NAM General Support

[z1 566]

Intracity loops should never happen; there's a lot of logic built into the traffic simulator to ensure this. Are you sure that the Sims who left your farm area are the exact same ones that arrived there? If you can generate a route query that includes a loop here, please post it; I'd be very interested in seeing this.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Sorry, I scrapped the city.  It was beyond recovery, and I couldn't figure out how to get the farmers to use the trains.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

"Here's a howdy-do" - W.S.Gilbert in the Mikado

There has got to be something I missed when I was reading this up, because I don't understand this.  My workers walk to the bus, take it up to the main drag, walk on the main drag to the steet where they work, and hop the bus again to their workplace.

The main drag shows buses on the thoroughfare, but they don't seem to want to enter it from the side streets.  The main drag is a MAVE-4.  Did I miss an interface?  Can you intersect with a MAVE-4 just by contacting it?  The graphics act like you can, but the buses don't cross the boundary.

Post Hoc:  Forget it.  I figured it out.  I just led the street into the side of the MAVE-4, not across it.  I set up a reight turns only situation.  When I dragged the street all the way across, it works just fine, thank you.  It might be worth a note that you can indeed set up a "right turns only" situation this way.  Who'd-a-thunk it, eh?

[Tarkus 6,932]

You need to drag the street all the way through the MAVE-4 to make a full +-Intersection, just as you would with a standard Avenue.  Right now, you just have the "Near T" intersections, which basically only allow RIRO (right-in right-out) movement.

-Alex (Tarkus)

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

You'll note that I did amend my post to say I didn't need a reply.  I figured it out when other streets allowed buses to right turn but not left.  Anyway, thanks for the prompt reply.

John (of the Nonny Moose)

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Just a note of thanks.

I have now completed the set up of a new region in which the main city has a MAVE-4 as its main drag.  This works like a dream to tame the heavy traffic through my common business district, and I have some sub-districts as well.

A couple of notes about the behavior of MAVE-4:

1. No curve pieces.  I am using avenue round abouts to turn the MAVE-4 in one of my cities.  One assumes that these will be forthcoming in a future release.  Presently, if you try a turn by dragging, it turns into an AVE-4.
2. Sometimes, when there is an intersection, the MAVE-4 partly reverts to AVE-4.  This can be fixed easilty by dropping in a new starter piece and extending it accordingly.
3. The new controlled intersections for roads are very nice.  The islands are inspired.
4. Ran a monorail across the MAVE-4 without difficulty.  Ditto on regular rail tracks.
5. In this city, the MAVE-4 runs completely across the tile.  Neighbor connectors work like gangbusters.  Very nice.

The development of this city (New Ostia) is not complete, but it is far enough along for me to say that I really like what the NWM has added to the NAM.

[gigacoaster 4]

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?

quote>

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Originally posted by:???

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?quote>

Its happened on the first and second ones from the avenue roundabout list--the plain one and the plain one with the diagonal jut thing.  Those are the only two I have in use, though...so I don't know if it would happen on the other ones.

quote>

I have a city with the first avenue roundabout in it, and this does not happen to me (on Linux/wine 3.2).  I have replaced the stuff in the centre with a zone.

[gigacoaster 4]

Originally posted by: A Nonny Moose

Originally posted by:???

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?quote>

Its happened on the first and second ones from the avenue roundabout list--the plain one and the plain one with the diagonal jut thing.  Those are the only two I have in use, though...so I don't know if it would happen on the other ones.

quote>

I have a city with the first avenue roundabout in it, and this does not happen to me (on Linux/wine 3.2).  I have replaced the stuff in the centre with a zone.

quote>

I'm using Windows XP to run the game...ah it's not a major deal though.  I've learned to avoid careless mouse strokes

[Samness 104]

Hey I don't know if this has already been asked but... How do you make GLR go through roundabouts? As in, Tram-in-Road going through a Road roundabout?

[jim 546 43]

There are roundabout pieces at the back of the Tram-in-Road puzzle pieces for the one way road roundabouts, and there are avenue roundabout pieces in the roundabout puzzle pieces menu.

[Api17 0]

I'm having some problems with NAM .

Once i place the roads and intersections etc , The cars seems to be driving on the opposite lane, Despite the roads showing which way to go .

Is there anyway to fix this?

[jim 546 43]

Api17: Did you install NAM for the correct driving side? If your cars drive on the left and you skipped through the installer quickly, you would have missed the option to install left hand drive pieces. You should check this is the problem by running the installer again.

[Api17 0]

jim 546: Thanks for the help , I did miss out that option, I changed to the left drive, And it drive on the correct lane .

Sorry for troubling you .

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

I've been having problems with the bulldozer. 

When working with puzzle pieces, when you have to change or correct something, if you bulldoze a single tile, for example in a rail cross over, the tiles on both sides usually collapse.  Apparently the bulldozer is not precise enough for a single tile, and I know no way of changing its range.  We need to consider whether it would be possible to refocus this gadget, because I hate having to rebuild some structure of long standing just because I want to have a new road pass under a previously rail-over-blank-terrain piece which has to be replaced with rail-over-road.

As part of some thread cleanup, this and the next several posts were moved from the Development thread since they deal with the existing NAM and not things in development.

-CaptCity

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

This is a different bug altogether.

NAM Current Version.

NWM - MAVE-4

Intersection of two Maxis Roads one tile away from each other.  I think the game overrode you here.  Tried this with first one then the other, and vice versa.

Is it possible that the RTMT bus station may have caused this?  I have been having some strange things happening within three or four grids of these things.

EDIT:  And to answer that question:  Apparently not.

[Tarkus 6,932]

That there looks like the NAM Road Roundabouts Plugin trying to interlope.  Had a similar issue with intersections between two dual-tile Road-based NWM networks, too, though that one was fixed before release.  I'll take a look at it for our next update--thanks for reporting it, John!

-Alex (Tarkus)

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Originally posted by: Tarkus

That there looks like the NAM Road Roundabouts Plugin trying to interlope.  Had a similar issue with intersections between two dual-tile Road-based NWM networks, too, though that one was fixed before release.  I'll take a look at it for our next update--thanks for reporting it, John!

-Alex (Tarkus)

quote>

No problem, Alex.  I report 'em if I stumble upon 'em.  I fixed it by rerouting one of the roads by one grid, destroying a small amount of I-HT.  It is interesting that you are falling over your own work, because I am sure there are other nasties lying in wait in the main executable too.

When I was working, one of the things I was very good at was testing a program to destruction.  I didn't formally do Q.A. but I was involved in the early edits of the ISO 9000 series of standards.  I was sometimes referred to as ol' poison fingers.

John.

P.S.  Thanks to everyone who had anything to do with the new traffic volume display.  It is very, very helpful.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

An observation on the inter-city Sims looping problem.

I am posting this here because it has to do with the infamous car/passenger ferry.  I spent several hours today chasing down and breaking up a persistent inter-city loop among several of my current cities in my current region.  At first, I thought that the seat of the problem was the monorail system that stretched across some of the cities involved, but as my analysis continued I found that the root of the problem is the attraction of sea air for the Sims.  It seems they like to travel by boat, especially if they can take their cars with them.

In one instance, the little devils travelled by road when they should not have even been in the city involved.  There were more Sims on the rail line than the number of Sims in the city, and when I pulled that plug, they came from another direction entirely from a different city, by road.  I started tracking to see what the attraction was.  It was the ferry.  The ferry was only there for esthetic reasons, so I bulldozed it.  The bogus traffic vanished and did not return.

I moved to the city that was the source of the last set of bogus Sims.  It did not have any neighbor connections of any kind except to the small city that had attracted my attention in the first place.  I was using the road connection as a production sink for my freight, but the Sims started using it to loop to the sea.  This city had no shoreline.

This city was also connected to one of my shore side cities by a monorail link that was never attached to anything.  So I put a link to the road the darlings were using, and put a big monorail station on it.  Since they could no longer get to a boat via the road route any more, they all jumped on the monorail.

I opened the sea side city, and completed the monorail link with a high capacity station.  Sure enough, thousands of Sims showed up.  I broke a link in the tracks so that they could only go south towards the water.  This overloaded my normally good monorail station nearest the water, and took the other terminus to 100%.  Both of these stations were end points.

I tracked the devious devils along several of my transport networks, and discovered that they had overloaded the rail terminus nearest the ferry by my seaport, which was there for the people on the island in this city to get to the industrial plants.  They were running about 8200 usage on this ferry, so I bulldozed it, and the other two along the shore and monitored.  After about fifteen minutes (I have a slow machine), all the traffic levels returned to normal, and the loading on the station I put in went from about 15,000 to around 3,000.  The loop did not re-establish anywhere I could detect.

I conclude that one of the big attractions is the car/passenger ferry.  I am putting this here because your group have had problems with that building, and ask if your manipulation of it may have made it more attractive to the Sims? 

Think about it.  I've been playing this game for eight or more years and have never had as many loops as I have had since I installed the latest NAM.  Could your tweak have pushed some instability in the lot?

[Tarkus 6,932]

Actually, we never touched the Car and Passenger Ferry itself.  The crashing issue in the last release was caused by an interaction between the AutoPlace mechanism that was added in RUL 0x10000000 to allow for Draggable Fractional Angle Roads, and the underlying Transit-Enabling under the ferry lot. 

To fix it, all we did was remove the new feature from the RUL file, reverting the Fractional Angle functionality to how it was in the July 2009 NAM, which eliminated the conflict without touching the ferry itself.  Since its inception 6 1/2 years ago, the NAM Team has had a standing policy of not including lots or modifications to lots in the NAM and its other related RUL-bound Plugins, like the RHW and NWM.

-Alex (Tarkus)

[KCJC 367]

I've noticed the bulldozing thing too, especially with TULEPS it can get rather frustrating if you're doing something complex. Is the bulldozer or something about the nature of puzzle pieces, the modding involved in the NAM is a little over my head so I'll leave that to you guys, but just wondering if their might be a possible solution, it's no big deal if there isn't, just a matter of convenience.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Originally posted by: Tarkus

Actually, we never touched the Car and Passenger Ferry itself.  The crashing issue in the last release was caused by an interaction between the AutoPlace mechanism that was added in RUL 0x10000000 to allow for Draggable Fractional Angle Roads, and the underlying Transit-Enabling under the ferry lot. 

To fix it, all we did was remove the new feature from the RUL file, reverting the Fractional Angle functionality to how it was in the July 2009 NAM, which eliminated the conflict without touching the ferry itself.  Since its inception 6 1/2 years ago, the NAM Team has had a standing policy of not including lots or modifications to lots in the NAM and its other related RUL-bound Plugins, like the RHW and NWM.

-Alex (Tarkus)

quote>

Thanks, Alex.  I was trying to be helpful in case you had touched something that might have triggered this problem.  I wonder if this affinity for going to sea has always been there, or has been exacerbated by the expanded network powers granted by the modifications your team has been making.  As I said, I have never had so many loops so often.  I was aware of the problem and generally try to avoid setting it up.  Must be something in my new playing style.

Update: Monday, 04 October 2010 03:07 PM

There are six ferry ports in my main city that was invoved, all showing normal loads.  But three of them are in a cluster, which indicates that at one time I worked hard to distribute an over load.  Killing the loop has calmed these stations.  Could it be that Sims like ferries because the calculated shortest time is on a ferry than by any other means?

[z1 566]

Ferries are weird. Unlike other networks and travel types, most of the information about them does not appear in the traffic simulator exemplar - it's hardwired somewhere in the executable. So ferries have a speed, but we don't know what it is. That could certainly have an effect on the calculated shortest time. If someone wanted to conduct some experiments on ferries versus other water crossings, a speed range could be determined.

Also, if the body of water on which a ferry terminal sits connects to another city with a ferry terminal, ferries will traverse that route, even if the ferry terminal in the second city is on a different body of water that isn't connected to the first. The reason for this is that the first city does not have access to the second city's topography. It only knows that there's a connected body of water there and another ferry terminal.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

giggle.  I had a suspicion about ferries all along, but only thought that they were the fastest means.  I never realized they could teleport.  I'll be very careful how I deploy them from now on.  Often, they are the only means of getting to an island other than using a very expensive bridge that takes up more land than is available.  Also, because diagonal bridges are only done through really underhanded tricks, I try to stay away from that.

I have goldiva's water taxi.  Maybe by using it, and/or the passenger only ferry with parking buildings I can prevent the Sims from  roaring around from place to place and looping through my region.

Thanks for the discussion gentlemen.  You've cleared up some points that have bothered me for months.

(aside:  I guess it would be politically incorrect to say ferries are queer.}

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

You really do have a texture problem with the NWM transition piece for MAVE-4 to AVE-4.  This time, I very carefully levelled the ground that this piece is on using the road tile stamping method.  It was worse after I levelled the g round than before.  Here is the shot.

..

[Tarkus 6,932]

Yes, the grass collision there--I've had a couple other folks report that as well.  It's kind of an odd one as it seems to be at least partially dependent on particular graphics cards/settings (settings-wise, Blue Lightning has mentioned that the "Z-fighting" property may have an impact).  I have not been able to replicate it here on my end, however.

Just out of curiosity, what do you have graphics card-wise?  I'm on an ATI Mobility Radeon 4100 here.

-Alex (Tarkus)

[jdenm8 362]

I'm just saying that I've only ever seen it once, and I was (foolishly) using it on a slope (that causes the hole to China bug too it seems). So, no real issues here I guess.

I'm on an ATI Mobility Radeon HD3200 which must be safe.

[Shadow Assassin 336]

I have not been able to replicate it here on my end, however.quote>

I have.

Laptop with 9500m GT... had the issue.

Laptop with 5730... didn't have the issue.

It could be how both cards deal with Z-order. But that being said, it may be theoretically possible to check the nVidia control panel and change relevant settings. I've experimented with it before, to no avail.

[Tarkus 6,932]

Sounds like it may be an nVidia issue, then?

-Alex (Tarkus)

[Vahr 341]

It varies. My 2003 nVidia GeForce FX Go5200 doesn't suffer from this issue. My ATI card (2010) doesn't suffer from this issue either. So most likely, its dependent on the z-bias/fighting settings on the card, possibly either built in handling of it or by the "aggressiveness" setting in options.