RHW (RealHighway) - Development and Support

[Indiana Joe]

Just a thought: Would it be possible to make D1/E1 Flex-Ramps (not necessarily for the next development cycle...)? I was wondering because those new Flex-ramps for inside exits and entrances (while extremely awesome) seem very dangerous without acceleration/deceleration lanes because it forces you to merge into the "fast lane". 

Keep up the awesome work! 

Something like that is definitely on the long term to-do list.  But Alex is flexing like a madman at the gym right now, so it's anyone's guess what we'll see this round.   

[Tarkus]

Just a thought: Would it be possible to make D1/E1 Flex-Ramps (not necessarily for the next development cycle...)? I was wondering because those new Flex-ramps for inside exits and entrances (while extremely awesome) seem very dangerous without acceleration/deceleration lanes because it forces you to merge into the "fast lane". 

Keep up the awesome work! 

As long as you aren't referring to Inside D1/E1, but rather, standard outside ones, they've already been made, and are shown at the end of the QuickChange reveal video.

-Alex

[Indiana Joe]

...and he's already done it.     I guess I need to watch the video again.  What else did you hide in there?

[APSMS]

I think that the question was whether the inside ramps would be available in D1 or E1 style, and I think that the answer is currently no, since standard ramps of those type don't exist, much less Flex-based versions. Also, because you would be adding a lane on the inside, it would dramatically change the geometry of the highway (it's relatively easy to make standard D1 and E1 ramps since the entire highway stays straight). Adding inside D/E 1 inside accel/decel lanes would mean that the entire ramp would have to shift to the right while the lane was introduced, which could cause a number of headaches in construction, as well as increase the size, which currently is one of the advantages of having inside exits--compactness.

[Kuewr665]

Are C or F ramp FLEX pieces planned at all?

EDIT: Meant F ramp, but put C instead. 

[GDO29Anagram]

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The closest analogue to what you're talking about (in terms of mainline wonkiness) would be the wrongly named RHW-6S F2 Ramp. After that would be the RHW-4 D1 Inside Ramp, which is the only inside D1 Ramp there is right now.



But there's a bigger problem: When one thinks "Inside D/E/F1 Ramp", does the MIS stay straight or does it move from the mainline the same way its outside brothers do? Either case would result in the entire mainline having to shift to some odd direction, but the truly mind-boggling one would have to be the D1 ramp because both the mainline and the branch stay straight...

[whatevermind]

Inside 6S-E1's or F1's are useful in partial trumpet's (is that even a name?) used for splitting off a bypass. For these, I would keep the MIS straight, and curve the main line - just like in that pic of the "6S-F2".

I'm not as sure about inside D1's usefulness, but they could be handy in a congested urban area - inside diamond interchanges for example. 

[Kuewr665]

I don't see how the ramp is incorrectly named?

[Wiimeiser]

People seem to have missed my previous post since it was the last one on the previous page...

[GDO29Anagram]

I don't see how the ramp is incorrectly named?

It doesn't following the naming scheme that the Periodic Table of RealHighway Ramp Interfaces establishes.

http://imageshack.us/a/img43/9320/rhwptoep57ver1.png

According to how the naming should go, the width of the branching network should NEVER exceed the mainline. On the PToRI, it means that the number of red lanes should not exceed the number of black lanes. The mainline in the ramp is MIS, but the branch (the FARHW-4) is an RHW-4, and giving it the name "RHW-6S Type F2" is incorrect, and its real name should be "RHW-6S F1 Inverted." A diagram of the wrongly named RHW-6S F2 Ramp would need to have the FARHW-4 connection be coloured red and the MIS coloured black, when it should be the other way around to be accepted onto the table. All RHW Ramps should be able to fit under the PToRI. If it doesn't, then it's an "isotope" of another existing ramp.

To accommodate for Ramp Interfaces that would otherwise be named incorrectly like that, the Ramp Type of "Inverted" is needed instead. But the naming convention for Inverted and TOTSO-type ramps has never been fully established until now.

http://img854.imageshack.us/img854/1474/fptf.png

"Inverted" Ramps are used to represent situations where the branch is kept straight and the mainline diverges from the branch. Take, for example, the RHW-10S A1 Inverted Ramp. Is it an A1 Inverted, or an A5 Ramp? Calling it an A5 implies that the RHW-10S is classified as a branching network, when the only branching networks permitted should be RHW-2 (in some cases), RHW-4, RHW-6S, and MIS. Think of the RHW-4 and 6S as being MIS-2 and MIS-3 networks. Calling the aforementioned ramp an A5 ramp also wrongly implies the development of ultra-wide RHWs, which are at the very end of the backburner due to how much additional work they require.

Refer to this post: http://sc4devotion.com/forums/index.php?topic=990.msg357034#msg357034

Here, I come up with every type of RHW Ramp Interface there is and assign each one a letter. However, I run out of letters in the alphabet by the time I hit the 10S. This is part of the reason the naming system consists of a letter and a number, so that only six familiar letters can be used, but to also distinguish what the widest permissible branch should be.

[Kuewr665]

Ah, I get it now!

[Indiana Joe]

Actually, funny thing, Rionescu disagreed with the idea that there can't be inside D-style ramps even two years ago:

[Wiimeiser]

^That looks really cool, hope it gets in...


Also, this, this and this are what I was talking about before. As for the RHW-3 one... Perhaps I should screenshot what I'm asking about?

EDIT: Here's a screenshot of the RHW-3 one:


Uploaded with ImageShack.us

[vinlabsc3k]

There's a bug on Straight FLUP under RHW-6c.
I don't know exactly what happened.
I've applied the Diagonal RHW-6 Fractional Ramp Patch, but I don't use very often the RHW-6c, so this may not be the problem:

Before:


After:

[Tarkus]

I believe we've already fixed that one on our end for NAM 32.

-Alex

[GDO29Anagram]

Actually, funny thing, Rionescu disagreed with the idea that there can't be inside D-style ramps even two years ago:

Inside D1 ramps need to be able to fit within the 2x3 footprint that the default 2x3 D1 FlexRamp has, so a bit of modification would be needed. Wouldn't take too long if one has the resources. (Plus, they gotta conform to the new textures; there's actually some subtle changes to the RHW texture set that even Project Symphony didn't recognise).

EDIT: Here's a screenshot of the RHW-3 one:

Something like that would be more of a transition than a ramp interface. In fact, RHW-2 D1, E1, and F1 ramps would technically be RHW-2 to MIS transitions by that standard, but they bear the hallmarks of ramp interfaces and are treated as ramp interfaces and not transitions.

Conversely, it would mean that the RHW-6S to 6C transition (one of them at least) would be considered an RHW-6C D3 ramp and the RHW-8S to 8C transition an RHW-8C D4 ramp, neither of which don't even fit on the PToRI and are therefore considered transitions.

I don't know exactly what happened.

It's likely an unrelated thing; the barriers on the 6C median changed from a single barrier to a double barrier, and that singled out a few pieces that still used the single barrier.

[wschmrdr]

For NAM 32, are we going to be required to have that update we supposedly need for NAM 31.2? Some of us don't have our CD anymore.

[Swordmaster]

Yes. NAM 32, and most likely every subsequent release, will continue to ship with the patch. It is essential for the stability of many users' systems.

SimCity 4 is still available through various retailers, both on CD and as digital download.


Cheers
Willy

[Kuewr665]

I'm still getting the FLUPs median bug.

[Tarkus]

Actually, the patch that causes the NAM installer to stonewall NoCD/cracked .exe users is the official Maxis EP1 patch, not the 4GB patch.  The primary reason for this is the same, however--for support-related reasons. 

The EP1 patch was released several months before NAM 1, and has always been a requirement to use the NAM--it's just now that our installer can detect whether or not the user has it.  As its theoretically possible to mismatch a later NoCD patch with earlier versions of the other files, we have no way of verifying that the user does in fact have all of the update.  We had a string of users in the past couple years coming to the NAM Team, asking us to fix transportation-related "bugs" that were actually fixed by Maxis in the EP1 patch, and that prompted the installer functionality.

And to further Willy's point, the game rather regularly goes on sale at one or more online retailers.  I've seen Steam drop the price down to $3.99 on a flash sale.

I'm still getting the FLUPs median bug.

The issue is fixed in NAM 32, not NAM 31.2.

-Alex