northmost one as far as I can tell). This is why I've used a prop for the stairs on the avenues.

Date: 9/9/2004 11:41:21 AM
Author: the7trumpets

If it's the modding portion which scares you, maybe we can work together. I'm house sitting now, so I can't even open up the gmax model, because I don't have gmax, the BAT, or the Lot Editor installed. However, If you were to figure out how to rotate the model 45 degrees and create a prop from it, if you posted the prop, I'd be more than happy to turn it into diagonal versions. One reason I'm excited about the diagonal versions is that they will not suffer the same 'no road connection zot' issue. The reason is that every zone which borders a straight diagonal road actually borders two network tiles. The roadtop MT station would replace one of these, but the other would still be a road network tile.

Like I said, if you get around to rotating the prop, I'd love to help out. I don't have the lot editor installed, so if you want to make the lots so they look symilar to the orthagonal ones, I can just attatch the FSH textures which you'll need to use for the diagonal lots. That way you can make the lots look like the existing orthagonal stations and I'll just turn that lot into a transit enabled station. Just let me know what you want to do, and I'll post whatever you need

quote>
The way I see it creating diagonal stops involves the following :

1. Creating an SC4Model file and probably a prop for the rotated subway stairs.

2. Sorting out what to do about props for the bus stops - the in game benches are all orthogonal, but would probably still look ok. Otherwise we have to obtain a prop or GMAX model from somewhere.

3. For each of the stops (6 if we make Bus, Subway, and Bus/Sub combo stops for Diagonal Road, and Diagonal Avenue, more if we want double diagonals or oneways)
3.1 Creating textures (up to 8 per stop if you include UK friendly versions)
3.2 Creating and laying out the lot (postioning props primarily)
3.3 Modifying the building exemplar (Transit Switching, Costs, Query Windows/Sounds, etc.) and if necessary the lot exemplar (though hopefully Tropods templates should work as advertised).
3.4 Testing/bug fixing

There's no individual part of this that I can't do, given time, but in total it's quite a lot of work (especially the textures) which I wasn't going to commit to undertaking. Since you're offering to help, I don't mind putting in some effort as well and maybe we can at least get some of the diagonal stops operational.

I've done step 1 (45 degree stairs SC4Model and Prop). The result is attached.

As far as step 2 goes I think it's worth seeing what the first lot looks like with orthogonal benches before trying to do anything else.

For 3 its just a question of deciding where to start. I suggest the single road stops.

I can't tell from your post whether you're voluteering to make any textures or not (step 3.1). If you are then make a start on the US versions of whatever stop you want to do first (I can make an override for UK ones at some point in the future.) If not then I suggest we start with just the standard textures and add custom ones later. (We'll need to be careful that none of the exemplar mods stop the lot from working in the lot editor, but since it seems to be fine working with the existing stops I don't see this being a problem.)

I'll start having a play about with some lots for the diagonal road stops now.

[cjmarshall 0]

Date: 9/9/2004 6:52:39 PM
Author: DragonFire1380

Another interesting problem Iv found and its only a problem cause its adding to the commute times...

quote>
Good Find. There's a couple of possibilities here. First is that it is impossible for sims to pass straight through the stations. None of the subway stations (including the Maxis ones) have Transit Switch Point entries for subway pass-through. This may be a bug or it may have been done for good reason (I know some switch combinations are supposed not to work).

The alternative is that the way the game works, subway pass-through happens automatically (despite the missing switch point entry) as long as there is a subway line all the way through, and that this is just a pathfinding problem. If you can get a single sim to pass through on the subway then it is most likely a pathfinding issue and one of the pathfinding mods may help.

A workaround is to lay your subway alongside, rather than directly under the road (I tend to do this anyway so I can see traffic levels in the data view).

If you feel like investigating this further, post what you find. Otherwise I'll take a look at it before I do a proper release of my version.

[DragonFire1380 0]

Iv been so annoyed with the lots as of late that I destroyed all my cities from that region.  Tho, I did in fact try laying the tunnel along side the lots and nothing changed.  At least for me anyways...

 

Hmmm....I just had a look in iLive.   All the subway only lots do have a transit switch cost, I only changed the bus and subway lots since thats all I use.   I wonder if for whatever reason the traffic sim is useing the values from all the lots even tho a certain lot might not be in use.....Does that makes sense?

 

Something else is I don't recall this happening before.  

[cjmarshall 0]

OK. I've attached the initial version of the lots for the diagonal road. The zip includes the rotated stairs prop.

[the7trumpets 10]

Date:9/9/2004 6:52:39 PM
Author:DragonFire1380

Another interesting problem Iv found and its only a problem cause its adding to the commute times...

quote>

 

Only thing I can think of, is did you draw the subway tunnel 'through' the roadtop lots?  Or did you just draw the tunnel from one lot to the next, etc.  I haven't really used or tested these extensively though, if I get some time I might give it a shot.

 

cjmarshall -

I'm affraid I'm no good at textures, they would probably come off looking weird.  However, I will try to take up your challenge and look into the transit I/O properties, as well as what determines the subway cube underground.  Thanks a lot again!  This is going to be awesome

[SteveeD 3]

Hi...nice little mod...thank you ...one little discovery I had tho was as follows

replaced the old mod with this one...fired up the game and chose one of my existing cities to have a look...your model replaced the old one but with a slight visual bug...the stairs stick out over the road instead of being parallel...workaround was to destroy the existing subway/bus stop (which I use pretty well exclusively when laying out my transit) and re-plopping said stop....stairs are now parallel to road

anyone else who has tried this mod come upon the same bug? seems Im gonna have a lot of work ahead to replace all the stops in my existing cities

thanks

Steve

dunno yet if the same holds true for road top subway only stops...

[a11eria 3]

i must say that these lots are very impressive looking. However from what i can tell due to the transit cost changes they dont seem ready for general use. Feel free to correct me if i am wrong.

[cjmarshall 0]

Date: 9/10/2004 3:25:40 PM AM
Author: SteveeD
Hi...nice little mod...thank you ...one little discovery I had tho was as follows

replaced the old mod with this one...fired up the game and chose one of my existing cities to have a look...your model replaced the old one but with a slight visual bug...the stairs stick out over the road instead of being parallel...workaround was to destroy the existing subway/bus stop (which I use pretty well exclusively when laying out my transit) and re-plopping said stop....stairs are now parallel to road

anyone else who has tried this mod come upon the same bug? seems Im gonna have a lot of work ahead to replace all the stops in my existing cities

thanks

Steve

dunno yet if the same holds true for road top subway only stops...

quote>
Thanks for the report. Upgrading is going to be an issue whatever I do I suspect. The game seems to copy certain aspects of buildings when they are plopped and must store them in the save files. I've noticed this when changing capacities - you have to bulldoze and re-plop for the new capacities to take effect. Whilst I probably could do something about the orientation of the stairs when upgrading I'm not sure if it's the best thing to do. I've no idea what other information is being cached as well as the orientation of the stairs and the capacity, and as this could lead to a whole host of problems I'm inclined to leave the visual bug in to prompt people to bulldoze. There really ought to be a comment in the readme about this - I'll try and put one in the next version.

Date: 9/11/2004 3:56:22 AM
Author: a11eria
i must say that these lots are very impressive looking. However from what i can tell due to the transit cost changes they dont seem ready for general use. Feel free to correct me if i am wrong.

quote>
If you're worried about the discussions of the 'Transit Switch Entry Cost' which resulted from DragonFire and MarcCollins's problems it should only be an issue if you're using modified traffic speeds. If you are then don't use this mod (or any previous Road Top Mass Transit versions - they all have this issue). If not then I would expect them to work ok for the most part (at least as well as the old ones anyway). Again I'll put a comment in the next readme about speed mods.

With that all said, this is a beta version so make a backup of your cities before trying it (you should really do this with any new mod whatever is claimed about it). If you do decide to try these, please post how you get on.




Finally a general comment to anyone reading this. Until stated otherwise, anything in this thread related to diagonal stops is work in progress and should not be used. Of course if you are a Modder, BATter, Texture Artist, or Lot Developer with time to spare feel free to download the various bits and contribute your improvements .

[a11eria 3]

Thanks a bunch cj i dont use any of the speed mods just use the better path finding. So i will get the road tops and start redoing my subway stops.


Also god bless the victims and families of 9/11.

[berkthomas 0]

I just started using these lots yesterday and have noticed a bit of a problem.  The Road stops seem to work fine, but the street stops that are in front of zoned houses block the residents of that house from getting to work. 

 

Any ideas.

[the7trumpets 10]

HAHA!!!

You thought I forgot about this .

Attatched is the road stations you made, with fixed exemplars and new overlay textures with roads and all. I'm not entirely sure what scheme you were using changing the costs and other values though, so please have a look and let me know what you think, cjmarshall.

[the7trumpets 10]

And here are the textures for diagonal roads, avenues, and oneways, with bus stop, subway, and both written on them.

If there are any comments, let me know, I still have the original psp files. I tried to keep closest to the original textures as possible, so that they integrate seamlessly.

[cjmarshall 0]

@berkthomas

I just started using these lots yesterday and have noticed a bit of a problem. The Road stops seem to work fine, but the street stops that are in front of zoned houses block the residents of that house from getting to work.

Any ideas.

quote>
A fundamental limitation of all transit enabled lots is that when placed in front of a 1 tile wide residential zone (on an orthogonal road - diagonals will be slightly different if we get them working) they cause a no-road zot. To the best of current knowledge there is no way round this. The readme ought to have a note about this though. Thanks for the reminder.

@the7trumpets
Nice work on the diagonal stops. I've given them a quick test and they seem to work. Doing textures was above and beyond the call of duty (and you seem to have had better luck getting things to line up than I did when I tried ). I believe the accepted gesture of appreciation on Simtropolis is the bunny.

One thing that I may do before an official release, is try changing the texture instance ids. From what I've read on the lot making forums, texture clashes seem to be a big worry and a texture index has been set up to try and prevent this. Looking at it, no-one has attempted to reserve the 70 series ids that you used so we don't have to do anything, but since the Road Top Mass Transit mod is already blocking large junks of the id space round the 08 series it might be considerate to confine all our textures to that same area. Don't worry about this at the moment though, but don't delete those PSP files either.

Thanks again, and I'll try to get the lot layout done for the diagonal avenue stops as soon as I can.

[Thalassicus 33]

Date: 9/24/2004 5:42:31 PM
Author: cjmarshall
@berkthomas

I just started using these lots yesterday and have noticed a bit of a problem. The Road stops seem to work fine, but the street stops that are in front of zoned houses

quote>

A fundamental limitation of all transit enabled lots is that when placed in front of a 1 tile wide residential zone (on an orthogonal road - diagonals will be slightly different if we get them working) they cause a no-road zot. To the best of current knowledge there is no way round this.

quote>

This is only the case if the lot has no other network acess on any of the four sides. If the lot is on a corner, or with another network behind it, the sims can/will use the other network. So to prevent this problem, I just place my stops next to intersections or in front of lots that span multiple tiles. This is also more efficient, as sims entering the intersection from any directions can easily access the stop.

You might consider adding one extra file that reduces the switch costs for all the stops x10, as most of the traffic mods increase transit speeds x10. I did this through the reader, but it would make it easier for people who don't know/want to use it

[sas205 0]

Hello there,
I got frustrated from the low capacity of standard bus stops, so searched the STEX and Mods for more convenient alternatives till I found your brilliant Mod. Used it yesterday in a city of mine and it sounds OK, except for the following.

In the ReadMe file you mentioned about the NRZ occurrence when placing a stop in front of a 1xY Res. lot. But nothing was said about this annoying zot when placing a stop over an Avenue in front of a 2xY Res. lot, probably because the Avenue stop occupies a 2x2 slot not 1x1 as street/road stops. I see this another restriction to the Mod. Haven't seen a mention to it anywhere, so here it is reported.

Also, when I started placing stops on most streets/avenues things appeared to improve in term of city development, but as I completed placing stops over every street/avenue, many Res. buildings showed the NJZ!!! Is it me or is it something to do with the Mod?

One more thing: would the direction of the stop make any difference? (e.g. left vs right or up vs down over the same cell)

The only Mods I have installed are NAM and Equinox RCI QueryMod. The RoadTop MT I downloaded yesterday is the one currently available at Mods section which shows 2.1 as its version.


BTW, being a Transit Mod by DarkMatter, does it have any conflicts with NAM?

Cheers,
Saed

[greyveil 37]

anytime you alter your transit system, including placing bus stops, the traffic engine will recalculate the pathing, the larger the city/region the longer it takes, during this time you will sometimes get NJZ's because the sims are looking for new routes to work.

what I recommend is anytime you make a major change to your transit system, run the game on chettah for about 6 months, the NJZ's should dissapear, if not let us know!

hope this helps...

[cjmarshall 0]

@DragonFire1380
Thalassicus's comments got me thinking again about your problem of the Sims getting off then on the subway at each stop. I think it's probably happening because you modified the switching costs to 0. As a result of this it takes no time for the sims to get off, cross the tile on foot then get back on again, which is quicker than travelling under the stop on the subway (which will incurr as small time cost).


@Thalassicus

This is only the case if the lot has no other network acess on any of the four sides. If the lot is on a corner, or with another network behind it, the sims can/will use the other network. So to prevent this problem, I just place my stops next to intersections or in front of lots that span multiple tiles. This is also more efficient, as sims entering the intersection from any directions can easily access the stop.

quote>
That's interesting. I'll have to give that a try.

You might consider adding one extra file that reduces the switch costs for all the stops x10, as most of the traffic mods increase transit speeds x10. I did this through the reader, but it would make it easier for people who don't know/want to use it

quote>
I presume you've divided all the switch costs by 10. I wondered whether doing this would work. Thanks for confirming it. I'll add this as an extra once I'm sure the building exemplars are in their final state, as I don't want to duplicate them and then have to go through and modify two sets because I've found a mistake


@sas205

In the ReadMe file you mentioned about the NRZ occurrence when placing a stop in front of a 1xY Res. lot. But nothing was said about this annoying zot when placing a stop over an Avenue in front of a 2xY Res. lot, probably because the Avenue stop occupies a 2x2 slot not 1x1 as street/road stops. I see this another restriction to the Mod. Haven't seen a mention to it anywhere, so here it is reported.

quote>
This is a general problem, that sims must exit from their houses onto a proper network tile, not a transit-enabled lot, which is what the stops are. The best I can suggest with 2xY residences on avenues is to stagger the stop so it partially overlaps the fronts of two different buildings. As long as a 2xY building has access to at least one proper road tile it should not display NRZ.

Also, when I started placing stops on most streets/avenues things appeared to improve in term of city development, but as I completed placing stops over every street/avenue, many Res. buildings showed the NJZ!!! Is it me or is it something to do with the Mod?

quote>
I'm not sure what is causing this, though I'd suspect that you're using modified traffic speeds (i.e the Speed x10 mods included with either the transit supermod or the NAM). For the moment, the Road Top Mass Transit stops do not work properly with increased speeds, though this can (and will eventually) be fixed. (see my response to Thalassicus)

One more thing: would the direction of the stop make any difference? (e.g. left vs right or up vs down over the same cell)

quote>
All the stops need to be in line with the road, so that it can run through them (looks very silly otherwise as well as not working ). Also, with my version (the one for download in the first post of this thread) the one-way stops do have to be the right way round for UDI and vehicle automata to be able to use them.

The only Mods I have installed are NAM and Equinox RCI QueryMod. The RoadTop MT I downloaded yesterday is the one currently available at Mods section which shows 2.1 as its version.


BTW, being a Transit Mod by DarkMatter, does it have any conflicts with NAM?

quote>
None of these mods should clash. It'd be worth checking that you've followed the installation instructions for the NAM correctly though if you're still having problems.


Finally a just a quick note to anyone who's been following the progress on the diagonal stops. This project hasn't been abandoned, and I'll post an update soon.

[sas205 0]

Thanks cjmarshall for the clarification. Things are fine now and the stops work great. Just a couple of things I recently encountered as well.

If I have an Avenue intersection (2 Avenues or Avenue-Street) and attempted to place a stop over an Avenue stretching from that intersection, I noted that the stop will ALWAYS DELETE sections of the Avenue (3 to 7 tiles) if the stop is placed one tile away from the intersection. So, I have to lay the Avenue once again after the placement! Bit you could realise how costly this would be aside from being tedious... Placing the stop just after the intersection works fine. Only if placed one tile from it!! Why is this happening and how can I overcome it?

Another thing. When I'm inside Zone overlay screen I can see the stops while I'm placing them. But if I exit the screen and enter it again, the stops don't show, but their places appear as empty breaks in streets/avenues. Is this familiar?



Cheers,
Saed

[cjmarshall 0]

Date: 10/13/2004 3:07:29 PM
Author: sas205
Thanks cjmarshall for the clarification. Things are fine now and the stops work great. Just a couple of things I recently encountered as well.


If I have an Avenue intersection (2 Avenues or Avenue-Street) and attempted to place a stop over an Avenue stretching from that intersection, I noted that the stop will ALWAYS DELETE sections of the Avenue (3 to 7 tiles) if the stop is placed one tile away from the intersection. So, I have to lay the Avenue once again after the placement! Bit you could realise how costly this would be aside from being tedious... Placing the stop just after the intersection works fine. Only if placed one tile from it!! Why is this happening and how can I overcome it?


Another thing. When I'm inside Zone overlay screen I can see the stops while I'm placing them. But if I exit the screen and enter it again, the stops don't show, but their places appear as empty breaks in streets/avenues. Is this familiar?




Cheers,

Saed

quote>
I don't think there's anything I can do about the issues you've raised I'm afraid. In the zone overlay all lots (growable and plopped civic) are hidden including the road top stops. As far as I know no-one has found any way to change this and I suspect it's controlled in the exe.

The way the game handles a transit enabled lot plopped on to an Avenue is not something that I can control in the lot itself. It might be possible to change something in one of the RUL files to fix this, but even if it is it's beyond my ability. You could try asking the people working on the NAM if there is anything they can change to allow transit enabled lots to be placed right next to avenue junctions.

Sorry I can't be of more help

[Llama Lord 4]

What are the dependencies?

[sas205 0]

The problem cjmarshall is not with the stops placed right next to avenue junctions as they are OK. It is ONLY with those that are placed one tile away from the junctions. Let me give an example:


|| ||
|| ||
|| ||
|| ||
====[]========[]======
|| ||
|| ||
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In this layout of Avenues, placing a stop on top of an Avenue in the red tiles will create the problem, while placing them on top of other locations is fine.

It seems a problem with the game itself as you mentioned, as I encountered the same when tried placing GDV's electronic tolls on Avenues today (including the empty breaks in Avenue inside Zone overlay), which supports your comment about how the game handles transit enabled lots plopped on to an Avenue.

Thank you anyway, I'll try to think of a way-round.

Cheers,
Saed