First of all: Sorry if this topic already exists somewhere or if the info is old. I recently discovered something, and I searched quite a bit and never found a reference about this.
Did you know that the 'drawpaths' cheat can take a number as argument?
Yes, you can put any number after the drawpaths cheat! (e.g.: "drawpaths 1") This will show a subset of paths.
Take this example of a puzzle piece with numerous paths on it.
'drawpaths -1' does exactly the same as 'drawpaths', i.e. show all paths:
(https://picload.org/image/dgigirdr/misc_170915-jan.2001507568767.jpg)
Old news, anyone knows that! But try different numbers:
(https://picload.org/image/dgigirgi/misc_170915-jan.2001507568797.jpg) (https://picload.org/image/dgigirgw/misc_170915-jan.2001507568831.jpg)
(https://picload.org/image/dgigirrr/misc_170915-jan.2001507568863.jpg) (https://picload.org/image/dgigirra/misc_170915-jan.2001507568907.jpg)
(https://picload.org/image/dgigirrl/misc_170915-jan.2001507568931.jpg) (https://picload.org/image/dgigirri/misc_170915-jan.2001507568962.jpg)
(https://picload.org/image/dgigirrw/misc_170915-jan.2001507568991.jpg)
drawpaths with any number higher than 6 does not show any paths anymore on this tile. There might well be other tiles which still show paths when counting higher.
Now what I'm asking myself: Could this be of any use for pathing a tile? (helping to avoid duplicate paths, visibility improvement when there is a 'mess' of many paths, ...). As I have about zero knowledge about the mechanics of pathing and modding in general, I truly can't tell. I just thought that it might be interesting for one or another. :)
A interesting discovery, I can think of a few instances where it might come in handy. SC4 Path Creator sometimes gets to cluttered, as do the in-game paths to really clearly see everything. Although I must say, I switch to SC4 Reader in such cases which does allow me to see each path individually if needed. But even so, being able to do this from the game itself is probably going to be useful.
thanks a lot for this Mc Duell :thumbsup:
I am going to try this out in game , first chance I get .. ;)
Did you test arguments with hidepaths? Maybe combining the both you can isolate subsets by type of network, or maybe some other arguments can do that.
Anyway, it's a cool discovery on a very old game that still holds surprises, and a lesson too: do mess with the commands when sandboxing!
I was not able to find any organization with it really..
Just seems to knock paths out kinda randomly/ partially the best i can tell so far..
Yes, its still a great discovery :thumbsup:
.. and perhaps we will just have to work out how to use the arguments to search for some kinda system that makes sense with it
There is surely some rationale to it, but given the sheer number of individual paths you can have on a piece, it may not always be useful. I'm sure before NAM came along, nothing in game had 50+ paths for a network item. Given these were derived from Maxis dev tools, they would have only had the vanilla content in mind.
Each path has a unique ID, but you can use the same ID for paths of different networks and entry/exit points. As such, how that maps to the number input may be skewed by the modding used for a particular path. In short, it might be better to start looking at vanilla paths to make sense of it. Because NAM pathing has never really had any of this in mind and sometimes simply needs so many paths that the ID system won't synch well with how I'm imagining it was intended to be used.
I really love your explanation of a tool designed for Maxis- basics , and now were trying to apply this tool to the greatly advanced transit world of nam 37 planning.. Superb man Superb !, &apls