NAM General Support

[Propfam 2,288]

9 minutes ago, rsc204 said:

No

That's unfortunate. I hope the team will be bringing back those on new networks once the master plan (cough cough HRW cough) is fully executed.

[rsc204 21,808]

3 minutes ago, chfzdn said:

That's unfortunate. I hope the team will be bringing back those on new networks once the master plan (cough cough HRW cough) is fully executed.

Everything we do requires code and work to make it happen. I seriously doubt such things will be high up on the list, especially since these days the number of WRCs and related pieces has ballooned. Meaning it would require some serious effort to create what are probably not well used setups. Certainly I would expect proper diagonal support to be more of a priority for such networks.

[Propfam 2,288]

2 minutes ago, rsc204 said:

Certainly I would expect proper diagonal support to be more of a priority for such networks.

Obviously, diag support is much more important than WRC. At least WRC can be moved several pieces apart like crossing 2 FlexFlies.

[junspud 1,066]

On 1/13/2021 at 3:42 PM, Matrim Cauthon said:

Considering that looks amazing and now I feel like I need to use that intersection places.. I'd bet on that being intentional.

Am I right in thinking that is a 90° road turn with a diagonal OWR leaving it?

Oh yeah it's a cool feature and the intersection itself definitely is intentional, I just meant specifically the abrupt change into white lines as opposed to the yellow ones. As pointed out by rsc it's probably just the lack of a US texture.

12 hours ago, rsc204 said:

You'd be surprised how many non-obvious additions lurk in the depths of the NAM. I wasn't around, but I believe the first iterations just looked to add support for various setups that were not supported with the base game.

By going through all the NAM files looking for textures, you notice a lot of these things. For example, did you know you can drag El-Rail and Monorail over the standard 90° road/street curves, Intersections (including Avenue and Ave curves), highway curves & jogs and more besides? 

Sometimes a bit of experimentation wields results, but perhaps some of these features would be worth be listed somewhere?

Personally I think such a list would be a very nice addition to the documentation.

Speaking of this, one of the reasons I'm tempted to switch to Euro textures is the really nice looking transition it includes (assuming it still is included currently) for the road-OWR transition, as seen in some of the NAM tutorial videos on Youtube. I think I may invest the time into re-purposing the Euro version into a US version. The super specialized tools people have developed to make something like this fast and easy always amazes me a little when I think about it.

[Propfam 2,288]

I know we have all-new FLUPs. But, as a stopgap, FLEX FLUPs (FLUPs that use FLEX pieces instead) for all network should be welcomed. So the work is you plop the FLEX piece. Then, drag the network with network you like. The resultant will be transparent network similar to puzzle piece FLUPs. The disadvantages of the old FLUPs are still there but as a stopgap, it works fine.

What do you think? Sorry for my words. Thanks.

[Naomi57 2,985]

18 hours ago, rsc204 said:

By going through all the NAM files looking for textures, you notice a lot of these things. For example, did you know you can drag El-Rail and Monorail over the standard 90° road/street curves, Intersections (including Avenue and Ave curves), highway curves & jogs and more besides? 

I discovered many of these by accident after installing the NAM, and wondered if they were NAM additions.  Back in SC4 vanilla, I scarcely ever used elevated rail.  In the NAM, elevated rail might just be one of the most capable and most flexible of networks, as part of the broader "Light Rail" network.  I'm using it more and more.

18 hours ago, rsc204 said:

Does this apply to newer networks like the post-33 RHW, HRW, REW, RRW, HSR, Viaducts and their alternatives, etc?

The feature set of the elevated rail network in the NAM is vast and intricate, being now a "light rail" network, of which Maxis elevated rail is just one part.  The frustrating part, is that some combinations work well, and other combinations don't, but there's sufficient feature set to find elegant solutions to almost every issue, if you like problem solving.

The initial learning curve to learn the broader light rail network is not easy, but now I'm past that learning curve, I can't see myself going back.  the NAM light rail network is far, far more useful than it seems at first glance, because of the varied feature set and because it's an exceedingly attractive network from the sim's perspective ... they LIKE using it!  

Elevated rail works with many orthogonal crossings, but may require transition to and from ground level GLR, and occasionally requires transition to subway, or special puzzle pieces.  GLR and ElevatedRail-on-Road extensions of the light rail network tend to be very finicky to construct, so that may not appeal to some mayors.

As an aside, in case it's useful, the BriPizza stations in the NAM are a good way to link your many various mass transit networks — light rail, heavy rail, monorail, HSR and/or HRW, subway and bus-way.  

BriPizza 15m Multi-Purpose Arched Station

BriPizza 15m Multi-Purpose Station with Parking

On 09/12/2019 at 11:53 AM, rsc204 said:

I do have one of Norikae.

 

[rsc204 21,808]

4 hours ago, chfzdn said:

What do you think?

I thought it has already been mentioned somewhere, but indeed the plan is to expand this to cover the same networks as the legacy FLUPs, probably with some new functionality too. However the first release only covers a few RHW networks, it will take time to expand that.

[Propfam 2,288]

16 minutes ago, rsc204 said:

I thought it has already been mentioned somewhere, but indeed the plan is to expand this to cover the same networks as the legacy FLUPs, probably with some new functionality too. However the first release only covers a few RHW networks, it will take time to expand that.

No, not that subway. The subway override is for the future. For now, it's like draggable GLR except it's either road, OWR, avenue, or street. It's still a surface network technically, just with transparent texture like the current FLUPs. In other words, draggable (or FLEXified) legacy FLUPs. This is only a stopgap.

[Tarkus 6,932]

3 hours ago, chfzdn said:

No, not that subway. The subway override is for the future. For now, it's like draggable GLR except it's either road, OWR, avenue, or street. It's still a surface network technically, just with transparent texture like the current FLUPs. In other words, draggable (or FLEXified) legacy FLUPs. This is only a stopgap.

That had been proposed as a potential solution at one point before we found out that Subway-based override networks were in fact possible.  It never got off the drawing board, because it has a fatal flaw: it's subject to the slope settings of the base draggable network.  That means that, especially if you have a restrictive slope mod installed, your "tunnel" is going to completely warp the terrain when built, which kind of defeats the purpose.  We determined that keeping the old puzzle pieces was actually better than a non-Subway-based override network solution (one of the very, very rare instances where that's been the case), because they aren't affected by network slope settings.

Also, Subway-based FLUPs isn't the "future" . . . it's now.  And that's the direction we're going from here on out.

-Tarkus

[Propfam 2,288]

34 minutes ago, Tarkus said:

(one of the very, very rare instances where that's been the case)

Very rare. I mean 0.0001% of the decisions that the team makes. FLEX in any cases is better, except few which includes this one case.

[Tarkus 6,932]

Also, regarding all the Elevated Rail crossings that have been mentioned have actually been referenced in the Documentation since they were first added back in NAM 17 (June 2005).  There's a simple text listing of them here (scroll down to the "Group Two" section).  That's in the "Base Network Features" guide, in the current NAM Documentation (which is pretty extracted from one of the old features lists in pre-PDF NAM Documentation).

-Tarkus

[Sabretooth78 808]

Long time no see; getting back into this and playing around with NAM 39.  A couple of questions I've encountered; forgive me if these have been addressed before.

Regarding 7.5m (L1) structures, I was curious whether some things are possible as it relates to simulating some more rural/suburban configurations.  It's quite possible I'm trying to build some things that either simply aren't supported, or I'm just going about it the wrong way.

First would be the minimum length required for a RHW bridge.  While theoretically possible to create a bridge of 1-tile length with the Flex Height Transition on-slope pieces, it's not possible to drag a road under the structure pictured below.  Should it be possible?  With that being said; it is a viable alternative for plop water stream crossings.

It is possible to build a 2-tile length bridge and get it to work with a road underneath (with a fair amount of RHW2 clicking around to get the bridges to connect) or with a 2-tile network such as an Avenue straight "out of the box" (below, lower).  The shortest configuration that seems to accommodate a road easily is the 3-tile length bridge (below, upper), which is OK but in most real-life situations you would never find the abutments that far away from the road being crossed:

 

Going the other way around, and crossing the RHW with the road, there are a couple of options.  The lower crossing pictured below can be achieved using the 7.5m ERD puzzle pieces, but for an RHW4 only with the crossing pieces being ERD over one-way and the minimum median width being 5 tiles or else the on-slopes don't work right.  The upper crossing can be achieved for any median width provided the abutments are set back a tile (somewhat unrealistic as I noted above) so as not to cross the RHW at the end of the draggable ERD, which causes problems.

Are there plans to add more support for short crossings of 7.5m ERD over/under RHW?

[Tarkus 6,932]

@Sabretooth78, great to see you around these parts!

To answer your question, we've been having to wrangle with the RHW FLEX OnSlopes (FLEX-OSTs) a ton these past few releases.  There were some unannounced code changes that someone (not me) sneaked into NAM 35 that were designed to improve some things . . . that ended up breaking others, and we've been having to constantly tinker with the way the FLEX-OSTs work pretty much every release since in order to try to compensate.  Each change has been a one step forward, one step back sort of situation.

I think we might finally have it with NAM 40, however, or at least, much closer to it.  I've been able to build the exact situation you've described, by placing the Road in the trench first, then placing the FLEX-OSTs on either side. 

The base setup without the overrides will actually make a full +-crossing with the trench network and the RHW.

Note that, as shown above, it won't work for base RHW-2 right now, since we killed the auto-L1/L2 RHW-2 out the ends of the FLEX-OSTs and FLEX Height Transitions (FLEX-HTs).  Doing so back with NAM 38 helped a lot with stability on all the override networks (and saved us from needing a couple hundred thousand lines of RUL2 code to turn L1 and L2 RHW-2 crossings into the ones for the other networks), but we're going to need to add dedicated RHW-2 FLEX-OSTs and FLEX-HTs that still have that "auto" feature in order to compensate.

-Tarkus

[Sabretooth78 808]

5 hours ago, Tarkus said:

I think we might finally have it with NAM 40, however, or at least, much closer to it.  I've been able to build the exact situation you've described, by placing the Road in the trench first, then placing the FLEX-OSTs on either side.

Got that to work myself as well.  I guess the moral of the story is "if at first you don't succeed, try it the other way around."

Now I just need a 7.5m ERD over Flex RHW puzzle piece!

[matias93 7,535]

Is there some piece for the OWR-2 x AVE-6 intersection? Or some reason why the default one has this weird texture in the middle? It does not happen with the road x AVE-6 intersection.

 

[Tarkus 6,932]

That's a Euro texture issue.  Cleaned up the US textures, but the EU texture equivalents never got updated.  I'm going to guess it probably also affects the Road crossing, and the TLA-7 equivalents, so I've covered them all in this attached file.  Place it somewhere where it'll load after the Euro textures file (which is in Network Addon Mod\7_Texture and Drive Side Support\EU_Right Side or Network Addon Mod\7_Texture and Drive Side Support\EU_Left Side, depending on if you did an RHD or LHD install).

-Tarkus

z-Triple-Tile-NWM-EU-IntFix-01172021.zip

[Propfam 2,288]

A somewhat similar effect affects me. This problem should be fixed.

[Kurzov22 18]

Hello. I have not played SC4 in quite some time, but I'm looking to get back into it. My Steam installation of SC4 still has NAM36 attached to it, with the LAA patch already installed. I have heard/read that there have been a lot of changes since NAM36, so I was wondering if there was anything "special" that I needed to do to upgrade to NAM39 properly - i.e. would it be alright to just follow the instructions in the README of "taking out" the old NAM from my plugins folder, then installing NAM39, or would I need to perform some additional funny business to upgrade properly?

[rsc204 21,808]

22 hours ago, matias93 said:

By the way, I notice that you may have the wrong tunnel settings, you can fix the black banding above them, if you rectify that and subsequently re-draw the tunnels.

There is a "slope mod" or Network Properties Exemplar in the MHO, which should be setting those inside i_Tunnels.dat unless I'm forgetting something. If you've a slope mod, tunnel mod or anything that alters the same Properties, loading after the Network Addon Mod folder, it may be interfering. Ideally, you should just edit the slope mod you want to use, to have the tunnel settings (Properties) from the NAM, so you get the best of both worlds. If you need some help, like the specific Properties/Values, just let me know.

4 hours ago, Mayor-Kurzov said:

would it be alright to just follow the instructions in the README of "taking out" the old NAM from my plugins folder, then installing NAM39, or would I need to perform some additional funny business to upgrade properly?

Personally, I always recommend moving the Network Addon Mod and z___NAM folders, somewhere SC4 can not see them, i.e. Outside of the Plugins folder. That way, you can return to your previous setup by simply restoring these folders, should you run into problems.

However, the main issues users are having, comes from how the newer installers, can't do some of the whizzy stuff the old ones could. One part of that is applying, where necessary, the 4GB Patch. If your game is patched, you won't need to do this again for NAM 39 or subsequent versions. But, if you ever have to re-install SC4 for any reason, at that point you would, but that applies for older NAM versions too. The second has to do with something called the NAM Controller, which basically holds all the code needed for the new networks/features of NAM to work. The installer can no longer automatically create the most efficient Controller, based on your installation choices, everyone instead gets a single default "full" Controller. If you don't have the 4GB Patch, have less than 4GB RAM or use a 32-bit version of Windows, you can not use this Controller, your game will CTD as you try to load the first city. Even if none of those scenarios apply, you will have to wait a few minutes for the game to load the first city. You can do as the older installers did, but manually, by running the Custom Controller (also a Java-based tool, like the Installer itself), to customise it to your needs. But if the full Controller doesn't bother you, it's totally optional for most users. Another option is to simply download a Controller "lite" (swap one NAM file with the download), which has been pre-made for convenience, just note you won't be able to use RHW with this Controller.

Based on feedback from the new installers, each revision of NAM is making the process simpler and less prone to problems. It seems likely we'll be including or at least providing a similar "lite" controller from here on out. Note too the .bat files inside the installer, using these helps ensure the tools I mention above work reliably and first time. But I can't recommend highly enough, actually reading the 0-read-first.html file inside the NAM download, before going any further.

[RyanSim 5]

Recently moved computers, and onto steam after not playing for several years, also had to download new version of NAM as as had lost the TSCT. I've realised i need to change the base network capacity from clasic to higher. However if i do so none of the stations capacities on the gui's change unless i bulldoze and rebuild. Please dont tell me i would need to do this for 1000s of stations?

[matias93 7,535]

3 hours ago, rsc204 said:

By the way, I notice that you may have the wrong tunnel settings

Yeah, I also noticed that, and is because of a custom slope mod. It's just that I'm on some sort of city-building roll and taking time to fix it on the reader will surely end it. lol

[rsc204 21,808]

18 hours ago, RyanSim said:

However if i do so none of the stations capacities on the gui's change unless i bulldoze and rebuild. Please dont tell me i would need to do this for 1000s of stations?

The TSCT only deals with networks, the capacities of stations are set by the station's files directly, generally speaking the NAM doesn't change any of this, with the exception of the Maxis Stations, which were modded with values less likely to cause problems. Note there is one set of increased values, regardless of the simulator in use.

Unfortunately, in order for these changes to be propagated, since the values are added to the save file when the item in plopped, it is necessary to bulldoze and replace each instance or station to refresh the save data. Of course that's optional, nothing is worse off as a result and at least all new instances will have the updated values from here on out.

[jeffryfisher 2,176]

15 hours ago, matias93 said:

I'm on some sort of city-building roll and taking time to fix it on the reader will surely end it.

At least you know what needs to be done, so you can leave yourself a note to handle it later when you reach a good stopping place in your development.

[Kurzov22 18]

19 hours ago, rsc204 said:

Personally, I always recommend moving the Network Addon Mod and z___NAM folders, somewhere SC4 can not see them, i.e. Outside of the Plugins folder. That way, you can return to your previous setup by simply restoring these folders, should you run into problems.

[snip]

Based on feedback from the new installers, each revision of NAM is making the process simpler and less prone to problems. It seems likely we'll be including or at least providing a similar "lite" controller from here on out. Note too the .bat files inside the installer, using these helps ensure the tools I mention above work reliably and first time. But I can't recommend highly enough, actually reading the 0-read-first.html file inside the NAM download, before going any further.

Alright, thank you - will do.

[Propfam 2,288]

What's WRHW-2? And how do I make it without resorting to puzzle pieces?

[rsc204 21,808]

It stands for Wide RHW-2, it's basically a cosmetic variation that is similar to AVE-2 from the NWM. It's main use is simply to hook up to RHW-3, especially the turning lane pieces. As for using it without resorting to puzzle pieces, it's cosmetic pieces only, there is no draggable or even full network functionality for this niche network presently.

[Propfam 2,288]

8 minutes ago, rsc204 said:

It stands for Wide RHW-2, it's basically a cosmetic variation that is similar to AVE-2 from the NWM. It's main use is simply to hook up to RHW-3, especially the turning lane pieces. As for using it without resorting to puzzle pieces, it's cosmetic pieces only, there is no draggable of even full network functionality for this niche network presently.

Why not making it draggable?

[rsc204 21,808]

Have you ever used it? The functionality is so specific, it doesn't really warrant making draggable. Literally, it's ONE piece, the straight and was never intended to be used as a substitute for RHW-2, only for some specific transitions.

That said, when such Cosmetic options get revisited eventually, some sort of FLEXification will no doubt take place.

[Map Guy 162]

Something I noticed while fiddling today, was a problem with the RHW-8 transition cosmetic pieces. Both lane 1 and lane 2 dashed line pieces don't show up when plopped in lane gain situations. Lane merges work fine. In the attached image you can see the lane 2 dashed line merge piece displaying correctly, but the lane gain equivalent is missing. The pieces show fine when plopped on their own, but not over a RHW6 to 8 transition. I've not noticed any other issues with other cosmetic pieces I've used on RHW-4 or 6. Could it just be a Euro texture issue perhaps?

Nonetheless, I'm a BIG fan of the cosmetic pieces, is there any plans in the roadmap for including L1 versions in future?

[Tyberius06 12,189]

46 minutes ago, Map Guy said:

Something I noticed while fiddling today, was a problem with the RHW-8 transition cosmetic pieces. Both lane 1 and lane 2 dashed line pieces don't show up when plopped in lane gain situations. Lane merges work fine. In the attached image you can see the lane 2 dashed line merge piece displaying correctly, but the lane gain equivalent is missing. The pieces show fine when plopped on their own, but not over a RHW6 to 8 transition. I've not noticed any other issues with other cosmetic pieces I've used on RHW-4 or 6. Could it just be a Euro texture issue perhaps?

Nonetheless, I'm a BIG fan of the cosmetic pieces, is there any plans in the roadmap for including L1 versions in future?

Hi!

The problem here is that you would like to plop a static cosmetic puzzle piece on the top of an other static puzzle piece (transition). Which is not supported. I'm not sure if it was possible even codewise, maybe yes, but I'm not sure, but considering how NOT flexible are the static puzzle pieces (any!!!), hm... I don't know. It could be although, that the Eu version of the texture was not made properly of the comsetic PP. I don't know, I never really used those static pieces.  

The other problem is, that the cosmetic puzzle pieces are on the way out (more or less all of the static puzzle pieces are on the way out - except a very few one) from the NAM in big time. Actually which NAM version do you use? Because something rings the bell that since NAM 37+, they are not supposed to be in the NAM at all as still available items. Anyway probably later on at some point there will be a kind of flexible replacement of the current cosmetic puzzle pieces (probably some kind of FTL-ish thingy) and for sure for the near future there are plans for replacing the RHW width transitions static Puzzle Pieces with FLEX pieces. 

- Tyberius