BigRedFish

First off, having experimented with the Tunnel Mod a bit, I think there's no reason to ever remove it. If you want to build over a hill rather than use a tunnel, draw the road to the top of the hill, release the mouse button, then draw the road down the other side separately. No problem. After loading the (excellent) Tunnel Mod into iLive The Reader to see what was in there, I found another interesting, somewhat related set of exemplars: MaxSlopeAlongNetwork, and MaxTunnelSlope. These control the maximum allowable grade on a network. I tried setting them to the following numbers to roughly mimic the maximum grade percentages I've seen on real networks: Rail: 2 Street: 20 Road/OneWay: 15 Avenue: 10 (could go to 12 in mountainous areas, I suppose) Highway/Ground Highway: 6 (could conceivably go to 8, as above) Elevated/Monorail: 5 The result was realistic grades! No more rails running up hills at a 25-degree angle (making the train cars look really goofy at the transitions). This makes it a little harder to place networks, obviously, as you have to really follow the map contours laying rail through. Sometimes crossings can require a little manual levelling. On the plus side, no more wavy rails, it lets you really start using land bridges and tunnels, and making cuts through hills, just like real-life railroads and highways departments have to. The highways look spectacularly real with these numbers. And it'll save you a fortune in terraforming costs. The elevated-subway and ground-elevated highway transitions look a bit silly in comparison, but they did already... hopefully someone who can run the FiSH-file tools will make longer versions of those pieces... Try it for yourself, and tweak to suit your eye. It's pretty cool for realism freaks. If it's OK, I'll post my modded tunnel mod for those who want to do it the easy way. If not, it's easy enough to change with iLive's Reader, only takes a few minutes, and then you can mod it YOUR way.

https://www.simtropolis.com/idealbb/images/smilies/24.gif> You rule. https://www.simtropolis.com/idealbb/images/smilies/24.gif>

I am honored that my little fishie ended up on a boxcar at all. The Oscar's brand-name with the target in the O is something I'd never have thought of, and I like it. I only hope that as I get better with iLive, that I can contribute back to this community more - since the BAT came out there's been a vacuum in modding, so I think I'll work in that area for now. Part of the problem may well be that I passed Trolca a poor GIF to begin with - all the good pictures I could find were copyrighted and I didn't want to infringe, so I ended up using an image from the US Dep't of the Interior. Best I could find without disrespecting someone. It is the source of my avatar, though. If h's going to try another pass at it, that's up to him. The last thing I want to do is be another voice pestering him to do things when he's already putting in 100% above and beyond the call of duty with Euro, light-rail, and SimMars things. Bad enough that I tagged a request onto his old Dirt streets thread. Thanks Trolca, you made my day. EDIT: Well, I'll throw in one request, but it doesn't involve anything extra beyond what you're already doing: It seems to me, that the rail company on Mars should be called Trolca Terrestrial Transport or somesuch, and the cars themed appropriately, perhaps with a nod to Dearnen thrown in somewhere. No one deserves the honor more, says me.

We all know what this is for. https://www.simtropolis.com/idealbb/images/smilies/1.gif border=0> Sorry for the lousy GIF. EDIT: [in case Trolca has Private Mail turned off.] Text: Professional Aquarium Supply Car Number: BRF-1988-2002 No need to put my screen name on it - the picture says it all. For color, whatever you think looks good is fine, Trolca.

JCab's flag car is #1776, and yours is #1984 - subtle, and clever.

---------------- On 3/14/2004 2:58:22 AM kassarc16 wrote: Sounds great! Just make sure the vehicle speeds still seem right. Can't have the avenues clogged with slow-moving cars. Maybe test the elevated rail more after you released a first version. If only we could regulate speeds on certain sections of track. 35 is good for city, but 50+ is the only one for the boonies! ---------------- I have released the first version of this mod. It can be found in the thread Long Trains Mod! here on the Modding - Open Discussion forum. It is attached to the first post. There are some pictures in that thread to indicate its best use. I'm very open to feedback, and I'm willing to tune it based on the responses. It works pretty well - I'm not sure about the frequency at which trains appear, so as people respond to it, I might adjust that if needed. And anything else that may come up - it's a by railfans, for railfans sort of thing. I too wish we could have variable speeds and make them accelerate out of the station and roll faster through the countryside. Since freight traffic always originates inside the city limits in SC4, and the largest city is only 4km across, I figure even the current speed I'm using is rather optimistic, unless SimNation builds some really powerful diesels!