Network Extensions Project

[ethansprang 41]

@hitzu  That's much closer to a realistic use of a Right of Way - most CSL roads are way too wide.

The big question is, "what do you want to do at intersections?"  You will never make effective intersections with three road types because that will need 3 intersections for every crossing street, and those will be too close together. Without road anarchy, the game wouldn't even let you build them close enough together.

If those parking lanes ALWAYS join back to the main lanes at every intersection, then you want a single road type.  But if you want this to be more of a frontage road, with smaller streets or 1-cell alleys intersecting the side parking lanes but NOT intersecting the main road, then it would have to be three separate roads - and until we can re-write the vehicle AI to handle complex multiple-intersections, that's not going to work well.

[GC_Vos 714]

That does look like a very nice road layout, looks kind of Parisian. And your lane width is spot on. The only problem I foresee is I don't know how one would stop traffic from merging thru the treeline.

Edit: One could try this...

A bit glitchy but it does work.

[hitzu 139]

1 hour ago, GC_Vos said:

That does look like a very nice road layout, looks kind of Parisian. And your lane width is spot on. The only problem I foresee is I don't know how one would stop traffic from merging thru the treeline.

I checked your post from here to keep the measurments  

If there is no way to bypass restrictions then 3 adjacent roads would be a single option with complex 8-way crossroads. Do you use mods such as Sharp Angles or Road Anarchy mod?

[GC_Vos 714]

Yes I use Sharp Angles, it's very possible to make road layouts like this but I imagine it would probably cause more congestion than less. I'm not sure it would be something to test extensively with lots of traffic. And maybe some traffic light / manager mod.

[hitzu 139]

Perhaps it would be better to discontinue shoulder driveways, connecting them somewhere in the middle of the block

[ghosty20 150]

One thing that would be cool to see is curbs, grass and trees like there are on the in game 2 lane roads but on the small 3 lane and small 4 lane roads If it is possible as be very cool..   As that is the one thing I miss when using those roads..

[hitzu 139]

It is doubtful that grass and trees could fit into 2-tiles 4-lanes street. Even 2m sidewalks are too narrow for people.

 

But sacrificing one lane you get some space to fit two rows of trees with optional grass

 

Or one row of trees and a bike lane (or car parking)

[boformer 3,169]

On ‎31‎.‎12‎.‎2015 at 1:11 PM, GC_Vos said:

That does look like a very nice road layout, looks kind of Parisian. And your lane width is spot on. The only problem I foresee is I don't know how one would stop traffic from merging thru the treeline.

there must be a setting for that in the lane definition code.

Traffic++ allows you to change it, so it should be possible.

[GC_Vos 714]

@boformer Ah that's where my knowledge ends The mesh itself could be made (not saying I will any time soon, we will need regular 6/7/8L first)

@hitzu Yes, you're right, 2m is only just enough for parked cars. Similarly the 1m is gonna be tight for trees, some may overlap the curbs.

Here is my current lane setup, I hope to test this ingame in the next weeks.

In Streetmix:

[hitzu 139]

My inner urbanist is crying seeing this unfair land distribution between motorized and non motorized participants. I know that C:SL design inherently is car-centric but but... 

I like greenery and wide sidewalks more 

 

BTW I have questions regarding the NEXt:

- Is it possible to make lanes more or less wide?

- Is it possible to combine different lanes in order to get shared space streets?

- Is it possible to combine a parking lane with a tree lane to get this pattern ==Ж=====Ж=====Ж== where = is a parking lot and Ж is a tree?

[boformer 3,169]

I wish that CO would just add such a streetmix customizer to the game...

Parking lanes mixed with trees are not possible without deeper changes to the code.

It might be possible to add "shared space" lanes, I'm not entirely sure.

[hitzu 139]

6 hours ago, boformer said:

It might be possible to add "shared space" lanes, I'm not entirely sure.

Although it would be great for making streets like this:

and this

or this

[Bad Peanut 826]

@GC_Vos delving into your knowledge: what's the feasibility of using the one way road's prefab as a template for a road, but change one lane's direction so although you're using the one way template the end result gives you two ways (this may seem silly but hear me out) OR if that can't be done how easy is it to give a normal two way road prefab the same behaviour as the one way when you right click on it, ie reverse the direction that you drew it.
Basically a way to have the switch direction feature for a two way street. - again seems superfluous but if you created a road that had the following:

as the normal road but have this:

 as a turning lane segment. it would be a more realistic way to have turning lanes and the game wouldn't confuse the shared lane of the current ones we have (like it does sometimes) the only problem is that depending on how you draw the turning lane segment the turning lane could be on the wrong side of the road, thus the need for the switch direction tool. (btw totally ignore the bike lanes they could just be pavement or something not important)

[GC_Vos 714]

Hmm that's really beyond what I know about this. I know asymmetry gave us problems in the past, but it's something we are gonna look into again because we really want 1+2/3+2 etc.

I don't know anything about changing lane direction. I'm using that mod with the inversion buttons, but that only works on the vanilla roads.

Shared lanes are possible, lanes can be stacked on top of each other. So one could center trees on sidewalks without grass strips. However I don't know how you'd handle the planters, those might have to be attached to the trees and there's no vanilla props for it. I believe there's also no way to control where exactly the trees will show up.

Similarly one could model parking bays like bus stops, but cars might still park accross the entire segment (inside the sidewalks).

Also lanes can be whatever width you want them to be. We just stick to 3/3.3m for regular roads and 4m for HW.

[wojtason 113]

I have a suggestion about merging lanes. What we need is an offset 3,4,5,6 etc lane highway. Last lane on the right side should be at the same distance as 2 lane highway. This way we would be able to create on/off ramps. We would probably need a custom menu just for merging lanes like the new Network Skins. It's hard to explain so I made few shots from the game.

I hope you get me  Third one is just my fantasy

 

 

 

[GC_Vos 714]

I agree this would look much better than how HW merges atm. However I can't begin to explain how difficult this would be to implement, if not impossible.

Like roads, highways have node textures for intersections. These are always overlapped with generic concrete. Primary reason is we cant reliably uvmap nodes. This is the reason crosswalks look mangled, the closer you get to the node, the more the uvs get distorted.

So as much as I would like to have striped markings, dividers and continous lines, tbh you can probably forget about it. :/

The only possibility I see, would be to add the outer most lines. But they wouldn't look perfectly clean / straight.

[boformer 3,169]

I think more important than lines would be highways with offset lanes, so that the transition from 3l to 4l is smooth for the inner lanes.

[hitzu 139]

55 minutes ago, boformer said:

I think more important than lines would be highways with offset lanes, so that the transition from 3l to 4l is smooth for the inner lanes.

Actually with a lot of patience and the Sharp Angles Mod it is pretty much possible. 

[wojtason 113]

True it is possible but really hard and time consuming.It's very glitchy as well. We basically need copies of 3,4,5,6 highways with a small offset and additional icon in menu "ramps'. That would be great but I understand that it will take a lot of time to create it...:(

[hitzu 139]

Proof of concept

[Koesj 659]

Wait, is that the 2-lane freeway plus the dropped lane being perfectly in line with the 3-lane one? Do they snap to the footpath to the left or something? Looks promising!

[hitzu 139]

I placed the footpath in order to manually align 2-lane and 3-lane roads. Connections are bent actually, but vehicles move very smoothly. Making this junction is tedious and I don't know if it does worth it. It took me about 15 minutes to build this one. But one can make some assets and reuse them every time.  

 

EDIT:

Elevated parts. Showing how exactly curves work

https://imgur.com/a/jELb9

[boformer 3,169]

Some special offset highway pieces would be a better solution. Maybe I can add such a feature to Network Skins so that it works without additional network assets, I don't know what is possible.

Some special offset highway pieces would be a better solution. Maybe I can add such a feature to Network Skins so that it works without additional network assets, I don't know what is possible.

[Koesj 659]

2 hours ago, hitzu said:

I placed the footpath in order to manually align 2-lane and 3-lane roads. Connections are bent actually, but vehicles move very smoothly. Making this junction is tedious and I don't know if it does worth it. It took me about 15 minutes to build this one. But one can make some assets and reuse them every time.  

 

EDIT:

Elevated parts. Showing how exactly curves work

https://imgur.com/a/jELb9

 

Ha, but to get nice results I don't think there's need for the footpath method though:

 

You need a 2m offset from the 3-lane centerline,  to either the left or right, to 'continue' two original highway lanes as a 2-lane highway, right? So at the end of the 3-lane segment, drag a 24m (3 cell) long road at a 5° offset, and then continue along the original axis from there. A little bird called Pythagoras tells me that you've created a 2.09m offset this way, well within C:S' margin of 'looks well enough' error 

 

 

e: seriously though, this forum's software is retarded

  Edited January 6, 2016 by Koesj  

[Koesj 659]

So yeah, I can get really good lane geometry. That clipping though:

 

What if the trafficked paths were raised by a couple of cms though? Is that possible? Or if everything'd be solid color? From a long distance it might look really good.

What about roads that are only as wide as the lanes themselves? And laying a second road underneath for the shoulders/dirt, combine with raised lanes on the former? I'm just spitballing!

[hitzu 139]

2 hours ago, Koesj said:

hat about roads that are only as wide as the lanes themselves? And laying a second road underneath for the shoulders/dirt, combine with raised lanes on the former? I'm just spitballing!

It could be possible even without adding new assets but just changing the texture like Boformer said. Although it would be hard with overpasses because the geometry clipping, and even if one make special pieces without side barriers then the game would create ugly junction nodes.

[Mr_Maison 2,426]

I just noticed today that the tunnels for 2-way National Highway have walls   How did you do that? Can all tunnels get these?

[wojtason 113]

Path method is preety good but offset highway would probably make things easier and faster 

I tried a little bit as well:

 

 

[hitzu 139]

12 hours ago, boformer said:

Some special offset highway pieces would be a better solution. Maybe I can add such a feature to Network Skins so that it works without additional network assets, I don't know what is possible.

Boformer, you mentioned somewhere that you could make a mod that can allow nodes on slopes. Is it hard to do? It would be handy there  

[Koesj 659]

Manual lane drops: a chore, but doable?