Additional Public Transit

[andreharv 1,197]

VERSION 8.0 RELEASED!

Nothing super sexy here.  Mostly fixed stuff that went south after the ParkLife update.  

-Fixed broken pathing (cims not entering the stations)

-Fixed station track selection bug

-Fixed large airport slope too steep

-Increased island platform track to 19m to make it compatible with @BadPeanut island platform station train track (train converter)

-Cities transfer to MOM seamlessly from vanilla. 

-Ghost Mode allows users to unsubscribe from MOM without trashing their city. Enable Ghost Mode from the options and then load and save your MOM enabled city. After your MOM enabled city/cities have been saved under Ghost Mode, feel free to unsubscribe.

-Asset Editor now has station tracks added to the track option menu

-Station Length range increased. Now from 88m to 192m. Default now 144m.

-Default station depth lowered from 12m to 15m.

-Station Bend slider now initially points to 0. Still defaulted to 0.

-You may now adjust your station options using the keyboard. Simply click on the slider or option title in the station options menu and use the arrow keys to see changes in real time. Left/Right arrow: Increment slider left or right. Up/Down: set slider to min/max. RCTRL: Set slider to default.

-Fixed (or reduced) cims clipping through the ground to get to stations.

-Fixed Level crossing LOD weirdness.

-Fixed large airport metro stations (again).

-Fixed some visual weirdness when placing one way tracks.

-MOM/Tram crossings are no longer possible.

-Fixed various stations that were having problems. If you notice any other stations that act strange or don't work please let me know here.

-Rail costs reexamined adjusted

[Bad Peanut 826]

@andreharv I know you don't really use the road editor to make your networks but I was wondering if MOM could recognize metro networks made in the editor?

I'm thinking I could make a metro network in the editor that works above ground, use it in an asset (it won't be overwritten by MOM because it won't have the same name as what the mod looks for) but still have MOM tracks connect and use it as a metro track/station.

It would mean that people wouldn't need to use the train converter mod and it would actually be necessary for what my intentions are: I intend on having a station with two tracks in the same spot/overlayed - one a train network, the other a metro network. that way depending on which track users choose to connect to this stop dictates whether it would be a metro stop or a train stop. 

Basically as long as MOM can recognise and connect to a vanilla metro network the theory would work. However I'm not sure if it will connect based on the fact the classes are different so they don't recognise each other to connect at the nodes.

[j4lambert 22]

Thanks for your hard work!

[andreharv 1,197]

Hey y'all.  I have been spending a lot of time on bugfixes and optimizations (still am) but I thought I would take a moment and share (one of) the things I am working on at the moment.  Quad Tracks will finally allow your metro trains to somewhat intuitively overtake each other.  Trains that do not stop at the station will automatically go to the inner express lane.  This will greatly improve the overall flow of your metro traffic by allowing more of your trains to maintain a top speed longer.  You can branch one and two lane tracks off for more local traffic.  I have plans for the side platform version (pictured below) with outer stops, island platforms with inner stops,  and a main dual island platforms (stops on all tracks).  Sorry for the dim pics...They're teasers...yeah...

[Clus 24]

Hey ! Wow ... awesome !! Keep up the great work ! Thank you !

[Bad Peanut 826]

34 minutes ago, andreharv said:

Hey y'all.  I have been spending a lot of time on bugfixes and optimizations (still am) but I thought I would take a moment and share (one of) the things I am working on at the moment.  Quad Tracks will finally allow your metro trains to somewhat intuitively overtake each other.  Trains that do not stop at the station will automatically go to the inner express lane.  This will greatly improve the overall flow of your metro traffic by allowing more of your trains to maintain a top speed longer.  You can branch one and two lane tracks off for more local traffic.  I have plans for the side platform version (pictured below) with outer stops, island platforms with inner stops,  and a main dual island platforms (stops on all tracks).  Sorry for the dim pics...They're teasers...yeah...

what are your offsets for lanes? I've been meaning to finish off my train track version, but I may as well make it the same offsets as you so if you ever want to have converter ability (unless you plan on releasing your own train version?)

[wasmic 111]

Wow, that's cool! I'm stoked.

[jstatha 6]

Does this mean we’re gonna get 4 track above ground metro stations soon as well? 

[Railfan459 6]

20 hours ago, jstatha said:

Does this mean we’re gonna get 4 track above ground metro stations soon as well? 

Yeah I would love to see the @boformer / @Mr_Maison NYC Elevated Stations as express and local stops!

Great work, thanks for the update!

[sachizm 65]

Hi

This may be outside the scope of what you are doing but I am having problems with outside trains and would love to see something done to fix them. Its the problem people used to have with freight trains. Too many random nearly empty trains clogging the lines. I'd love to be able to either schedule outside trains just like normal trains. Or be able to build a station on the outskirts of the city so that outside trains passengers have to transfer to a local train. How ever it doesn't work in the tests I've done. If I connect it to the main line that goes to a central station they pile in but wont use an isolated station. Its annoying cause having a central station is really good for new residents. When I build a lot of new houses I will get hundreds of people using public transport to get to their new house instead of clogging roads. 

 

[donoteat 478]

On 6/20/2018 at 11:44 PM, andreharv said:

-MOM/Tram crossings are no longer possible.

how am i going to do a historic chicago build now?

 

Seriously excited for 4 track subways though; so I can finally live the dream of four-track local-express subways under every street.

[Delta2k5 311]

9 hours ago, donoteat said:

how am i going to do a historic chicago build now?

Well, I guess the problem here is MOM would require the snowfall DLC if propper intersections would be build. Intersections between tram and MOM were possible in the first betas too and they worked logically quiet fine. Visually the nodes were missing the trams tracks somehow...

[Bad Peanut 826]

3 minutes ago, Delta2k5 said:

Well, I guess the problem here is MOM would require the snowfall DLC if propper intersections would be build. Intersections between tram and MOM were possible in the first betas too and they worked logically quiet fine. Visually the nodes were missing the trams tracks somehow...

actually it's not down to making snowfall a required DLC, it's because the node connections (how the tracks connect) use the same connect groups as trams, therefore if you have a metro and tram road intersect and they use the same node connect groups, both tracks will connect, which has lead to some undesired tracks showing up. disallowing them fixes the issue as they can never conflict if they never intersect.

As a side note, this is why i refuse to do any other tram track arrangements in my roads other than what is in snowfall as it might eventually conflict with someone else's. I suspect the tram roads currently on the workshop do this, so if i were to use the same connect group they've chosen (maybe a train one) then it would apply both tracks at the nodes (mine and the other creator's) and they would overlap/not align due to different layouts.

[j4lambert 22]

It still seams like fewer passengers want to use metro overhaul mod lines in comparison to vanilla metro lines. Is it possible for that to be changed in the next update?

[andreharv 1,197]

The real reason why trams and metro do not intersect is because their tracks are different heights.  AFAIK it would look tacky and unrealistic.  Train tracks can not intersect tram...presumably for this reason. 

I notice this issue @j4lambert.  Sadly I'm afraid it cropped up after a dev update because I remember this issue came up since the update and using an earlier version of MOM (from January) does not reverse this issue.  I'm sure it's fixable (somehow).  Will just take some investigation.

*EDIT @j4lambert It looks like it has something to do with an update to TM:PE.  Once I unsubbed it, the issue resolved itself.  TMPE was updated on June 1

[wasmic 111]

On 5/7/2018 at 7:30 AM, andreharv said:

The real reason why trams and metro do not intersect is because their tracks are different heights.  AFAIK it would look tacky and unrealistic.  Train tracks can not intersect tram...presumably for this reason. 

-snip-

Actually, there's a tram track on the workshop that has the tracks at the same height that train/metro tracks use! I believe it actually reuses the track model from this mod, and then removes the third rail and adds a catenary instead. It looks and works great, except that since there are no custom intersections, any intersection between this 'light rail' track and normal tram tracks cause a void hole in the terrain, and if you attempt to make intersections between 3+ sections of this tram track, the intersection will just look like the vanilla tram-only track. But, if proper custom intersections were added (and transitions from this track to the normal tram track), it would look quite good.

Here's a link: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1280918635

But yeah, intersections with train/metro lines will still look tacky since there's no custom intersection.

[Distanced 114]

Hey, not sure if this has been suggested before but has any thought been given to Moscow/Kiev/Soviet tunnel styles? Imo they're pretty neat looking and I don't think the mesh would be that complex since the tunnel pieces have a grid pattern. 

[andreharv 1,197]

If I ever get the time to update the concrete tunnels to the style I would like, I would probably go for that (dirty concrete / honeycomb).  I played with wire textures but realized from your pictures that black or dark brown wires would be best as they are subtle and give a better illusion of depth as a texture (not meshing wires).  The original concrete texture was just to get the original tunnels done but yes, they do need a makeover.  If a brave soul may venture to create such textures (1024x1024) I could probably implement them rather quickly.

Also while I'm here, a bit on what I am working on right now:

Ridership has been an issue ever since the update came out a month or two ago.  The main issue is that cims are really getting penalized for walking to the edge of the stations before descending the stairs.  In a way to combat this, cims will have to enter the station from the middle.  I am going to first get an update out that achieves this and then I will update the model to reflect the change (just need to get something out).

Also, angles are acting strange when people switch between different stations.  I am working on fixing this as well.

Once I get both of these going OK, I will update...Then it's back to NExt2 for the additional roads mod integration, THEN I can continue working on quad tracks.  Thanks for being patient.

[Distanced 114]

I can try making the texture, sure! So if you end up implementing the style, the honeycomb/grid won't be "3D" but instead just a flat texture?

[andreharv 1,197]

Yes, flat because an actual 3d shape of so many pits would increase the tris count of the tunnels 20-100 fold.  Because many (if not most) do not regularly go into first person camera mode to enjoy the tunnels, it wouldn't be a wise move.  Though not an expert (like at all), normal mapping may give a slight 'illusion' of depth to the textures but it's a bit early to tell.

[Bad Peanut 826]

11 minutes ago, andreharv said:

Yes, flat because an actual 3d shape of so many pits would increase the tris count of the tunnels 20-100 fold.  Because many (if not most) do not regularly go into first person camera mode to enjoy the tunnels, it wouldn't be a wise move.  Though not an expert (like at all), normal mapping may give a slight 'illusion' of depth to the textures but it's a bit early to tell.

Normal maps won't make too much of a difference because they're better viewed front on and require lighting to show up so with minimal lighting in the tunnels you won't get much. 

But the bonus is there's minimal lighting so it doesn't matter too much that they're flat anyway

[Distanced 114]

Got it. Will work on that asap

 

[wasmic 111]

Regarding the decreased ridership, that's something I've certainly felt. The weird thing, though, is that it seems to affect some lines worse than others, even when all the lines I'm looking at are entirely underground. One line I built basically got no riders at all, while another had a reasonable, if somewhat low, number of riders. Both of them went through all types of zoning, but the nearly unused line did have deeper stations on average - that might have something to do with it. Some of the stations on that line had no riders at all, and that was just with the standard vanilla metro station (autoconverted by MOM).

Either way, great to hear that a fix is coming.

[Distanced 114]

Yeah, that's what's been happening with my lines too but I assumed that maybe my station placement wasn't that good. 

[Bad Peanut 826]

Is it because the extra depth is adding additional length to the pedestrian routes so they opt for other modes of transport because they're actually quantifiably shorter in distance and the game always prioritizes shortest distance?

[wasmic 111]

4 hours ago, Bad Peanut said:

Is it because the extra depth is adding additional length to the pedestrian routes so they opt for other modes of transport because they're actually quantifiably shorter in distance and the game always prioritizes shortest distance?

Last I heard, the game prioritizes shortest time, not distance. This can easily be seen by setting up two parallel transit lines, where one takes a slightly longer route but is at a much higher speed. The cims will always take the one with the higher speed. However, it probably does have something to do with the longer pedestrian paths. It might suddenly be faster to just walk to another station and take the train/whatever from there.

However, I don't think that's the whole explanation. I've had metro stations where lots of cims would alight, but none would board the trains. It wasn't a terminal station. If the pedestrian paths allow the cims to get away from the platforms, they should also allow them to get down to the platforms, at least to my understanding.

I'll try playing around with it a bit more.

[Bad Peanut 826]

5 hours ago, wasmic said:

Last I heard, the game prioritizes shortest time, not distance. This can easily be seen by setting up two parallel transit lines, where one takes a slightly longer route but is at a much higher speed. The cims will always take the one with the higher speed. However, it probably does have something to do with the longer pedestrian paths. It might suddenly be faster to just walk to another station and take the train/whatever from there.

However, I don't think that's the whole explanation. I've had metro stations where lots of cims would alight, but none would board the trains. It wasn't a terminal station. If the pedestrian paths allow the cims to get away from the platforms, they should also allow them to get down to the platforms, at least to my understanding.

I'll try playing around with it a bit more.

Yes sorry you're right it's about time.  

In terms of allowing disembarking and not boarding it would still be a case of what's fastest. Maybe going away from the station is a slower route but coming back is faster so they only go one way.

Ive noticed that it can be something as small as the curve of the network that can change the speed of a journey, allowing them to choose a minisculy faster route because it takes them a fraction of second longer to take a bend.

However the best way would be to see if you eliminate all other forms of public transport and see  if there's still minimal use (ie they choose to drive over using metro)

[Elektrix 42]

Do you have any plans for an in-mod implementation of custom underground station meshes? I know for a fact that the meshes could be replaced manually (they are in Resources/Meshes/ if anyone else is wondering) but could a menu be implemented to toggle between station meshes? 

Or is that unfeasible in execution?

Edit: I thought about it for a while after posting this and I figure it's possible to change the network entirely (e.g. a second underground station network that connects to MoM tracks seamlessly) using a network skins-esque menu. Additionally, if just the tunnel station prefab itself would be changed, if one were to browse through the source code, it seems that the asset manager would load the extra OBJs in the asset folder automatically (L29, L61) so it would only be a matter of changing the mesh itself based on menu input (which still may be more or less impossible). Still browsing through for the lines of code that specifically set the network itself (I'm rather unfamiliar with the code since I have not seen it before today, lol)

Edit, like, 4 or 5: I found the code and it looks pretty much impossible to do it dynamically (or specifically, after load) based on the current setup, although I might be wrong _(lol). However a second station network still looks completely possible. Secondary networks could, in theory, be loaded at the same time as the originals and could share necessary meshes, such as tracks, etc., while loading their own meshes for the station itself. I might try a proof of concept, if I ever get time.

[Nicolas B 4]

On 30.6.2018 at 8:38 AM, Bad Peanut said:

what are your offsets for lanes? I've been meaning to finish off my train track version, but I may as well make it the same offsets as you so if you ever want to have converter ability (unless you plan on releasing your own train version?)

great to hear that, so you are talking about this one :

with inspiration from this one? :

 

 

[Nicolas B 4]

On 21.8.2018 at 5:50 PM, andreharv said:

If I ever get the time to update the concrete tunnels to the style I would like, I would probably go for that (dirty concrete / honeycomb).  I played with wire textures but realized from your pictures that black or dark brown wires would be best as they are subtle and give a better illusion of depth as a texture (not meshing wires).  The original concrete texture was just to get the original tunnels done but yes, they do need a makeover.  If a brave soul may venture to create such textures (1024x1024) I could probably implement them rather quickly.

Also while I'm here, a bit on what I am working on right now:

Ridership has been an issue ever since the update came out a month or two ago.  The main issue is that cims are really getting penalized for walking to the edge of the stations before descending the stairs.  In a way to combat this, cims will have to enter the station from the middle.  I am going to first get an update out that achieves this and then I will update the model to reflect the change (just need to get something out).

Also, angles are acting strange when people switch between different stations.  I am working on fixing this as well.

Once I get both of these going OK, I will update...Then it's back to NExt2 for the additional roads mod integration, THEN I can continue working on quad tracks.  Thanks for being patient.

somehow connected to textures: I got this weird bug at tunnel portals, but only with single track, double tracks are fine as you can see: