RHW (RealHighway) - Development and Support

[Wiimeiser]

While the thread's less active, could someone make mockups of my ideas from before?

[APSMS]

I would generally assume that if the thread is less active, it's because the team members are busy, either doing stuff for SC4 or they have RL that is occupying their time. Forum posting takes up free time. Slow forums usually indicate busyness elsewhere.

[Tarkus]

Also, this thread's been quite active in the past few days, actually.

-Alex

[Wiimeiser]

Eh, I'm just wanting my ideas to be useful.

-The first one would fall under the category of a RHW-2/3 splitter, so if those get flexed you could probably put that in there.
-The second one transitions Road directly into MIS without the need of One Way Road. It could also work with AVE-2, and ARD-3 if the MIS and extra lane are going in the same direction (You could probably even make a version with ARD-4 and RHW-4 if the former ever sees the light of day). It makes things a bit more compact since you no longer need OWR to bridge the Road and MIS (Plus it'd probably look better)
-The third one is for a diagonal avenue or RHW-4 joining an orthogonal Ave-4 and turning it into a RD-6 or AVE-6 in the process, while preventing sharp turns (Right in a LHD game), so it's like an at-grade Partial Y. You could probably even split up the RHW version into two component pieces that transition to OWR-3.
Imagine the possibilities!

[Kuewr665]

Ah, there it is.

I've never heard of the no patches rule. Is this something temporary? I hope it is.

[GDO29Anagram]

Ah, there it is.

I've never heard of the no patches rule. Is this something temporary? I hope it is.

We don't wanna release patches between NAM releases. It'd be like the Hotfix system, which was never well-accepted by anyone.

Eh, I'm just wanting my ideas to be useful.

You have just about every resource at your disposal to make your ideas (at least the textural part) a reality yourself. If you think your idea is a good idea, then don't just passively ask the NAM Team to do it for you, try it yourself and be active. Asking us to make something a novemdecillion times doesn't do anything to expedite the process that you would be capable of, especially when some of us are being buried with real life. There are plenty of freeware image editing programs (Paint.NET, GIMP) available to download, and even the entire texture repository for the RHW, NWM, and TuLEPs is available for anyone to access.

[Kuewr665]

I'm not too supportive of the no patches rule, partially because remaining bugs would repeatedly be reported and does not make the mod as clean.

You probably have your reasons.

[Tarkus]

I'm not too supportive of the no patches rule, partially because remaining bugs would repeatedly be reported and does not make the mod as clean.

You probably have your reasons.

I bolded part of the quote I took from your post, Kuewr, because you actually hit on a reason why we've been going the opposite direction.

Even when we do in-thread attachment patches (ITAPs, I suppose), people can't find them, and we still get bug reports.  We have to dig around to find them ourselves, in order to refer to the late reporter to them.  I actually thought the RGBK issue on those ramps was one of those situations, and it took me a couple hours of digging around on the forums and our Github issues page, plus digging around in a number of files, both presently available and in development, in order to determine that it was indeed not addressed.  There has also been at least one instance, in which we did an in-thread patch, but then forgot that the bug or its patch ever existed, and the issue ended up persisting in the next release.

In other words, it may be beneficial to a few users who get an ITAP while its fresh, subsequent users will not be so lucky, and it adds an extra step into our process of ensuring the bug is truly squashed in future NAM releases.  The case of Hotfix 301, which Ganaram mentioned, also played a factor.  Even though it was a readily available file on the LEX, STEX, and ModDB, people didn't even know it existed, and we'd regularly get reports of bugs that we'd already fixed with the Hotfix.  Dealing with a tiny attachment on a forum thread exacerbates that issue all the more.  It also raises confusion among users not familiar with the inner workings of the NAM.  We've had a number of situations where users have requested ITAPs for things we can't fix that way--e.g. RUL issues, and had to go into detail as to why we can't address their issue until a new release.

Part of the plan, however, involved releasing NAM versions more frequently, as we've done to an extent already with the 31.x releases, which mitigates the need for ITAPs.  Coincidentally, all the changes we've made in going to the Monolithic NAM paradigm have made us far more able to do this than the old, so-called "modular NAM" approach of NAM Versions 21 through 30.

-Alex

[eggman121]

You have just about every resource at your disposal to make your ideas (at least the textural part) a reality yourself. If you think your idea is a good idea, then don't just passively ask the NAM Team to do it for you, try it yourself and be active. Asking us to make something a novemdecillion times doesn't do anything to expedite the process that you would be capable of, especially when some of us are being buried with real life. There are plenty of freeware image editing programs (Paint.NET, GIMP) available to download, and even the entire texture repository for the RHW, NWM, and TuLEPs is available for anyone to access.

To further add to GDO29Anagram's comment if you want to have new content in the game you should be prepared to show some initiative on some of the content you would like to see. For instance I wanted to have some signs on my road network and in the future catenaries on my railways, so I went ahead and made some signs and railway catenaries with Building Architecture Tool. There are plenty of resources for T21ing which I am doing now, Transit Texture replacing and other modding tutorials to help you.
Furthermore other users will help out if your Ideas are feasible and useful. I know that has been my experience with my road signs and catenaries and I am truly grateful for the help that the NAM team has shown me to help me on my projects.

For instance I have went into the foray of making a new piece for the RHW FAR network



Guess what this is for?



And Here is a picture of what it is suppose to do. (Hopefully I have not done something that someone else has done. Maybe Shadow Assassin has already covered it but I thought that I would make it anyway.)

Before anyone asks I have just replaced the textures for the FARHW 4S F1 Ramp with new textures to show it in the game. I'm not advanced enough to make my own puzzle pieces yet.

-eggman121

[Shadow Assassin]

Maybe Shadow Assassin has already covered it but I thought that I would make it anyway.)

I have that texture lurking around somewhere but for some reason I haven't implemented it in-game yet

The RULs are easy though, they're pretty much identical to the RHW-4 piece.


Speaking of FARHW... first time in a while, but here's a picture for everyone



This, too (honestly, can't remember if I showed this in public or not):

[Geometry123]

Ah, that's just cruel, because you just made my eyeballs pop-out due to its epicness...

[Wiimeiser]

Alas, I am not a artist. That picture I made is pretty much the extent of my artistic skills.

I could probably try if only I had all the necessary textures to use as a base...

[MandelSoft]

You can always try and you can always train your skills. Remember, I went from this:


(which was basically the v3.0 textures with white lines and white triangles)

... to this:


(which are vector images done from scratch)

All you have to do is just try and make something out of it...

Best,
Maarten

[Gugu3]

SA this FARHW content is epic!
Eggman your work is incredibly nice...your work with catenaries and signage mod is amazing...nice to see you involved with RHW as well!
Cheers
Guglielmo

[noahclem]

It's a pleasure to see those beautiful curves again Daniel    They'll certainly be invaluable. No exaggeration.

[jdenm8]

I could probably try if only I had all the necessary textures to use as a base...

You do.

RHW-2 is here:


MIS is here:


The other RHW ones follow the pattern 270x00000 as well.
Road is easy to find, there's a copy of it in SimCity1.dat at IID 00000001.

This is how I make textures since I don't have immediate access to the orignals. If you're really interested, I have PSD (Photoshop) and XCF (GNU Image Manipulation Program) master versions of the A1 Volleyball SCP that I can upload.


As for your actual requests,

-The first one would fall under the category of a RHW-2/3 splitter, so if those get flexed you could probably put that in there.

Less workable than you would think due to the fact that the centreline is in different places on RHW-3 and RHW-2. It'd be a long piece. I think textures have been made for FAMIS ones though, which are naturally long enough that it doesn't look like a chicane.

-The second one transitions Road directly into MIS without the need of One Way Road.

No. Incredibly unsafe in most circumstances IRL and we do endeavour to make realistic intersections.

A piece like seen here though... maybe if someone is bothered enough or OWR-1 development picks up.

AVE-2

See Above.

ARD-3

What? An RHW-4 version? With traffic coming off a motorway at those speeds having an intersection immediately after so vehicles can do a U-Turn? You're more likely to see an intersection like this that fulfils a similar purpose.

You may be thinking of the other direction, but the problem is that you need to think both ways if you're making draggable solutions. The OWR to Road transition is awkward enough as it is.

-The third one is for a diagonal avenue or RHW-4 joining an orthogonal Ave-4 and turning it into a RD-6 or AVE-6 in the process, while preventing sharp turns (Right in a LHD game), so it's like an at-grade Partial Y. You could probably even split up the RHW version into two component pieces that transition to OWR-3.

Why not just build a Partial Y and make it Limited Access using the pieces we already have anyway?

[GDO29Anagram]

I could probably try if only I had all the necessary textures to use as a base...

The Road Texture Database, which I alluded to in my previous post, has every texture used in the NAM's major projects... http://sc4devotion.com/forums/index.php?topic=15780

[Kuewr665]

re: patches

That sounds reasonable. I figured that the patches would not be easily accessible, which led me to the idea of having a thread dedicated to patch releases...

Still, having more frequent version updates is a good compromise.   

[Wiimeiser]

-The first one would fall under the category of a RHW-2/3 splitter, so if those get flexed you could probably put that in there.

Less workable than you would think due to the fact that the centreline is in different places on RHW-3 and RHW-2. It'd be a long piece. I think textures have been made for FAMIS ones though, which are naturally long enough that it doesn't look like a chicane.

I still don't like the idea of having a RHW-2 bottleneck or a RHW-4 bulge...

-The second one transitions Road directly into MIS without the need of One Way Road.

No. Incredibly unsafe in most circumstances IRL and we do endeavour to make realistic intersections.

A piece like seen here though... maybe if someone is bothered enough or OWR-1 development picks up.

So even that piece would be too dangerous?

-The third one is for a diagonal avenue or RHW-4 joining an orthogonal Ave-4 and turning it into a RD-6 or AVE-6 in the process, while preventing sharp turns (Right in a LHD game), so it's like an at-grade Partial Y. You could probably even split up the RHW version into two component pieces that transition to OWR-3.

Why not just build a Partial Y and make it Limited Access using the pieces we already have anyway?

There are RL intersections like that, I believe. Admittedly this is the closest I can find, but it's close enough...

[als98]

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!