NWM (Network Widening Mod) - Development and Support

[Tarkus]

The only ironic network available in the NWM is the OWR-1 in that instead of widening, it's narrowing.

-Alex

[Wiimeiser]

For some reason I can't have turn lanes near the single-tile NWM networks. Is this a bug with the NWM, Turn Lane Plugin, or Euro textures?

EDIT: Almost forgot! Missing path file:

By wiimeiser at 2012-09-12
Dunno if it's just LHD though. Didn't affect me in that case as I was going to extend the TLA-3 past there anyway, and that intersection has paths.

[epicblunder]

-Alex

Don't tell me you're hoarding a ground level FLEXFLY, and that it's OWR-1 instead of MIS...

[Tarkus]

For some reason I can't have turn lanes near the single-tile NWM networks. Is this a bug with the NWM, Turn Lane Plugin, or Euro textures?

You're not supposed to have Road turn lanes near single-tile NWM networks.  As the Road Turning Lanes Plugin has very invasive RUL2 code, which has a tendency to disrupt NWM overrides, there's several thousand lines of code (nearly as much as the NWM itself) obliterating RTLs near NWM/Road and Road-based NWM/NWM intersections.  If anything, that pic suggests my obliteration code isn't forceful enough.

Dunno if it's just LHD though. Didn't affect me in that case as I was going to extend the TLA-3 past there anyway, and that intersection has paths.

That one is intentionally missing.  The OWR-3-ending-in-OWR-2 T-intersection technically has to exist in order for an OWR-3-ending-in-OWR-3 T-intersection to work, but in and of itself, it's a nonsense intersection.  Where does that third lane go?   

-Alex

[kj3400]

Alex: I think he was referring to TLA-3, but you make a good point too

[Tarkus]

Thanks for catching me there, Kenny--it was hard to see that he had a Euro TLA-3 there with the screenshots being in night-time mode.

-Alex

[mike3775]

Its still Rural to me, and its not because I refuse to change, its just that is what it was still being called when I quit playing the game for awhile in late 2009, and didn't start playing it again until early last year(2011) and thats when I realized the name had changed from Rural to Real, but dang it, I am 37, to old to change  (incidentally I still call renamed sports venues in my area their old non corporate names like Comiskey Park(US Cellular Field) and Rosemont Horizon(All State Arena)

Just as long as you don't repeat the fallacious statement that RHWs shouldn't be built in "urban areas" because the "R" stands for "Rural".   Nothing grates on my nerves more.

-Alex

Being a born smart a$$ I normally would say it just to get a rise out of you, but I won't because I know how you feel on that issue and I agree with you 

[Wiimeiser]

I assume nothing short of a total rewrite of possibly trillions of lines of code would fix the bugs you mention?

[mike3775]

I assume nothing short of a total rewrite of possibly trillions of lines of code would fix the bugs you mention?

You volunteering for that mission? 

[Tarkus]

I assume nothing short of a total rewrite of possibly trillions of lines of code would fix the bugs you mention?

You volunteering for that mission? 

If you wanted full stability of every possible situation where the RTL could interfere with the Road-based NWM networks, it would indeed take a massive amount of code.  Trillions of lines would actually overload the DAT file.  When the RUL2 file is stored compressed (as it was before NAM 30), it can contain about 270,000 lines of code.  Due to how Maxis set up the file headers for compressed and uncompressed files, the uncompressed file can actually store a lot more, and we had to go uncompressed with NAM 30 in order to fit the SAM ultra-stability project (~247,000 lines by itself).  (It's also worth noting that uncompressed RUL files, while taking up more hard drive space, can be loaded considerably faster by the game.)

The theoretical line-count limit for a RUL2 file, stored uncompressed, is around 72.7 million lines.  This would be a 4.3GB file (using the decimal SI prefixes, not the binary ones).  Tests done so far have found that much smaller files can actually crash the Reader.

Actually, there's a vastly easier, more painless way--put the old Road Turning Lanes Plugin out of its misery.  It was designed years before anyone would have thought we'd have a ton of Road-override widening networks, and while it was brilliant in its day and age, it would be considered bad software design by today's NAM standards.

-Alex

Edit: Fixed minor grammatical thing that slipped as I was rephrasing things.

[mike3775]

I assume nothing short of a total rewrite of possibly trillions of lines of code would fix the bugs you mention?

You volunteering for that mission? 

Actually, there's a vastly easier, more painless way--put the old Road Turning Lanes Plugin out of its misery.  It was designed years before anyone would have thought we'd have a ton of Road-override widening networks, and while it was brilliant in its day and age, it would be considered bad software design by today's NAM standards.

-Alex

I often wondered what the installation rate is on that.  I've never selected it, because I never liked having every road intersection have left turn lanes(which is why I like Tuleps, you can pick and choose), and most city journals I have read rarely have them either.

[GDO29Anagram]

So what you're saying that the RTL is a relic and that it was made using now-subpar standards.

I still see some utility behind it, but recent developments has proven it to be... Intrusive... Still, if you wanna decommision the RTL, you'd still need legacy support. Not a problem.

Just for the record, on the short scale, a trillion is a million millions. On the long scale, it would be different. One estimate of the maximum amount of RUL-2 code needed for just RHW would be 17 million lines, barely a fourth of the RUL-2's maximum capacity, so in order to even have a trillion lines of RUL-2 code, it would need to be about 59.147 TERABYTES. Most computers today have only about 4-16GB RAM...

A long scale trillion is a short scale quintillion. Just multiply the previous numbers by another million and you get 59.147 exabytes. That's more than 1/10th of the World Wide Web back in 2009.

Good luck downloading that.

[Tarkus]

I often wondered what the installation rate is on that.  I've never selected it, because I never liked having every road intersection have left turn lanes(which is why I like Tuleps, you can pick and choose), and most city journals I have read rarely have them either.

When the NAM installer was first implemented back in 2005, the NAM Team of that time decided to have the Avenue Turning Lanes (ATL) checked by default, but not the Road Turning Lanes (RTL).  The reasoning for that was partially what you described, though it goes a little beyond.  Back in those days, computer systems were a fraction of what they are today, and there was concern about the RTL's impact on system performance.  Because users generally had more Road/Road intersections than Avenue/Avenue intersections in their cities, it was thought that it'd have a much greater effect, and of course, the team was already trying to proof against the "speed-clickers", who would hit "Next" without bothering to read the options (or the Readme).

There's actually been a long-running but sporadic debate about the future of the RTL within the NAM Team and among transit-modding followers for about 5 years.  jplumbley and I had run into problems with the RTL's "onion coding" and lack of encapsulation, early on in NWM development, and began pitching the idea of replacing it with an alternative plugin.  He designed a prototype that was draggable, and involved a pattern with Street-Road transitions before intersections.  There was a development thread with a poll here, if you really want a look back.  That poll, by the way, saw 89% of voters supporting an RTL revamp, with only 7.7% supporting keeping it as-is (and 3.3% without an opinion).  The new RTL, however, received a lukewarm response from the NAM Associates in testing, and kind of fell off the map.

When the NWM was revived in 2009-2010, we planned on basically declaring it incompatible with the RTL.  Beyond the initial implementation of the SPUI in RHW 4.0, the NWM was part of the justification for TuLEPs, and there was again talk of the RTL outliving its useful life with that development occurring.  However, the more conservative elements in the NAM Team insisted that we keep it, because it had been there for so long, and was "automatic".  Shortly thereafter, I took a "brute force" approach, and wrote the mess of RTL-obliterating RUL2 code for the Road-based NWM networks, which kind of dodged the issue.

So what you're saying that the RTL is a relic and that it was made using now-subpar standards.

I still see some utility behind it, but recent developments has proven it to be... Intrusive... Still, if you wanna decommision the RTL, you'd still need legacy support. Not a problem.

The guy who coded it (Teirusu) deserves a lot of credit--especially as he basically got qurlix started on the RHW.  But it's definitely not something that meets modern NAM standards.  When the RTL was developed, the NAM Team was mostly a group of people who made puzzle pieces (Maxis Highway pre-fabs were the "holy grail" back then).  RUL2 was seen as a largely useless file, little more than something to produce "ornamental" content (like the RTL) or make minor tweaks to RUL1 and INRUL modifications, rather than the conveyance for the ubiquitous override network system that now forms the backbone of what we do today. 

-Alex

[mike3775]

I hope Teirusu is doing great today, he did so much for the game in the early days when people started figuring out how to "jury rig" the game to make it way better than Maxis released.  And the fact that others have not only carried on the work that he and a few others started originally, but improved upon it, shows that the game will never die.

I often read of "the good ol days" in threads every so often, and yes, those days were great, but the fact that even today, there are groups of people who are continuing it, shows that the "good ol days" never really ended.

I still remember when the NAM came out that had multiple ramps for the MHW, that opened up so much of thegame, no longer being stuck to the same boring interchanges ovwer and over free to build different styles was great.  Then finding out about the possibilities of the RHW, then the NWM, man, its been a great ride for the past 9 years for sure.

[memo]

Honestly, I am always fascinated by the brilliance of the RTL plugin's implementation. It has been done in such a clever way hardly any other NAM plugin can keep up with. It causing trouble with override networks, which have become so popular, does not affect the RTL plugin's cleverness at all. I do understand the problems though, but it should be possible to override the RTLs just like any other networks, as has been done for the NWM. Yet, my supporting of the RTL plugin is not due to me being "conservative". I am usually supportive of new things, but not, if it discards a nearly perfect plugin.

Edit:

Looking closely at those pictures, it appears there is some very strange problem related to flipped textures. Note that the second picture does not have to do anything with NWM at all. It would be helpful to check the paths using the drawpaths cheat. I assume it is just a missing texture in the euro texture mod's LHD files.

[Tarkus]

You're the last that I'd call a "conservative NAMite", particularly since you've led the charge on many revolutionary modding techniques.   I agree that the RTL is a clever piece of code (and it takes quite some time to decipher), and my criticism of it is entirely on the basis of how it runs interference on override networks, due to how it is encapsulated.

-Alex

[Haljackey]

Any plans to join these one day?

[MandelSoft]

I once made textures for this, but oddly enough this hasn't been implented yet, though it would be very logical...

[Patricius Maximus]

Any plans to join these one day?

I sure hope there are, because it would make my RHW-3 expressways much more viable, in the sense that in the surface street-to-expressway transition it wouldn't have to transition to a road first and then expand to its previous size, thus creating a bottleneck.

[GDO29Anagram]

I sure hope there are, because it would make my RHW-3 expressways much more viable, in the sense that in the surface street-to-expressway transition it wouldn't have to transition to a road first and then expand to its previous size, thus creating a bottleneck.

Two or four lines (maybe eight) of RUL-2 code at best. It really isn't that hard to add in. Is the texture there? I dunno...

Though this would be the poor man's way of connecting the two together: "Slam down" two puzzle pieces that don't exactly fit aesthetically, but fit perfectly by pathing. Same with the MIS-OWR-1 transition.



Except instead of OWR-5 and TLA-5, you instead use RHW-3 and ARD-3 starters in the correct rotation and position. This only works on flat land, because these use false intersections, which tend to be slope-intolerant.