NAM General Support

[MandelSoft 2,775]

It should be in between the MAVE-4-to-MAVE-6 and the MAVE-6-to-TLA-5 transistion in the NWM transistions TAB-ring. Try to look again

[Tarkus 6,933]

Generally, trying to end a dual-tile NWM network at any single-tile network, be it a Maxis network or a single-tile NWM network, will not work.  There are no textures or coding in place for any of them, and you'll get some odd things as a result.  Some of them probably won't be created, as they don't make sense (i.e. A MAVE-6 ending at a one-lane one-way . . . the three lanes on the MAVE would have to merge into one mid-intersection).

-Alex (Tarkus)

[Tarkus 6,933]

Generally, trying to end a dual-tile NWM network at any single-tile network, be it a Maxis network or a single-tile NWM network, will not work.  There are no textures or coding in place for any of them, and you'll get some odd things as a result.  Some of them probably won't be created, as they don't make sense (i.e. A MAVE-6 ending at a one-lane one-way . . . the three lanes on the MAVE would have to merge into one mid-intersection).

-Alex (Tarkus)

[longhorn 25]

Is there a puzzle piece for Elevated Heavy Rail to cross over Underground Heavy Rail? I looked through all of them and only found the Elevated (Subway) Rail over Underground Heavy Rail. Thanks.

[gigacoaster 4]

I've noticed a small problem with NAM 29. When I hover over an avenue roundabout with the route query tool, even only briefly, the game CTDs. This did not happen to me with previous NAM versions. Its not a major issue, but it is annoying when im moving the mouse from one side of the screen to the other, and by coincidence i run over a roundabout and CTD.

[CaptCity 4,915]

Originally posted by: longhorn

Is there a puzzle piece for Elevated Heavy Rail to cross over Underground Heavy Rail? I looked through all of them and only found the Elevated (Subway) Rail over Underground Heavy Rail.quote>

Such a piece isn't present at this time...

Originally posted by: gigacoaster

I've noticed a small problem with NAM 29. When I hover over an avenue roundabout with the route query tool, even only briefly, the game CTDs. This did not happen to me with previous NAM versions. Its not a major issue, but it is annoying when im moving the mouse from one side of the screen to the other, and by coincidence i run over a roundabout and CTD.quote>

Is this with one of the single piece avenue roundabouts selected from the menu? If so, which one(s) are you trying - the "empty" one or one with something in the center?

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Well, this was a surprise.  Did I miss a piece, or did you not test this one.

MAVE-4 intersects diagonal rail.  The roadways split into an AVE-4 on the other side of the rail, but could be repaired using the MAVE-4 starter piece, but it was so close to the termination point, that I had to use a MAVE-4 to AVE-4 transition piece instead.  Worked fine, except for the rail crossing.  See picture, below.

On ne veut pas être tué sur le chemin de fer.

Seems to have reverted to road, sort of, on the tracks.

[Vahr 343]

Situation not yet made/covered. Most diagonal items will be covered in future releases.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Well, I feel relieved to have reported something that may help in the future.  Initial releases are such fun.  They really are a kind of super beta.  In 1980 when I was at U. of Waterloo we were testing a new operating system for Honeywell, and that was a lot of fun.  During the month of August, when the University is theoretically free from students and researchers, we had the main math faculty machine up and down like a toilet seat.  It was the month of the O/S version of the day, and sometime of the hour.

So I really do understand what you fellows are going through.  Thank heavens I don't have to read three-inch-thick master mode dumps any more.  The whole thing was about a million lines of assembler.  We did have a dump interpreter, however, and it really helped to get a trace up to the crash.  The O/S eventually was released as GCOS 8.

And, wow, that was a fast response.  You, too, must have subscribed to the thread.

[TheNachoFan 0]

Double-decker (el-rail+road) trouble...

I'd like to make a straight-line rail line, with a road going in and then, out. However, the pieces don't connect properly.

What could possibly be wrong?

[CaptCity 4,915]

Originally posted by: TheNachoFan

Double-decker (el-rail+road) trouble...

I'd like to make a straight-line rail line, with a road going in and then, out. However, the pieces don't connect properly.

What could possibly be wrong?quote>

You need to leave a tile or two gap between the piece and the ends of your ElRail so that the small stub on the ElRail-over-Road piece will appear. After that you can drag from the end of the piece to connect the ElRail.

 

[TheNachoFan 0]

Oh, thank you CaptCity. And by the way: that cul-de-sac we see at the end of the road... where can one get that?

[CaptCity 4,915]

Originally posted by: TheNachoFan

And by the way: that cul-de-sac we see at the end of the road... where can one get that?quote>

Whoops... Sometimes I forget to clear our my plugins before taking pictures. That's a re-texture mod that is being tested and hasn't been released yet.

[TheNachoFan 0]

As I resumed playing the game after a good year off, I try out new things like the Road Widening Mod, namely to get rid of a traffic problem in an old way, a one-way loop (I'm not doing a great, classic job at designing with this new city), but in a new fashion, a three-lane, one-way road. And... for whatever reason, it seems the simulator couldn't get any vehcle to drive on that OWR-3, as only pedestrians used it!

Once again the question: is this normal?

@CaptCity

1: The solution worked. I guess my lay off from the game was so long I kind of forgot everything.

2: Well, that cul-de-sac looks oh, so very nice. Let's hope it'll work out so it can be made available at some point in the future! 

[kolnikov inc 1]

..is the nam team going to make FARR-to-diagonal MIS puzzle pieces? .i think it would be essential for making realistic interchanges that have smooth curves...just a thought.

[hmm 17]

Originally posted by: TheNachoFan

As I resumed playing the game after a good year off, I try out new things like the Road Widening Mod, namely to get rid of a traffic problem in an old way, a one-way loop (I'm not doing a great, classic job at designing with this new city), but in a new fashion, a three-lane, one-way road. And... for whatever reason, it seems the simulator couldn't get any vehcle to drive on that OWR-3, as only pedestrians used it!

Once again the question: is this normal?

quote>

Im having the same problem as well but with the transition peices for the OWR-3 and ARD-3. All vehicle types will drive onto these sections of network through standard intersections, maxis and NAM. However I cant get peolple to drive through the transition peices. If the stretch of road was an OWR-2 and was upgraded traffic steadily drops to zero and it remained at zero for around 5 in game years. I checked to make sure it was the right hand side version (U.S. file) and it was and I reinstalled twice. Gonna reinstall again because i cant live without this mod!

[CaptCity 4,915]

Originally posted by: TheNachoFan

...a one-way loop (I'm not doing a great, classic job at designing with this new city), but in a new fashion, a three-lane, one-way road. And... for whatever reason, it seems the simulator couldn't get any vehcle to drive on that OWR-3, as only pedestrians used it!quote>

Do you have the OWR-3 in a loop with all 90 degree turns? I seem to be having an issue with such a layout. Try running a short stretch of street or road across the OWR-3 and see if traffic will move. Or you can replace a tight turn with a couple 45 degree turns to see if it helps. Just a thought...

[Tarkus 6,933]

I've just done a bunch of testing myself tonight . . . I've managed to improve the 90-curves a little bit on the TLA-3, ARD-3 and OWR-3, but generally speaking, you're going to run issues with residential zones on confined, closed loops of those networks.  Fortunately, I doubt many folks really do that aside from testing.  Three-quarter loops, oddly enough, work.  It seems to be a game quirk and I can't find a reasonable way around it.

hmm, with the OWR transitions, make sure the arrow on them is pointing the correct direction.  While the transition itself is bidirectionally pathed, the OWR stubs on the ends are more sensitive and can only go one way.  I just used the OWR-2-to-3 transitions myself in a test with a clean plugins folder without issue.

-Alex (Tarkus)

[longhorn 25]

Originally posted by: CaptCity

Originally posted by: longhorn

Is there a puzzle piece for Elevated Heavy Rail to cross over Underground Heavy Rail? I looked through all of them and only found the Elevated (Subway) Rail over Underground Heavy Rail.quote>

Such a piece isn't present at this time...

quote>

In lieu of that, is there anywhere where I could still get the ESURE that z was working on a while back because that would achieve the same goal?

[CaptCity 4,915]

Originally posted by: longhorn

Originally posted by: CaptCity

Originally posted by: longhorn

Is there a puzzle piece for Elevated Heavy Rail to cross over Underground Heavy Rail? I looked through all of them and only found the Elevated (Subway) Rail over Underground Heavy Rail.quote>

Such a piece isn't present at this time...

quote>

In lieu of that, is there anywhere where I could still get the ESURE that z was working on a while back because that would achieve the same goal?quote>

ESURE is still in development and undergoing testing...

[Mdrizzle3 6]

I'm not really sure where to post this, but whenever I try to download the main NAM, it stops at 29%. Help?

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Welcome to the conversation.

Try it when the servers are less busy.  Say, about midnight eastern time.

There have been problems with the STEX, so you could also try it at SC4Devotion

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

And now, my queston.

Has anyone noticed that you might get long haul loops in the transportation systems?  I have a set of elevated and ground highways looping through several of my cities on one region, and the traffic seems to be building exponentially, more than can be accounted for by the cities population.  This also involves rail and monorail neighbor connections.  I am getting red hot (300%) highway sections, and some of my trains and monorails seem to be carrying more Sims than there are in the region.

[z1 566]

Yes, this is the infamous Eternal Commuter Loop, and unfortunately, there's nothing that we can do about it in terms of a bug fix. As you noticed, it's very bad for your region. The safest way to handle this is to break all connections between any two cities in the loop.

The reason you have so many commuters is that it's just the same Sims traveling around and around, and in bad cases of this situation, they'll end up getting counted multiple times.  They'd much rather travel around all day than go to work.

[chocolate_city 93]

A Nonny Moose - I would be grateful if you could give a little detail as to exactly what you mean by "looping" Do mean having a highway circle around a city of something like a by-pass... I ask because some like what you're describing is happening to me too.... thanks

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Originally posted by: chocolate_city

A Nonny Moose - I would be grateful if you could give a little detail as to exactly what you mean by "looping" Do mean having a highway circle around a city of something like a by-pass... I ask because some like what you're describing is happening to me too.... thanksquote>

I was afraid that's what happened.  I've had this happen when cities are closely linked by transportation, say, over a few close grid squares across four cities where you are trying to develop a city that has separated the zoning categories, but this one is a lulu (spelled backwards ul ul).  I have five or six cities, all balanced, all in the black, all connected with each other by various means.  I have raised and ground highways, rail, monorail, roads, etc.  Several of these cities support each other for power and water and garbage via neighbor deals.

Each city has large industrial parks, sometimes two or three, lots of commercial, quite busy in a lot of cases, and a lot of high-rise R$ Sims to work in them.  Alas, I am so well connected that all my Sims do is ride around all day.  I first noticed this when I set up a classical scenario with Sims living at one end of a heavy commercial district connected by an avenue (AVE-4, the standard Maxis avenue) to a high-density industrial complex.  The traffic between the Central Business District (CBD) and the industrial complex started building, and in the end I have 2 MAVE-6 and a MAVE-4 avenues connecting the CBD and the industrial complex.  The industrial complex has a ground level highway to be used as a drain for its freight, but this artery became very busy, indeed.  I discovered that most of the traffic was buses leaving for the next city, so I installed a monorail link to drain the traffic from the highway, which it eventually did.

Imagine my surprise when I switched to the connected city and found that there were 17,000+ commuters on my monorail link.  I had to find a station on the STEX that could handle it (actually from the LEX).  After I had, I thought, dissipated this traffic over the network in the receiving city, which had both rail and highways, I went on with my main city on a large tile.

Now the main city is connected to its neighbours on all sides with various highway, road, and rail links.  Yesterday, I noticed that the top of the highway leading to the next city had gone to 300% exiting the city at the top of one of my three industrial complexes.  I put a cloverleaf in at the bottom of the industrial complex and ran two more links, with toll booths everywhere, to the cities to the north.  Didn't make much difference, and one of the cities is 100% I-Ag (small tile) with the highway running on a fast angle through one corner.  The only traffic originating here are a few freight trucks.  The highway segment here is showing over 100% load.  This happens to enter the city where the heavy monorail traffic enters as well.  I became suspicious that I had caused a loop of staggering proportions, and it is so!  The Sims are great getters-on, and not very good at getting off.  Even if you force them off by terminating the transit line, they just cross over to another one and keep riding.

I've know of this bug in microcosm for some time (years), but it never occurred to me that it could happen across an entire region full of balanced cities.  I am going to scrap this region, re-render the map, and start over with more care.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Much later, the same day.

First of all, I scrapped that region.  It was hopelessly bogged down in the deadly loop and, as with all positive feed back systems it was shaking itself to bits.  It would have probably blown a gasket somewhere in the program at some time.

So, I re-rendered the region, and carefully built five more cities.  One of them is totally I-Ag, the others are mixed and I tried to balance them, but it takes too much time, so in the end, I just set my traps.

Let's call them City1, 2, 3, 4, 5 for short (c1, c2, c3, c4, c5).

c1 has a standard organization of port => commercial => residential =>main commercial =>   industrial => more residential to stimulate the industrial.  The port has an avenue running from it all the way up through the final sector of residential and, until neighbor connections were made, all the freight was going to the port, and everyone was working in this tile.  Starting with the last (northern) segment of residential, I converted the avenue to a ground highway, then to an elevated highway and ran it into c2.  I ran the highway from c2 straight into c3, which is all I-Ag, where I stepped the highway down to an avenue that ended in a street (a farm concession line).  The intention was to terminate any loop and dissipate the traffic.  The program sensed this, and only accepted freight trucks and a few farmers over the link going the other way.

In c2 I created an underpass ramp or two, and built a standard layout city.  Stuff was coming in from c1, but had no where to go except to work in the commercial and industrial.  I carried one of the roads west to c4, when nothing spectacular happened because there was not loop.  I carried a link from c4 south to c5, and built a very brief city there.  The demands were almost nothing, so I put in some farms and single residential.  Industrial had no demand at all, until "ta da", I ran a road link back east to c1.  All hell broke loose as soon as I completed the road in c1 that made the full link to my main network.  The loop formed in seconds.

"Aha!", says I, "I'll fix you, now."  So I broke the link in c4 and turned it into a neighborhood that wasn't connected to the main network at all.  The incoming traffic from c1 disappeared, and the Sims in the residential neighborhood I had set up as a sponge took the link over, going the other way on foot or in cars.  I gave up on that part of the link and went on to a further experiment.

In the main network in c4, I set up a rail link which led into c5, but bypassed all of the network and ended at a ferry station where there was nothing but a rail passenger station and tracks.  Sure enough, a bunch of Sims jumped on the train and roared down to the ferry, hopped the ferry to another ferry station in my main net.  The egg is on my face.  I forgot about that other ferry station, but the game, being a computer program, did not.  So I got another pretty loop-de-loop that would have built, and built. 

Since there are only five cities involved, I will use my godlike powers to obliterate them rather than re-render the map since I did some additional terra forming that I don't want to lose.  However, you may rest assured that I will be watching that my networks do not include any inadvertent loops in the future.  It is fatal.  You spend all  your time wondering where the blazes all these Sims are coming from.

[z1 566]

It's really not necessary to obliterate cities when you get eternal commuter loops. Simply break the loop by breaking all the connections between any two cities in the loop, and your region will quickly return to normal. Depending on your configuration, you may need to make this break between more than one pair of cities, though I've never personally found that necessary.

[chocolate_city 93]

A Nonny Moose... thanks for the explanation ... This is happening to me also...

Obliterating is sooo final... at least copy the region you might have a change of heart somewhere down the line....

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Thanks for the kind words gentlemen, but the deed is done.  The second set was a test group, and I was getting fed up with the first, anyway (but it is on my monthly archive, if I change my mind).

I have started a new city on the recovered map, and am being very cautious.  I set up a standard layout with Sims having to pass through my downtown to get to work.  Works beautifully, the avenue is running about 70% loaded.  If it overloads, I can easily convert it to a MAVE-4 to double the capacity.

I placed a village well off my I-Ag set up, at some distance, serviced it with the usual amentities, and added a rail link to the main city's industrial complex.  The tracks touch the I-Ag in passing, so I added a few single houses and a rail station to allow people to go to work on the farms, the haul from the city being rather long.  Everyone in my new, smaller village went to work on the farms, as expected.  However, a real suprise that didn't happen until I added the second group at the farm site is that some of the people in the residential area of the main city cross the city by bus, hop the train, and ride it around to the farms, hop the bus and loop-de-loop, all in one city.  Grrrrrr!

I'll have to dope out how to cope with these idiots.  I have a feeling that I am going to break the road link from the farms to the city, and leave them with freight rail only to get their stuff to the seaport.  This should damp the loop.  Thanks for the ear.

UPDATE 10 p.m.

I cut the connection between the farms and the avenue coming into the city, and converted the farm road into a loop.  This stopped the loop tripping Sims cold.  I was able to trace some of the Sims who were legitimately coming to my village.  One house had 6 $$ commuters to my town.  Half were cops, and the other half worked in the clinic there.  I am sure similar results can be tracked for the others since there is no longer any loop, just a destination.

Something queer happened, though.  The road link was heavily used for freight, so I replaced the road freight link with a separate piece of railroad with appropriate cargo stations.  No use whatever, and the farms have stopped sending out freight trucks.  Before, the four farms were sending out 65 freight trucks to the port.  Now it is zero, so I guess there is getting to be a lot of produce on the manure pile.

So that's the situation.  Not only do you have to watch out for intercity loops but for intracity loops.  I'll bet they occur all the time and no one really notices because they are not watching for them.  So, the road system can be a tree, but not a network with interconnected loops, or the Sims will just ride around all day.  That is some silly bug.  See what happens when you rush a computer program product out the door.  EA gets the prize for untested stupidity.  Not the Maxis guys fault, they were forced.