Expanding the vehicles routes and behavior

[Terring 6,476]

@hailman made a mod named Variable Route Buses. This mod changes the behavior of the buses to allow Sims to ride the bus directly to work, by getting on the bus at designated stops but getting off anywhere they wish along the route. It might sounds unrealistic and make buses work like taxis, but this is how many municipalities operate bus service in more rural areas, like in Belgian countryside.

So, if we can change the behavior of the buses, how about changing the behavior of the rest of the vehicles as well, by giving them new destinations and new abilities? Here are some ideas.

Freight trucks begin from your industries and end up at the edges of your city (usually), at your freight train stations or at your seaports or in-land freight airports/spaceports. It looks like your industries supplies your neighboring cities, which is nice and welcomed, but never your own city. If they can ship their products at the other cities, why not at your own city as well? So, here is my first question. Can we make the freight trucks going to commercial (and even residential) zones as well? This could simulate the purveyance  of the shops and offices, like having the trucks transporting food from the farms to the restaurants and cars from the car industries to the car dealerships. It could also simulate delivery orders from industries to residences, like ordering a new wire for your phone or spare parts for your car directly from the factory. This could made the traffic more realistic but also more challenging to manage it.

Speaking about I --> C and I --> R freight tracks, how about adding a C --> R version as well? We already have some nice automata that could be useful for this task, like those commercial vans. Shops (and maybe even offices too) would function like mini factories that provides jobs to our Sims, but they'd also send products by vans to our Sims' homes as well. A kind of C <--> R connection.

Now, let's make the add. Homes sends workers to shops and offices, shops and offices sends products to homes. Homes sends workers to factories and farms, factories and farms sends products to homes, shops and offices. Add the rest of the routes (like cars and buses) and you'll have something like this:

R <--> C

C <-- I <--> R

It would make the freight trucks even more useful and the traffic even more realistic, but I'm afraid it would require a serious (and maybe impossible) scale of modding attempt.

And now, my favorite part. Let's get nuts and heretic . We all know that industries can ship their products directly into the railroad if you build them right next to it. No need for the freight station. Just build your factories right next to the rails. But how about giving this ability to the residential zones as well, so Sims can use the railroads as an alternative for the roads? I'm not talking about visiting the closest rail station to get a big passenger train. I'm talking about this:

Small, car-train hybrids for everyone! Just build some homes next to the rails and let your Sims hit the railroad to go to their jobs and return from them. Of course this will require a new kind of automata. Something like this:

Big passenger trains, freight trains, and now small car-train hybrids. Another good reason to get rid of those track checkers.

So, more useful freight trucks, delivery vans, and more flexible railroads. Can we have them?

[CorinaMarie 29,771]

For my testing, I used Residential only, but I feel certain the same would work for Commercial.

Here we see Freight Trucks driving to a Growable Residential home, plowing right thru their living room, kitchen, and out the bedroom window to continue on to their destination:

 

Even setting the capacity to 1 doesn't make the trucks go one per home, but simply turns the first one all red in the Traffic View:

 

Daisy chaining the Residential still allows the Freight Trucks to pass thru, but the arrows look goofy for it:

 

And I could not find any way to tell the game the House was the final destination.

 

For your Sim's Personal Railroad I did create this in a Growable Lot where they will use it like a Passenger Train Station for both morning and evening commutes:

 

[powerfullshammy 81]

What this is first I saw this someone will drive through your room at home to get goods out of city also making use of your house as wearhouse

[CorinaMarie 29,771]

3 hours ago, powerfullshammy said:

What this is first I saw this someone will drive through your room at home to get goods out of city also making use of your house as wearhouse

It does rather make one wonder what that farmer's crops are in my first picture. Like why is it necessary to take it directly to someone's personal home and only then is it sent out on the black(market) road?

I also modded a version where the freight trucks drive to the residential lot and from there they tossed it onto passing freight trains to send it out of the city. The problem seems to be the game only recognizes the freight's final destination as a city tile's border either via vehicle based networks or a rail line on a freight train or upon arrival at a seaport which has (among others) the OccupantGroups 0x1519 (Water Transit) which then in turn is prolly hard coded as freight destination. That 0x1519 may also have to be paired with the Seaport designation because adding it by itself didn't let a home be considered the end of the line for freight. It likely either needs deep enough water nearby or the Seaport OccupantsGroup or both (or more). And even then I can already see that the freight is going to keep going to the same, closest option it can find and therefore won't simulate random deliveries throughout the day.

[jeffryfisher 2,176]

12 hours ago, CorinaMarie said:

For my testing, I used Residential only

Can a residential lot be modded to act like an inland freight terminal (e.g. at an airport) with a very low capacity? My worry is about port controllers -- they can be finicky.

[CorinaMarie 29,771]

2 minutes ago, jeffryfisher said:

Can a residential lot be modded to act like an inland freight terminal (e.g. at an airport) with a very low capacity? My worry is about port controllers -- they can be finicky.

Well, I don't know, but if you can point me to one I can check for adding whatever properties it has to the houses. I did make the growable residential act exactly like a Freight Train station so it seems likely that could be done too.

[jeffryfisher 2,176]

On 9/27/2019 at 8:40 AM, CorinaMarie said:

if you can point me to one I can check for adding whatever properties it has to the houses.

https://www.sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=1663

But beware of functional port rules:

https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/index.php?topic=7138.0

[CorinaMarie 29,771]

1 hour ago, jeffryfisher said:

But beware of functional port rules:

https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/index.php?topic=7138.0

I got the file downloaded ok, but this linky just takes me to a login screen. Did Devotion go to members only or something?

Edit: I've checked and other forums display fine over there. Maybe this is something which got borked during the transfer and @Tarkus can flip the toggle back so it's viewable by us guests.

[jeffryfisher 2,176]

5 hours ago, CorinaMarie said:

this linky just takes me to a login screen

LEX and the forums are separate registrations

[CorinaMarie 29,771]

3 hours ago, jeffryfisher said:

LEX and the forums are separate registrations

I'm well aware of that. However, my concern is why that particular thread/forum is not viewable by non-members.

[Tarkus 6,932]

That particular subforum had some restrictions placed on it sometime in 2009, due to the "Seaport Controller Wars" of that era.  The continued existence of those restrictions escaped detection until now, despite being ancient history at this point.

I've gone ahead and restored guest access.

-Tarkus

[CorinaMarie 29,771]

On 9/27/2019 at 11:35 AM, jeffryfisher said:

Can a residential lot be modded to act like an inland freight terminal (e.g. at an airport) with a very low capacity?

Yes.  

 

After some tweaking:

[jeffryfisher 2,176]

Wow, now the key to a good new mod is to figure out what kinds of buildings deserve to absorb small amounts of freight. For instance, department stores, small shops, shopping malls etc. It doesn't seem practical to mod existing buildings (except maybe the Maxis ones), but creating a few "freight sink" commercial buildings might be fun.

And then there's CAM-patibility to consider.

Did you need to mess with your port controller or use up something like a port ID to make your house function?

[CorinaMarie 29,771]

1 hour ago, jeffryfisher said:

Did you need to mess with your port controller or use up something like a port ID to make your house function?

During this phase, I removed the Airport Cargo one from the downloaded mod and inserted the IID of my Farm House lot in the Port Developer exemplar in its place:

To make this work, it does have to have an entry in that list. In that same BSC Functional Seaports, Version 3.1.dat file, I then deleted both exemplars and LText related to the Airport Cargo lot.

 

Then in my own .SC4Lot file, I updated my Building Exemplar like this:

 

And added this exemplar (modeling it after the Airport Cargo one I deleted) and tweaking the numbers downward:

 

While it worked just fine receiving freight trucks and providing the minor cap relief I set for it, I did notice it would flash to the dirty, black distressed look for a split second two or three times per month. I narrowed this down to it having reached 0% Efficiency due to the low Trip Capacity List. (If this isn't set low then all trucks just go to the first one they find and it defeats the purpose of having them visit multiple lots.) Above you can see my attempted fix by setting 0xca271785 (Efficiency Distress Threshold) to a very large negative number. The internal calculations ignore any value below zero for this and substitute a zero instead.

To visually fix this, I added the property 0x09f00e59 (Ignore lot state effects) set to True (0x01) in my building exemplar. Next I extracted every prop I have on the lot and added the property there too. (Because I used prop families when lotting, this meant finding each prop within said families.) All this extra work prolly makes it not worth creating growable minor freight end points as these altered props should all be given new IIDs so they don't interfere with any other existing lot. Btw, the non-distressed look does not interfere with No Road, No Water, nor No Job zots should it actually abandon.

So, it's quite the interesting idea, but would require significant dedication to pull it off well.

 

[Terring 6,476]

I need to salute you for all this work you've made, Corina. Your efforts are very promising and who knows what new things we'll discover. Thank you very much for giving my ideas a try

However the thing I really need to comment is your very first attempts of making residential zones receiving industrial goods. The fact that the freight trucks are passing through homes and road-less areas...

On 27/9/2019 at 6:28 AM, CorinaMarie said:

...looks like a way to simulate delivery drones. They're not common yet, but give it some time and the skies of tomorrow will be filled not by flying cars, but by this:

It also looks like the behavior of the ferries in the game. As we know, ferries are the most unique transportation in the game, because they don't follow a specific road you've build. All they need is a deep enough body of water and you have this:

Your first attempts even had trucks traveling through homes, roads and even empty land to go to their destination. So for once again I'm coming to the question I've asked a number of times but nobody gave me a positive question. Can we build an amphibious version of the ferries to simulate air transportation, in order to make our airports and heliports connecting our cities? Those airports and heliports not only will provide support to the commercial zones, but they could actually transport Sims and cargo, connecting districts and even cities together, just like the helicopters in Cities in Motion.

Of course I know nothing about modding, so...

[monkeywater 910]

On 9/29/2019 at 3:18 AM, Tarkus said:

 "Seaport Controller Wars" of that era.

?????????

 

huh?

[CorinaMarie 29,771]

4 hours ago, monkeywater said:

?????????

 

huh?

Since that was a decade ago, let's not bring it up for re-hashing here.

[CorinaMarie 29,771]

With some more detail: Cori's Growable Residential Freight End Point Tutorial

[jeffryfisher 2,176]

19 hours ago, CorinaMarie said:

So, it's quite the interesting idea, but would require significant dedication to pull it off well.

Indeed, just the need to enter the lot's IID into a port controller means that only a few special lots could become freight sinks, and each would need to declare very clearly what port "system" (e.g. BSC ports) it belonged to.

Because of the stress you discovered, I reckon each would be purpose built, like the air-freight terminal,  not a simple self-edited customization of an existing lot. So I'm thinking maybe one or two growable commercial properties (e.g. big-box store or large shopping mall) could draw some freight. Then it might be nice to make them CAM-patible and possibly non-CAM as well.

[CorinaMarie 29,771]

2 minutes ago, jeffryfisher said:

Indeed, just the need to enter the lot's IID into a port controller means that only a few special lots could become freight sinks, and each would need to declare very clearly what port "system" (e.g. BSC ports) it belonged to.

Now that I fully understand the exclusion part of Seaport (and Airport) controllers I notice it's been very over complicated than what it needs to be almost as if they were set up to make it difficult to have other Seaports. There's no logical reason to have all the sub Controllers in the main file. Those (and their LText) should be in with each lot. With the main Controller in a file by itself it would then be super easy to edit the list to have any combination of Seaport lots without any hassle at all. Ofc, one would still need to decide which they were going to use ahead of time since changing horses mid stream would still bork cities saved using a different list of Seaports.

 

7 minutes ago, jeffryfisher said:

So I'm thinking maybe one or two growable commercial properties (e.g. big-box store or large shopping mall) could draw some freight. Then it might be nice to make them CAM-patible and possibly non-CAM as well.

Sure, whatever you want to make would be cool. I've done the research so now it's up to the creative peeps to, well, create.

[jeffryfisher 2,176]

On 10/1/2019 at 9:11 AM, CorinaMarie said:

it would then be super easy to edit the list to have any combination of Seaport lots

IIRC,  BSC lists a whole slew of generic-named ports (or is it sub-controllers?) that can be used for future mods (I guess there's no penalty for listing a port that is not yet invented?). So it might be possible to claim those prefab listings when creating inland freight sinks.

[Tarkus 6,932]

On 10/1/2019 at 9:11 AM, CorinaMarie said:

Now that I fully understand the exclusion part of Seaport (and Airport) controllers I notice it's been very over complicated than what it needs to be almost as if they were set up to make it difficult to have other Seaports. There's no logical reason to have all the sub Controllers in the main file. Those (and their LText) should be in with each lot. With the main Controller in a file by itself it would then be super easy to edit the list to have any combination of Seaport lots without any hassle at all. Ofc, one would still need to decide which they were going to use ahead of time since changing horses mid stream would still bork cities saved using a different list of Seaports.

That whole situation was a legacy of "Seaport Controller Wars", unfortunately, and while I'd rather not dredge that up, I do think it's necessary to explain the current status quo and file architecture.

"Seaport Controller Wars" was really just "BSC vs. Pegasus Round 2" (it was actually 2008--I had it confused with "Round 3" over the Prop Pox/beach umbrella situation in 2009).  Both were making seaports, and the Seaport Controller became a highly contested matter--the BSC wanted to make the two sets be interoperable, to prevent CTDs (the consequence of installing a seaport without the necessary controller entries), but Pegasus wouldn't let them, and also objected to a neutral third-party assume custodial responsibilities for the controller (there were offers from the SFBT and the NAM Team, IIRC).  The thread linked above describes some of this situation.

Why Pegasus included the controller directly in his package is self-explanatory from this.  As far as why the BSC didn't issue the Seaport Controller as a separate file, I'm not entirely sure.  The most sensible possible explanation would be that they didn't want to run the risk of users downloading the main seaport file but not the controller, and getting hit with a rash of CTD support cases in the process.  They did include entries and enabler exemplars for a number of other non-BSC/non-Peg seaports as well, and for a couple years (until 2010), the file received regular updates, expanding the support for other seaports.  IIRC, they also remodded those older seaports' stats, to get them in line with the "X-Ports" and CAM standards.

The Airport Controller system works very similarly--the copies of it are usually ensconced in an airport set (the most recent being xannepan's Functional Airports Version 2.2 from 2013). 

If the controllers were to be separated out, in order for that new file architecture to really work, pretty much any old seaport or airport upload with a controller file would need to be altered to remove it; otherwise, CTD risk is quite high, depending on how the user has their Plugins folder arranged.  There's also the issue that some users may have outdated/incomplete controller sitting in their Plugins folders, which would have to be removed (an even bigger issue, considering that they're stuffed inside of seaport/airport sets, the whole of which would have to be pulled from the Plugins folder, due to the existing file architecture).

-Tarkus

 

[CorinaMarie 29,771]

On 9/30/2019 at 4:42 PM, Terring said:

So for once again I'm coming to the question I've asked a number of times but nobody gave me a positive question. Can we build an amphibious version of the ferries to simulate air transportation, in order to make our airports and heliports connecting our cities?

Something like this?

 

I'm certain it cannot be done as a transportation route as those are already defined and no additional ones can be added. Prolly the closet you could get would be with some Lua scripting to have plane or helicopter generators and then elsewhere have attractors for same.

[Lucario Boricua 7,030]

The aluminium mosquitoes, they are back!!!

 

But back on topic, one method that could be used, and has been used for other transportation modes, is making subway stations disguised as terminals for said other modes. Ever seen the WMP train ferries? Maybe someone could make an airport terminal disguised as a multimodal station converting pedestrian, car and bus traffic into subway traffic, then the player would be able to connect the terminal to other terminals elsewhere. For practical purposes, subways are all-terrain routes and can be routed any way the player wishes, they are only be limited by steep cliffs and there's mods which lessen this effect.

 

 

[CorinaMarie 29,771]

20 minutes ago, Lucario Boricua said:

making subway stations disguised as terminals for said other modes.

So, what about modding, say, monorail with invisible supports and tracks? Mod the monorail train as just the engine, but make it an airplane shape. Then could the y-offset (height) for the train-plane be elevated to actually run 1000 meters (or something) above the invisible tracks? One would then weave all those first in the city tile before starting the growth part. Add neighborhood connections so the train-planes flying thru would follow an apparent set flight path.

[CorinaMarie 29,771]

Ok, so I've tested with a Passenger Train Engine on a regular railroad and now I have multiple airplanes running on the tracks. I also set the train length minimum and maximum to 0x01 (which includes the engine).

 

Now the key part is can the vertical offset be set somewhere so it's not right on the tracks? I'm sure the tracks themselves could be made invisible. (And we would really want to use a different network as regular train tracks are too popular, but this is just a partial proof of concept and where I knew I had heavy traffic.)

[CorinaMarie 29,771]

I've gone as far as my skills can go. Model Tweaker can only raise the plane so far and values any higher seem to cycle around. I'm guessing it needs a bigger LOD (or something) which is more than I know how to do.

Set to Vertical +320:

 

Set to Vertical +640:

 

Set to Vertical +2000 (or some big number):

^ I also increased the frequency per second so I didn't have to wait as long to see them.

 

So, we need the experts to step in now and say if there's something else that can be done to get that Locomotive Airplane higher above the railroad tracks.

[Tarkus 6,932]

1 hour ago, CorinaMarie said:

Now the key part is can the vertical offset be set somewhere so it's not right on the tracks? I'm sure the tracks themselves could be made invisible. (And we would really want to use a different network as regular train tracks are too popular, but this is just a partial proof of concept and where I knew I had heavy traffic.)

What you've described is actually not far from how the NAM's Canal Addon Mod Plugin (better known as CAN-AM) is structured--just replace boats with planes. 

-Tarkus

[Terring 6,476]

Using a technique similar to CAN-AM with puzzle pieces or new drag-able transportation systems to add air traffic does sounds promising, but there is a very large challenge to overcome and that's the difference between boats and airplanes. Boats have very limited movements and can only go where the canals leads, but airplanes can go everywhere and fly above any kind of obstacles, just as mountains, large bodies of water and skyscrapers. And while we can drag/plop paths on mountains so the airplanes can fly above them, we can't do that in our cities without having strange open spaces that makes our cities look awkward, since buildings can't be constructed on those puzzle pieces or drag-able paths. And if airplanes still follow the anaglyph of the landscape, I really want to see them flying above seas and lakes. Will they still fly or will they dive and become submarines?

Of course I'm not going to be Mr Negative. I'm just pointing out that an air version of CAN-AM sounds cool in theory but very challenging in practice. But still, let's give it a try.

By the way, if we have airplanes flying above railroads without any other extra modification, we might end up having flying trains. And yes, some folks are taking this concept very serious!

Confused? Let me explain. This train-airplane hybrid is attached to a railroad by a current collector to get the electricity it needs to power its engines and transport a lot of people from station to station. Maybe we can now have those crazy babies in our cities

[CorinaMarie 29,771]

4 hours ago, Terring said:

And while we can drag/plop paths on mountains so the airplanes can fly above them, we can't do that in our cities without having strange open spaces that makes our cities look awkward, since buildings can't be constructed on those puzzle pieces or drag-able paths.

As a concept for getting the plane to follow some sort of path it was worth exploring, but as you point out there are too many reasons it won't provide what you want.

 

4 hours ago, Terring said:

I'm just pointing out that an air version of CAN-AM sounds cool in theory but very challenging in practice. But still, let's give it a try.

Substituting the airplanes for boats still kept everything ground level since CAN-AM is really a bus route in disguise. As an alternative for the rail lines, this is even worse with regard to the paths it can follow. In my rail line airplane tests they did at least follow all the gentle curves allowed by NAM. Changing the offsets for the airplane S3D model with the Model Tweaker does need adjusting all 3 axes and I now believe it still might be possible to look like it's the right height compared to the buildings. (No point in testing further tho since the end result wouldn't create what you want to simulate.)

My best guess for Alex's CAN-AM suggestion was to look at the Lua Script which generates the boats. As such one would want to tie the Generator code to a new lot which would then create the airplanes similar to how the landing strip part of an airport does. In the modular airport sets this can be found as small as (iirc) a 2 x 2 piece and would allow keeping the airplanes in their default automata group. Separate Lua code tied to a different lot could then be the Attractor where they would disappear upon arrival. The planes would show proper acceleration and banking with no concern for ground being water or not.

Ofc, this is already available in the game by building an airport and then random planes do fly around.