RRW Retexture Project Online!

[TheCouncill0r 70]

Hi guys,

 

Firstly, apologies if this is the wrong place for this - Corina & Co please feel free to move this if it's better suited elsewhere.

A little while back I tried to upload my Real Railway retexture project, with 16 different railway skins to choose from. Unfortunately they clock in at ~65Mb each, and specific sets are needed depending on what sidewalks you use and any grass / terrain mods installed, so hosting them is a bit of an issue. I'm eventually going to compile them into an installer with RSC's installer, but with current time pressures that's still a few weeks away.

 

With the release of NAM43, I've begun the process of updating my RRW textures for 100% coverage and elimination of glitches and so on, but without the ability to host suck a large range of options on any one site, I figured a publicly-accessible OneDrive folder would be the way to go! This way, users can examine screenshots and previews of the various retextures, then download the specific ones of interest in either Maxis grass, Sudden Valley grass and standard or custom sidewalks. I've attached the link below, please feel free to check any or all of them out - I'm not aware of any download limits on the free 5Gb of OneDrive storage, and they're arranged in four folders:

-Maxis Grass + Maxis Pavement,

-Maxis Grass + Councill0r's Pavement,

-Sudden Valley Grass + Maxis Pavement,

-and Sudden Valley Grass + Councill0r's Pavement.

 

Currently most of the retextures are only available in the Sudden Valley grass option as I'm in the process of updating them all to NAM43 compliance, but they should be available in all options in the next few days. My Custom Sidewalks and custom Terrain Grass NAMs are also available in various iterations, some of which come with other changes like red asphalt crosswalks, cul-de-sacs on most roads & streets or dashed lines in TuLEPs. If you guys have any suggestions on how to host such a massive selection of textures or get the link out to the community, please let me know, and feel free to distribute these far and wide!

 

The link:

https://1drv.ms/u/s!AoheF4r-pktwaqNRYyu47qAThIM?e=zvdIVR

 

 

Cheer guys!

TheCouncill0r / Billy.

 

[Lucario Boricua 7,028]

My suggestion would be to have this moved over to NAM and Transit Networks. Even if it's an independently developed set of re-skins, it's still for transit networks, and would be easier to find there.
 

     And this set looks amazing! I'm sure lots of players will appreciate having such a large assortment of rail textures at their disposal.     

---

Staff Note:  Good idea!  I've moved it over.  -CB

  Edited January 30, 2022 by Cyclone Boom  

[MatlockMan 370]

Not sure if this is a silly question or not, but can you use two or more textures at once? Or is it a straight override?

Love the textures and would love to use more than one, e.g. using the city railway texture closer to the city core, but then transitioning it to more suburban-friendly textures as the commuter lines radiate outwards.

[rsc204 21,808]

You can't create RRW override networks with a texture mod, the only way that would work is through an update in the NAM. However, the idea of a 'SAM for RRW' has been brought up a number of times before and the NAM team have no plans to make such changes.

[Ssaidd 1,325]

nice work dude, love the options!

[franyer 305]

@matlockman Logically, since the game reads and replaces the textures, it is impossible to have two textures at the same time... Maybe it would be to change another El-Train or Monorail network so that it looks more like the railway, but I don't know to what extent that would be possible.

[franyer 305]

@rsc204 Is there any reason why they rejected the SAM modality for RRW??? there are many transport networks that have not been fully improved such as the Monorail and the El-Train except for the combined networks such as the El-Train Over Avenue, but I am sure that other networks could be improved much more.

[rsc204 21,808]

8 minutes ago, franyer said:

Is there any reason why they rejected the SAM modality for RRW???

At it's core, it's the amount of code needed to make this happen v.s. the usefulness of the feature v.s. the willingness of someone to put in the work.

So the regular streets have somewhere in the region of 500 + textures at last count. Prior to the recent SAM updates, WRCs, NWM support and some others, each SAM mod had around 80-90 textures, a small fraction of the regular streets. Some people won't be happy unless we cover everything, but practically speaking I personally don't believe that's such a great idea. Anyhow, those are now maybe approaching 150 per SAM set, but there are 16 SAM sets (not all are currently active). Every piece and every set requires code and textures and paths and T21s and so on to function, someone has to make this stuff. My SAM11 addition was around 80 to 100 thousand lines of RUL2 code by itself and that was before all those additions I mentioned before too.

Rail has vastly more textures than streets, so the amount of work to code an equivalent simply dwarfs SAM, that was pretty much internally the end of that discussion as I recall. Willy (RRW's creator) pretty much just said no, but I'll add it wasn't like we all disagreed with him. Sure, we'd not be looking at 16 sets, let's say just one, but even if we offered that, others would then want two, then three, it never ends. Given that the time of these discussions RRW was in a limbo state, having been perhaps added to the NAM a bit too early, although it was very much optional, it needed a lot of attention. @Eggman121 has been the #1 driving force behind RRW development for a number of years and myself and @rivit have helped out a lot where we could, although mostly providing missing texture support for legacy features and crossings. If we had gone down the path of effectively doubling the workload for RRW development by adding just one override, then RRW would be half the mod it is today. Whilst the landscape may have changed a little since then, even if we were not rather against the idea internally, no one who could do this wants to, so it won't happen. If that changed, well maybe we'd soften our stance, after all, when I said...

On 31/01/2022 at 12:32 PM, rsc204 said:

the NAM team have no plans to make such changes.

...that effectively just means no one on the team wants to do it. I don't think there is an existential or technical reason why we would actively block someone who could from coming along and adding such a feature. That said, with every new release the amount of work to realise such an override just get's more and more. Practically speaking, those holding out for this are probably going to be disappointed.

24 minutes ago, franyer said:

Maybe it would be to change another El-Train or Monorail network so that it looks more like the railway, but I don't know to what extent that would be possible.

Yes you can re-purpose and re-skin any existing content, IF you know how and IF you have the time. El-Train might not be too bad, it's a fairly small amount of pieces, in fact Monorail is too, both are mostly unloved/developed.

But, El-Rail is used by GLR and integrates with Subway, you can make it look like rail, but that doesn't mean it'll function like rail, because it's still El-Rail, just made to look different. In fact, the E-RRW system has from it's 1st release surpassed it in terms of functionality too, so there is another problem.

Monorail is more interesting and actually, if you think about it, that kind of already has a 'second' option, in the form of the Hybrid-Rail feature. Eventually there are plans for a Real High Speed Rail, a replacement for Monorail directly. But Hybrid-Rail allows for both Rail and Monorail to intermingle together. Effectively like having high-speed dedicated rail lines and local rail coming together for shared sections of track, which is very common in the real world, especially around these parts (Germany). Since it's a unique network, you can use different textures for it. That would seem to me to be the solution everyone's looking for, since it functions as Rail and Monorail, but is a unique network in it's own right.

[Lucario Boricua 7,028]

@franyer For a RRW SAM implementation to be doable, you'd actually need to have a multi-member group within the NAM team working full time. Said sub-group would be developing the RUL code (network rules--this defines how networks are placed, override and connect to each other) and converting TGI values for each of the overrides. The required RUL code would essentially be multiplying the base RRW RUL code by however many texture overrides are made for it, plus adding the required adjacency RUL2 code to interact with the other NAM networks, and even the RUL2 code required to do transitions between each RRW SAM re-skin. Even if some of us in the team wanted to do it, we'd need to have a lot more people involved; and that can also run into the logistical limits of making the NAM controller (the compiled RUL code to run the networks) too big for the game.

As of NAM 43, the NAM controller already exceeds 400 MB with the full set of features, to the point where we already had to add smaller versions of the NAM controller removing the single largest feature, the RealHighway, for use in computers which have low RAM (4GB or less) and/or run in a 32-bit architecture OS. Even then, there's also internal debates on whether we should produce a barebones NAM version which removes most of the extra content (focus on the base networks and the more essential features of the extra networks) and doesn't require frequent updating.

Regarding the development of other rail networks with aesthetic differences: currently we have the Hybrid Railway, which is a dual network between conventional rail (RealRailway) and monorail (the basis for high speed rail network mods), acting like a mainline railway with HSR operating in mixed traffic. We've been adding features to it in phases for the last few NAM versions, in preparation for a much larger project we'll disclose when it's ready for the spotlight. There is also another project in early stages, the Real Light Metro Rail, which is another dual network that combines RealRailway and El-Rail/Ground Light Rail. This one is intended to act more as urban railway mainlines in which long-distance passenger and freight trains coexist with metropolitan rail systems (metro, commuter rail, trams). This one has a different texture to RRW and resembles the plain rural-styled GLR.

Regarding the future of Elevated Rail specifically: there is some internal discussion to return to its development after a decade with no meaningful advances on the base network; and limited advances after the last round of El-Rail/surface roads and tram/surface road networks until 2015. Several of us who are newer members of the NAM team are still debating just how we should do it. The leading rail developer, @Eggman121, is advising us to keep the scope minimal to merely add missing functionality to the El-Rail and GLR, while only adding minor cosmetic changes to the existing implementation. We are, however, also exploring the possibility of doing a more significant re-vamp of the El-Rail. We cannot guarantee that it could happen, despite the interest of several team members in making it happen. If we did make it happen, we'd likely be looking into making 3 variants of the El-Rail by only swapping the model textures; and it'd only be possible because El-Rail's geometry isn't as sophisticated as that of RRW, for now. Like with currently available RRW re-skins, we're looking into players swapping out textures through a cosmetic mod (ex. RUM for RRW, the official NAM Maxis-lookalike RRW texture, or @TheCouncill0r's 16 RRW re-skin pack), instead of an El-Rail SAM.

Regarding how transportation networks are developed in SimCity 4: contrary to what many players might think, transportation network textures are quite complicated because the game does not automatically bend and combine textures, paths and models to automatically to recreate all the curves, intersections and transitions between networks. Each and every single texture and model needs to be created individually and specifically for its purpose, along with its associated variations (ex. wealthing for textures, or height variants for elevated network models) and underlying code. This process has been partially automated thanks to some advanced development tools created by programming wizard @rivit, in particular GoFSH. We're also researching how to automate the process of creating network paths, which would further accelerate the development of complicated features.

 

     Bear with us, we do have a genuine interest to expand the rail-based options in SimCity 4 and the NAM; but that takes a combination of time, newer members catching up on development skills, and understanding what is practical and what isn't practical with this game and this mod.     

[franyer 305]

@TheCouncill0r

Thank you very much for the contribution, I have not tried it yet, I only downloaded it yesterday after about 5 attempts due to the one-drive server and my fluctuating internet. I would appreciate it if you could reupload the file to another server like mediafire zippyshare or uptobox

[linhedavid 31]

OneDrive is a friendly option Because it is global, I can download them even I live in China .