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

[jedi93]

NAM 31.2, IIRC.

[jedi93]

Nevermind, I fixed it.
It had nothing to do with the NAM, just had to rename a file from the Functional Airports...

[Vlasky]

[fefenc]

I've found another bug, as I could see, the Draggable piece L0 to L2 on slope transition over RHW-4 doesn't works properly. Let's see the pigs:






They won't work even if both RHW-4 pieces are one beside another:



Something like this will happen if I use L0 to L1 on slope transition piece :\



No matter how many times you click around, you won't get any satisfactory result... :\

[nathkel]

I of course love NAM, and i'm hoping version 32 fixes a lot of the problems as I was having before.
But the main concern I have is for the download. Users can DL from either here on the LEX or from modDB (whatever that is). I have attempted to DL from modDB & response time (after you click on "Download" & answer a feckless survey) is horrible; it can take 15 minutes before your Download Manager asks you what you want to with the DL request. I have yet to DL from there...
DLing from the LEX is far worse. I am at a public library where I have limited time but the best bandwidth and internet speed. It's Sunday so municipal bandwidth sharing is at a minimum. And yet it's going to take upwards of THREE HOURS to DL NAM 32 from the LEX. For today's internet users, that is simply unacceptable.
An alternative for DLing such a necessary component of the SimCity experience has to be found. At the risk of coming off like a crybaby, i'm wondering if I should for the next incarnation of the NAM, which will surely have more features and fixes before I trouble myself. It's not like NAM 31 ruins my SimCity time completely...

Thanks for whatever you can do.

[Tarkus]

It's at Simtropolis again, too.  It sounds to me like there might be either a run on the NAM and other mods, being that it's a weekend, slowing down the servers, or something up with the connection in your area.

-Alex

[Wiimeiser]

I've found another bug, as I could see, the Draggable piece L0 to L2 on slope transition over RHW-4 doesn't works properly. Let's see the pigs:






They won't work even if both RHW-4 pieces are one beside another:



Something like this will happen if I use L0 to L1 on slope transition piece :\



No matter how many times you click around, you won't get any satisfactory result... :\

Me too. This is like a beta. It's less stable than a hydrogen bomb sitting in the middle of a baseball field.

[Tarkus]

I've found another bug, as I could see, the Draggable piece L0 to L2 on slope transition over RHW-4 doesn't works properly. Let's see the pigs:


They won't work even if both RHW-4 pieces are one beside another:


Something like this will happen if I use L0 to L1 on slope transition piece :\

No matter how many times you click around, you won't get any satisfactory result... :\

I just used the L1 with no problem.  It may depend to a certain degree with the order you're constructing things, and what slope mod (if any) you're using.  Whatever you do, don't drag through the OnSlope itself--the slope will get messed up, and there's no real way around that.  The L2 networks are, across the board, touchier than the L1 networks.  It is possible to build that setup if you have an additional tile of space between the onslope and the RHW, but it's not as flexible as the L1 at present.  That's something we'll address for NAM 33.

Me too. This is like a beta. It's less stable than a hydrogen bomb sitting in the middle of a baseball field.

The NAM has always been a project that's in continual development.  All software of any degree of complexity will have issues, and we do the best we can as an all-volunteer effort. 
Your comment adds absolutely nothing constructive or worthwhile to the conversation.

-Alex

[APSMS]

I agree with Tarkus. Haven't used draggable AVE viaducts yet, but have noticed interesting user quirks with the road ones. Can't be avoided, and I'm glad they're here now. It simplifies a lot of things on my end.

So thanks for all your work. It's really great to breath new life into the game.

Also, it might be worth noting that an H-bomb in the middle of a baseball field is ridiculously stable. In fact, it would take a nuclear explosion to set it off (which, in fact, is what happens in an H-bomb). So I'm kind of confused as to the relevance or the implications of this comment--I'm guessing it wasn't supposed to be taken in a positive sense? (sorry for going off topic; this kinda bugged me)

[jdenm8]

I've found another bug, as I could see, the Draggable piece L0 to L2 on slope transition over RHW-4 doesn't works properly. Let's see the pigs:

Add another tile between the hill and the RHW.

It's Sunday so municipal bandwidth sharing is at a minimum. And yet it's going to take upwards of THREE HOURS to DL NAM 32 from the LEX. For today's internet users, that is simply unacceptable.

Only three hours to download nearly a Gigabyte on free internet from a free website (Also, you shouldn't need to fill out any survey at all at ModDB. If it tells you you do, click the download link again so a different advertisement is served) is thoroughly impressing.

Yes, public facilities tend to have very good connections, but most of that is reserved for internal traffic and there's always a per-machine quota for the public machines.

Also, ModDB is the Mob Database. A very old and very popular mod distribution service that's part of the Desura online game marketplace.

Me too. This is like a beta. It's less stable than a hydrogen bomb sitting in the middle of a baseball field.

Considering it was coded by a single person in a fortnight, I think that's a badge of honour. Also, APSMS has already said how Hydrogen bombs are incredibly stable.

Also, nothing's forcing you to use the Draggable functionality, all of the old Puzzle Piece-based overpasses are still there. We're forcing the game to do things it's specifically designed not to do, so cut us a break.

[Wiimeiser]

I was just saying I had the same problem with the viaduct overriding the ramp to be part of the viaduct so there's no ramp. The viaduct itself is stable if you drag it out a few tiles, but in doing so it converts the onslope tile into a viaduct tile...

[spot]

How can I build the RHW-10S Arch bridge the length I want it to be?  For some reason, it expands two tiles inside the ledge of which i want it to be starting out of.
RHW-8S bridge for reference:

At the same time, RHW-10S bridge goes inside the ledge. 


Is it supposed to do that, or I'm doing something wrong ?

[Kitsune]

see.. the issue with everything being draggable is rearing its ugly head. With the increase in length of the ramps combined with the fact in a few cases you have to have that one tile is leading to an increase of 4 tiles for an overpass, which when you factor in ramps is leading to things becoming quite wide. Also - the cosmetic pieces can't be flanked anywhere near an overpass now or else it'll deconvert to rhw-2, which makes things rather frustrating. Although, I will say NAM 32 is otherwise a joy to work with ... I just built an interchange that is truly epic and was only possible with nam 32.

[Tarkus]

How can I build the RHW-10S Arch bridge the length I want it to be?  For some reason, it expands two tiles inside the ledge of which i want it to be starting out of.
RHW-8S bridge for reference:

At the same time, RHW-10S bridge goes inside the ledge. 


Is it supposed to do that, or I'm doing something wrong ?

Bridge placement can get rather finicky when slope mods get installed, and the fact that those two bridges are different types (arch vs. undertruss) may have some effect.  I haven't placed enough 8S or 10S bridges myself to really know the intricacies, but I've had a whale of a time with Avenue and One-Way Road bridges with my current slope mod.

see.. the issue with everything being draggable is rearing its ugly head. With the increase in length of the ramps combined with the fact in a few cases you have to have that one tile is leading to an increase of 4 tiles for an overpass, which when you factor in ramps is leading to things becoming quite wide.

It's not so much a problem of draggables in general as it is just a case of the draggables not being at full implementation capacity yet.  We're still in a transitional state, where some functions still require digging out the static puzzle pieces.  But that doesn't mean we should cave in and expand the static PPs, giving up on the FLEX/draggable system.  We've long faced the paradoxical problem where people want new functionality, but simultaneously complain about the number of pieces they have to navigate, and adding more to the almost 200 static PPs that are part of the whole Road Viaduct system (compared to 14 FLEX/starter pieces in the new system) will just aggravate that exponentially.

-Alex

[titanicbuff]

Theres a glitch with street vs Ave crossings- someone forgot to place the stopping area. In other words traffic in all 4 directions at once.

[trabman11]

Theres a glitch with street vs Ave crossings- someone forgot to place the stopping area. In other words traffic in all 4 directions at once.

titanicbuff: Those are just the pathing of the roads that are being displayed with the "Drawpaths" cheat. They have nothing to do with when the traffic stops of goes. If you press play and wait a little, you will see that the simulator does indeed have the automa "stop" and "go" in that intersection, and in all other intersections in the game. 

[Tarkus]

If they are, in fact, not stopping and going at that intersection, that'd be on Maxis, not us.

-Alex

[wallasey]

I selected the autobahn textures for RHW...but I've got the american textures coming through.

This turned out to be an installer bug that was created by a change in another part of the installer.  The fixed files are too big to attach here, but here's what you can do to get around the bug:

• Run the installer in the Custom Installation mode.  For the Main Road Texture Style, choose one of the top two American-style textures.
• Under "Options for American-Style Road Textures", open up the RHW Options and select either of the two options.
• Run the installer to completion.
• In the folder "z___NAM\Road Textures\Euro Cosmetic Re-Texture Mod\RHW", you will find a folder called "0_Standard".  Move this folder and its contents to someplace outside your Plugins folder.
• Run the installer again, choosing the options you want.
• Move the "0_Standard" folder and its contents back to where you originally got them.

The American textures should be gone now.

Apologies for the late reply back, that's worked! Thanks for your help there!!

All the best.

[Kitsune]

It's not so much a problem of draggables in general as it is just a case of the draggables not being at full implementation capacity yet.  We're still in a transitional state, where some functions still require digging out the static puzzle pieces.  But that doesn't mean we should cave in and expand the static PPs, giving up on the FLEX/draggable system.  We've long faced the paradoxical problem where people want new functionality, but simultaneously complain about the number of pieces they have to navigate, and adding more to the almost 200 static PPs that are part of the whole Road Viaduct system (compared to 14 FLEX/starter pieces in the new system) will just aggravate that exponentially.

-Alex

See, this is why I think having a flup piece with the 6S and MIS on it would be nice. It would allow people to have "old functionality" with addition of one new flup piece, as the flup ramps for roads are only 3 tiles long.

[GDO29Anagram]

See, this is why I think having a flup piece with the 6S and MIS on it would be nice. It would allow people to have "old functionality" with addition of one new flup piece, as the flup ramps for roads are only 3 tiles long.

Following the trend of the only RHW FLUP in existence would actually show that an RHW FLUP entrance would actually need to be 4 or 5 tiles long, not 3; it's too unsafe for cars travelling at high speeds to hit the kind of slope that the Road FLUP entrance has. But this isn't the only problem.

Expansion of the existing FLUPs using static puzzle pieces is still the same as expanding any suite of static puzzle pieces. Fulfilling requests for static puzzle pieces denies people the opportunity to get accommodated to the new system and gives the impression, particularly those who are in favour of the new system, that we, the developers, don't like the new system. Can you imagine what it'd be like if the NAM Team did not like working on their own work?

Had the old system persisted, RHW would need to have over 16000 pieces, the bulk of which being RHW×RHW overpasses; browsing through 1/100th that amount would be hard enough already. The same trend would be true for any other system, like Elevated Rail over Avenue/RD-4 (estimated 100 pieces versus the 6 Flex pieces) and particularly the draggable viaducts (the required number would also be in the thousands).

FLUPs are already in a weird position given that they are named "flexible" despite being absolutely static, especially before the advent of mainstream Flex pieces. There were already experiments on revising the FLUP system, but the main priority is expanding the newly-introduced Flex system to the point where their functionality is on par (and even exceeds) the old system, to the point where it can even replace the old system. There's really no room for adding puzzle pieces, especially if their functionality can be copied by Flex pieces several versions later.

There's a problem with interstellar travel that's similar to the Flex versus Puzzle Pieces problem: If you launched a rocket now, it would take centuries to reach its destination. By the time it arrived at its destination, some other rocket built after the first rocket may have already arrived at it first. If we continued to develop puzzle pieces now, it may satiate the users, but only up to the point where they start complaining about how many pieces there are. Even if users get used to it, by the time Flex development gets into full swing, they would be too disinterested by the prospect because they would be too used to the old system.

This is the same situation that happened with the Dvorak keyboard; Qwerty keyboards have been around for so long, over 100 years, that people have gotten used to it, despite the fact that Dvorak is a far more superior alternative to Qwerty that actually doesn't break your fingers. People were simply unwilling to switch to a faster keyboard. (I personally find Colemak to be even more superior than Dvorak, though; not once have I gotten my hands sore from using Colemak). By going directly to Flex development, we eliminate the intermediary step by of making intermediary puzzle pieces but also give the opportunity to let users get accustomed to the system. (This is also how I got myself to type on Colemak: switch to it and never turn back.)

And keep in mind that this is merely the first iteration. RHW, for example, started out as just a dirt road that first evolved into a replacement highway system by version 1.x and 2.0. By that time, MHW was still king. RHW 3.0 first introduced elevated RHWs and by that point, it could already replace both MHW and EMHW functionality. Development for RHW is ongoing, but what gets developed can be applicable to other mods, such as RRW, NWM, and (yes), the draggable viaducts.