NAM 33 issue

[CCXXII 79]

I noticed a missing path when connecting RHW diagonal to a roundabout.  The other picture wont upload, but connections get fixed with regular road for the first tile coming from the roundabout.

 

  Edited October 23, 2015 by CCXXII  

[rsc204 21,808]

I believe the diagonal connection is not supported at this time. I'll check to see if adding a path is sufficient to fix it up, but I was under the impression some RUL code is missing.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Is NAM 33 now in general release??

[Lot Creator 304]

I noticed a missing path when connecting RHW diagonal to a roundabout.

If you notice closely at the roundabout, the paths are going the wrong way. Not sure if you want to repath simply the roundabout is very broken.

[Tarkus 6,932]

I noticed a missing path when connecting RHW diagonal to a roundabout.

If you notice closely at the roundabout, the paths are going the wrong way. Not sure if you want to repath simply the roundabout is very broken.

The issue is that the OP has drawn the roundabout backwards--that is enough to break the pathing, with the weird way the One-Way Road network works.  Draw the roundabout to have traffic going counter-clockwise as it should in a right-side driving situation, and it'll work.  I believe there are paths for those diagonal RHW intersections now, but they're no the best-supported feature right now.

Is NAM 33 now in general release??

We're kind of in a limbo state right now.  NAM 33 is still in pre-release state, but it's more stable than the more readily-available NAM 32.  The process of getting from pre-release to general release for 33 has been a rather arduous one, mainly because of a last few things that have taken quite awhile to fix (installer stuff and the Euro textures), due to RL and some personnel issues within the team.  The latest entry over at SimTarkus explains things a little further.

-Tarkus

  Edited October 23, 2015 by Tarkus  

[Mister Giggles 310]

This all likely means that NAM 33 may have to go without a Mac release, and Mac support in general may again be shelved for a time (the NAM Team won’t support any NAM 32.x release after NAM 33 is finalized, and NAM 32.0 has already been dropped from support).

Telling a whole group of innocent people "Meh, sorry" because internal politics screwed up everything is not the right course of action. I propose that you keep the older Mac version available with the warning that no support will be given, period, end of report. To soften the blow you can discuss any number of reasons that support cannot reasonably be given. As there are moderators/administrators for both Simtropolis and SC4devotion on the NAM team, you can enforce this with some form of punishment for not following the warning in bright red text.

Edit: The above is based on interpreting your statement as "We're going to take down the currently existing Mac version". If you're not, well, nevermind. <_<

  Edited October 23, 2015 by Mister Giggles  

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

I am confused about the MAC situation. 

I guess what the issue here is whether there is any real NAM support for any of the Aspyr versions.  Aspyr seems to have their own ideas of getting the program into operable condition and I guess they must have access to the source, but they sure are not paying much attention to the  published Maxis patches.  In any case, if Aspyr wants the NAM as part of the custom content for their product, they maybe should contribute a body or two to the NAM team.

As far as the NAM is concerned if you haven't been sucked in by Aspyr's little game, you can always run SC4 and everything associated with it under wine on a MAC. 

The only really portable part of the whole shebang is the TSCT which is coded in very portable Java, and I run in native mode under Ubuntu (Linux) without a problem.  It is simply a matter of having the JRE for your O/S.

[Tarkus 6,932]

FYI, the post is intended to outline a worst case scenario.  It's better to get that out of the way now than to leave the Mac userbase with false hopes.  It's possible the worst  won't come to pass, but pleasant surprise is a more desirable reaction than sudden disappointment.

The Mac situation is complicated, and the issues over the years have been the result of Apple's OS X changes, Aspyr's spotty support for their port, and the fact that there are very few mod developers who run the game on OS X, which has occasionally left us without anyone who can actively provide support.  Initially, when the NAM first came into being, in 2004, there was no installer, and it was a manual install, which, of course, worked cross-platform. 

In the early days, the mod was small enough that the manual install was feasible, but the mod expanded quickly and that became untenable.  We had the capacity to create an installer that would work in Windows, and did so in 2005, but did not have the ability to create a Mac installer, so the manual install remained out there and was labeled as a "Mac version".  We did have one active developer in those days who was a Mac guy (GoaSkin) and some assistance from some of the BSC and SFBT folks who were on Macs, but eventually, they all disappeared, or, in some cases, became PC users. 

We floated by for a bit, but with the increasing size of the mod and the complications that created for manual installs, it got to be very difficult to answer any questions Mac users had about the NAM.  Then, come 2011, Apple released OS X Lion (10.7) which killed support for the old PPC programs (like the original SC4 Aspyr port) and created a huge mess by forcing port users to pick up Aspyr's unfinished early beta patch for Intel Mac compatibility, which couldn't handle some critical NAM files without causing CTDs.  We started getting bombarded with support questions we really couldn't answer, and when it came time for the next release (NAM 31.0), we removed the Mac version.  Inexperienced users who didn't understand the whole situation would have held us liable for the CTDs if we left it up (as it effected pretty much every NAM version ever released).

Then, Aspyr updated their port (the Steam and App Store releases), and our most skilled developer (memo) got a hold of it, figured out what was causing the CTDs, and determined a way to get the Windows installer to run in a Wineskin that we could again distribute as a self-contained Mac version, which was released as NAM 32.1 in July 2014.  Apple, however, managed to screw things up again with the latest OS X update (the new SIC feature doesn't like Wineskin and apparently prevents the NAM 32.1 Mac installer from running), and with memo inactive, we're not presently in a good position to be able to address anything.

In effect, we're in limbo on the Mac issue.  Support was off after OS X Lion, back on when 32.1 was released, but we're entering into another situation where Mac support is becoming untenable, regardless of whether or not the Mac installer gets updated.  Old versions, even with all the warnings in the world, are a liability for us and take time away from development activities.  Keeping the supposedly "stable" NAM 32 release out there is becoming a liability, and we recently had a user with NAM 17 (from 2005!) show up in a support thread at SC4D. 

If the NAM can't sustain forward developmental momentum, the project will die.  We've been on the brink several times with the NAM 33 cycle.  It's a matter of survival.

-Tarkus

  Edited October 24, 2015 by Tarkus  

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Thanks for the clarification.  If the latest MAC edition (El Capitan) locks out third party stuff like wineskin (wine) then they have made a bad mistake.  I invite anyone who is having problems in that area to give dual booting to either Ubuntu or Mint with wine using the Windows version 1,1,641 and let Apple stick to its medical apps.

[Mister Giggles 310]

Can NAM actually die...? As long as the source files and documentation exists someone can always pick it back up.

  Edited October 24, 2015 by Mister Giggles  

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Can NAM actually die...? As long as the source files and documentation exists someone can always pick it back up.

No more than any other element of custom content might.  Support might disappear and the whole thing become static, which might be a good thing because it has become rather a vehicle for fancy highway aficionados.  I use very little of it since I do not use RHW nor GLR.  Not loading them saves a lot of space.

NAM development, on the other hand, could easily die from ennui and exhaustion.  Remember that this is a volunteer effort.  When I retired I dropped all of my volunteer efforts with respect to safe boating and haven't even had a boat since 1990.

[rsc204 21,808]

Can NAM actually die...? As long as the source files and documentation exists someone can always pick it back up.

Yes is the simple answer. The NAM requires a huge effort from a small number of people who must be motivated to continue it's progress. Not to mention that outside of a hobby we all have real lives, if tomorrow my life changed I couldn't prioritise SC4 over it.

As for documentation, I'm not sure what you'd expect is what exists. Basically you'd need to understand how it all works to get anywhere, trust me this isn't something there is a manual for. Frankly if people were interested (and capable) of such things, they are probably in the NAM team.

Right now the NAM team is still going and there are committed members working hard to try and ensure it's development continues. So long as a sufficient number of us with the required skills are still producing content and have the ability to package it up, the NAM will live on. Speculation here is really unhelpful, morale is something we all have to contend with. I think the best way I can sum things up is "enjoy it whilst it lasts", much like everything in life.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

One of the most interesting things in being a member of the volunteer NAM Team is that the pay doubles every year.

[Tarkus 6,932]

The NAM Team was in a pretty bad spot in 2006, too.  We lost a lot of the pioneers who laid the groundwork to RL during that time, though because the game was still relatively young (3 years) and there was a lot of other content activity going on (the BSC, Peg, and NDEX were still going full blast) and sustaining interest in the game, so a pretty healthy second-generation did come in and helped get the project back on track.  Doing that now, however, is a very different story, because the active SC4 community is much smaller, and the types of things we're doing are much more involved.

I suspect some of the current angst will pass when we finally get NAM 33 out the door . . . having a nearly 2-year development cycle for a project like this is brutal.

-Tarkus

  Edited October 24, 2015 by Tarkus  

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

The lengthy development cycle for NAM 33 is typical of a mature product.  As interest among the developers wanes and the complications increase we can expect that this might very well be the last major release barring fixes and minor tweaks in the future.  Volunteers age out for various reasons from sheer boredom to RL issues.  People just get tired.

[rsc204 21,808]

Speculation here is really unhelpful, morale is something we all have to contend with.

...we can expect that this might very well be the last major release barring fixes and minor tweaks in the future.

Could we, you know, not please?

[Compdude787 916]

The lengthy development cycle for NAM 33 is typical of a mature product.  As interest among the developers wanes and the complications increase we can expect that this might very well be the last major release barring fixes and minor tweaks in the future.  Volunteers age out for various reasons from sheer boredom to RL issues.  People just get tired.

I don't know if you follow the development threads at SC4 Devotion at all, but there is a significant amount of stuff being developed for NAM 34. For example, the RRW will have much increased functionality with the new FlexTrack feature being developed by Eggman121. Given that we're already seeing new features for NAM 34 while NAM 33 is still in pre-release (something that wasn't the case for NAM 32), I suspect that there's going to be a much shorter time between releases.

But NAM 33 is definitely not going to be the last NAM release ever.

[Tarkus 6,932]

To further my colleague's point, we're not planning on having NAM 33 be a swan song by any stretch.  The idea is, once we get through the gauntlet of finally getting 33 out the door, is that we're going to take advantage of our limited numbers--i.e. less cooks in the kitchen--by doing more targeted releases, getting multiple feature threads going and then fast-tracking releases that focus just on the features that are farthest along, while maintaining background development in the meanwhile. 

This is kind of what eggman121 has been doing . . . he's been going crazy with development since we were getting the NAM 33 PR ready, with the goal of having plenty of new material right on 33's heels.  If my RL can calm down and I can get through the more tedious tasks needed to close the book on 33, then I can start working on new features that would go live for the release after the one that features FlexTrack.  I'd like to get back to the NWM, for one, and kill the last few puzzle piece buttons on the RHW side (which is actually going to be a quick and painless affair).  Those could probably be two releases on their own under this new paradigm.

People have forgotten that there used to be multiple NAM releases in a single month back in 2004-2005 (July 2004 saw NAM 6, 7, 8, and 9 released).  Granted, the mod was in a much earlier state at that point, but we can still shoot for something more reasonable than 1-2 year lurches.

-Tarkus

  Edited October 26, 2015 by Tarkus  

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Speculation here is really unhelpful, morale is something we all have to contend with.

 

...we can expect that this might very well be the last major release barring fixes and minor tweaks in the future.

Could we, you know, not please?

I'll take that as a promise, fellows.  Keep up the good work.

[JessiLaurn 184]

Since we're here, and the official 33 release is "in limbo":

Does the current 33 pre-release include the various bridge-ferry interaction fixes that were slated for 33?  It's really the big thing for which I've been waiting....

[Compdude787 916]

Yes, it got fixed. See here.

[Tarkus 6,932]

Yes, it got fixed. See here.

Note the date on the fix, though--August 2015--while the pre-release came out in July 2015.  It will be fixed for the official NAM 33 release, but isn't fixed in the pre-release.

-Tarkus

[JessiLaurn 184]

Yes, it got fixed. See here.

Note the date on the fix, though--August 2015--while the pre-release came out in July 2015.  It will be fixed for the official NAM 33 release, but isn't fixed in the pre-release.

-Tarkus

That's what I needed to know.  And thus, the wait for the official NAM 33 release goes on.... *sigh*

[PhenoixFire25 0]

Hi, love the NAM mod.  Been using it for 3 years ish.  Got the new 33 but have a issue.  I'm missing the height trans for the RHW. Anyone else have this problem? Any help for me also?  

[rsc204 21,808]

NAM 33 removed the puzzle-based height transitions by default, if you re-run the installer you can select to install the "depreciated" height transitions. However, the flex-height transitions replace all of those pieces with just 4 flexible pieces that will override to the network in use. I'd strongly urge you to try them out instead, since those older ones will eventually be removed completely.

[tdybus642 0]

In the rhw menu my height transition tab has dissappeared have tried reinstalling still no luck help please!

2 minutes ago, tdybus642 said:

In the rhw menu my height transition tab has dissappeared have tried reinstalling still no luck help please!

Got it