NAM General Support

[velrox 39]

Also, another question is that RHW-4 to RHW-6S transition states it is 3x2 but the real size is 3x1. Why it is wrong?

[adsii1970 85]

1 hour ago, velrox said:

Also, another question is that RHW-4 to RHW-6S transition states it is 3x2 but the real size is 3x1. Why it is wrong?

Probably just one of those mod "goofs" which happen from time to time that just get overlooked. I am sure that they will more than likely address this in the next update.

[rsc204 21,808]

2 hours ago, velrox said:

Also, another question is that RHW-4 to RHW-6S transition states it is 3x2 but the real size is 3x1. Why it is wrong?

Bear in mind that the RHW-6S network used to be two tiles in width, but it was replaced a while ago with the single-tile +overhang setup used now. My guess would be that the piece was changed and perhaps the related text wasn't updated to match. Either way it's a minor issue that will no doubt be addressed at some point.

[Tarkus 6,932]

I don't think very many (if any) 6S-related puzzle pieces with the dimension listings had their LTEXTs changed when the overhang implementation went into place--while they're technically sitting on a single tile of width, the visual area they occupy is still greater than a single tile.  Most of them are in their last days as viable parts of the NAM/RHW, in any case, and the piece in question will be officially deprecated when the FLEX Width Transitions are finished.

-Tarkus

[velrox 39]

hello,

I tried to rotate RHW-2 ramp to underground road saying to "rotate for other ramps", but I only get RHW-2. is it a shelved plan to add more RHW ramps to underground?

[APSMS 1,892]

The RHW2 ramp was likely a placeholder for other single tile RHW networks but no new ones will likely be added until the implementation is redone, which iirc is after NAM 38 if Tarkus gets around to working it out (also I think it's a copy paste error?) . I think Dexter made models back in the day and a prototype exists but he topic hasn't really been visited properly since before NAM 31 (I think). So don't hold your breath.

[spiritualfire 138]

On 5/26/2018 at 5:45 AM, Tarkus said:

Those did indeed look like Maxis buildings, and those aren't even in the Plugins folder, so that's truly bizarre, and aside from some sort of inexplicable change with your graphical settings (switching to Low and back to High can sometimes fix inexplicable things), I'm at a loss as to an explanation.

Just checked it further . . . seems that somehow, the closest zoom file is from original version of the TLA-3 x Avenue intersection textures (which didn't have the crosswalk), whereas the farther zooms are the new texture.  That's rather strange.  The attached file below, if placed in the Plugins\z___NAM folder, should fix it.

Duplicate icons means there's duplicate icon exemplars somewhere in your Plugins folder.  Usually, this is a result of bits of an old installation somehow clinging to life.  The TuLEP and FAR puzzle pieces (and really, any conventional puzzle pieces--very few have been added since NAM 32, and none since NAM 34) are actually quite a bit older than NAM 32--TuLEPs originated in NAM 29 (and were last updated in NAM 30), and the old puzzle piece FAR dates back to NAM 24.  In any case, you're going to have to find the redundant files and remove them, in order to get rid of the extra icons.  If you're lucky, there's simply an extra copy of the files in their original form somewhere.

If you've ever used the SC4DatPacker utility (or JDatPacker), it's possible there's a NetworkAddonMod.dat file sitting in Plugins\Plugins_Compressed, which would definitely cause the issue you're encountering.  If not, the next easiest potential fix would be to do a search for the appropriate file--i.e. NetworkAddonMod_TurningLanes_Extension_Plugin.dat--in your Plugins folder.  If more than one turns up, you have your culprit.  (The proper spot for the file is Plugins\Network Addon Mod\Turning Lanes).

If not, then you're going to need to actually look inside the contents of the .dat files and find the duplicate Icon Exemplars. 

The way I typically use for such tasks involves ilive's Reader.  While there are newer versions around, old-timers like myself use the old 0.9.3 release (still up on the STEX) for at least some purposes.  Once it loads up, go to the Tools menu, and select "Plugins Analyzer".  Go down the (alphabetically-sorted) list and find the appropriate file for each of the icons that's duplicated.  That does require some knowledge of the NAM's file architecture (which I can help you with here).  Note that the Plugins Analyzer can take some time to load, as it is effectively scanning your entire Plugins folder before working its magic.

In the case of the TuLEPs, the file you'd want to look for on the list is called "NetworkAddonMod_TurningLanes_Extension_Plugin.dat".  The window on 0.9.3 doesn't really expand out the file names too well (don't know if the 1.x releases fixed it), so you may need to click on multiple "NetworkAddonMod_TurningLanes . . ." entries to find it.  Usually, in a typical full NAM installation, it'll be the third one (first one if you don't have the old Avenue Turn Lanes plugin installed), and you'll know for sure if the top listing in the "Instance" column of the table is "0x5b000000".  The "Display only common files" checkbox will limit it to files with duplicate Type/Group/Instance (TGI) entries. 

You will for sure see a "DIR" file listed that has a ton of duplicates--ignore it.  The one you're going to want to look for is an Exemplar file that has an Instance of "0x6a4704e0", which is the Instance ID (IID) for the TuLEP Icon Exemplar (all but a handful of network-related Icon Exemplars will have an IID that begins with "0x6a47").  If it shows up in a shade of blue, there is indeed a duplicate, and two columns to the right of the Instance column, you'll see a very wide column with a file path listed.  This file path will give you the exact location of the file that contains the duplicate instance, thereby allowing you to find and remove it.

Hope that helps!

-Tarkus

z_TLA-3xAvenue_TextureFix_05262018.zip

Thanks @Tarkus, I definitely could use the help with that. I wasn't sure about the stability of using a datpacker, but more people seem to be using it now, so I can give that a try. I was not familiar with the ilive Reader until you mentioned it, and it sounds somewhat easy to use. In fact, that could help me more now since I seem to have a few issues with getting some plugins to stay deleted because of a copy located somewhere else. Is the Reader available on ST?

  Edited July 12, 2018 by spiritualfire  
Identifying member

[simmytu 605]

I have a question about missing traffic lights in combination with GLR. The funny thing is that observing avenues with GLR track pieces with side junctions they would most of the time lack any stop lights, but at other junctions they do have the lights, seen quite clearly in the second picture compared to first. I have two pictures as attachment to illustrate the bug. I'm using the latest version of Stoplight Replacement Mod (v11) and NAM version 36.
In short, is this a plugin conflict or rather some bug with this NAM build?

Spoiler

 

[APSMS 1,892]

7 hours ago, simmytu said:

In short, is this a plugin conflict or rather some bug with this NAM build?

If I had to guess, those pieces simply lack Stop Points, which is the only place where you can position stop lights and expect them to work. I doubt it's a problem with the SRM; if there were a true conflict then the pieces would simply display the normal stoplights rather than none at all, though the SRM is easily removable without any extra effort required, if you really want to check (unlike a LOT there's nothing extra to be done save moving the relevant files outside of your plugins).

These pieces were made a long time ago and haven't really been touched since, save for some QoL improvements to make them compatible with latest NAM codebase updates. You might try drawing the base network first and plopping the TIA pieces over them to see if the stoplights stay afterwards (SC4 is weird sometimes) but if the game won't let you do that (and I've a suspicion it won't) then there's probably nothing you can do, unless you want to find all those pieces' IIDs and make T21s to add fake stoplights to them (which, IIRC, would show green all the time).

[Tarkus 6,932]

There are isolated pieces in the GLR (Tram)-in/on-Network set that do have traffic signals on them, but the signals are non-functional.  There are stop points on the pieces, but they are either not configured in such a way to be functional, or the dual CheckTyping of both the Avenue and Lightrail (Elevated Rail) networks may not permit stop points to be functional in that situation. 

As @APSMS correctly pointed out, this means they'll be stuck on green permanently.  Generally, the NAM Team won't put signal props on intersections where permanent green is the only option--hence why One-Way Road and RealHighway approaches to intersections--at least without the Signalization and Turn Arrow Project (SITAP) or FLEX Piece workarounds--don't have signals throughout the mod.  The GLR Tram-in/on-Network items were developed in several phases between NAM 21 in 2007, when GLR-in-Avenue was first introduced, and NAM 30 in 2011, when the developers of that project more or less retired from active modding (and when the last updates to the project happened, save for the initial stages of the later semi-draggable re-implementation).

The SRM was designed to cover NAM and Maxis items that had signals--I suspect MandelSoft just covered what was already covered, and didn't handle the items that weren't, especially taking into consideration the permanent green condition of the signals on the GLR-in-Avenue items.

-Tarkus

[simmytu 605]

Good to know, thanks guys.

[Alavaria 32]

Has NAM changed the ferries? Since they don't use standard networks or so on, I'm mainly wondering about the Transit Switch Cost and especially capacity for the terminals (which NAM changed for even the Maxis stations of all other types).

I've been experimenting, so I can tell they function. The terminals seem to lock up at ~20000 people. But unmodded should only have 1000 so max of 4000 or so. I've put down three and they sit at 20000, 10000 and 0 for some odd reason.

[rsc204 21,808]

Other than the settings for the terminals, no I don't think anything else really can be changed, the ferries are pretty much locked into the main .exe for SC4. The only reason for updating the capacities and TSECs are to prevent problems with the larger populations many players end up with. There are issues with the default values which can lead to severe problems with transit usage, you can think of these tweaks as optimisations really.

Why do these three have 20k, 10k and 0 usage?, well that's impossible to do more than speculate upon, without some really in-depth information on your city/region design. However, the routes used by sims are usually a reflection of how quick they are and how many sims need to travel in that direction for work. There is no particular reason to assume three such terminals will end up with usage spread between them, their placement and the routes leading up to and away from them, will greatly alter usage. As will factors pertaining to the number of commuters that want to make use of said route. You say they "lock up" at 20k sims, but I think you just mean you can't get higher usage than this? But that simply suggests there are other factors at play. Bear in mind here, if the roads to and away from the terminals had such high usage, at some point, sims would look for alternate routes, since congestion would eventually make the original or fastest route slower. It wouldn't surprise me if that was a factor here and thus some sims just ended up diverting onto a less congested path that affected the crossing point they used.

[Alavaria 32]

8 hours ago, rsc204 said:

Other than the settings for the terminals, no I don't think anything else really can be changed, the ferries are pretty much locked into the main .exe for SC4. The only reason for updating the capacities and TSECs are to prevent problems with the larger populations many players end up with. There are issues with the default values which can lead to severe problems with transit usage, you can think of these tweaks as optimisations really.

Why do these three have 20k, 10k and 0 usage?, well that's impossible to do more than speculate upon, without some really in-depth information on your city/region design. However, the routes used by sims are usually a reflection of how quick they are and how many sims need to travel in that direction for work. There is no particular reason to assume three such terminals will end up with usage spread between them, their placement and the routes leading up to and away from them, will greatly alter usage. As will factors pertaining to the number of commuters that want to make use of said route. You say they "lock up" at 20k sims, but I think you just mean you can't get higher usage than this? But that simply suggests there are other factors at play. Bear in mind here, if the roads to and away from the terminals had such high usage, at some point, sims would look for alternate routes, since congestion would eventually make the original or fastest route slower. It wouldn't surprise me if that was a factor here and thus some sims just ended up diverting onto a less congested path that affected the crossing point they used.

The capacity and TSEC were not changed apparently, at least in the NAM .dat file which did so for other things like Maxis bus stops and subway stations. When I gave a subway station's capacity (24000) to the terminals, by just copying the entry for capacity over using the iReader, there was no issue, everyone ran to the one ferry and off they went.

=====================

(For completeness) In the earlier case, all three were just close to one another, fed by the only monorail station out. You got off the station and walked to a ferry. People were taking the longer (all pedestrian) route ignoring the 20,000 one in favor of the 10,000 one at some point. There was no other option to get to work, only those ferries went to any employment (another city) and only one way there - it only depended on how far you walked from the one station to the ferry. Thus I suspected the nearer one had stopped letting people use it.

Also because before I added the other ferries, people were abandoning because of commute time, which ended when I (reloaded and) added a second ferry terminal.

 

After some reading... if the capacity was indeed untouched at 1000, then at 4000 the station would stop working, and so it's possible the game crammed in 20000 people in one updating cycle, and only later on, the next cycle was prevented from using it, thus 10000 in the next (total of 30000 people commuting). Since I already edited the buildings, it hasn't shown up again (until I get to 96000 people I guess)

[platinumranger 18]

OK I think I installed something wrong. I have GOG Deluxe 1.1.64 with basic CAM and NAM 36 complete install and I just started my first city. (Been out of it since Comp crash few yrs ago) Anyway when ever I try to use any puzzle pieces or optional road/rail items that use the Tab Key to access variables all I get is a white square as a curser but no items appear. I've never used NAM in conjunction with CAM before, It says use basic CAM with no Traffic support and NAM for full control. Is 36 compatible with CAM or do I need extra items to go with NAM to function?

 

Thank You

[Tarkus 6,932]

That wouldn't be anything related to CAM/NAM compatibility (aside from that one ancient traffic file in CAM 1.0--removed in CAM 2.1--they effect completely different parts of the game), but some sort of NAM installation error.  You ended up with the pieces and icons, from the sounds of it, but not the NAM Controller file, which is necessary to actually place anything. 

I'd reinstall the NAM.  I wouldn't do an uninstall at this point, just install it right over top again.

-Tarkus

[platinumranger 18]

I just reinstalled NAM about 2 hours ago. It stayed the same that's why I posted. I'll try removing my plugins folder, Reinstall just NAM buy itself then restart a new city then add things back slowly.

 

Again, Thank You

[platinumranger 18]

OK all works well with just CAM & NAM now the tedious part, putting files back in and opening game. Luckily I had stuff DAT packed so I have everything in 41 big files to speed up the search then go to the backups of each to narrow the issue when found.

Will update when found

OK That didn't take too long thanks to Datpacking. Seems I had 2 default passenger train replacements from RVT and it was playing havic with NAM. Deleated 1 all works now.

 

  Edited August 2, 2018 by platinumranger  
Status Update

[Yarahi 1,816]

Hey.

I just discovered that the newly added (industrial) SAM10-texture does not seem to work with Gobias' sidewalk mod.
Is there any possibility to fix this?

[Tyberius06 12,189]

@YarahiThe industrial SAM is not intended to work with Gobias sidewalk mod. It uses its own wealth textures, those basic greys, which is compatible for example with the IRM mod. It was design by this way. 
But @rsc204 could give you a more detailed answere, since he made the SAM-10 (industrial SAM) modification. But probably you can find some answeres and informations in his Mod thread.

- Tyberius

[velrox 39]

Is there something that can deal with water and air pollution? Basically a building that removes all water pollution, and another building that removes all air pollution.

[APSMS 1,892]

4 hours ago, velrox said:

Is there something that can deal with water and air pollution?

I'm not sure that this is a NAM problem?

You can use the TSCT to adjust the reduction value of the Clean Air Act ordinance which will reduce your traffic pollution by the stated value. As for the industrial and water pollution (keep in mind that pollution from traffic is viewed differently in the simulator from air pollution due to industry), there are a number of LOTs available on the STEX and LEX that should suit your needs, and should be pretty easy to find with a search.

[rsc204 21,808]

10 hours ago, Yarahi said:

I just discovered that the newly added (industrial) SAM10-texture does not seem to work with Gobias' sidewalk mod.
Is there any possibility to fix this?

You mean SAM 11/B right?

Sidewalks are never part of transport network textures, which is why they will adapt to whichever is installed. Based on the zoning, any transparent areas of a texture are filled with the sidewalk texture (i.e. your sidewalk mod), accordingly. Grass however does need to be baked-in to such textures, which is the method I used to get concrete on them. I basically add this just like you would grass, baking it in, so that no transparency is present, preventing sidewalks from appearing for low-density zoning. This is very intentional as it's the only workaround that makes the network blend in with Industrial zoning seamlessly. Any such transport network can have only 8 zoning types:

• No Wealth / No Zoning (0)
• Low Density $ - $$$ (1-3) Wealth
• Med / High Density $ - $$$ (4-6) Wealth
• Farm Zoning (7)

But I only forced the concrete to appear for 3 of those 8 (blue). Meaning, sidewalks can appear for the others, although practically speaking they won't for either No/Farm zones. However, sidewalks will appear when using Med/High Density Res/Com zoning, which is by far the easiest way of making this happen.

If however, you are willing to forgo the concrete appearing next to Industrial zoning, (by design, the whole point of the network), you can have sidewalks for Low Density zoning too. However to achieve this, you need to remove all the 1-3 wealth textures from the mod manually.

[platinumranger 18]

@2600 posts in this topic so I'll ask instead of browsing. How do I change NAM options short of reinstalling again? All my streets end in a dirt road with guard rail instead of staying gray asphalt. If re-running the installer is it the rural roads option that needs to be turned off?

[rsc204 21,808]

There is no NAM option that would create that setup, more likely you have a third party mod which is overriding that texture. In which case you will have to locate and remove it to prevent this effect.

[platinumranger 18]

1 hour ago, rsc204 said:

There is no NAM option that would create that setup, more likely you have a third party mod which is overriding that texture. In which case you will have to locate and remove it to prevent this effect.

Found it, I had downloaded something that had a street mod listed as a dependency. I removed the items and all is well now.

Thanks

[That Retro Guy 321]

On 02/10/2018 at 5:22 PM, Cyclone Boom said:

Running a Custom NAM installation and I can confirm that the Draggable FAR option must be checked for this to be possible:

Is there a way for me to check to see if all of these options are checked without uninstalling and reinstalling NAM?  And are there any options that I don't want to have checked?

I'd really like to have the Bullet Train Mod activated, but I am not sure if it is.

[Tarkus 6,932]

24 minutes ago, That Retro Guy said:

Is there a way for me to check to see if all of these options are checked without uninstalling and reinstalling NAM?  And are there any options that I don't want to have checked?

I'd really like to have the Bullet Train Mod activated, but I am not sure if it is.

The NAM does write an log to the main install directory--look in the My Documents\SimCity 4\Plugins\Network Addon Mod folder (or wherever you installed the NAM) and there should be an "install.txt" file, which contains the entire log of the installation process (including file removals upon upgrade).

The stuff that is being installed will be prefixed by either "Output folder:" (for folders being created) or "Extract:" (for individual files).  If you do a "Find" operation (Ctrl-F) in Notepad on the document and search for "ML Shinkansen MOD", and find it behind an "Extract:" line, then that's a sign you have installed.

The Bullet Train Mod is an easy mod to spot in-game if you have it installed, though, as it's a total replacement skin for the Monorail network.  Just try dragging a Monorail, and if it looks like the standard Monorail, that's a sign you don't have it installed.

-Tarkus

[rsc204 21,808]

2 hours ago, That Retro Guy said:

Is there a way for me to check to see if all of these options are checked without uninstalling and reinstalling NAM?

One simple method is to run the NAM installer, where you can go through the list, ticked items are all installed. If you don't need to make changes, just Cancel the installation and no changes will be made.

[jeffryfisher 2,176]

9 hours ago, rsc204 said:

run the NAM installer, where you can go through the list, ticked items are all installed

That won't show everything that's installed. There are things like RRW that will be left unticked even if you installed them last time (which means that you need to tick it again every time you run the NAM installer lest it be uninstalled by default). We had another thread, maybe early this year, in which someone started compiling a list of such NAM features that would not stay ticked.