Bad Peanut PSA - for people using custom train stations (especially mine)

[Bad Peanut 826]

Hey guys, if you missed it, or don't regularly look on the sub reddit, this is a repost of the same info:

 

So I occasionally get people complaining that such and such station is broken and they want a fix - for instance the most recent being Sotunder Sunken Station (which I've hidden for the moment).

Now it's usually a very very small percentage of subscribers who say that it's broken - which doesn't make sense because if it is broken then it shouldn't work for anyone and if I can have it work in a 100% vanilla game then it's certainly not my assets fault but something connected to an additional/combination of mods.

In saying that, the majority of you already know this because hey - logic!

BUT there is something i've recently realised/noticed that could create at least in part the problems people describe.

I've noticed that since the release of Moveit! mod there's been a gradual incline of people using it for precision placement of buildings, which is great because it's such a good mod that really opens the game's placement styles. I have it and a lot of people have it. It's fine for normal unique buildings and the like but not so great for some train station assets (some, not all).

Not many people will know, but the hidden pedestrian paths used to connect a cim to the platform of a station can be quite finicky, so if you adjust them in the slightest, you're likely to break the connections (hence the problems in the past when modularity was new and you needed to flatten the land before placing - thankfully i found a better solution that removes the need for the end user to think about it properly).

The problem with the ped paths is that when people initially place them alongside a road, all the ped paths are exactly where they should be, but with the new adjusting habits of the Moveit! mod users, as soon as you move the building even the slightest bit you'll end up compromising the hidden pedestrian paths. thus breaking the ability for cims to get onto the platform.

This isn't a rule of thumb, there can certainly be other issues with stations that may cause them to stop working, and not all stations will respond to being adjusted by MoveIt! will break. I think that it will depend on the complexity of the placement of the hidden pedestrian paths.

For instance:

1. Boformer's Sunken station doesn't break with MoveIt! mod adjustments (AFAIK) because the hidden pedestrian paths between platform and street are simple, 1 segment paths.

2. My Sotunder Station (and usually all my stations) will have more complex hidden paths because I try to if it's possible, to create a more visually realistic path the cims walk along, so they usually comprise of more than 1 segment, and when you use MoveIt! the additional nodes between segments can rocket around - which you can't see happen because they're hidden.

It's why when people find it's broken for them, then load it in the editor to check the hidden paths, they find them all as they should be - because in the editor is exactly as they should be and as they will be if you just place the station alongside a road without a MoveIt! adjustment.

As a side note: I also have a theory that when people place the stations with anarchy on it can sometimes cause the connections to be broken because some anarchy mods remove the fixed height values of the nodes, thus they change heights, and lose their connections.

TL;DR?

You're right it is long, but I was trying to answer all the possible future questions looking for clarity - suffice to say if you use MoveIt! mod or an anarchy mode while placing one of my stations you MAY have a problem with cims getting on the platform. Read the above for details on why and how to avoid it.