Cogeo's Transportation Lots

[cogeo]

I'm opening this thread for discussion about (any) my transportation stuff (mainly stations).

In order to keep Warrior's thread clean, I'm moving all irrelevant posts here. Other members, please delete your posts not related to HSRP and post your messages here.

cogeo --- « Reply #417 on: May 28, 2008, 04:07:42 PM »

I have made a set of GHSR and GHSR/Rail stations, using my transparent models.

If you want to test/review them, you can get them from the attachment in this post.
I would recommend that you remove them though after the final set is released, as they may be updated.

Dependencies are SG Props Mega Pack Vol1, BSC Textures Mega Pack, the Semitransparent Models (STEX) and HSR Stations Essentials (STEX).

Btw has anybody used my GLR stations pack? There appears to be a problem with station with dual track (Interchange Stations). Weird, they were released long ago, and got many downloads, but I have got no complaints yet.

EDIT: Buttons are not ready yet, so the menu shows the LE-generated icons, but other than that they are done.



Toichus Maximus --- « Reply #418 on: May 28, 2008, 06:14:41 PM »
sweet, checking them out right now.

EDIT

I had a ctd error trying to drag monorail from the station. This happen to anyone else?


edit 2
happened again trying to plop the station directly over existing line.

edit 3

i managed to get it working. I dragged hsrp first, plopped the station at one end, gave it some space, and then dragged some more. Didn't work in another tile, tho.



b22rian --- « Reply #419 on: May 29, 2008, 12:36:57 AM »
Cogeo,

I thought i was using the duel interchange in 1 of my cities..But i only ran across the single track interchange..
it seems to be working beautifully for me.. has a 32 % usage, not really in one of the denser part of my largest
city.. (355 K).. What did you find out on the duel path one that was an issue ?

BTW, thanks so much for all your beautiful stations   !

Brian



choco --- « Reply #420 on: May 29, 2008, 07:00:09 AM »
cogeo: im having the problem with the dual interchange stations.  GLR<->Rail.  No traffic at all.   

i'll have a closer look tonight.



cogeo --- « Reply #421 on: May 29, 2008, 10:28:14 AM »
@Toichus Maximus: What you are talking about is normal. There are two kinds of stations, those with the same type of networks through the station, and those with dual track. In the former case you simply drag the network through the station. In the latter drag the network as far as it can go into the station. GHSR (monorail) can only be dragged over one tile; the rest is rail and connects to normal rail. I never experienced a ctd, so could you please tell me the steps taken?

@b22rian: What do you mean by "single track interchange"? Is it one of the two large interchanges marked as "GLR at Front" or "GLR at Back"? These are OK.

@choco: The stations I found to have the problem are the interchange stations with dual track, with GLR connecting to the east or west side, both the small and large ones. That is 4 lots in total. I have attached an update. Could you please test it (replace the previous one, and buldoze all the 4 station lots mentioned above, if you have plopped any). If they are found to be OK, I'm going to update the uploaded ones too.

Thank you all for your testing and replying!



Toichus Maximus --- « Reply #422 on: May 29, 2008, 05:55:46 PM »
the ctd happened for two reasons--one was when i plopped a hub without any existing hsr network and then tried to plop a hsr starter. I didn't test if I could have done that on another part of the map or if it only happened when it was near the hub. The other reason was trying to draw monorail from the station to an existing end. It seems that dragging from the end to the station is safer.



choco --- « Reply #423 on: Yesterday at 05:58:03 PM »
not to get this thread too far off topic, but here's what i found with the GLR hubs....

The old hubs weren't working, except for cars and peds crossing thru the station.  I checked the readme to make sure i wasn't missing something obvious, but i couldn't get them to work.  The screens can say more than i can.  the first is the old hubs, the last is the modified hubs.



cogeo --- « Reply #424 on: Today at 01:47:59 AM »
That is it appears to be OK now? I do see traffic paths on the rail and GLR track. Isn't this what it was supposed to be?
As for the textures mismatch, these were designed for the old GLR textures, but there is mod on the STEX by ebina.

Warrior, sorry this has turned off-topic, but I'm going to delete all irrelevant messages as soon as this is sorted out.

To those tested the GHSR stations: Do they work for you? Any problems? Should I upload them as they are?



b22rian --- « Reply #426 on: Today at 07:50:49 AM »
Cogeo :

I have just tested  Small GHSR and also Large GHSR stations on one of my main lines in a larger city of mine..
Both stations are showing high passenger usage and are operating beautifully...

I will try to get a chance to test out some of your  Rail /GHSR interchange stations after work, later today..

Thanks for taking the time to create such wonderful stations for the GHSR..


Brian

[cogeo]

I have discovered a few problems in some of my lots. Just checked the Suburban GLR Stations. and they appear to have a problem with car and bus switchings: car switching (parking) occurs at all sides but the front, while bus switching occurs only at the back side. This is exactly the opposite of what was intented. Cars should enter the station from all sides but the back, while buses should stop at the front. It may be easy to say that everything is flipped, and the solution is just to reverse the switchings, but I remember well that especially this feature was exhaustively tested and worked really as intented.

That is there appears to be problems with TE lots that are not "symmetrical". So I would like to ask all TE specialists:
- Which side of the lot is supposed to be the "north" for TE? The convention my lots comply to is that the "north" is the "front" side of the lot, however some recent tests rather point out that the opposite is true.
- Is that affected by the SC4's or NAM's or the "Left-to-Right Switch" mod?
- Is this related, in any way by the orientation of the lot's "building" (the gray rectangle in LE)?
- Do the TE switches have to be defined differently if the track is just adjacent to the station or if it enters the station?

It may be a quick fix to TE these lots symmetrically and get rid of all problems easily. For example, stations with GLR at East could just be modded to allow GLR conversion at both East + West sides - as there is GLR track connected to the one side only, the other switch will just not be utilised by the game, but the side that does have a track conncetion will surely have a working switch, and this independent of how the game "interprets" east and west. However I would like to mod them them in a way that only allows transit conversions at the "correct" side only. Any help would be highly appreciated.

[nerdly_dood]

From my experience, north has always been at the BACK] of the lots.  It is not necessary to use symmetrical TE functionality.

[b22rian]

Ok Cogeo...,

I was able to test ALL of the Rail/ GHSR  interchangestations on one of my busier lines in one of my larger cities..
All of them are working great, high usage in all the tests I ran..
A very nice job with these  and they were sorely needed by many of us who love Warrior's High speed rail..

Thanks again for all your effort and hard work on these..

Regards, Brian

[cogeo]

@nerdly_dood: I have just confirmed this. Just can't understand how these problems weren't discovered earlier. I would swear that they seemed OK and tested in depth.

@b22rian: Indeed, I have tested them as well and they look OK. I'm gonna test them in LH-driving configuration too. All tracks here are straight and reverse paths were already included in the essentials, so no problems are expected - just want to make sure that switchings work the same.

I have also found some bugs in the following sets:
- GLR Stations and Hubs: cars can't enter the Small Stations from the front side (it was intended that they would not enter from the back side). Also the four hub stations with GLR connecting to the East or West side were all wrong.
- Suburban GLR Stations: car and bus switchings are flipped (they enter from the back side, instead of the front). Also no pathfiles for the split-track stations for LH-driving Installations.

What is really weird is that I have got no complaints from players, although these were released long ago and got many downloads. These are about to be updated in the next few days. A question I have is, why does the draggable GLR Patch for GLR Stations Pack include the building exemplars as well. For connecting to draggable GLR, modifying the lot exemplar only should be enough. Including the building exemplars in the patch causes them to just carry the errors they initially had, and even worse override any fixed buildings with the older (wrong) one!

If you have downloaded either the GHSR or the GLR Stations from the HSRP thread (attachments), please remove them, they are going to released and updated respectively (there are minor fixes in both cases).

OK, now that GHSR appears to work, let's hope that someone will mod/re-lot some of the existing rail station BAts (King's Cross, Gare du Nord, etc), enabling connections to all kinds of rail, ie GHSR (intercity), rail (commuter/local) and GLR (suburban) as is the case with real transit hubs. Maybe we should make a tutorial (somewhat more standardised this time), as with more transit types included, the combinations get so many that is impossible to make stations that can satisfy the needs of all players. The GHSR Station Pack (though it accommodates only two transit modes - GHSR and Rail) contains 8 stations, and there are still some combinations not made (eg Large Interchange Station with rail connections in three out of the four track outlets - only one GHSR connection). If another transit mode (GLR) is added (not to mention bus and subway) the number of lots becomes unmanageable. So maybe a good guide would be preferable.

Thank you all for testing/reviewing these.

[nerdly_dood]

I hope you can get your stations fixed.  I was not entirely aware that there was a problem, either.  I must say that I look forward to the fixed functionality with the lot update, they were excellent in the first place; they'll be even better with your update!

[b22rian]

I have also found some bugs in the following sets:
- GLR Stations and Hubs: cars can't enter the Small Stations from the front side (it was intended that they would not enter from the back side). Also the four hub stations with GLR connecting to the East or West side were all wrong.

Yup, I see what you mean now about the small GLR stations.. I checked 2 of them and not a single car is entering
either parking lot...

Brian

(edit).... I meant on the Small GLR interchange stations only.. On the normal Small glr stations the cars are entering
the parking lot as they should be...

[Andreas]

A question I have is, why does the draggable GLR Patch for GLR Stations Pack include the building exemplars as well. For connecting to draggable GLR, modifying the lot exemplar only should be enough. Including the building exemplars in the patch causes them to just carry the errors they initially had, and even worse override any fixed buildings with the older (wrong) one!

The main reason for including the building exemplar file was to fix the issue with the REP count of the Transit Switch Traffic Capacity property being not 0, which caused problems for Mac users. I don't remember if your files had this fixed already, though (many others didn't). I'd say the best method to prevent any further issues would be to include a Cleanitol file that has a list of all outdated files, including the draggable GLR patches.

[cogeo]

@Andreas: Thanks for the reply. So should I suggest players to remove the patch (and use the puzzle pieces only), or it would be possible to remove the building exemplars from the patch (update the patch)?

Some interesting findings about TE-ing lots. There appear to exist some bugs in SC4, as far as this is concerned.

Stations that connect to two kinds of tracks (a different one at each side), should work as both hubs (eg Rail<->GLR) and as normal stations (eg Ped<->Rail and Ped<->GLR). I first attempted to TE them in a way that only the "correct" switchings are allowed, eg for a station with GLR track at the East side, Ped<->GLR is allowed only at the East side and Ped<->Rail only at the West. This way the "hub" functionality works as exepected, but the embarking/disembarking not! Reversing the switchings causes the opposite effect, ie only embarking/disembarking works, but then the station doesn't work as a hub! So the only way to make both modes work is to  specify both East- and West-side conversions, Some tests I have have showed that even if the "East" and "West" are meant to specify "direction", rather than "side", this doesn't fix the problem either. So the only solution is to specify conversions at both opposite sides, eg stations with GLR track connecting at the East side must have switchings like
0x81,0xA0,0x07,0x00 and 0x82,0xA0,0x00,0x07 (ie at both East+West). Weird, but otherwise it doesn't work!

Parking is even more weird, eg if you want to restrict access from the back (north) side and specify a conversion like 0x81,0xB0,0x01,0x00, the (same) station is OK if plopped in the EW direction, but not if plopped in the NS direction! That is it appears to be rather buggy! So for parking only the conversion that allows switching at all four sides (0x81,0xF0,0x01,0x00) should be specified. I had attempted to block car access from the back side, to satisfy visual requirements (ie parking looking not "connected" to the back side), and this appeared to work in some cases, but as it causes problems (depending on how the lot is plopped) I'm going to revert it to normal. Cars will enter from the back side too, but I would prefer this to making the parking inaccesible for some plop directions.

EDIT: Tested buses as well, same problems here. Either specify conversions for all four sides, or at least at two opposite sides - you will get conversions on the side that you don't want too (as a side-effect) but this is still preferable to not getting conversions at the side intended.

If you have experimented with lots that are not "symmetrical" (and modded them as such), please post.

[Andreas]

@Andreas: Thanks for the reply. So should I suggest players to remove the patch (and use the puzzle pieces only), or it would be possible to remove the building exemplars from the patch (update the patch)?

Well, I haven't checked your files, but I assumed that you've made the stations compatible with draggable GLR when updating them recently. So that would mean the patch that was released a while ago isn't necessary any longer. The sole reason for the patch was to make the stations compatible with the draggable GLR and possibly fix the capacity bug for Mac users. For new or updated releases, I'd suggest to TE a station for draggable GLR, rather than the GLR puzzle pieces, so the patches are not longer needed (and can be removed via a Cleanitol file).

[b22rian]

Cogeo :

I see what you mean about the opposite sides switching for buses and cars..
I was having a look also at a couple of Lindevang Elevated Rail stations im using...
First of all the main thing is the stations seem to be working well with a high volume of passenger use..
But when I look at the colored pathing arrows using the route query... it shows cars entering the busing shelter
areas..And buses entering and leaving the parking lot.. Kinda the opposite of what you might expect...
Based on what you were saying in your post..I would assume Lindevang designed the station as it should be..
But must be some sort of backwards bug on the part of maxis.. ??
Id be curious to hear if any others have noticed this backwards switching thing with cars and buses ??

Thanks Brian

[nerdly_dood]

No, it was Cogeo's mistake, he was switched around wrong in what he thought was the front of the lot with Lot Editor and transit-enabling programs, but I cleared that problem up earlier, see above ^^^

[cogeo]

As said above, the suburban GLR Stations work as expected (bus stopping only at front, cars entering from all sides but the back) if they are plopped in the NS direction and wrongly if plopped in the EW direction, definitely a SC4 bug. These were tested a lot, but most probably plopped in the NS direction only. This error was very unexpected.

EDIT:
@b22rian: Just checked the Lindevang station, and it is modded in a similat manner. You can verify if the above is true, just try plopping it in the NS and EW directions. One should work OK, the other not. Isn't this a SC4 bug or not?

[b22rian]

Cogeo....

OK, I verified it.. as you said my 2 Lindevang  EL -Rail stations where the car and buses switching was backwards.. those were both east- west oriented stations.. But when i re -constructed one of the Lindevang station in a North - south direction the cars and buses are coming and going from where they were intended to come and go...

I can test some other stations which have buses and parking  lots but this is looking like a maxis issue ??

[b22rian]

I thought id show a couple pics of what Cogeo has found out with the station orientation concerning buses and
car pathing issues...

Again for testing purposes I'm using Lindevang El rail station...

First we have the proper functionality when the station is aligned North - south...

[b22rian]

Now we have the same station (Lindevang El- rail station)...

Tested in the same location in the same city as the prior pic..

.. But now oriented east - west...

The bus and car pathing reversed ,just as Cogeo suggested it would be .. RE: his prior posts above..

  I am only showing just the buses and car transits as this is the issue in question...

Brian

[cogeo]

Brian, thanks for the testing and the pics, this is exactly what I meant! 

The same happens with the track configurations too. If you specify that eg Ped<->GLR conversions can occur at only one side (eg East or West), the station behaves differently, depending on how it is plopped. 

So my stations now have "symmetrical" switchings, in order to overcome this (conversions at the unwanted side won't occur, just because there is no track there). I wanted to avoid this, but otherwise it doesn't work. Another solution would be to make two lots for each track confoguration, one for plops in the NS direction, and another one for the EW direction. But this would confuse the players further, and would need to be explained in the readrne in detail - but it is also true that many players don't actually... read the readme. 

[b22rian]

"So my stations now have "symmetrical" switchings, in order to overcome this (conversions at the unwanted side won't occur, just because there is no track there). I wanted to avoid this, but otherwise it doesn't work. Another solution would be to make two lots for each track configuration, one for plops in the NS direction, and another one for the EW direction. But this would confuse the players further, and would need to be explained in the readrne in detail - but it is also true that many players don't actually... read the readme.  "...

Cogeo...

Yes I agree with the above.. And not only that but you already put a lot of your RL time and hard work into this..
To create even more stations based on the directional orientation bug is asking too much of you..Were all very
appreciative that you have given us so much enjoyment with your stations.. To me your road- top station series
is pure sc4 modding genius 
 
For the more serious players.. (those that read these threads and are into the transport side to the game heavily)
are going to want to build a road on both sides of your stations regardless of the directional orientation.. (to allow
both bus and car access).. So as you said the "symmetrical" switchings stations will handle this issue..

It is true for the serious transport players that knowing which side buses and cars switch on could have some
bearing on where one places their station exactly..But as long as the player is aware of this issue with the direction orientation than it really isn't a major problem to be honest.. You just have to know which direction
your plopping down your station and than go from there...

.. And thanks again for your recent GHSR stations.. their working quite nicely in my cities at the moment 

        Brian ...

[cogeo]

Brian, thanks for the nice comments!

The final (I hope) version of these is now released (Linkie here). Please delete any of the test versions (downloaded as attachments in this forum). If you liked them get the released ones.

Updates to the GLR and Suburban stations will be released in the weekend.

[Jonathan]

Great, getting them ASAP.
Are you going to create a DAMN file for them, if not I'd be happy to do that.