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Three Rivers Region

Started by dedgren, December 20, 2006, 07:57:49 PM

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mgb204

#11080
First off, it's good to see you back with SC4. I toyed briefly with Cities Skylines myself, but with far less patience than yourself. Even so, I absolutely agree on many of your reasons for not continuing with C:S.

I do hope that having dipped your toe back into SC4, you'll find yourself at home once more.




In the Highway menu should be a FlexHeight item, which includes On-Slope and Ramp pieces for 1 Level or 2 Level transitions. After placing those, you can override them to whichever RHW network is dragged into them. This way only one piece is needed for all networks/situations. Note a similar set of pieces exists for the Road/Ave/OWR viaducts in the Road Menu.

Additionally, the NAM contains two sets of hole diggers/raisers, both support 15m, 7.5m and some other handy heights too. I prefer the Auto-Destruct versions personally. If you are using a similar thing from a downloaded mod, you'll want to use the NAM included ones instead. Since more than likely the download is outdated today.

:edit: Just a thought, have you tried using Tab to cycle through the other heights? Likewise use of Home/End will switch between Diggers/Raisers.

If you'd like a reasonably quick refresher course on using the NAM, I've a series of YouTube tutorial videos for that. It's mostly basic stuff, but should help get you up to speed with most of the modern developments. If you check the playlists on that link, the "NAM Tutorials" and "RHW Tutorials" are probably the most helpful.

thundercrack83

My, my...I didn't realize how much I still need 3RR in my life!

It's wonderful to see you again, my friend, and I'm happy to see that you're making the most of your retirement! I'll be on the lookout for the legendary work here at 3RR that I've come to know and love so much!

Take care!!!

Dustin

Seaman

#11082
Quote from: dedgren on January 23, 2019, 02:34:05 PM
The next day Seaman, who is now a 3RR Regular (my memory may be rusty, my apologies in advance to anyone for not recalling if someone has commented here previously), very kindly said:

[...]

My new friend and now two-time 3RR commenter Seaman advised on the 18th:

I am a little bit sad, that I was not around here in the heyday of 3RR or SC4D. Sometimes, when I stumble uppon one of the old grandmasters, I read the name and think like "hey, I know the name! He/She made this or that LOT/mod/MD.".
So, it is exiting to be called a friend from THE dedgren. And since the experienced (older) ones around here always whispered in awe about the 3RR, I'm proud to be a new 3RR Regular!  :)

I made 2 gifs for you:

The most easy way is to leave one tile space between the slope and the crossover (note the hole digger and raiser lot in the first picture, I think this is the NAM-included one):


But there's another cool feature with the NAM: the "disconnector" in the highway menue. With that, you can do it like this:



The RHW-2 overpass then can be overridden with any RHW you need

Silur

#11083
David, thanks for the congratulations. I really appreciate Your attention. We are waiting for new discoveries in 3RR topic. I forgot to tell you, since 2017, my journal has been on Simtropolis. It is created under the great influence of You and your Journal.
https://community.simtropolis.com/forums/topic/73197-santana-island-traditions-die-hard/
Thanks.  :) :) :)

dedgren

#11084
Well, so here's the interchange after playing with it for a while today.



Thanks to folks (for now, I'll do better shortly) who gave me tips and suggestions. I'm a bit happier with what I've got now, and trial and error has left me much more competent with the current NAM and particularly the RHW components then I was even 24 hours ago.

But Cities: Skylines has left its mark.  One of the reasons that the game was so attractive to me at first glance was the very realistic things that you could do fairly easily with roads and highways, and particularly complicated junctions and interchanges.  I kept trying to do things with the NAM stuff that were pretty much second nature with C:S and running into roadblocks, or at least seemed inordinately complicated.  The thing I realized, though, is that I could probably, if I wanted to put in the time, create a fix for the SC4 issues.  I had no comparable ability with C:S, and the modding community working on that game is so fragmented and individually unreachable that I just began to feel increasingly bored with dealing with all the same old unsolvable things,  But enough of that.  Here's my comments, in the form of an image, on the interchange.


   
I really like the FLEX ramps and exits.  They markedly improve the RHW over where it was at a few years ago, when these things (IMHO, of course) were one of its weakest points.  If I could wave a wand, though, I'd figure out a way to eliminate the couple of straight tiles of ramp inside the circles and continue directly into the 45 degree curve.  No matter how hard I tried, when I moved the two closer the exit piece blew up, and not in a pretty way.  Allowing this would make the spiral ramps much more RL accurate and let you make a significantly tighter and more compact interchange.  The second thing I would do is create a puzzle piece or equivalent that split a game road straight section into the two ramps at the arrow.  There is something like this in the FLEX menu, but it doesn't work for my purposes in terms of how I'd want the interchange to look and in any event wouldn't let me connect things to it the way I wanted to.  Moving the outside ramps in through the use of the puzzle pieces would again significantly reduce the size of the interchange, as well as conform it more closely to the ones out there in the wild.

I'm going to look at a lot of "Check out my NAM Interchange" pics tonight before I ask a bunch of questions about mainline RHW lanes over another mainline freeway.  I recall that you couldn't do this at one time, but I succeeded tonight with a setpiece 90 degree crossing. I have a spur freeway into Aurora waiting to be built in this quad and I'd like to use some form of a trumpet interchange to do it.  We'll see what happens over the weekend.

Cheers.

David

2836975
D. Edgren

Please call me David...

Three Rivers Region- A collaborative development of the SC4 community
The 3RR Quick Finder [linkie]


I aten't dead.  —  R.I.P. Granny Weatherwax

Skype: davidredgren

art128

Do you mean to use that piece? It's pretty far down the ramp menu.



I'll take a quiet life... A handshake of carbon monoxide.

Props & Texture Catalog

Seaman

Quote from: art128 on January 26, 2019, 01:53:29 AM
Do you mean to use that piece? It's pretty far down the ramp menu.

it also has a D(raggable)R(amp)I(nterface) pattern as seen here: https://youtu.be/b2PeDUDlwvw#t=01m23s



the other DRI are in the NAM documentation. I've found this sheet helpful when I learned the patterns:




dedgren

#11087
So it hit me all of the sudden sometime overnight.  I was going about this all wrong.  Instead of sticking to my plan of laying all of 3RR's roads, I was trying to perfect RHW freeways that I had all of what?... say three days experience with?

A recipe for frustration.

This is the quad- outlined in green- I'm currently working in- Grand SE.



As you can see, there are some major freeways running across the south and western areas of the quad and a spur route along the east edge.  There's also a significant freeway bridge across the Grand River- the regions largest waterway.  One of the region's larger cities, Aurora, is on the east bank of the Grand at the point where it flows out of Grand Lake.  The only other built up area is the hamlet of Oak Point across the river from Aurora on the quad's western edge.  Most of Oak Point is actually in Grand SW.

Here's what it looks like in the game.



Grand SE is where 3RR's major north-south and east-west freeways: F-21 and F-60, meet and briefly converge to cross the Grand River on a cable-stayed bridge that opened in 2005 and replaced the old Oak Point-Aurora Ferry that formerly carried Regional Route R-4 across the river in the quad.  A spur of F-21- F-121, serves Aurora, ending at a grade level street intersection with R-4 and R-7 on the south edge of the city.  F-60 remains uncompleted east of the F-121 interchange, but funding has become available as higher priority projects have finished up and it is now in the three year construction plan, with construction to begin in the quad over the coming summer and completion out to Wolf Lake scheduled for summer of 2021.

So how do I do this right?  My original concept all along dating back to the very early days of 3RR was to build the region's freeways with the RHW, completing various projects as new NAMs were released over the years.  Indeed, my sense is that if my work in 3RR had been continuous for the past 12 years the state that the RHW has been brought to the various transport wizards that make up the NAM Team over the various releases would have been just about right, as there are not a lot of big, complicated interchanges that needed to wait for today's more complex creations.  I had all along planned to use the game freeways in Pineshore and other densely populated areas, the latter as needed.

But here we are, and I'm catching this stuff up all at once.  And what I asked myself last night is- why am I taking that on?  Why don't I just go around the learning curve altogether and pave the region using the game freeways?  I mean, they really aren't that bad, and much has even been done to improve them over the years.  Using them is more or less second nature to me and, while they are not visually quite what I want, they will get the job done- for now.

For now, until... somebody really, really competent with the RHW comes along and says, "I can do better than THAT!" and takes the quad and does just that.  I'm going to bet that there are folks out there who could do that right now, even.  So I'm going to pose a little challenge.  If you would like to try your hand at placing RHW-4 stuff where the game freeways are in the quad consistent with the map- even down to making the F21-60-121 interchange ready for the construction of the F-60 extension to the east, let me know.  I'll ship you the quad ASAP and you can try your hand at it.  When you think you've got something ready to look at, post the results here.  If something works out great then, hey, your quad becomes the official Grand SE, and we'll take it from there.  So let me know.

Here's a few shots of areas you'll be dealing with.

1.  The F-21/60/121 Interchange.  There needs to be continuous high speed mainline lanes on F-21 around the big turn and ultimately across F-121 carrying F-60.  F-121 can be served with single lane ramps from both the west and the south, and in the future from F-60 from the east.  The game freeway NAM splits are just placeholders as far as I'm concerned, but they remind me of how excited I was to see them added by the NAM all those years ago.



2.  The stub end of F-121 in Aurora.  Nothing really to do here.  The freeway, which serves commuter traffic headed into Pineshore and heavy truck traffic from the warehousing and light industrial park area on the south side of Aurora, was designed to terminate here.



3.  The Grand River Bridge.  This bridge, as noted, carries F-21 and F-60 along with R-4 over the main channel of the Grand, which is navigable.  I really, really like the excellent work done on the cable-stayed bridge, which surprised me because I thought that the game freeways had pretty much been abandoned after a few last things were added 10 or so years ago.  I don't know what the RHW offers that is really comparable, but I guess we'll see.



4.  The Tenmile Island back channel area.  The challenge here is to drop the F-21/60 freeway back down to the plain west of the channel from the deck of the main channel bridge while allowing for an interchange with Regional Routes R-4 and R-5.



5.  The Duluth, Winnepeg & Western RR bridge and F-21/F60 divergence.  That is one game interchange I absolutely despise.  The largest share of the traffic will be on F-60 through the interchange.  F-21 from the east could be served by two lane ramps; from the west only one lane ramps will be needed.


   
6.  The Butterfield Creek/Oak Point area.  I added this to show how easy it is to overlook a game limitation.  Both the F-21 freeway and DW&W tracks should leave the quad on the diagonal.  But... hey, hasn't that been solved yet?



To wrap up, here's what the region view now looks like centered on Grand SE.  I need to be moving along with these- please consider trying your hand at my little RHW challenge.



Oh, and two things- It's 3RR Regular Maestro444's birthday for about the next five minutes here in Alaska as this is written.  Happy Birthday, old friend- hope to see you back here in 3RR sometime soon.  And I'll note that I have already matched new 3RR Regular YouBet's subscription.  I have two more that I am willing to match.  Please consider becoming an SC4D Subscriber [linkie].

Back tomorrow.

David

2837606
D. Edgren

Please call me David...

Three Rivers Region- A collaborative development of the SC4 community
The 3RR Quick Finder [linkie]


I aten't dead.  —  R.I.P. Granny Weatherwax

Skype: davidredgren

art128

Well, honestly it isn't the hardest tile ever to make two RHW interchange on. You've got flat lands and ample area to layout your highways.

I could try to come up with something, granted I'm not the best RHW user out there - I think Mcduell and Haljackey are the two best - but it would give me some fun time too.   :)
I'll take a quiet life... A handshake of carbon monoxide.

Props & Texture Catalog

Tarkus

Regarding the RHW bridge side of things, there's been a few of what we call "compact" RHW bridges made, which get around the side-by-side bridge limitation by actually having the bridges be MHW-based under the hood, but with the appearance of the RHW.  There's a little bit of override code that flips the MHW stubs over match the RHW appearance to give a seamless transition.

Even though RL likely won't allow me to finish it until some weeks from now, I couldn't resist spending a few minutes making an attempt before calling it a night trying to find a solution to the interchange. 



The MHW Y-Splits are pretty easy to emulate with the RHW using FLEXFly.  I decided to try to get the F-60 extension in as well, though I haven't yet figured out the best way to get the connection from the extended F-60 westbound onto F-21 southbound from where things presently stand--perhaps a better rested me would have been able to pull it off.    (Also found I need to fix something with the RHW-8S Type E2, but that's another story.) 

The RHW is also getting "pre-fab" interchanges, believe it or not.  They're called "QuickChange Xpress" (or QCX).  They're 100% FLEX-based items, rather than being conventional puzzle pieces (which we actually stopped making in 2015), so it's merely a matter of assembling a bunch of existing modular FLEX-based pieces together in RUL0 to create a full setup.  Doing so also gets around the oft-cited 16x16 limit of the old puzzle-based pre-fab interchanges.  The diamond interchange QCXs that'll be part of the first wave in NAM 37 break the old limit, in fact.  The only real work that needs to be done is determining how to rotate the CheckTypes in RUL0, and making the preview model--everything else is handled by the existing modular components.  (The QCX diamonds actually do include some new bells and whistles--some new turn lane setups--so they've required some additional work, but those new bells and whistles will become modular/draggable items themselves in a later phase.)

I have to say, it's really great to have you and 3RR back, posing the hard questions that, when answered, can push the game ever forward.

-Alex

dedgren

#11090
So okay Art (art128), here you go.



I can get it to you as quick as you PM me an email address I can send it to.  It'll be zipped, but that's about as complicated as it gets.

Now, I don't mean to sound bossy, but please, anyone who works on this challenge, don't change or add anything other than roads and freeways that are in the game + NAM 36.  We'll get to that (probably, no promises, remember?) down the road, but for now I just would like to see everyone's best shot at making the RHW work in the quad.  Along that line, Alex (Tarkus), your proposed F-21/F-60/F-121 interchange [linkie] was right in line with what I'm hoping to see.  Best of luck with the current RL adventures, and I'm hoping all gets resolved to your satisfaction ASAP.

So, any other takers?  Grand SE is wide open to everyone at this point.  Accepting the challenge does not mean you've made a lifetime commitment to developing the rest of the quad.  I'd really like to see a range of efforts, so thanks for taking this on if you decide to.

UPDATE:  I've got another thus far anonymous (well, I know, but I'm not tellin') entrant.  It would be great to have five or so to get a sense of what might be possible.

David

2837967
D. Edgren

Please call me David...

Three Rivers Region- A collaborative development of the SC4 community
The 3RR Quick Finder [linkie]


I aten't dead.  —  R.I.P. Granny Weatherwax

Skype: davidredgren

dedgren

Moving up into Cub Township.



Here's what the township looks like in the 3RR Atlas [linkie].



You can find detailed maps of Cub and other 63 townships in the Atlas, the latest edition of which is 12 years old.  Hmmm, sounds like it's time for a new edition.

Speaking of maps, I ran across a 2007 "3RR Proposed Freeways" map, and thought you might like to see where the F-60 freeway goes east of Grand Township.



It looks like the stretch between Exits 44 and 58 will get built over the next three or so years.  That's the only major freeway project I'm aware of that's in the cards right now- I'll have to check in with 3RR DOT.  You can also see on the map F-21 headed north into Cub Township.  That's been on the books since the 1970s when the system was laid out pretty much as it appears in this plan.  While traffic counts on R-5 have increased over the years, it will be interesting to see whether they have met the projections made almost 50 years ago that justified the proposed route.  We may see someday.

Please note my offer to match two SC4D year long subscriptions still stands.  I don't mean to be a nag, but this is important, folks.

I'm pleased to announce that 3RR Regular Henning (Seaman) will be joining Arthur in the challenge to convert the game freeways into RHW's in Grand SE.  It would be great to have a couple more volunteers.  Thanks in advance!

David

2838621
D. Edgren

Please call me David...

Three Rivers Region- A collaborative development of the SC4 community
The 3RR Quick Finder [linkie]


I aten't dead.  —  R.I.P. Granny Weatherwax

Skype: davidredgren

Silur

#11092
Hi,David... You used to build rural roads.
Now you start with the high-speed tracks.
What has changed in the traditional journal 3RR?
Where do these big tracks lead? Where are your small towns and villages? 
In my heart, in my mind, in my soul... (may be - Uriah Heep?).
3RR is a strong Rural Journal. This is a guide to building simple life things.
I think, You show us Your pictures with rural cities!!!
Good Luck!

dedgren

#11093
Another one bites the dust!



With Cub done I've now got four out of the 64 total townships.  I figure I can do three or four a day- so a couple of weeks or thereabouts.

I think of all the projects that ever had their start here at 3RR, I think I'm the most pleased to have seen the FAR (Fractional Angle Roads) take off and become part of the mainstream, with its own corner of the NAM.



There's some things I'd still like to see done with it, but judicious inclusion of the ones that are out there right now, especially in rural areas, can just add so much to the game.
Finally, I'd be wrong not to address my great friend Silur's concerns.


Quote from: Silur on January 28, 2019, 02:11:32 PMHi,David... You used to build rural roads.
Now you start with the high-speed tracks.
What has changed in the traditional journal 3RR?
Where do these big tracks lead? Where are your small towns and villages? 
In my heart, in my mind, in my soul... (may be - Uriah Heep?).
3RR is a strong Rural Journal. This is a guide to building simple life things.
I think, You show us Your pictures with rural cities!!!
Good Luck!

Don't fret, please?  Three Rivers Region was conceived as and remains a way for me to showcase the rural landscape, which is the northern Middle Western United States and Canadian landscape I love so much.  Completing the primary road network is a necessary first step, but I don't plan, as already noted, to obsess over it.  The small towns and woods and creeks and fields are all still right there, Silur.  I hope you will be helping me create them down the road a bit.

David

2838848
D. Edgren

Please call me David...

Three Rivers Region- A collaborative development of the SC4 community
The 3RR Quick Finder [linkie]


I aten't dead.  —  R.I.P. Granny Weatherwax

Skype: davidredgren

Silur

#11094
Hi, David!
I admire Your travels in Your real life as Your coeval. I admire Your quest and discoveries in Your creative life (3RR) as a player in the SC4...  &apls &apls &apls
I will always try to help you - if I can...  :)
I wish you new achievements, success and health!  :thumbsup:

Seaman

I'm sorry, I have a little bit of a false start here. I loaded the tile and soonafter ran into this issue&mmm

art128

I ran into the same issue as Seaman. Reading the thread, which flora are needed to prevent the crashes, David?

I found that bulldozing all the flora before trying to modify the terrain works, but that's not ideal either.
I'll take a quiet life... A handshake of carbon monoxide.

Props & Texture Catalog

tomvsotis

Hey David, I'll happily lay some RHW for you if you like. thawking at gmail dot com.

dedgren

I've been defloraing quads.  I'm really glad this issue was caught early on, as it takes a while to open each one, open up the Game Parameter Adjustment box, type "Flora off" and then "Flora on," and save to region for 256 quads.  But it's handled now.

Nobody working on Grand SE should worry about flora right now, in any event.  When If there is ever wider collaboration a list of everything, including the specific tree controller, that needs to be in a Plugins folder will be distributed with each quad.

So, Tom (tomvsotis), thanks for stepping up.  Check your email in a bit.



Thanks for working on this.

I've now done Spurlock Township way up on the Canadian border.



I'm shooting for another three or four townships today.

Oh, and does anybody remember what the term "Double-0" was used for around here?  Just askin'.

David

2839736
D. Edgren

Please call me David...

Three Rivers Region- A collaborative development of the SC4 community
The 3RR Quick Finder [linkie]


I aten't dead.  —  R.I.P. Granny Weatherwax

Skype: davidredgren

flann

It's a pleasure to see an oft-mentioned MD come alive.  Though I played the game a lot when I was a teenager from about 2006 - 2010, I was never very engaged in the community.  Coming back to the game in the past year, I often feel like I missed out on some very pivotal work, and the heyday of the Sc4 community. Granted now I have so much impressive work to include in my cities.  Your post about contributing via a CJ or MD struck a chord with me, and perhaps I will soon begin one myself.