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Three Rivers Region

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

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riiga

#11100
Glad to hear from you David and that you've kept 3RR alive through all these years despite varying degrees of activity. I looked up my very first post here on 3RR from 10 years ago - you had started a project to revamp the standard road textures and asked for feedback as well as volunteers to try it out.

Like you, I haven't been very active in the SC4 community for the past five years or so, due to RL taking most of my time, plus a shift in interests. But I've always kept coming back here to SC4D (and 3RR), albeit as a lurker for the past years. As you've written in one of your earlier posts, forum activity has unfortunately declined (and I'm one of those to blame for just lurking), so every post counts. I've observed the same thing with very few exceptions on various other forums that I frequent. I guess social media has swallowed most people's attention.

I also wanted to share this post [link] by you that I'm still reminded of whenever I think about the NAM, and it's funny how much of those things the latest version can do.  :)

EDIT:
Quote from: dedgren on January 30, 2019, 11:01:43 AM
Oh, and does anybody remember what the term "Double-0" was used for around here?  Just askin'.

I guess I just joined that very club, if it is what I think it is.  ;D

Seaman

haha... thx riiga for pointing to that poem :D

He's a visionaire, isn't he?

dedgren

#11102
And we have a... hey, waitaminnit!!



Yesterday I asked in a post whether anyone remembered what the term "Double-0" meant around 3RR.  A couple of hours later it looked like I had something to write a post explaining that to those in the dark when brand new 3RR Regular* flann posted.



Note the little circle around the post count: 11100.  Our friend flann became the 111th member of the prestigious...

...well hey!- I think so...

...3RR Double-0 Club which, along with $3.25 plus tax at any participating Starbucks™, will get you a venti regular coffee in a paper cup.  But it does get you some momentary recognition here above and beyond the thrill that goes with being a 3RR Regular** and in its day was quite the fashion.

So I was puzzling at my guest teaching job today over what I might do to recognize the occasion and whoa! here comes our old friend and esteemed 3RR Regular*** Felix (riiga) indicating that he recalled quite well what Double-0 meant, and that he had grabbed that particular ring this time around.  Recalling flann's post number, I was dumbfounded to see that he was, according to the school computer I was on, absolutely correct.



So what was up?  I mean, mistakes get made, but it struck me that unless SC4D's post counter somehow got stuck, there was something different between logging in at home and logging in somewhere else.  I puzzled over that for a while, then realized that, at the school, I was not logged in.  At home I was.  When I got back this evening I tested my theory.

Sure enough, when logged in Felix climbs to 11101 and flann remains the new inductee to the club.  But that hardly seemed fair, and for two reasons.  The first is that my guess is also that the difference in being logged in and not logged in and its effect on the post count is some glitch that is personal to me and my SC4D account- who knows why?- and that the membership at large sees the post count as Felix does.  It sort of takes the shine off announcing a new member of the Double-0 Club if the next six folks commenting are telling me, "Hey, hold it.  She was only number ---99."  Second though, and perhaps most important, is that the only thing better than announcing a new member of the 3RR Club is announcing two new members of the Double-0 Club.

So there you have it.  Congratulations to flann and riiga, the two latest members of the 3RR Double-0 Club!  I'll figure out what to do when post 11200 rolls around before it does.

David

* A 3RR Regular, as I continue to remind you, is anyone who has ever commented here in 3RR or over at 3RR-ST at least once.  We will not settle for less.
** See note, supra.
*** All 3RR Regulars, actually, are esteemed.  Felix has just been esteemed for a very long time.

2830573
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

tomvsotis

#11103
I had a few spare hours yesterday, so I stepped up to the challenge of RHW-izing the Grand SE quad that David sent me. David kindly invited me to make a post here about how I approached this, so here goes:

Here's how the tile looked at the beginning:


Look how little these MHW exchanges are! For latecomers to the game, like me -- I only picked up a copy of SC4 from the Mac App Store in mid-2014, which I guess is ... four-and-a-half years ago?! good grief -- it's kinda startling how small and unrealistic these are. It feels like it'll be a challenge to fit RHW versions of these into the space we have, but let's give it a go.


First up: the bridge, and this little island where the highway steps up to a weird sort of on-slope-y situation.


Instead of trying to cram two RHW-4 bridges into this space, I go with the time-honored solution of transitioning to avenue. This, unfortunately, means I can't use the fancy cable-stayed bridge; instead, I use a steel arch. Once the route crosses the second, smaller bridge, we transition to RHW-4. 


In David's original design, this diamond exchange had on-slopes on each side; that's def more realistic, but unfortunately it won't work here, because we need to keep both sides of the RHW-4 close to one another, while ALSO stepping one of them up to L2, for reasons that will become apparent shortly.


The railway line complicates things; there's not enough space for a height transition and an exit between the railway and the north-south RHW4 here. Instead, I step up to L2 before the railway line, and then cross the L2 lanes over the L1 lanes to make a T exchange. This is a lot of viaduct, but there simply isn't the space to fit in on-slope transitions.


Ideally, I'd like to drop the highway to ground level and run the railway over the top of it, but there's no diagonal RRW over RHW support yet (or if there is, I can't get it to work.) So instead, I run the rail through a trench. This leaves a pretty steep climb on the other side to the edge of the map, but if it's OK with the slope mod, it's OK with me :)


Next up: the triple Y-exchange setup over to the map's southeast. Here's how it looks with MHW:


There's a decent amount of space here, so I reckon I can replicate these exchanges easily enough. And I do, there's a problem: there are currently no diagonal height transitions for RHW-4. This means that the diagonal stretches that drop down to ground level will have to stay elevated.


This isn't especially realistic, I don't think -- I feel like most real-world exchanges would drop those flyovers down and then raise them again, rather than building a lengthy viaduct. But it's not terrible, and the alternative is completely re-designing the intersection, thus losing David's original design. I like this option better.

This means we're basically done! The finished product:



The only other alterations I made were updating the FAR-3 roads to modern, draggable versions -- they were in their original, puzzle-piece form -- and decorating the rail trench with some simple wall lots that I adapted from Mas71's walls.


The originals had a heap of props on them, and the base texture didn't fit with the railway line texture.


So yeah, that's it. Happy to contribute to such a well-loved project!

EDITAbsolutely first rate, Tom, and I think you've set a standard for explanation.  I've successfully loaded the quad back into the region and will spend time tomorrow going over it and coming up with comments and questions.  I'm hoping that Alex (Tarkus), our resident RHW God, will see this shortly and join in the discussion.  Thanks for the great work! -David

EDIT II: Thank you David! :) I'm really glad you like it. I'm just making a quick edit bc I forgot a picture!

Tarkus

Tom, that's some really top notch RHW work--those interchanges are spot on, and your solution for the T-interchange with the Rail crossing is very nicely done.  I'm also a huge fan of MAS71's walls . . . they've been my standby as long as I can remember.

With the bridges, my go-to would be the MHW-based "Compact RHW-4" setups, which come in four varieties (no cable-stayed, though there is a large steel arch--full listing with pics here).  The switch to Avenue results in a pretty steep drop in both capacity (on Medium, 4000 Avenue vs. 12500 MHW) and speed (for Cars, 50 Avenue vs. 150 RHW).  z's settings do actually give the MHW a slight boost in capacity over the RHW (only 10000 on Medium), but the same speed (150 for Cars).  The NAM Documentation currently incorrectly gives the MHW capacity for Medium at 15000, which it back in its days as "Simulator Z".  It was either the discovery of DIPs (Distilled Intersection Paths--the trickery used to give some override networks a single 25% per-tile capacity boost), or the addition of the Maxis Highway Override plugin that prompted that.

And to answer the question on the diagonal height transitions, there are Diagonal FLEXHeight transitions in development for the RHW-2, RHW-3, MIS, RHW-4, and RHW-6S at the moment.  They've gotten far enough along I have been able to use them in an actual interchange build.

-Alex

tomvsotis

Thank you very much indeed Alex -- that really means a great deal coming from you :) :)

dedgren

#11106
I've been pulled in all sorts of different directions today.  I'd hoped to have come home and give Tom (tomvsotis) some decent feedback on his RHW building in Grand SE quad.  I wound up getting back a lot later than I expected and thought that, before I critique someone else's effort, I'd better take a stab at coming up with what I thinkwould be an optimum solution to the freeway layout in the quad if I were both king and could wave a wand and make the RHW be anything I wanted it to.

So I started by "squarifying" the quad as developed by Tom into what became a 2,400x2,400 pixel image.



Using that as a base image, I designed what I see as being the optimum freeway build, without regard as to whether it would be possible in SC4 or not.



That took much of the evening, so we'll take this back up tomorrow during the day.

David

2841371
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

Ok so I've completed my try too, here are some pictures:






















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

Props & Texture Catalog

dedgren

It's my wife Heather's birthday today so I'm just popping in for a moment to acknowledge Arthur's (art128) great Grand SE RHW submission and to let everyone know about the latest 3RR Regular to give this a try.



Welcome, Robin (mgb204).  Thanks for giving this a try.  Anyone else who would like to do this, hey- it's not too late.  The more approaches to this, the better.  Who knows- the end product may well be taken from the efforts of many.

Gotta go do birthday stuff.  Hopefully I'll be back late this evening to talk about what we've got so far.  Have a great weekend, wherever you are.

David

2841684
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

Seaman

#11109
I'm back from holiday. I took a couple of days to visit Stockholm in winter and had a wonderful time and the perfect amount of snow: not too much to barely keep the busses working but enough to cover everything in beautiful white.
It's odd, that for some reason Sweden is a right hand drive country, but the metro system in Stockholm is left hand drive and so is all the infrastructure around it. I frequently ran into the wrong elevator because I kept taking the right one instead of the left...

Back to topic. Here's my take on the Grand SE Situation:



It's very tricky to leave enough space between the on- and off-ramps of the various intersections to avoid weaving. Additionally, I have to deal with the slopes approaching the bridge section, where it's hard to place ramps in a decent manner.



I tried to have the I24 running smoothly on it's way to the bridge while keeping it condensed. Also, I'm so happy about the diagonal onslope pieces, I always try to incorporate them in one way or the other. I think this roundish overpass does make it look more interesting. I think, it will look great once the flora is placed. I'm a little bit uncomfortable with how close the access ramps to the regional roads are, but I hope it'll do the job.



I tried to match the pylons with the island and the embankment of the river while having the arch right where the ships would go underneath. Since the overpass over the regional road is 15m, the diamond ramps have to go quite a distance to cover the hight difference. Hence the rather funny shape. But hey, it does look special.



I took Davids scetch and tried to reproduce it. It should be easy to incorporate the 2 missing ramps to prolongue the I60. Big shoutout to the RHW stability project: the southbound I121 leg runs in close proximity to the onslope pieces under 3 tiles of highway and although having to place the pieces in a certain sequence, the override does actually hold in place. That's big!



Arthur (art128) inspired me here, but I took the RHW-6C all the way since with the FARHW pieces you get decent looking smooth curves.



So, what do you think?



EDIT:
I've already made some improvements on my version. I incorporated Tom's idea to make a slope on the island (blue circle) in order to lower the second, smaller bridge. By this, I get rid of the slope on the western approach of ther bridge and get more room to relocate the I21 ramps to the regional road 5 on the westbanks of the river. By this, the I21 ramps have more distance to the I21/I60 intersection and weaving into traffic is much more simple now.
I also used Arthurs idea to upgrade the road number 5 from a "road" to a RHW-2. By this, Arthur was able to use the amazing cosmetic pieces for the ramp intersections. I think this is now way better than my previous approach.


riiga

Quote from: Seaman on February 07, 2019, 01:15:48 PM
It's odd, that for some reason Sweden is a right hand drive country, but the metro system in Stockholm is left hand drive and so is all the infrastructure around it. I frequently ran into the wrong elevator because I kept taking the right one instead of the left...
It's not that odd given that until "H-Day" on the 3rd of September 1967, Sweden was a left hand drive country. Most cars were still made for right hand drive traffic though, and it was one of the reasons we changed. Because we drove (or rode) on the left when railways were first introduced, it was only natural to use left hand traffic for trains as well. Trams drive on the right as they mix with other traffic, while the Stockholm metro does not. If anyone wants to know more, this is a good listen.

And to stay on topic... Those are some beautiful interchanges, Seaman!  :thumbsup:

Seaman

Quote from: riiga on February 09, 2019, 01:18:26 PM
It's not that odd given that until "H-Day" on the 3rd of September 1967, Sweden was a left hand drive country. Most cars were still made for right hand drive traffic though, and it was one of the reasons we changed. Because we drove (or rode) on the left when railways were first introduced, it was only natural to use left hand traffic for trains as well. Trams drive on the right as they mix with other traffic, while the Stockholm metro does not. If anyone wants to know more, this is a good listen.

Ah... I totally forgot about history. Yes, now it makes actually perfect sense. And if you are used to it, one might even be able to deal with the inconsistency :D
Thank you for the explanation and the links!

art128

Seaman, that's a pretty good design! Hope you don't mind if I save a few pics as inspiration for future interchange.
I'll take a quiet life... A handshake of carbon monoxide.

Props & Texture Catalog

mgb204

#11113
To coin a phrase, failure is always an option. I gave this a really good go, but found it a very tough challenge overall. However, I would still like to show the final results, even if I'm not completely satisfied, there are some parts I'm very happy with.



Here's a general overview of the entire tile. The I-60 enters the tile as MHO (Maxis Highway Override), the I-60 extension and I-121 also both use this network. MHO converts the game highways to a dual-tile RHW-4 style and is a NAM option. In the process it removes the default interchanges, but adds some neat new features too. It also happily transitions to RHW-4 and utilises the MiS too. I had originally planned to make more use of MHO, but in the end, I felt I needed more lanes.

The I-21 mostly keeps with the RHW-6S network. I've also converted all the road/rail WRC/FA pieces to their draggable counterparts. I only mention it because they exist, have better slope tolerance and are more flexible.



Starting from the West side with the I-60/I-21 interchange and junction. There is a bit too much weaving present in this design for my liking. Likewise, I ended up with a junction design that others also opted for, frankly the lack of space/incline almost forces this choice. For variation, I transitioned from a RHW-2 90° bend to the FTL (Flex-Turn Lanes) from NAM36.



I've opted for the two-bridge approach, but I'm very picky about the slopes where the bridges start/end. I've terraformed those areas to get a cleaner bridge transition, the trick is a tile of space beyond the embankment at a lower level. The main Arch bridge is just high enough for ferries too.



This is probably the part I'm most happy with. The slope here gives us a bit more flexibility, so I've been able to put each side of the junction on a different side of the R-4/R-7. This allows me to keep Westbound traffic further away from the main interchange, alleviating a potential weaving problem in the process.



Here is where I got a bit too ambitious. I'm really happy with the overall design of this interchange between the I-21 / I-60 / I-121. I got seven of the connections in place, but then ran into a small problem. Where to put the lane from the I-121 onto the Eastbound I-60 Extension. I figured I has a solution, but then hit the following issue:



Unlike it's Ortho counterpart, the D-OST's don't yet support a L1-L2 transition. I was going to cheat a little and add some RUL code to make it work. After all, we can provide patches for these things now. Not to mention, since this is a proposed route, it might even wait until a NAM update. However, this fix is a bit beyond my pay grade, as it requires a very special transit model to conform to the slope, which is simply beyond me right now.

So that would leave this interchange in limbo without some sort of diagonal transition that would make this work. Having put hours into it's design, I had little desire to re-make it from scratch. But whilst not everything here works, I do hope it at least gives some inspiration. I'm also fairly confident this will eventually be possible, not to mention it comes really close to the design David originally conceived too. Frankly, a few NAM versions back this would have been unthinkable, which serves as a neat illustration of just how far things have come.

Alan_Waters

It seems to me that the MGB version is the most thoughtful and best suited. IMHO

dedgren

Don't give up hope!

Apparently all this new activity on my computer fried my old graphics card.  So my trusty desktop with all the SC4 and SC4D stuff on it has been waiting on a replacement- a more, better replacement- for the past couple of weeks.  Well, it's apparently arrived at the post office and so I should have things up and running again over the next couple of days.

Thanks, everyone, for hanging in there.  I'm here for a while, not just two weeks or so.

David

2849509
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

metarvo

Since it's the graphics card and not the HDD, I trust that the files are still OK (and hopefully you even have backups).  It does my heart good to see you back David and to see 3RR up and running.  Looks like some great highway work is going on.  I've been trying to get back into the game, but RL and outside interests and hobbies are playing havoc with my ability to concentrate on it.  Nonetheless, I am playing it again and fired it up yesterday for the first time in 2019.  Take care, and keep up the good work.  I look forward to what this year brings.
Find my power line BAT thread here.
Check out the Noro Cooperative.  What are you waiting for?  It even has electricity.
Want more? Try here.  For even more electrical goodies, look here.
Here are some rural power lines.

dedgren

Happy Birthday, 3RR!



Thirteen years ago this all started.  Thanks, everyone, for being there.

On the computer front, the news is not so great, but not in an irrecoverable way.  I need a new desktop, bluntly put.  The graphics card was just the tip of the iceberg.  Three Rivers Region was running, in the brief time I had it back in operation, on nine year old hardware that was apparently, among other things, not liking Windows 10 very much.  The silver lining is that nothing storage-wise is affected, and everything SC4/SC4D that I have is backed up across three hard drives.

So the problem is an economic one.  I'm five years into my retirement and am substitute teaching pretty much every day to earn the $6,000 or so that my transcontinental bike ride planned for this summer will cost.  I can squeeze out a couple of hundred dollars extra every month against a new computer, but that will still take a while.  My wife and I are discussing options, but as a frugal old guy my intention is to pay as I go- that has served me well over the years.

So, once again, thanks for your patience.  My last work laptop died a couple of years ago, but I have an iPad, so can look in pretty much whenever.  There's just no 3RR stuff I can do with it, and that just sort of takes the heart out of being here for me.  I'm not whining, mind you.  I guess I'm just being reminded how far down the road we really are at this point.

3RR- a teenager.  Who could have guessed?

David

2860429
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

vester

13 years, as time flies.

Good to see 3RR get going again.

metarvo

Sorry to hear about your tech troubles.  Windows 10 almost seems designed to destroy older computers.  When the forced upgrades were being rolled out, there were even businesses which incurred losses because they had to replaced toasted equipment.

On the bright side, happy birthday 3RR!  &apls :party:
Find my power line BAT thread here.
Check out the Noro Cooperative.  What are you waiting for?  It even has electricity.
Want more? Try here.  For even more electrical goodies, look here.
Here are some rural power lines.