NAM Issues Thread - PLEASE POST YOUR NAM QUESTIONS AND PROBLEMS HERE

[mgb204]

4 Pieces of the ElRail has missing Textures

Double track diagonal rail and the old tight radius curves are both unsupported by RRW specifications. For the curves, Rivit's RUM for RRW includes textures to support these viaduct pieces however.

4 Pieces of the ElRail has missing Textures

I really bugs me that HSR and Monorail (Bulet train) STILL cannot cross RHW 8S and above without the attached happening.  I just does not look complete.

ML's BTM mod was made before the P57 ID changes, but it's not as simple as re-IDing existing pieces to use them. Almost every piece needs to be remade anew to fit with the P57 specifications. I've done a similar thing for ML's El Rail but I hesitate somewhat with BTM given likely changes to the monorail network in future. I did make a couple, maybe I expand the set, maybe I don't, if not then I wouldn't expect to see them anytime soon.

[jdenm8]

Moonlight's Elevated Rail overrides (I'm including the Shinkansen one in this) are quite complex. They do something we previously thought impossible, they break the game's 600 Polygon-Per-Model limit. IIRC, the ELR over Maxis Highway model comes to about 2,500 Polygons for each half.
Them breaking this limit makes them nearly impossible to modify.  We don't know how they break this limit and why the game renders them. I think the HSR can interact with Project Symphony correctly, but the ElRail definitely can't.

I think the main reason the Shinkansen one hasn't been updated to the new RHW was primarily because of the T21s.

[APSMS]

Small texture discrepancy with RRW Flex Track:


Paths are OK though, so not a big deal. Probably a problem with the overhang.

[Natuurzoon]

First of all, let me just say i'm really happy the new NAM is finally out!

I am having some issues however with the RHW as of NAM 33, especially from region view. (I'm using the new euro textures)

Every diagonal stretch except the RHW4 is nearly invisible from region view and anything other than L0 height turns dark black in region view. I have a fairly developed region with an extensive highway system, so this problem will really mess up my region view




First  a small test setup



It's already starting to look weird from this height



And from region view you can clearly see the problem

(sorry for the small images)



In the above image i made a few stretches of L1 and L2 as well and they go really dark. At the top of the image at the town there is one city tile I loaded with the new NAM and if you look closely you can see two dark spots were L1 crossings are and to the left of that there is an invisible diagonal stretch.

Is this issue known, and is there a sollution?

[mgb204]

First off it's probably important to note the circumstances behind the EU RHW texture changes. The previous RHW variations were created by Marteen who is no longer actively creating SC4 content. When NAM 33 added a bunch of new ramps, including changes requiring the remaking of many of these original textures we had a problem. Not only would many textures need to be remade for NAM33, but the same issues would occur when new features were added in future too. A decision was made to switch the EU textures to a procedurally-generated set based off the US textures as a result. This allows the NAM team to continue to support EU textures into the future. The workload of updating the original textures is too high because the specifications of the textures differ from the US default set.

What this means in practise, these are the new textures and they are likely to be the only viable option going forward. What you are seeing isn't a bug, just the changes in textures mean they render differently. In fact Alex (Tarkus) deserves a huge thanks, without his huge efforts in this regard there would be no EU RHW texture support for NAM33's feature or the foreseeable future.

[jdenm8]

It's probably something to do with the model settings. RHW4 has something set (or unset) that the others don't.

[vortext]

That would't explain why the same issue is absent for the US textures though, since the EU textures are just an override and does not contain models, i.e. it uses the same models.

Instead the issue seems to be with the mipmaps and specifically the file z2_EU_RHW-Mipmaps - the F textures in there are all blank & scrambled. And if you remove this file a large portion of the networks will revert back to US textures - even though the EU textures are still present. Admittedly I know too little about the RHW side of things so I can't tell how this works exactly*, however, on a hunch I made a proper European F texture for the RHW6S and the issue disappeared, so it seems to be fixable.

zoom bug as it is


and fixed with proper F texture


* come to think of it, it's actually rather straightforward.

[Natuurzoon]

First off it's probably important to note the circumstances behind the EU RHW texture changes. The previous RHW variations were created by Marteen who is no longer actively creating SC4 content. When NAM 33 added a bunch of new ramps, including changes requiring the remaking of many of these original textures we had a problem. Not only would many textures need to be remade for NAM33, but the same issues would occur when new features were added in future too. A decision was made to switch the EU textures to a procedurally-generated set based off the US textures as a result. This allows the NAM team to continue to support EU textures into the future. The workload of updating the original textures is too high because the specifications of the textures differ from the US default set.

What this means in practise, these are the new textures and they are likely to be the only viable option going forward. What you are seeing isn't a bug, just the changes in textures mean they render differently. In fact Alex (Tarkus) deserves a huge thanks, without his huge efforts in this regard there would be no EU RHW texture support for NAM33's feature or the foreseeable future.

I was aware of the situation with maarten's textures and i'm gratefull there is even an alternative that's been developed. But a few things remain unclear. You say it's not bug, so this is just the situation as it is at the moment with the new euro textures? is there any chance there will be a fix for this in the future? and does the US default set has the same issue or not?

Don't get me wrong, i'm really happy with the new NAM, and i know the workload must be massive with developing all of this. If this is what it is at the moment, so be it, i'm still happy with all the effort and respect everyone who has worked, and is still working on NAM. It's just that, if the US set doesn't have this issue, i might consider stepping over, because seeing the missing and black stretches of highway all over my region does not look particularly good.

PS, the next image shows an interchange with black overpasses, and there are even missing straight stretches of highway.

[Natuurzoon]

Only just now read vortext's message, which explains at least a few things sadly enough I have no knowledge about this whatsoever, let alone being able to fix it myself... 

[mgb204]

Well I'm not sure anything is wrong with the original DAT, I can open and view the textures from GoFSH. You won't see anything normally in the reader, since they contain embedded mipmaps which Reader can't display correctly.

I'm not intimately familiar with RHW myself. However some mip-maps look better than others, at z1 each tile has only an 8x8px texture displayed. It looks to me from my game like the changes in the textures have altered the Mip Maps. This is why I wouldn't initially consider this a bug, this is after all version 1 of the textures, improvements will come in future. That said, if all it takes to improve them is new F textures, I could conjure up a set in no time. But if these textures are supposed to have embedded mipmaps, then just switching them for single-sized textures might lead to other problems. I guess the situation needs looking into.

[vortext]

Well I'm not sure anything is wrong with the original DAT, I can open and view the textures from GoFSH. You won't see anything normally in the reader, since they contain embedded mipmaps which Reader can't display correctly.

Doh, of course.

The US F textures don't have embedded mipmaps though, so I think their EU counterparts got them by accident and a new single-sized set would fix the zoom bug (see pictures added to my previous post).

[mgb204]

If Alex confirms that using single F-Textures is fine, I'll get a set out quickly, it's less than 20 textures looking at it. I just don't know exactly how these embedded mipmaps function or if they are indeed necessary or an oversight.

[Tarkus]

The US set does actually have those F textures with embedded mipmaps--however, it appears that due to the way the load order is operating (there's non-mipmap versions in the height level folders), they're being overridden with non-embedded mipmap textures.  They were created sometime in 2011 or 2012, in the NAM 30/31 era. I'm going to have to see what happens if I move the embedded mipmaps to a location where they will load with the US set.  The embedded mipmaps do look odd in the Reader, which is to be expected, given that they're basically an overlay of five different zoom textures.

In the interim, I suppose that non-embedded textures would suffice.  Maarten's set lacked embedded mipmaps entirely.

Edit: The US mipmaps don't suffer this issue when placed in a proper load order position.  My guess is that the issue stems from the processing of the embedded mipmaps.

-Alex

[wallasey]

Just want to make people aware that should you need to uninstall NAM...there's the potential that your plugins folder may also uninstall.

Just happened with me; fortunately I back things up and haven't cleared my downloads folder for a bit!

[Gugu3]

I looked through this thread and tried to have a look into older threads too but couldn't find anything. Just wandering if someone could tell me why I get brown boxes when using the SAM1 (parking lot texture).

Many thanks and sorry if the answer is easy to find and I couldn't find it

[Tarkus]

The SAM1 set has no dependencies, so it may be a case of an external T21 mod of some sort missing some files.

Doing a little more testing with the mipmaps, there is still a slight darkening when switching over to the US embedded mipmaps, but nothing quite to the extent that Natuurzoon showed.

Just want to make people aware that should you need to uninstall NAM...there's the potential that your plugins folder may also uninstall.

Just happened with me; fortunately I back things up and haven't cleared my downloads folder for a bit!

The uninstaller uses a recursive algorithm, and what it removes depends on where the file is located.  The advice we've generally given folks--don't move the uninstaller. In fact, don't even run the uninstaller.

If you are installing a new NAM over top of an existing one, we've improved the installer such that you can do that without having to uninstall your previous version, and in fact, not uninstalling the previous installation will allow the new NAM installer to tell what you had previously installed.

-Alex

[Alan_Waters]

7.5m Elevated Avenue over highway (Project Symphony):





Question:
In the future, expect the bridges to "Project Symphony"?

[mgb204]

Can you confirm which piece that is, the dragable or puzzle piece 7.5m Ave? The piece works there is a texture missing somewhere.

Actually having thought about it I think I know the problem. The props for the concrete barriers do not have textures either. If you are using my MHO Patch Mod, but do not use the Japanese NAM Facelift alternate overpasses, you need to remove the folder "zJap NAM FL Overpasses" from the folder "Plugins\z____MGB Mods\M - MHO Patch". If you'd left it in, that's exactly what you would see.

[Alan_Waters]

mgb204, thank you very much! It really helped.

[Zach Glover]

Hello, I just installed NAM 33 over the pre-release I had already installed, and I noticed there's no RHW longer height transitions, just this new FLEX height. Is the old height transition no more? These new FLEX height transitions are so much longer than the old height transitions