Highway Sign Maker - For Cities Skylines?

[Need4Camaro 50]

I have 0 modding experience with Cities Skylines. I can 3D Model fairly decently but I am not a programmer.

Anyway onto my questions.

I wanted to eventually make a mod that literally allows users to "plop" custom Highway Signs instead of having to 3D Model them or custom make them for each interchange. It could be completely modular or it could work with the currently existing "Street Name" mod. So lets say for example that you have a stretch of highway and it has an interchange. The mod would do the following things for each interchange:

• Remove the existing Cities Skylines Highway Sign Prop
• By default, place a modern / realistic gantry or sign post near the exit ramp. 
  • Upon its initial appearance the post will be incomplete and will not have a sign attached to it.
  • The user will select the post and will be brought to an interface to assign the sign's data and other specifications.
    • User will select the type of post. Whether it be an overhead gantry that spans across the entire carriageway, or a post on the side of the road.
    • The street name, route number, herald, exit number, direction, control name can all be set for the sign in this interface
      • If a user has the street name mod, the sign can be set to automatically detect the name of the street at the end of the ramp to pretty much automatically generate a sign.
    • Multiple sign boards on one gantry would be possible. (For example a sign over the main carriage confirming the router number / direction advising that you're traveling in, and another board to the right (or left UK) advising the information for the current exit)
    • Provide the ability to generate approach signs. By default their distances would be set to 1/2 mile and 1 mile (like real life) but they can be altered aswell.
      • Approach signs would also be modifiable to include other information
      • If two approach signs are within 1/4th of a mile of each other, they will automatically be merged to avoid cluttering.

The Mechanics:

• The interface will use pre-fabbed sign boards (so the game will not have to create shapes / 3D models in-game) and will use the data the user enters to determine which sign board is most appropriate according to size. In essence, everything will be built to fit in the smallest board possible, but if a larger board is needed, it will use a larger board.
• Approach signs will automatically merge if they're too close to each other, however; it will be possible to customize approach signs or de-merge them if necessary.
• Approach signs will also merge onto the control sign at a previous exit if its within 1/4th of a mile of the previous exit.
• Signs will avoid spawning under overpasses, but they CAN spawn on bridges.
• Users can import their own Heralds and define in the game how the route numbers will be placed on those Heralds
• The mod would be made to support multiple Heralds.
• The mod would be made to support automatic exit numbering, with an offset number aswell for interstates leading into your city (I.E. the first exit for your city is Exit 50 instead of Exit 1)
  • Can be controlled by mile OR by actual exit.
• 2 Lane Highways will Generate a Rural Post (on the side) by default. 3 and 4 Lane Highways will Generate an overhead Gantry by default.

Basically the idea is to provide a way to generate highway signs for those who don't want to 3D model a sign for every exit they have. Once again this is all still theory. Nothing is in the works yet. This thread is asking if my idea is even possible, and if it is..where would I begin?

[GC_Vos 714]

This is an interesting idea! The signs themselves could be made easily. I have no idea how you'd link a mod to them though. You would have to find a way to texture them dynamically, which I don't know if that's possible either...

[boformer 3,169]

Network Skins could do this. It directly affects the rendering of props placed on a road segment.

I'm not planning to do it, but any developers are welcome to contribute code.

The prop rendering happens here: https://github.com/boformer/NetworkSkins/blob/master/NetworkSkins/Props/Detour/NetLaneDetour.cs#L429

[Need4Camaro 50]

So in short, where would I begin on this? I saw the link where the prop rendering happens. I'm assuming that this is in some in-game file that the code is quoted from. Which file is that and what exactly would I need to do to it? I'm guessing I need to create the sign posts / sign boards and props and the coding would call these props at certain instances? Can anyone teach me more as to how to program this sort of thing or is there anywhere I can learn?

EDIT: I just learned that Network Skins is a mod. Maybe I should just contact the developer and ask him if he can assist me?

[Koesj 659]

22 minutes ago, Need4Camaro said:

EDIT: I just learned that Network Skins is a mod. Maybe I should just contact the developer and ask him if he can assist me?

 

20 hours ago, boformer said:

I'm not planning to do it, but any developers are welcome to contribute code.

There's the developer, and his answer...

[Need4Camaro 50]

Ah I see. Where can I learn the code to do this?

[Need4Camaro 50]

4 hours ago, AJ3D said:

Do you have any previous object oriented programming experience?

Not really no. I've made a few props for SC4 but I wouldnt really call that programming.

[LeeMeister57 7]

Hi, are you still interested in doing this? I am a highly experienced coder and would love to work with a modeler on this! I have been thinking it would be cool to apply my coding experience to C:S, and I am thinking this would be an ideal mod to start on. I know someone else has already come up with a mod that does some what you're talking about, but I'd really like to take this a lot further than they have. 

[Judazzz 1,936]

At the risk of some shameless self-promoting, what about this?  

[tony56a1 79]

@Judazzz looking good! Any progress on the painter? Really looking forward to that!

@LeeMeister57 Can't speak for everyone, but Mark-a-Route is on github, and I would love to get some PRs for any improvements!

[LeeMeister57 7]

@Judazzz DROOL!!!! That looks incredible! 

@tony56a1 your mod was exactly where I was going to start looking! It's going to take a while for me to catch up though...probably. 

[Judazzz 1,936]

13 hours ago, tony56a1 said:

@Judazzz looking good! Any progress on the painter? Really looking forward to that!

Ummm... at the risk of sounding like a doofus, could you remind me what that painter thing was? I've had so many mod ideas floating around in my head that I may have forgotten a few  

[tony56a1 79]

@Judazzz oh sorry, meant the "create sign" feature. I Remembered that you said something about creating an in game UI to generate the textures to be selected( define specific areas to draw, and sprites / text to put over the area for customization) and I got really excited about the idea. Like I was saying, super looking forward to it!

[Judazzz 1,936]

@tony56a1 - ah, gotcha  
Yeah, painting/creating sign textures in-game is the ultimate goal to work towards, but that's going to be a very long term process. For the time being I'm focusing on UI-based in-game texture replacing, because firstly it will really aid the process of me learning Unity, and secondly, it wil yield results much quicker (meaning I can offer the community something to play with while working on a more complex and feature-complete version). One last reason is that in-game texture replacing obviously doesn't have to be limited to road sign props, which potentially makes it a very powerful tool for those like me who love to customize things but struggle to even model a humble cube   
It could for example also be used for your billboard animator (not that there's anything wrong with it, though ) - if I got it right, it basically obscures the baked-in textures by overlaying custom textures on top of the model rather than replacing the textures, right?

[tony56a1 79]

@Judazzz: Yep! Main reason for the overlay was because it was easier to implement , and it makes certain experimentation ( alternate shaders, movie textures, etc ) a bit easier to handle as well, since you don't need to deal with the rest of the model's material.

BTW, going back on the idea of drawing textures, I thought it might make it easier if the user only had to draw over the most relevant bits of the texture, rather then the whole thing, so I tried out "drawing a texture over another texture", seems to work alright, hope you'll be able to put it in American Roadsigns!

 

 

[Judazzz 1,936]

@tony56a1 - wow, looking good! Most definitely going to play with that once I have my texture-replace logic worked out (signs may ultimately get 'draw-it-yourself' textures, but texture replacement as such could be useful in various other use cases).
Do you know if it's possible to embed fonts as well (and if so, which one would you need? .ttf, .oft, ...) For realistic-looking American gantries Highway Gothic is indispensable, while European signs may need a different font like Frutiger.

I'm currently mainly struggling with a prop selection tool - I think I'll be able to re-use your Billboard Animator logic (and even if not, it was very education to study your code in any case), but I'm not quite there yet - hopefully this weekend I'll have time to work on it for a few hours on end. One the whole I'm quite pleased with the speed of progress though, going faster than I expected (which, obviously and unfortunately, gives zero guarantee how things will progress later down the road).

[tony56a1 79]

@Judazzz Do you mean embed fonts in the game? Yep, you can either load installed fonts via Font.CreateDynamicFontFromOSFont, or load them using assetbundles. 
 

 

[Judazzz 1,936]

That's awesome! Doubt many people will have Highway Gothic installed on their machine as an OS font, so being able to embed/include/bundle them is great news.

[SamsamTS 93]

It's probably possible to embed the fonts as a resource the same way I embed images and load them from the assembly.

[KrabbHD 0]

Information on fonts used in countries, here's a map:

 

Countries that I know by heart:
 

Austria: Austria (yes, really)

Belgium, Switzerland, Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Romania, Bulgaria: SNV

Germany: DIN 1451

Netherlands: RWS-Ee/ANWB-Ee (Modified Highway Gothic)

United Kingdom, Portugal, Denmark (modified), Iceland (modified): Transport

France: Charactère

Sweden: Tratex

Norway: Trafikkalfabetet

[wojtason 113]

Poland : Tablica Drogowa

Download font here:

http://www.znaki-drogowe.pl/index.php?option=com_weblinks&view=category&id=124&Itemid=166

[KrabbHD 0]

5 hours ago, wojtason said:

Poland : Tablica Drogowa

Download font here:

http://www.znaki-drogowe.pl/index.php?option=com_weblinks&view=category&id=124&Itemid=166

Other font downloads found on wegenforum.nl: https://www.wegenforum.nl/viewtopic.php?t=2243&start=30

[tony56a1 79]

So I tried fleshing that texture replacement thing a bit more, and I can see why everyone was clamoring for it over the original method, definitely worth the extra effort! Now we just need that in-game painter UI...

[LeeMeister57 7]

@tony56a1, I have to say that I love what I'm able to do so far! I am making lots and lots of signs now!

As far as little tips and tricks I've found...

1. Download a free version of the Highway Gothic font here: http://www.cufonfonts.com/en/font/8582/highway-gothic.  If anyone wants their signs to look like the real thing (for countries like the U.S. and other listed above), this where they can get the font for free.  I use the Expanded version of it mostly.
2. As far as size goes, I was losing my mind at first trying to get everything to look right, and so I played with the PNG size a bit to get results that look good up close. I've attached a ZIP file that includes some of the more likely blanks one may want with the tweaked proportions. (582x364 for both double gantry signs and 772x346 for the single highway sign)  If you'd like to share them with everyone, you're more than welcome to do so...it's a small way of giving back to this awesome community!  I made a template in some really antiquated software that allows me to crank out signs quick.  The bummer is it's antiquated. When I get into something newer, I'll share that too.
3. Don't delete or rename any textures you're using! When I made my first few signs, I was a little sloppy. I decided to rethink things and redo a few, plus I had to refine my naming convention since extra periods (.) in the filename messed with your mod. In the meantime, changing the filename caused ALL of my texture-replaced signs to disappear!!  The overlay ones were all still present, but my point is that it's REALLY important NOT to delete any of your sign textures or everything disappears!  The good news is that I deleted all the signs I could find and saved my game, then reopened and much to my delight I could put in new signs again. WHEW!

 

signtexturetemplates.zip

[tony56a1 79]

@LeeMeister57Looks amazing! I put up the link in the texture guide, thanks so much for sharing it with us!

As for the bugs, I think I put in a fix for the deletion issue, hopefully it'll work for you!

[LeeMeister57 7]

Awesome, sounds great!  One other tip I forgot in the midst was that I use the Prop Line Tool to measure distance along my route, since you can set props to appear every so many meters.  So I set it to some multiple of 100m, and since I'm using miles, 200m = approximately 1/8 mile, 400m = 1/4 mile, and so on.

[LeeMeister57 7]

@tony56a1 I started working on a sign template that has more realistic proportions (thank you, MUTCD) in Inkscape. In the process, I've discovered that the double gantry sign textures are mapped at 90 DPI and the single signs are mapped at 72DPI. If this is something that can be fixed before everyone makes a tons of signs, it would be great if the single sign could be changed to map at 90 DPI (965x432.5px -- give or take a half pixel on the height) that would be super cool. It will be just fine if it's left alone, but it might be a little less confusing exporting from my finished template. Just let me know.  THANKS!

[tony56a1 79]

@LeeMeister57 Thanks so much for the suggestion! In this case, the textures are currently drawn over the original as-is, so I think I have to re-scale the image when loading it in the mod. I'll take a look at that in a bit.

[tony56a1 79]

Finally put in support for @Bipin's awesome single gantry sign, check it out here:http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=649674529

[Bipin 3,402]

5 hours ago, tony56a1 said:

Finally put in support for @Bipin's awesome single gantry sign, check it out here:http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=649674529

You're the best! Thank you.