mcdrye - B.A.T. it again

[superhands]

I had a good feeling to check this thread today. great work Mcdrye!

[SimNation]

At last you have returned! Sorry to hear about the hd malfunction (those can always be a pain in the ass). Glade to hear you backed up your stuff and did not loose much of it. The ducts are looking fantastic and loving the walls cannot wait til you release these. I wanted to ask a Q though...when you finish with the full set in its whole would you consider making ones that have GLR textures for the tracks?

[thingfishs]

Hi mcdrye,
these look amazing, it's great to be able see underground a bit.
The new wall height is a lot more convincing, although I wouldn't have noticed without a side by side comparison. The lighter texture on the walls looks better too.

[mcdrye]

I've rexported the 90 degree piece to reflect new settings and wall height.

I'm also nearly done on the SSR to Rail piece but I want your opinions!

In addition to what you think of it overall, how in particular do you think the rails should be ended? The electric rails are easy and slope down like in real life but its the main rails I'm wondering about.

[mightygoose]

I think your just going to have to slope it gradually into the ground... so it looks seamless with texture...

[puresim]

I agree with mightygoose, a seamless transition would be my preference. These are looking fantastic mcdrye - I don't know why but your rail pieces remind me of a stretch of track going from London Kings Cross to Farringdon station...

[mcdrye]

Hehe mightygoose I hope it does remind you of that stretch of track as that is what I have in mind when I BAT this set

[jmdude1]

Just out of curiosity, are these eyecandy only?  Or are they going to be modded to be transit lots?

It might be worth talking to the NAM team and seeing if we can mod them to be like NOB's sunken GLR lots which are special TE pieces I believe.  One thing with that is you would need to rerender them with hollowed out LODs so you can see the trains on the tracks.

i think this sounds like a great idea! is it possible to make the trains visible? (off topic: are NOB's glr pieces available?)

either way, these still look amazing. great work!

[cogeo]

How to End?

I think the idea posted above (ie a "seamless" transition) won't really look very good. How "seamless" can track be, where the four-rail infrastructure terminates? It can't, because it would look very unrealistic/useless. In theory trains that don't need the four tracks can run on such track (provided of course that gauges and clearance are compatible), but the four-rail track terminating in the middle of nothing is totally unrealistic. Trains would never go there because they don't have a reason to do so, and because they can't be reversed (though el trains are not literally "reversed", like steam, they just change direction) ie they would only use one of the tracks, not the other, because they can't get there! But you could do one, players could connect it to a supposedely unelectrified yard/depot - only for this case.

But if you want to make a realistic-looking termination pieces, I can only see two options:
- Make some ground-level track tiles (4-rail), and a scissor crossover tile and/or a simple crossover tile (this is how tube trains are reversed). Then you can make another version of the above, connecting to (normal) 2-rail GLR track. Or you may elect not to.
- Terminate the (4-rail) track at a station. The first 1-2 tiles of the lot should use a special texture - simple or scissor crossover track - for a realistic look. Take a look at my GLR Stations & Hubs pack, it contains such examples (connecting GLR to heavy rail though).

Have you considered making these functional? The tiles are not really many, so I think it wouldn't be much work to NAM-ise () them ! And of course there's no need to make these a draggable network, the correct form is puzzle pieces imo. For this you have to contact the NAM team and request a range of IDs for the puzzle pieces. The "wide" radius tile will need a quite long range, and this because it looks "square" to me, ie no matter how you place it the lot dimensions are the same. A 10x1-tile large puzzle piece only needs 10 IDs (well, x16 range) because it can be implemented as 1x10 instead. Btw how large is your largest tile? I have released a Fenced GLR Puzzle Pieces set on the STEX. Not a big success dl-wise, but it works, and I can provide help if needed.

[jmdude1]

just wondering if there has been any progress in this amazing work? keep up the great work!

[DCMetro2834]

Wow, amazing work...definitely something to keep an eye on!

[TmiguelT]

this is one of the most ambitious projects of 2010!! 
One very magnificent piece of work 
Keep it up 

[littlefriend420]

Absolutely amazing!  I can't wait for the release!

[tulane633]

farily new to sc4  but love the dimmension of the third rail and the little props like the electric boxes as you would see as you travel the tube. (shame theres no sound effect too! - Maxis sound effect a little "clanky Are the rails continuing  at  ground level but with in-game tube trains? I've looked at tutorials on the BAT and looks very complex to me. Well done keep up the good work and look forward to the development of this realistic subway system?

[samerton]

This is brilliant! Please don't let this project stop! It's come such a long way, and nearing completion! Please don't give up!

[Ciuu96]

This indeed is very cool, could serve as a open-top subway in my cities. (i don't like using the default subway because i can't udrive on it ) Please keep it up, this is something that i could really use. In other words: AWESOME!

[SuperTimo]

I think the idea posted above (ie a "seamless" transition) won't really look very good. How "seamless" can track be, where the four-rail infrastructure terminates? It can't, because it would look very unrealistic/useless. In theory trains that don't need the four tracks can run on such track (provided of course that gauges and clearance are compatible), but the four-rail track terminating in the middle of nothing is totally unrealistic. Trains would never go there because they don't have a reason to do so, and because they can't be reversed (

It's not that unrealistic for the centre track to terminate in the middle of the line, as i believe london underground stock can use the mainline third rail system as well. However this rarely occurs and the rails would normally terminate at a station.

Great work here by mcdyre, i hope this project comes to completion in the future as i think this is something that can really make underground railways alot more visual in our cities

[mcdrye]

Wow have I been gone a while! Loads of RL stuff to deal with and boy has this year flown by! Well I haven't forgotten good ole BAT, and though I occasionally opened up BAT it wasn't very productive.

edit: Forgot to mention, my laptop failed back in Spring! Technology hates me! Thankfully I got a new Dell back in April.

This week I decided to get this SSR stuff sorted. Back at the beginning of the year SimFox was giving me some great advice but the prospect of radically altering the models which had already been altered several times before made me lose interest, but they seem so loved by you fab people that it's time I got them done and released.

The old wall textures had to go, oversaturated from multiple edits, barely tileable, and the bump map was flaky. They were still Standard Materials aswell so no ambient occlusion, and rounding corners, which is very useful with old brickwork. So I've retextured the walls and with A&D materials.

The depth has been reduced from 16m to 7.5m and the scaling reduced to compensate.

Below is the current iteration:



This set will also display automata! 




I'm kinda cheating at the moment because I'm using NOB's sunken lots so I can test the pieces, eventually they will be my own lots.

So what do you think so far?


Also I've been working on a seperate project for months, of which a sneak peek is below...Don't worry! It's actually about 90% complete and this is a small portion of it. The Lucky Penny Casino Hotel.

[rooker1]

 Let's just say you have made me very excited.
Are there any variations in the wall?

Robin

[WC_EEND]

I'd love to see those SSR pieces released (and now that I've been to London recently and seen them in real life, they look just like the real thing), I'm also rather curious about that casino, the nightlighting is awsome.

Xander