NAM General Support

[Ganaram Inukshuk 906]

Please use the NAM General Discussion and Support Thread - 2nd Edition for this question.

 

I've moved the target post.

 

How come RTL (Road Turn Lanes) aren't working for me in Simcity 4.

They were interfering with another NAM plugin. Click on the intersection tile using the Rail tool (hotkey T)

[katamariguy 6]

Help! When I try to run the installer, right after I click "I Agree," the installer crashes! ("NetworkAddonMod_Setup.exe has stopped working)

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Works for a lot of other people.  What machine do you have and which operating system?

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

And a comment on documentation.  The NAM front page does not state which version of the NAM it is for.  It can't be that hard to change a page title.  A little more attention to detail when there may be various versions out there would be useful.  Right now you have to be an experienced user to determine from the documentation what you have.

[MandelSoft 2,769]

We are fixing that too. We get a whole bunch of new manuals distributed with the NAM 31.1

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Yes, I've got some of them.  I think PDFs are definitely the way to go.  I installed V31 in my production system.  It is fine for what I am doing.  Suggest you not put the documentation in the Plugins folder though.  How about a NAM_Docs folder in \SimCity 4?  Will save a little time not looking at those headers.

 

Another question that bothered me when I was testing GLR.  Three open tracks?  What kind of safety is this?  Will the Sims get killed by the power rail?

[Metalpuritan 160]

Is there a reason why rivit's street replacement mod does not work with the new NAM31?  All the straight sections and t intersections and 4 way intersections are broken now and show up as normal maxis streets.  I added a whole bunch of "Z"  up to I think 6, I started with just 1, but no matter how many I put it will always be superceded by NAM31  

 

Also is there a reason why the "larger cul-de-sac" mod no longer operate properly?  At first I thought I could live with just roundabouts, but then I started to make rural and suburban neighborhoods and the roundabouts look terrible in those situations.  The textures for them install naturally with "z" in front and alphabetically they load last, again though, as with rivit's street replacement mod, no matter what I do NAM31 takes over.

 

I also want to know if you are aware there is an issue with ramps for project symphony.

This is an error I can repeat all day right here.  These starterless on/off ramps from ground to elevated almost always glitch, see the extended ramp there, it is not supposed to be like that and there is no reason for it, very unstable, and at almost the same frequency(random but frequently) the MIS where it intersects the avenue will change from MIS to two lane when you place the starterless as well.  If I were to go and try to put a ramp piece there to join the starterless on ramp witht he highway, it will not allow it, it will turn the piece to face the other direction or it will not go at all.

 

I was really mad the other day too, I went to try and use project symphony, so I thought, I will check out a few videos so I can build along, I really wanted to give it a fair shot and learn how to use it effectively.  I followed the video step by step piece by piece pausing as I went along to give myself time to find the pieces and assemble them.  Turns out I could not even do that.  Makes me wonder if the build the person was using in the video was the same build we are working with because his went off without a hitch.  

 

This is a fresh new plugins folder too, no old NAM30 and nothing here conflicts, well, aside from what I have mentioned here and it doesn't so much as conflict with NAM31 as it gets overridden by it.

 

I really want to give NAM31 a fair shot, but every time I turn around there is something else that is telling me no.

 

I was wondering if there is a fix for these problems, and if not, if a fix for these instances will be included with NAM31.  More specifically, will NAM31.1 be more flexible than it is right now, as is right now this NAM31 does not play well with other mods, so far it either says no outright or it just messes up other mods.  And are you aware and working on the highway puzzle pieces problem?I pray someone has already brought that one to your attention.

 

This is one time I am reasonably confident that I myself, am not the issue.

[Tarkus 6,932]

I'm not sure why those street mods wouldn't be loading properly.  Try replacing all the "zzzz"s in front with a tilde (~) and see if that works.

 

As far as what you've reported with those ramps, it looks like somehow, you ended up with a ramp with starters there.  If there is a bad reference in the RUL0 entries for both versions of that piece, it would have been there since NAM 30 (though you might not have run into this issue, since Project Symphony didn't exist during NAM 30's time).  The HIDs in RUL0 have been re-indexed during our "fix" phase, post-NAM 31.  I'll check over to see what exactly is happening with those pieces in the current version of the controller.

 

As far as deconversion to the RHW-2 with the starterless versions, being starterless, there simply are no starters on there to convert the RHW-2 into MIS, and being standard puzzle pieces, they are not capable of initiating or supporting RUL2 overrides.  There's no way to change that with those particular pieces, and that's been the case as long as those pieces have existed (since NAM 28).  They're mostly designed for situations with a ground highway connecting to an Elevated Road/OWR/Avenue, not from an elevated highway to a ground-level Road/OWR/Avenue.  For Elevated Highway-to-Ground Network, unfortunately, you're going to need to allow a little extra space for starters.

 

The only possibility would be to completely get rid of those pieces altogether, and use some sort of FLEX setup.  The existing implementation of the FLEX-HT flexible height transition system requires a starter to run into it at the lower level, which you can't do with an intersection immediately butting up against it (it also doesn't work on 4-tile +2 level transitions--only 4-tile +1 level transitions and 7-tile +2 level transitions).  I could look into implementing an override, such that a starter can be placed in the middle of a FLEX transition, which would allow for nothing between the transition, the intersection, and the on/offramp connection to the Project Symphony Highway or RealHighway, but that's simply a theoretical proposition at this point, and, should it prove viable, probably wouldn't be introduced until NAM 32 at the earliest.

 

-Tarkus

[Metalpuritan 160]

I'm not sure why those street mods wouldn't be loading properly.  Try replacing all the "zzzz"s in front with a tilde (~) and see if that works.

 

As far as what you've reported with those ramps, it looks like somehow, you ended up with a ramp with starters there.  If there is a bad reference in the RUL0 entries for both versions of that piece, it would have been there since NAM 30 (though you might not have run into this issue, since Project Symphony didn't exist during NAM 30's time).  The HIDs in RUL0 have been re-indexed during our "fix" phase, post-NAM 31.  I'll check over to see what exactly is happening with those pieces in the current version of the controller.

 

As far as deconversion to the RHW-2 with the starterless versions, being starterless, there simply are no starters on there to convert the RHW-2 into MIS, and being standard puzzle pieces, they are not capable of initiating or supporting RUL2 overrides.  There's no way to change that with those particular pieces, and that's been the case as long as those pieces have existed (since NAM 28).  They're mostly designed for situations with a ground highway connecting to an Elevated Road/OWR/Avenue, not from an elevated highway to a ground-level Road/OWR/Avenue.  For Elevated Highway-to-Ground Network, unfortunately, you're going to need to allow a little extra space for starters.

 

The only possibility would be to completely get rid of those pieces altogether, and use some sort of FLEX setup.  The existing implementation of the FLEX-HT flexible height transition system requires a starter to run into it at the lower level, which you can't do with an intersection immediately butting up against it (it also doesn't work on 4-tile +2 level transitions--only 4-tile +1 level transitions and 7-tile +2 level transitions).  I could look into implementing an override, such that a starter can be placed in the middle of a FLEX transition, which would allow for nothing between the transition, the intersection, and the on/offramp connection to the Project Symphony Highway or RealHighway, but that's simply a theoretical proposition at this point, and, should it prove viable, probably wouldn't be introduced until NAM 32 at the earliest.

 

-Tarkus

Yes that did it, tilde was the answer to the cul-de-sac mod AND rivit's tar sealed streets, just add a tilde, never seen or heard of that before, thanks bud, so NAM31 DOES play nicely with other mods!

 

As to the MIS ground to elevated transition(15m) ON and OFF pieces.....Oh wait...I see the problem now....keep rotating and they toggle "starterless" off and on, well for that misunderstanding on my part I do apologize, it is very possible that I did just drag the piece over without noticing if it had switched to starterless or not, just looking at the arrows making sure they are pointed the right way.

 

I never used any of the highway stuff from previous versions of NAM, it is(was) too complicated, here is to trying new things, I am bound to make a bunch more mistakes int he future, I will try to be more patient and understanding going forward.

 

 

 

 

Edit: yes, I was able to build three back to back to back interchanges without  a single hiccup.  Thanks for making me aware of my error, looks like i did it to myself again.

 

Thanks Tarkus.

[katamariguy 6]

Works for a lot of other people.  What machine do you have and which operating system?

 

hp laptop, windows 7, ATI graphics.

 

I must note that my game is installed on the D drive. I have a suspicion that that is causing the problem.

[Gurning_Chimp 398]

Yes, I've got some of them.  I think PDFs are definitely the way to go.  I installed V31 in my production system.  It is fine for what I am doing.  Suggest you not put the documentation in the Plugins folder though.  How about a NAM_Docs folder in \SimCity 4?  Will save a little time not looking at those headers.

 

Another question that bothered me when I was testing GLR.  Three open tracks?  What kind of safety is this?  Will the Sims get killed by the power rail?

 

People don't get killed by it in Manchester (granted the power lines are overhead) but I imagine that can be modded there...

[JessiLaurn 183]

Re: third rail

 

Overhead catenary lines would be nice.  That said, I can only imagine the modding issues there.  There would need to be accommodation for support poles at intervals (which would probably require yet another set of puzzle pieces), mods to the light-rail vehicles to portray the pantograph, etc.

 

However, surface-street third rail solutions aren't unheard of.   In a number of American cities that had streetcar service (until its demise in the mid-20th century), ordinances required electrified street railways to draw current from a third rail and return the current to a fourth rail, both installed in a continuous vault underneath the street and accessed by means of a collector that passed through a slot between the running rails.  If the surface light rail textures were modified to include that slot, it would accurately portray that solution.

 

- Jess

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Works for a lot of other people.  What machine do you have and which operating system?

 

hp laptop, windows 7, ATI graphics.

 

I must note that my game is installed on the D drive. I have a suspicion that that is causing the problem.

Sounds like a bona fide bug in the installer.  It should be able to find your Plugins folder anywhere.

[CocoJones 7]

hp laptop, windows 7, ATI graphics.

 

I must note that my game is installed on the D drive. I have a suspicion that that is causing the problem.

Sounds like a bona fide bug in the installer.  It should be able to find your Plugins folder anywhere.

Just chiming in that I have both the game and my plugins installed on my D and had no probs installing NAM.

Seeing it crashes before choosing installation type this seems to be another conflict, maybe caused by other programs running at the same time.

[akbear 3]

Re: third rail

 

Overhead catenary lines would be nice.  That said, I can only imagine the modding issues there.  There would need to be accommodation for support poles at intervals (which would probably require yet another set of puzzle pieces), mods to the light-rail vehicles to portray the pantograph, etc.

 

However, surface-street third rail solutions aren't unheard of.   In a number of American cities that had streetcar service (until its demise in the mid-20th century), ordinances required electrified street railways to draw current from a third rail and return the current to a fourth rail, both installed in a continuous vault underneath the street and accessed by means of a collector that passed through a slot between the running rails.  If the surface light rail textures were modified to include that slot, it would accurately portray that solution.

 

- Jess

Even more contemporary than that in the early 70s the CTA (Chicago) reconfigured the Evanston Shuttle to third rail to eliminate older running stock from the system (the Skokie Swift ran a dual on the fly changeover system 'til much later on).  Their solution was to enclose the rails with chain link fence and gates which swung open over intersections that also then provided a secondary barrier at the crossings.  The cars would experience an inturruption of power and coast across the intersections for further safety rather than a few possible ways to were certainly available to prevent that.  Much later the chain link gates were replaced by something along the lines of elaborate cattle guards

[Swordmaster 50]

Re: third rail

 

Overhead catenary lines would be nice.  That said, I can only imagine the modding issues there.  There would need to be accommodation for support poles at intervals (which would probably require yet another set of puzzle pieces), mods to the light-rail vehicles to portray the pantograph, etc.

 

This is already in place in the form of a number of third party T21 mods. There are also many automata with pantographs.

 

 

Cheers

Willy

[z1 566]

 

Works for a lot of other people.  What machine do you have and which operating system?

 

hp laptop, windows 7, ATI graphics.

 

I must note that my game is installed on the D drive. I have a suspicion that that is causing the problem.

Sounds like a bona fide bug in the installer.  It should be able to find your Plugins folder anywhere.

 

It does.  The installer assumes nothing about the installation location.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Hmmm.  As I suspected.  You guys are pretty good.  Now, what could have caused the installer to crash, and do you get a dump?

[z1 566]

Hmmm.  As I suspected.  You guys are pretty good.  Now, what could have caused the installer to crash, and do you get a dump?

 

I've never seen the installer crash.  Looking at the documentation, it appears that it would not produce a dump if it did.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

I think the poster of this problem has to have a look at his set up.  There must be something weird about the way he is getting his files onto the D drive.  I guess you guys look in the registry to find the user files?  What if they are redirected by an option on the command line?

[z1 566]

I guess you guys look in the registry to find the user files?

 

Exactly.

 

  What if they are redirected by an option on the command line?

 

We go searching for them.  If we can't find them, then in Custom mode, the user can specify the path.

[GeometryMath Algebra 614]

Well, regarding the Ultra-Wide RHWs which I know won't be released in the next few releases, why not use the "Modular Lane RHW"? This new system would consist of 3 separate starters, The Inner Piece, Center Piece, and Outer Piece. This is more handy dandy than making a separate starter piece for each width because you can make an RHW-26 with just 3 puzzle pieces. (not including the number of center starters you have to plop! ) Also the number of puzzle pieces and RULing for ramp interfaces are largely reduced because the outer piece will pretty much handle the ramp interfaces for each width.  A disadvantage for that system would be bridges. Can this be made possible in the next few releases?

 

Regards,

Geometry

[Ganaram Inukshuk 906]

Well, regarding the Ultra-Wide RHWs which I know won't be released in the next few releases, why not use the "Modular Lane RHW"?

Well, that's a question that I already had written for the RHW FAQ.

There are a lot of complications:

An infinitely modular RHW would entail a system of textures with 3 or 4 lanes distributed evenly across, with each lane being, let's say, 32 pixels wide, or 4 meters wide, or 13.12 feet. The current textures have a lane width of 35 pixels, or 4.375 meters, or 14.35 feet. This would make the RHW lane width be smaller than even the non-RHW networks, which have an average lane width of 36 pixels.

The matter here is not just the lane width, but if such an effort is even worth it. Since we'd have to redo all of the RHW textures (and the RHW textures have come a long way, from directionally biased to far too wide than needed) and that we've reached a point where we don't wanna recalibrate the width any further, such a plan might not happen at all.

-----

There's also the matter of where to put it: the 0x57###### range was designed for every possible (practical) width of RHW, and it's been divvied up so each network gets its own address. Thing is, almost every address has been used up, and the ones that haven't are already reserved for future projects. There's no place to put it.

-----

Diagonals. What happens if you have diagonals? Everything breaks down because the diagonal footprint increases faster than the road deck can fill in. If you have a single RHW-4, an ortho RHW-4 will have a 16m-wide space to work with, but a diag RHW-4 will instead have 11.3 meters of space to work with. If you jump to the 8S, an ortho 8S will have 32 meters of space to work with, but a diag 8S will have nearly 34 meters of space to fill. And if you have an RHW-6C, instead of having 48 meters of space to work with orthogonally, it would have a whopping 56.57 meters of space to fill in diagonally. This problem would compound itself the wider a network becomes, until you reach the point where you have completely blank tiles that aren't being occupied by anything.

Using just the infinitely modular subsections in an ideal manner means you'd have to restrict the entire RHW system to being orthogonal-only. This is why we have dedicated widths, and furthermore, a width cap.

[longhorn 25]

One way to MIS isn't working for me.  Shows a blank tile where they connect.  Connections that were built prior to v31 are working fine.

[GeometryMath Algebra 614]

One way to MIS isn't working for me.  Shows a blank tile where they connect.  Connections that were built prior to v31 are working fine.

Please use the NAM 31 Central Bug Tracker instead. Anyway, the NAM Team have fixed that bug on their side and will be released with the NAM 31.1 hotfix.

[Tarkus 6,932]

It won't be a hotfix. It's a full-on package.  The hotfix paradigm is officially dead.

 

-Tarkus

[GeometryMath Algebra 614]

It won't be a hotfix. It's a full-on package.  The hotfix paradigm is officially dead.

 

-Tarkus

Well, I am aware that it's a full package. But in my view, a hotfix is an update that's either a full package or not a full package.

[Averse 0]

Hi, everyone. After I installed NAM 31, the game will freeze at whichever city I try to load. Is anyone having the same problem? 

I appreciate any possible solutions. Thanks! 

[z1 566]

Yes, this is a known problem for certain users, and it will be fixed very shortly.

[KillFace 0]

Sorry, quick question. I've looked everywhere and can't find the answer.

 

When is the estimated release date for NAM 31.1?

 

I'm having issues with crashes on save with NAM 31 and was told that it should be fixed in 31.1.

 

So I'm anxiously awaiting it's release so I can return to SC4.

 

Thank you for all of your work guys!