Mojave Texture Development: Phase 0b

[Ganaram Inukshuk 906]

A few of you guys may have seen me randomly post tiny little screenshots of this, but now I've created (hopefully) a video for it.

 

 

And what better time to publicise it than the 100M Download Milestone?

 

Selected screenshots from video:

 

 

 

Other teasers:

 

 

The main goals of this project is this:

• Create a texture set only using Inkscape; this may also include grass and sidewalk textures, as well as using GIMP or Paint.NET to modify original Inkscape-exported images.

• Create a unified look of road networks for as many networks as possible, starting with the cardinal networks (Road, One Way Road, and Avenue, and if possible, Street) and eventually expanding to other NAM networks (Tram-Road Addon Mod, Street Addon Mod, Network Widening Mod, RealHighway Mod, etc).

 

This will entail the following fundamental design changes:

• All networks: Sidewalks will now line directly at the curb instead of having a grass strip between it and the actual road. This is to ensure a consistent width, no matter if it's orthogonal, diagonal or fractionally angled.

• All networks with sidewalks: The sidewalk width will be changed to 60 inches (1.5 meters, or about 12px), the recommended minimum width for sidewalks in the United States that has clearance for sidewalks. This width may not be possible for exceptionally narrow networks.

• All networks, including all NAM-added networks: Recreate the lane widths for each network to be as uniform as possible. Some networks will have wider lanes than others, but for groups of networks of similar overall width, such as Road and One Way Road, or with TLA-3 and ARD-3, their lanes should be of the same width. The recommended width is 32px and may be wider or narrower than that as needed.

• All networks but Street: An additional white line will line the sides of each network, denoting which side is the outermost side in the case of Road and Avenue.

• All networks but Road and Street: Line spacing will follow the guidelines as suggested by the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices, that being a 3:1 gap-to-dash length ratio with a minimum of 30ft for the gap and 10ft for the dash. For tesselation purposes, this means that this ratio will be 39ft (12m, 96px) for the gap and 13ft (4m, 32px) for the dash.

• Avenue only: Yellow lines will be added to the median to better denote the actual median.

• All networks but Street: All network intersections will have a uniform turning radius, no matter if the intersection is orthogonal-orthogonal or diagonal-diagonal. The crosswalks will also have a defined width, the same width as the sidewalks. Any orthogonal-diagonal intersections will be based off of the original ortho-ortho intersections, but will be skewed accordingly.

• Street only: Apply all of the modifications set forth with all of the other networks, while still maintaining most of its original colouration.

• All networks: Sidewalk textures will be changed to a different set of textures, also made with Inkscape. The "tiles" on the sidewalks will be changed from being a 10×10 pattern to a 16×16 pattern, meaning that each "tile" is one square meter. These textures will be 256×256, however. This sidewalk modification is optional.

Phase 0 of this project is establishing the dimensional and colour specifications for this project. Once that's done, Phases 1 and 2 can go forward. So far, the future plans look like this:

 

 - Phase 0: Dimensional and colour specifications

 - Phase 1: Road Textures, including certain related NAM plugins

 - Phase 2: Street Textures, including related NAM plugins

 - Phase 3: One Way Road or Avenue?

 - Phase 4: ?!!

 

I'm taking a "phased" approach to this, working on only one network at a time. Since Phase 1 only focuses on Road textures, intersections/crossings involving Road and other networks will not be included. As Phase 2 involves Streets, Street-Road intersections will be included then. If Phase 3 involves Avenue, then Street-Road, Road-Avenue, and Avenue-Street intersections will be involved then, and so on.

 

I may include open testing for this, sharing test files before public releases. I will be later providing the raw .png files for this, in case others would like to try their hand with texturing. The methods of texture making aren't like what most people are probably used to, as this uses a completely different set of tools than what most of us are used to. I'll explain this at another time, but to give you a hint, most of it is based off of Rivit's texture development process. (Kudos to him for showing me his texturing program.)

 

Overall progress for this will be on a "whenever I can" and "if my Internet connection can keep up with me" basis.

 

Questions? Comments? Concerns? Drop 'em in!!

[Cyclone Boom 17,032]

Nice video Ganaram, well done! I thought there was some good humour in there too!

 

The project looks really promising, and I'll be interested to see how it develops. The new textures certainly are much improved, and appears to give networks a fresh, smooth look. That zoning mod also looks rather neat as well.

 

Shame about the diagonal issue, but I guess it's just a game limitation. Not a big deal really.

[Huston 5,800]

Nice project! I could totally use that over the current maxis textures. It's looking very impressive and hoping to see further developments

[MTYland 35]

[Ganaram Inukshuk 906]

Nice video Ganaram, well done! I thought there was some good humour in there too!

 

The project looks really promising, and I'll be interested to see how it develops. The new textures certainly are much improved, and appears to give networks a fresh, smooth look. That zoning mod also looks rather neat as well.

 

Shame about the diagonal issue, but I guess it's just a game limitation. Not a big deal really.

 

Thanks. The video serves several purposes:

- Some thing are best seen in action rather than still images.

- It gives me an excuse to further develop the "double narrator" thing I've had for ages.

The zoning mod's merely a set of 11 textures; it's small enough to release as a mini-mod. I'll look into that sometime this week.

There feels like a disconnect over how textures should be developed, and I'm erring on the side of efficiency. As I mentioned, I'm using a tool that Rivit developed that handles wealthing all of the textures for you, so you only need, at the absolute minimum, three textures: the texture for wealth level 0, the alpha for wealth level 0, and the alpha for wealth levels 1-3. Technically you need three copies of it, so technically you need five textures, but four of them are alphas. Otherwise, you have to go through the gruelling method of generating the wealth textures yourself.

-----

Speaking of diagonals, someone asked on my Youtube vid about how to fix the notches in the sidewalk.

Speaking as someone who has no experience retexturing, is it possible to have the sidewalk overhang the tile? That way it wouldn't break up the sidewalk on diagonals.

There is one theoretical method to fix it: use a Type21 exemplar that uses an overhanging prop that fills in that notch. The drawbacks here have to do with practicality: one, interference with other exemplars, such as those that add in streetlights, so unless you remake a lot of streetlight T21s, you'll either have a streetlight or a notch, but not both; 2, interference with other sidewalk mods, as you'd have to remake the prop for every sidewalk mod there is; and 3, certain buildings might extend out all the way into the corner, so the notch gets buried into the building.

 

Nice project! I could totally use that over the current maxis textures. It's looking very impressive and hoping to see further developments

Thanks also.

The one thing I'm looking to fill in next is all of the weird Road crossings. These are the ones done so far...

[A.Burgess 2]

Ahh yes, the T21 exemplar issue is one I did not know about but upon looking into what it was I can see why it wouldn't work. It's a shame I guess. The other option would be filler pieces but I can't see that being that practical for many people.

 

But all in all, the project is looking good. I look forward to seeing how it develops in the future.

[MandelSoft 2,775]

It would also be nice to have an Euro style version of this. This would entail the following changes:

- All yellow lines should be white.

- The double solid median line of the roads should be single dashed lines (solid lines for sharp curves). To distict them visually from OWRs, use three dashes instead of one per tile. This usually means that you should maintain a lower speed.

But the current set looks like a new standard in the making. It reminds me of the SimCity 3000 roads!

[riiga 234]

It would also be nice to have an Euro style version of this. This would entail the following changes:

- All yellow lines should be white.

- The double solid median line of the roads should be single dashed lines (solid lines for sharp curves). To distict them visually from OWRs, use three dashes instead of one per tile. This usually means that you should maintain a lower speed.

But the current set looks like a new standard in the making. It reminds me of the SimCity 3000 roads!

 

Indeed, but I disagree that there should be solid lines at curves. I've never really seen that, perhaps it's more of a continental European thing. Also, using too many dashes would make the textures unrealistic like the previous Euro ones. Looking at the official Swedish road marking specifications, dashes have 1:1 ratio at 50 km/h and slower, 3:1 otherwise, and 1:3 where there's limited sight.

 

I like the look of the textures so far, Ganaram, the remind me of SC3K as Maarten said.

[TPB 563]

That is an amazing project Ganaram! Best of luck!

 

Such a shame about the corners on diagonals, I suppose that's why original simcity sidewalks were so small : )

 

I don't know where you all are from, but I'm pretty sure every country I've been to has solid lines on curves.

 

This is from UK:

 

 

France:

 

 

Germany:

 

 

...etc.

 

 

As far as I know, dashed line = ok to overtake

Solid Line = DO NOT Overtake

 

Curves are obvious do not overtake spots

[Shy Dude 149]

I hate how Maxis overscaled the road automata and as a result a simple 2 lane road is about 9.6 meters wide rather than something more close to reality like about 7 or 8 meters. Smaller (correct scale) roads and automata would be way more versatile But there will seem to be too much problems that are probably beyond the scope of this mod if that route is taken.

 

Also, I always wanted to make textures with Inkscape, I look forward to the video explaining it all.

[Ganaram Inukshuk 906]

But the current set looks like a new standard in the making. It reminds me of the SimCity 3000 roads!

I like the look of the textures so far, Ganaram, the remind me of SC3K as Maarten said.

Then you guys know something I don't: what SC3K looks like because I never played it. Weeird...

Since Phase 0 has to do with getting the markings right, there needs to be a few things that need to be clarified. So far, I know these regional traits:

United States:

- Predominant colours: White and yellow

- General layout of Road-type networks: Double yellow line to mark off the middle of the road, white lines to mark off the shoulders

- General layout of Avenue-type networks: Single yellow line to mark off the median, white lines to mark off the shoulders, white dashes in a 12:4 ratio of spaces to dashes every tile

- General layout of TLA networks: Same as Avenue but with an inner set of yellow dashes inside of the median to mark off the central turning lane

Canada:

- Same as the US but with TLA central turning lane markings turned inside-out

Ireland and South Africa:

- Same as the US but with yellow lines for the shoulders and white lines for the middle of the road

- TLA: Unknown

"Generic" European:

- Same as the US but with white lines only

- General layout of Road-type networks: Single white dash per tile, space-to-dash ratio is variable according to speed of the network

- General layout of TLA networks: Almost nonexistent, more research is required

Now here's the problem I have to untangle with Europe's road markings: every country seems to have its own standards for markings. That's what scares me about Euro textures is that there's lots of variation. If I were to start with RHW, for example, I'd have to bear in mind that France's highway markings are different from that of, say, Germany; every four dashes on a French highway is a break in the shoulder's line, impossible to replicate in its entirety unless you use a T21.

There's more. Since, for the first time ever, there are shoulder lines on things that aren't RD-4, AVE-6, or the RHW networks, should these textures also be subject to how shoulder markings work in certain European countries?

And on that matter, what about Asian road markings? European road markings tend to be passed off as Japanese road markings; if there's other similarities/differences I need to--

BABY STEPS, ME!!!

I'm gonna find some information about road markings across the world. Then I'm gonna see if a "generic" European set can be made out of it. Specificity can be dealt with, then. I will, however, keep in mind the line spacing for Road-type networks; I just need to see if there's any other specific numbers I need to bear in mind. If anyone's also got specific information worth nothing, feel free to point it out as well. =)

First stop, Europe.

-----

Or I could just look at the RHW textures for inspiration. Der...

[MushyMushy 3,618]

This is looking really great; I'll definitely download it!

 

I was curious if you could also release an alternate version of the US texture set that lacks the white lines on the edges of the roads. The roads in the region of the US where I live actually don't have the lines (for some reason!); the only networks that have them are the highways (to mark the shoulder). This trait causes the right-hand lanes of 4 lane roads (e.g. AVE, RD-4) to be larger than the left-hand lanes. This is generally a lot more noticeable on 4 lane roads w/o medians (RD-4). This also affects 6-lane roads in the same way.

 

This (I think) is a relatively minor thing (cover up the white line with road texture?), but I realize you also have a lot of tiles to texture. I guess just give it some thought if you find the time...

[Ganaram Inukshuk 906]

The roads in the region of the US where I live actually don't have the lines (for some reason!); the only networks that have them are the highways (to mark the shoulder). This trait causes the right-hand lanes of 4 lane roads (e.g. AVE, RD-4) to be larger than the left-hand lanes. This is generally a lot more noticeable on 4 lane roads w/o medians (RD-4). This also affects 6-lane roads in the same way.

It confirms something I was just looking up: the states of the US either follow the national MUTCD or some variant of their own. In my area, there tends to be a white shoulder line, even on non-Highway roads, hence the project name "Mojave Texture Development", because the initial version is based off of Mojave Desert road systems. The few exceptions included the ones I had in my video.

There's one minor thing to keep in mind with the asphalt is that I'm using the Inkscape equivalent of noise, so the asphalt is not just one colour, so just painting over the shoulder lines wouldn't be enough... The difference is negligible, but a really keen eye can pick up the difference...

Anyway, future plans of this would include me sharing the raw .PNG/.BMP and .SVG files so that others can toy with the textures all they want. It's to allow others to make their own specific/custom versions. Certain textures, like the weird Road crossings I had a few posts back, are made by stitching together the very first weird Road crossing (in the upper left corner) with certain other Road textures, like the S-bend, boomerang bend, 45-degree bend, or a mirroring of itself. Certain other textures (I fear this may be the case with certain diagonal crossings) need to be created and exported through Inkscape.

-----

So should I really start worrying about regional variation? Yes, but mabye not by a lot...

[Durfsurn 539]

Great stuff Ganaram! One thing on the sidewalk "notch" issue, you could convert the diagonal networks to models not textures and have overhanging sidewalks (but they would not change by wealth would they?) much like how PS does diagonals. I don't know if this would work and if they could be at a Y=+0.1 of say grass textures on houses (so they go overtop) but could be worth considering.

 

-Billy

[Ganaram Inukshuk 906]

One thing on the sidewalk "notch" issue, you could convert the diagonal networks to models not textures and have overhanging sidewalks (but they would not change by wealth would they?) much like how PS does diagonals.

Height issues aside, it'd mean converting the Road network into a model-based network, but only for the diagonals (like with the NWM), and that's a lot of work already. Plus, it'd mean you'd have sidewalks at wealth level 0, and it'd be hard to get to work with custom sidewalks. (I actually considered sidewalks at wealth level 0, but that'd be really complicated, since you'd need wealth levels 4-7 to compensate.)

The model could be made into a prop and then a T21 exemplar be made for it for attaching it onto the Road itself, but then you'd be back to the same issue I described.

So, sadly, yeah, no good way around the notch problem.

[MandelSoft 2,775]

About the European Textures: what I do is to keep them generic as possible at the first instance (baby steps). Although there are regional differences, the majority of the markings are roughly the same. When in doubt, it may be best to stick to the German road markings, since that's probably the most generic European style out there.

 

Regional differences are a killer, which is why I stick to generic sets at first.

 

Once a base set is done, you can start looking for regional differences. Here is a (quite long) list of characteristics of regional differences:

• Relative dashed line spacing, lane seperation (approximate):
  • 1:2: Austria, Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany, Ireland, Slovakia, Slovenia, Switzerland.
  • 1:3: Belgium, France, Finland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden
  • Other: Italy (4:7), UK (2:7); Portugal (7:13)
• Outer lines:
  • Standard: solid
  • France,the Netherlands (new standards): dashed, 3:3 (meters)
  • Sweden: dashed, 1:1 (meters)
• Block markings
  • Austria, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, Norway, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Switzerland, Sweden: fat dashes equal to the normal dash length, 1:1
  • Belgium, UK: thin, short dashes, 1 meter long: 1.2:2 (like the US style).
  • The Netherlands: fat dashes, 1 meter long, 1:3.
• Specific regional characteristics:
  • Slow speeds (50 km/h and lower):
    • Standard: no difference
    • Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden: dashed line frequency doubles, line spacing becomes either 1:1 (SE, NO, FI) or 2:1 (DK).
    • The Netherlands: line length becomes 1 meter instead of 3, relative spacing proportions remains the same.
  • Dangerous curves and sections:
    • Austria, Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Slovakia, Sweden:  dashed line frequency doubles.
    • Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway, UK: the dashed line spacing proportion reverses: i.e. 1:3 becomes 3:1.
    • Belgium: short dashes: 1:0.5 meters
  • Sharp curves
    • Standard: solid, single
    • UK, Norway: solid, double
    • Sweden: usually the same as for dangerous curves.
  • Ramp split markings:
    • Standard: chevron lines
    • The Netherlands, Slovenia: Solid fill.
  • Yield markings:
    • Dashed marking (no special markings): standard
    • "Shark Teeth": Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway, Slovenia, Sweden
    • Double Dashed lines: UK
  • Line colours:
    • Standard: all lines are white; only temporary markings are yellow
    • Norway: center lines are yellow
    • Ireland: shoulder lines are yellow

As you see, Germany falls for the most part in the most generic style, so try to keep that as a norm.

 

That's European Road Markings 101 for today

Best,
MandelSoft

[DomoTheRussian 68]

 

One thing on the sidewalk "notch" issue, you could convert the diagonal networks to models not textures and have overhanging sidewalks (but they would not change by wealth would they?) much like how PS does diagonals.

Height issues aside, it'd mean converting the Road network into a model-based network, but only for the diagonals (like with the NWM), and that's a lot of work already. Plus, it'd mean you'd have sidewalks at wealth level 0, and it'd be hard to get to work with custom sidewalks. (I actually considered sidewalks at wealth level 0, but that'd be really complicated, since you'd need wealth levels 4-7 to compensate.)

The model could be made into a prop and then a T21 exemplar be made for it for attaching it onto the Road itself, but then you'd be back to the same issue I described.

So, sadly, yeah, no good way around the notch problem.

 

 

Well I hope there will be a good workaround someday while it's getting developed, either way it's really gonna be a big drawback for me so either i'm gonna deal with it or avoid placing diagonal roads at all 

[Ganaram Inukshuk 906]

Well I hope there will be a good workaround someday while it's getting developed, either way it's really gonna be a big drawback for me so either i'm gonna deal with it or avoid placing diagonal roads at all

Or you can simply not use the mod at all. Don't like it? Don't use it.

If I spend my precious time worrying about how to fix a tiny aesthetic shortcoming rather than figure out how to progress with everything else, then not only will it drive progress to a standtsill, but it'll no longer make the process fun. Things such as figuring out how to standardise the road markings and how to space out each lane deserve a higher priority, as it contributes to the overall progress. If there's a shortcoming and there is no good solution to it, then it's no longer worth looking into and we're all are just gonna have to deal with it.

Catering to the requests of one person at the expense of everyone else's only serves to suck the fun out of mod development, especially after I've explained how that one particular issue is a very difficult issue to fix. Besides, no one else is complaining about it.

[DomoTheRussian 68]

 

Well I hope there will be a good workaround someday while it's getting developed, either way it's really gonna be a big drawback for me so either i'm gonna deal with it or avoid placing diagonal roads at all

Or you can simply not use the mod at all. Don't like it? Don't use it.

If I spend my precious time worrying about how to fix a tiny aesthetic shortcoming rather than figure out how to progress with everything else, then not only will it drive progress to a standtsill, but it'll no longer make the process fun. Things such as figuring out how to standardise the road markings and how to space out each lane deserve a higher priority, as it contributes to the overall progress. If there's a shortcoming and there is no good solution to it, then it's no longer worth looking into and we're all are just gonna have to deal with it.

Catering to the requests of one person at the expense of everyone else's only serves to suck the fun out of mod development, especially after I've explained how that one particular issue is a very difficult issue to fix. Besides, no one else is complaining about it.

 

The problem is that I like the mod and neither I request the fix. Yes, you could say that I'm kind of complaining but it's just either my egoist inside me or my "perfectionism". Sorry

[TPB 563]

I  have to say, your reply to dOmo kind of kills any desire one might have to give any type of critical feedback to your development process. It's a real shame, as one could argue this type critical input is far more important than its purely positive counterpart.

 

I really don't think that it is a "tiny shortcoming", it's a rather huge one. One that is likely to make this mod be half as popular as it deserves to be.

 

It also makes your whole work kind of pointless, if you ask me. Why are you standardizing the road marking and making the sidewalks the right size? For added realism I assume? Well, I don't think having triangular sections of the sidewalk missing every 14 meters along roads is very realistic.

 

Having said that I do realize this "tiny" detail is practically impossible to fix without huge amounts of work, and the only easy fix means backtracking on most of the scaling work you've done. I guess this is why the sidewalks were downscaled in the first place.

 

Personally I was hoping you'd address the issue at some point in development, but I also totally understand your reasons for not doing so.

 

What I don't think is constructive nor beneficial is that type of tone(Which incidentally I've gotta mention I've witnessed more than one Moderator make liberal use of) in replying to feedback or criticism, that's all. Just my two cents.

 

Hopefully the reply to this observation wont be: "You don't like the site? Then don't use it."

 

I hope this doesn't cause offence as that is certainly not my intent.

 

Best of luck and have a wonderful day.

[Ganaram Inukshuk 906]

<>

Perhaps I should explain what "scope" is.

Scope, in the context of project management, is the work that is required to accomplish a task with the desired features. Things that are within the scope of this project is basically everything that I've listed above.

Things that are "beyond the scope" of the project include these things:

- Damage to the roads - impractical since you'd see the same exact pattern on every tile.

- Rescaling the in-game vehicles.

- And, of course, fixing the sidewalk notches.

I don't want to go into T21 modification to fix that problem because it's beyond the scope; T21 modification is a completely different thing, and that level of detail would require me to create a prop using GMAX, exporting it with the BAT, and then creating another T21 exemplar to fix it, not to mention creating compatibility patches with every third-party T21 modification in existence.

The alternate solution is to beg everyone to stop making wall-to-wall BATs or to start making compatible diagonal lots, neither of which is practical.

So by focusing on fixing the notches, I would have to go into three different fields: T21 modification, BATing, and compatibility insurance. That's a lot of work for something that's small.

Now, if I kept doing that with every tiny little detail that everyone asks of me (excluding road markings), we get something that's called "scope creep", or what NAMites would call "feature creep": additions of tiny little things that aren't even necessary whatsoever. Suddenly, you'd have a texture mod that's incompatible with half of the game, and it would require recreating half of the content of the game and probably a third of all of the content on the STEX. If the NWM's single-tile networks did that (and I've explained how the NWM's sidewalks are even worse offenders) the project would still be unreleased, even after 10 years of idling, possibly giving the impression that the NWM is cancelled.

It's not because I hate the sidewalks or anyone who says anything against what I'm doing, it's because I already know that it's gonna be hard work to do, and that if I try to do so, everything about managing the project smoothly is out the window, and the project will never be completed. If anyone else asks, it's beyond the scope of the project itself.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scope_%28project_management%29

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scope_creep

[MandelSoft 2,775]

To add to the whole diagonal chip discussion:

Why does it work with Project Symphony and not with normal roads? Simple: height. The road deck in Project Symphony is not at the ground level; it's 0.75m from the ground. This makes sure that neither terrain nor lot textures overlap. On the ground level, this is bound to happen. Where do we see that? Yes, the NWM and RHW. You can also see missing chips or z-fighting textures (every laid down a RHW-6S next to a MIS with wealth textures?).

You could make the whole thing model based and assign the sidewalk textures to the chips. But this can pose two problems:
1. the sidewalk textures are either too bright (usually model-based items appear to be brighter)
2. you have to make a darkened version of every sidewalk texture mod out there just for these chips.

To make a long story short; you can add the missing chips, but even when you do, you still can get missing chips.

Best,

Maarten

[T Wrecks 10,210]

In order to gauge just how noticeable these chips will actually be in a developed city, a screenshot including a realistic developed environment may be helpful. In practice, the notches will sometimes be filled with on-lot pavement, other times they will be toned down considerably by lot textures, and then they'll be covered by trees and buildings pretty often.

 

The rest will depend on your personal level of obsession to some degree, I guess. For example, it often bothers me a little when garage driveways don't end up right at the streetside on diagonal / FA passages. Then again, when I see gridless suburbs at zoom 4, I often quite like the overall look.

[Ganaram Inukshuk 906]

In order to gauge just how noticeable these chips will actually be in a developed city, a screenshot including a realistic developed environment may be helpful.

My pilot video on the top of the page (towards the end of the vid) shows how the notches become visible with parks lining the roads. My contest entry image shows how it reacts in my guinea pig test city.

The NWM's single-tile networks are far worse than this, for those watching at home; at best, the visual effects are negligible (and yet...).

[T Wrecks 10,210]

Well, that's even a very unlucky scenario because there is only a single spot where the notch gets filled, and there are no high-density sidewalks, either. In practice, areas with such a low development density could also be served by streets to a large degree, reducing actual roads to major thoroughfares. So there are workarounds, too, that won't be too obvious on a larger scale.

[rsc204 21,867]

Well personally I would focus more on the quality of that road texture than on the slight niggle that is the notches, I don't like them, but if that's the price of making the roads look nicer, I think its a fair trade off. Just starting out with a road texture and thinking about how to make a complete set is daunting enough. To put this into perspective something like the SAM mod has around 80 textures to create, just the roads (with all the various junctions) is many times this, before you think about the overall goals of updating all the base networks. Therefore it's really a good day when anyone can muster the effort to start work on such a set, let alone accomplish the feat.

 

One thing I've noticed doing the work on my HD-Grass mods is that some Ave/OWR textures are still from the default Maxis game all these years later, not to mention one of my biggest texture-niggles that over the years the process of texture-creation has become so fragmented that there really is no consistency between them, especially in terms of colour matching. So even though these are US textures right now, I'm really looking forward to seeing the progress here, because eventually I can see a more uniform set of textures for all coming out of this, can't wait to get my grubby mits on the development textures . I can't help wondering if there wouldn't be some way of creating a base set of textures without the markings, without causing too much additional workload. If that was viable then a set of blank templates, ideally with separate textures for the road markings would make the process of localising them a synch. In theory then you could just adjust the road markings, for example for a simple Euro set, just batch-process all these markings to change the Yellow to White and then have some automated process that can combine the layers together when you've edited the markings as desired. Of course, given the planned workload, I can totally see how that might just be wishful thinking on my part.

[Ganaram Inukshuk 906]

Well personally I would focus more on the quality of that road texture than on the slight niggle that is the notches, I don't like them, but if that's the price of making the roads look nicer, I think its a fair trade off. Just starting out with a road texture and thinking about how to make a complete set is daunting enough.

This is another term that needs to be a good takeaway: tradeoff. I can work on the texture set at the expense of how the sidewalks look or I can work on how the sidewalks look at the expense of working on the texture set itself. Practically speaking, the smallest possible tradeoff would be the one to go for. And yes, just starting a texture set is hard enough, why make it harder? (It's actually deceptively easy; the hard part's always the wealthification.)

The other takeaway should be "Work smarter, not harder", A phrase I learned from high school sophomore year, and one that I've pretty much taken with me into a lot of places. (Another one that I learned later, but this is a generalised phrase, is "procrastination can be good because the pressure can be motivating" and also "question everything"; not sure if I got that from the SC4 intro or from a Science Channel commercial; I think it was the Science Channel.)

One thing I've noticed doing the work on my HD-Grass mods is that some Ave/OWR textures are still from the default Maxis game all these years later, not to mention one of my biggest texture-niggles that over the years the process of texture-creation has become so fragmented that there really is no consistency between them, especially in terms of colour matching.

One of the many gripes about texturedev in general that I mentioned once before. Not even the NAM team can establish a globally accepted aesthetic standard, unless you consider just the RHW by itself. Teeny tiny differences in everything that, even with two eyes, you can pick up. (Obligatory four-eyes joke.)

The even harder part is, with NAM plugins in particular, figuring out what belongs where; there's an almost undocumented part of the NAM that deals with additional base network intersections and crossings, the most famous of which is the 8-way Avenue intersection (and some of the others make no sense at all).

I can't help wondering if there wouldn't be some way of creating a base set of textures without the markings, without causing too much additional workload. If that was viable then a set of blank templates, ideally with separate textures for the road markings would make the process of localising them a synch.

That's actually easy; the .SVG files I have on hand have every aspect about a transit network texture pre-separated into layers. There are two ways/options to go about this: re-export the blank textures without any paint markings whatsoever (alongside sharing the originals, if desired as well), or share the .SVG files with everything pre-separated into layers already. (The tricky part is that I'm using a vector image program to create these textures, a technique that I've not only recently mastered, but something that's totally alien to someone who's, for example, used to Photoshop.)

The thing about the pre-exported textures is that others don't know the exact filters I had for the paint lines (if they wanna make their own paint marking patterns), and the thing about the .SVG files is that, well, even on my computer, they're pretty hard to work with more than one layer at a time. (The beauty of this conundrum is that I can change the "or" into the previous paragraph into "and": re-export the blank textures AND share the .SVG files.)

The other thing about this is that, because of this initial design system, Road, Avenue, and One Way Road textures, minus the paint lines, are completely identical. Avenue shares the same dashed lines as One Way Road, and all three networks share the same exact shoulder paint lines. I could easily just create a bunch of small .PNG files containing all of the major markings in every which way you can think of, and they'll correspond to each tile in some way. (Some assembly required.)

[Ganaram Inukshuk 906]

Been a while, but not-so-good Internet connection and class-y stuff on C++ classes means that I'm gonna be busy for quite a bit. However, I've gotten some of the most complicated crossings assembled.
 


There's a reason why these crossings are designed the way they are. I'll give you a hint: six-way Road crossings, but I've done nothing to make them happen; they were already native with the Road and One Way Road networks.
 
Now I can finally...
 

[Ganaram Inukshuk 906]

First update in a long while, but I need your thoughts on this proposal:

 

https://youtu.be/SWCqs3xIbVM

[cmdp123789 710]

I dont understand a lot about pixels and all of that.. but what I do know is that I like those HD roads, and having them would be awesome.. so, whatever you do, dont drop this because its awesome.. the question is, will it be NAM compatible?