Railroad crossings and other traffic props

[Tarkus]

Hmmm, could it be, that you forgot 45° crossings, or do you make them later?

He certainly hasn't forgotten them.  I'll quote an earlier post:

I'm also checking out the model tweaker to see if it will save me time making mirrored and diagonal props. 

-Alex

[jondor]

Hmmm, could it be, that you forgot 45° crossings, or do you make them later?

He certainly hasn't forgotten them.  I'll quote an earlier post:

I'm also checking out the model tweaker to see if it will save me time making mirrored and diagonal props. 

-Alex

And indeed it did work on every one of the many, many vertex blocks in the gate animations and made quick work of the process. At least for the gates and flashers.  As for the static props, gantries, poles and such, those have to be rotated and re-exported in the BAT, which means I have to finalize the styling (mainly textures and materials) of the orth props first.  I did start that process right before I left, so I'll have some comparison shots for you in a day or two.

[Ryan B.]

The best part is, that would only take a few minutes tweaking to rotate the model and recenter it, so I imagine if you ask nicely someone would be willing to do it. 

Would anyone be interested in rotating & re-centering those traffic signal models to a horizontal style, commonly used in Texas?  Please? 

[Tarkus]

Sure thing.   Just swapped the Y and Z coordinates and inverted it in Model Tweaker.  I can easily recolor the fixtures, too.



-Alex

[Ryan B.]

That looks awesome when compared to my best attempt, Alex!  Truly a job well done!  All-black works for me.  Another style is as such:



Also, I read earlier that different signal combinations (such as a doghouse) might be possible.  I present another option to be considered:  a double red ball, as seen here:



Thanks so much to everyone for their hard work!  You're truly making SimCity more realistic with every day that goes by!

[Jack_wilds]

This is a great project to enhance the NAM for a more 'realistic' life to game approach...    anticipate something fun to play with soon   

Then on a 'side-note' request to be pointed to a lace where I can find help concerning trolca and BRF amtraks... as I'm having issues with 'burned out' rail cars -which I surmise is a missing props or dependency yet I believe I have 'em all plus having issue of 'phantom' engine-less trains running around the city any help appreciated... I'll be watching the develops here as they unfold...

[jondor]

Okay, guys finally back with at least a little progress to show.  As I said, I need to finalize the look of the static ortho props before I rotate them in the BAT.  There's already enough props to have to change settings on as it is. 

So: Here's what the gantries look like with some proper metal materials applied (left) and one of my old dev pics from page 2 with a flat gray color (right):


You can also see the change in the height of the gantry and the height of the flashers and crossbucks as well as the HD crossbuck texture, which may need a little manual shading. (And yes, that is the same crossing, cropped to the same dimensions. )

[TJ1]

Excellent work Jondor 

[Ryan B.]

You, sir, are . . .



. . . replace the 'Custom Cars' with 'Custom Props'.

Speaking of which . . . . mad props to you for all this awesome work!

[Ramona Brie]

I want this now, EVEN if there's nothing diagonal yet.

[jondor]

I want this now, EVEN if there's nothing diagonal yet.

There's still a lot of work to do on the orhto props before I could do that.   On some networks, the props are so close to the edge of the tile that I run into the eternal props problem when trying to bulldoze the crossing, and it wrecks havoc with the crossings when you save and reload the city.  I'm going to have to go through and offset all the props (which I would have to do anyway once TTR and QTR come out).

And I still have a few secret weapons to work on.   

[Ramona Brie]

How are things coming?

[jondor]

At the moment I'm working on offsetting the existing props and redoing the T21s to hopefully fix the eternal props problem.  It's been a long week and I haven't had much time to work on this project unfortunately.

The modular flashers are presenting me with a unique problem, not only do I need an offset and a flipped offset version, but also an inverted offset version (and it's flipped counterpart), since half of the flashers are mounted facing in the opposite direction and the offset I need for everything else puts the origin even further off tile.

Edit: Found a novel solution to the problem but still, all these flipped and offset versions are definitely going to require some bookkeeping.  I've gotten about half of the intersections I've already built converted to the offset props, so far it's not TOO painful, but we'll see once I start to hit some of the diagonals.

I know people are waiting patiently (or not quite so patiently) for this project, and although part of me doesn't want to break it up, depending on how things go I may (I haven't decided for sure yet) start with just the ortho props and orth-road x orth and diag-rail intersections, then follow that with a diag props and diag-road x orth and diag-rail release and likely a separate retro props release with the wigwags and a few other things I have tucked up my sleeve.

And, speaking of diagonals:
http://www.youtube.com/v/OuGSn91CzXY?version=3&hl=en_US&rel=0
(In case you're wondering, I switched to the Olympic terrain mod instead of Missouri Breaks which I was using previously.)

Edit, 7/22: Finally, all the current T-21s have been updated to use the offset props.  No more lingering crossbucks and gantries, now I can get back to actually building T21s for more networks.  Also, now that you've seen all the props in action, I'll probably stick to pictures until/unless I have some new animations to show off.

[txrailcat74]

Hey Jondor, I thought you might like this signal.

http://youtu.be/yajkJH5TX7I

[MR.Y]

@jondor: why the barrier of the crossing is flashing?

@txrailcat74: Is the train driver bored or why is was he blowing the horn?

[joshriddle577]

@txrailcat74: Is the train driver bored or why is was he blowing the horn?

because it's North American law that the locomotive engineer must sound his horn before entering a crossing.

Anyway, great props Jondor. They look very nice and realistic 

[MR.Y]

ah ok, Here in germany they just have to blow it if the crossing has any electric fuse like barriers or flaching lights...

[jondor]

Hey Jondor, I thought you might like this signal.

http://youtu.be/yajkJH5TX7I

That is one industrial strength gantry!  I may include one like that for the OWR-4 and 5

@jondor: why the barrier of the crossing is flashing?

In North America, all crossing gates must have a minimum of three lights, which flash with the rest of the lights (except for the end one which stays on solidly for the entire activation cycle).

Anyway, great props Jondor. They look very nice and realistic 

Thanks!  Hoping to get in some more work on this project in the next couple days.

[MR.Y]

@jondor: no, that's not what I ment(You can find it also in east germany: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUyBbDljhUI) I ment, that you a short time just see the cross, not the barrier(I know, my english isn't really the best). Is this cause of the video or is it a bug you have to fix?

[Andreas]

I think Mr. Y means that your railway crossing props seem to disappear for a few moments in your SC4 video. I suppose that's a recording glitch, though.