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Three Rivers Region

Started by dedgren, December 20, 2006, 07:57:49 PM

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vester

...and a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you David.

Best wishes for you and yours for the new year.

art128

Wonderful picture David!

Merry Christmas. :)
I'll take a quiet life... A handshake of carbon monoxide.

Props & Texture Catalog

Swordmaster

Merry Christmas, David. I hope 2013 will be a good year for you and your terrific project.

If I remember correctly, we were halfway between amazing and awesome.


Cheers
Willy

metarvo

Nothing makes Christmas complete quite like a good old fashioned 3RR snow pic.
Find my power line BAT thread here.
Check out the Noro Cooperative.  What are you waiting for?  It even has electricity.
Want more? Try here.  For even more electrical goodies, look here.
Here are some rural power lines.

noahclem

Merry Christmas David and what a beautiful winter scene  &apls   I'd love to see more from you and 3RR in the new year and I'm wishing all the best to you and yours over the holiday season :)

dedgren

#10885
Thanks for the holiday wishes, folks.  Before we get down to some new business, let's take the time to consider a couple of things.

You occasionally see this rotating banner stream across the top of whatever page you are on here.


Enjoy the full SC4 Devotion experience and support the site by clicking on this link and becoming a  !

Our great friend jeroni started this site a little over six years ago out of his pocket.  Within a short time he was also financially supporting the LEX, which has grown to consume ever increasing (and ever more expensive) amounts of bandwidth.  A couple of folks chipped in to help more or less from the start, but our friend has always been there to make sure that, no matter what else happened, things would keep running along.

A couple of years after SC4D got going, it became clear that it would not be economically realistic to rely on any single person to support the cost of running the site and the LEX.  The current subscription program was set up, which allows members to support the site by donating 12 Euros (€12)- a little less than (US) $17- through PayPal and become a SC4D Subscriber for a year.  A student can become a subscribing member for a year for only three Euros (€3).  Subscriptions by the month are also available for just one Euro and ten cents (€1.10).

The greatest "city" (heh!) builder game ever will be 10 years old in a few days.  If you haven't already figured it out, I hate to be the one to break it to you- but Sim City 2013 will be a huge disappointment for those of us who have come to know and love SC4.  This site- the fansite that is devoted to that game- will become more important than ever as we bring SC4 into its second decade of greatness.  With that in mind I'd ask everyone who has made it this far on this post to please consider becoming a Subscribing Member or, if you are one already, renewing for another year.

Here's the link again:


Enjoy the full SC4 Devotion experience and support the site by clicking on this link and becoming a  !


David

1071468
D. Edgren

Please call me David...

Three Rivers Region- A collaborative development of the SC4 community
The 3RR Quick Finder [linkie]


I aten't dead.  —  R.I.P. Granny Weatherwax

Skype: davidredgren

homefryes

Hi David and all,

It's good to see you back around these parts!

Thank you for this important post. I had been away from SC4D for quite awhile, and upon my recent return, I found this option and immediately became a subscriber. Even though I'm not as active as I'd like to be (though I do have a few things brewing in the "kitchen" right now), I see the importance and value of contributing toward keeping this site running for all to enjoy. Oh heck, let's be a little selfish - I contributed not only to alleviate the burden off of the few, but also for MY benefit ... because if this site should disappear, I'd be at a HUGE loss. It shouldn't be the burden of one person or even a few. I hope everyone will consider giving.

Sincerely,
Don
Utility Poles Project [linkie]
Ashtabula (the MD) is not dead; it's just on a really long hiatus!
Check out Homefryes' BATatorium

dedgren

Just a question I've always wondered about- how close to RL scale is SC4 rail?  You might know that most mainline railroads around the world are built based on Standard Gauge- 4 feet eight inches/1.42 meters between rails.  Fewer folks know that dual rail lines have tracks that are generally about 16 feet/4.88 meters between centers.

So here's SC4 "game" DTR on the right and "to scale" DTR on the left.



I think we are sticking with what we've got.


David

1072329
D. Edgren

Please call me David...

Three Rivers Region- A collaborative development of the SC4 community
The 3RR Quick Finder [linkie]


I aten't dead.  —  R.I.P. Granny Weatherwax

Skype: davidredgren

Jmouse

#10888
Good grief. He's gone for months on end, and wouldn't you know it, when he finally returns, he has a railroad track in each hand.

Welcome back, my friend... :)
-Joan

z

Quote from: dedgren on December 29, 2012, 10:11:42 PM
So here's SC4 "game" DTR on the right and "to scale" DTR on the left.



I think we are sticking with what we've got.

Otherwise, imagine how small the trains would be... :D

Swordmaster

I gave what we discussed some more thought. Always a good idea to sleep on it.

Leaving track gauge as is, only adapting distance between tracks, to-scale you'd get something like this. Top are the originals.

     
     

Network re-calculations aside, I admit its a persuasive improvement.







I'll leave it to you to draw conclusions.


Cheers
Willy

Tarkus

A couple interesting things to note about that wider scale . . .

First off, it'd actually move the offset from center on DTR from 2.0 (also the offset for Streets, El/Light Rail and Monorail) to 2.5, the same offset used for Roads, One-Way Roads, and Avenues.

Secondly, because TTR would cover the full width of the tile, it would render QTR moot.

-Alex

FrankU

Hi David, 

I'm glad you are back!
On our way to 2M views?

The tracks and scale: is it really worth wile considering this issue? Let's face it: we have 4m high sims, we have tractors that are twice the size of the barns they are supposed to fit in, we have seaships not even a quarter of their real scale...
What is scale in SC4? Let's not spoil our time on rearanging all rail textures and lots....
Or am I wrong?

I surely don't want to spoil anybody's hobby, but for me I'd say: no bother!

Frank

And a happy new year to all of you!  :thumbsup:

dedgren

#10893
Frank, I'll start with your comment.  Yes, I would hope very much, and not just on behalf of 3RR, that we are on our way to two million views.  If this thread is active at that level, it says a great deal about the heath of the community and the ongoing amount of interest in our game.  More on all that early next year.

The purist in me would want for SC4 to be scaled down from RL in all things as much as possible.  However, my friend, you have it exactly right.  There were so many compromises, short cuts and out and out lazy implementations of things on the part of the original developers that correcting them all is an impossible task and correcting one against the backdrop of everything else that remains uncorrected seems like the most futile of efforts.  Then there is the issue of what I've called granularity in the past.  At 256x256 pixels to the gridsquare (view level 6- where things appear the largest) and each gridsquare being 15.65 meters/51.4 feet on a side each pixel represents just over six centimeters/a little less than 2.5 inches square.  That seems pretty reasonable for fine detail, but it's unfortunately not the end of the story.  Much graphics work in SC4, and in particular transit textures, is done primarily using a 128x128 pixel grid (these are what you see, in example, in Willy's (Swordmaster) post a few back).  A pixel in one of these textures is about 12 centimeters/five inches wide and high.  That size granularity does not lend itself to fine detail work.  Things that are less than those dimensions- overhead power lines, telephone wires, leaves on trees, for example- simply cannot be done to scale.  Those and many other small things are created oversize and we have simply come to accept them as the result of a limitation in the game that cannot be overcome.

SC4 rail, along these lines, is very troublesome.  Here is a cross-section of a piece of "100-pound" rail, which used to be the standard for US long-haul mainlines.



As you can see, the top of the rail is less than three inches/eight centimeters wide.  That is, if it were done to scale, about one-half of a pixel wide on a transit texture.  Our textures, then, as we are required to create them, start with the tops of the rails being twice as wide as they should be.  From there, the tops of those rails should be four foot eight inches/1.42 meters  apart.  That's just over 11 pixels.  As you see here,



that would be workable, but odd-looking when you have become used to the games original textures, where the rails are 16 pixels- about six feet eight inches/two meters apart. One of the reasons for this apparent oddness is the ties.  On mainline US railways, a typical railroad tie is 8-1/2 feet/2.6 meters long, 9 inches/23 centimeters wide, and 7 inches thick. Tie spacing can vary, but a good average rule of thumb is 3000 ties per mile/1,850 per kilometer. That's a tie spacing of about 21 inches/54 centimeters. The gap between ties at this spacing would be 12 inches/30 centimeters.

In our game trackage, ties are 24 pixels long, which works out to 10 feet/three meters.  They are generally two pixels wide, which makes them slightly overwidth at 10 inches/25.4 cm.  The gaps between ties is too great by about a factor of two at three or four pixels (15 to 20 inches/38 to 51 centimeters) in width.  As I noted a post or so back, the RL distance between RL dual trackage (our game DTR) centers is 16 feet/4.88 meters between centers.  The game DTR shrinks this to 30 pixels- about 12 feet six inches/3.8 meters between centers.

So this turns out to be a notional gridsquare of ortho DTR scaled as close to RL as the 128x128 granularity limitation will allow.



Again, Frank- you are almost certainly right.  But, as usual, I had to look for myself. 

More on this in a bit.  Alex (Tarkus) sent me some hopeful news on the TTR front today, and I need to check it out.

Cheers!


David

1072816
D. Edgren

Please call me David...

Three Rivers Region- A collaborative development of the SC4 community
The 3RR Quick Finder [linkie]


I aten't dead.  —  R.I.P. Granny Weatherwax

Skype: davidredgren

FrankU

Hi David,

Thanks for the karma point!

And as a final statement: granularity might be a fundamental property of the universe. We just don't know.....
But it is definitely a property of the SC4 universe. Everyone will have to live with compromise.

I am curious what you are up to, but I am certain I will see it when time comes.

Nice to have you back, David!

Swordmaster

Happy New Year, David. I'm confident that the stars will align in 3RR's favor this year. I think SC2013, among other things, is motivating us to do much, much better.


Cheers
Willy

dedgren

#10896
Back from Heather and my son Tristen taking gimpy old me to The Hobbit.  Saw it in 2-D and loved it (there's some sort of connection to my take on SC4 there, I'm pretty sure).  Everything that I've read that criticizes- the length of the dinner at Bag End, the overstated "character" makeup worn by the various dwarves, the inclusion of new material involving Radagast, Galadriel and Saruman- all those things worked just fine for me.  The high comedy point of the film came with the first scene showing the Great Goblin when Heather and I turned to each other and said at the same time "Ballchinian."  Bottom line- it'll be a long year ahead waiting for part two.

A little less than two hours 'til next year here.  Happy New Year, everyone.  I'm going to do my best to start 3RR off in 2013 with a bang.


David

1073207
D. Edgren

Please call me David...

Three Rivers Region- A collaborative development of the SC4 community
The 3RR Quick Finder [linkie]


I aten't dead.  —  R.I.P. Granny Weatherwax

Skype: davidredgren

dedgren

First order of business...



I'm working on an extremely promising possibility.  Back to you in a bit.


David

1073439
D. Edgren

Please call me David...

Three Rivers Region- A collaborative development of the SC4 community
The 3RR Quick Finder [linkie]


I aten't dead.  —  R.I.P. Granny Weatherwax

Skype: davidredgren

Girafe

#10898
Radagast, a mother nature'son, another one  :) I love his rabbits  ::)

It's a good film, landscapes are so fantastic, one day, maybe, sc4 will look like this



TTR are nice and seems to be fantastic. Just a though, is there the place for 2 trains aside?

Happy new year 2013!


The Floraler

This is the end, hold your breath and count to ten, feel the earth move, and then...

*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *    *   *   *   *   *    * 

M4346

#10899
Quote from: dedgren on January 01, 2013, 03:38:24 PM
I'm working on an extremely promising possibility.  Back to you in a bit.

I like it. I like it a lot! ;D Will have to keep an eye on this!

Quote from: dedgren on December 31, 2012, 11:11:04 PM
The high comedy point of the film came with the first scene showing the Great Goblin when Heather and I turned to each other and said at the same time "Ballchinian."  Bottom line- it'll be a long year ahead waiting for part two.

Ballchinian! Ha! Made me chuckle! :) I loved The Hobbit, and even as a huge Tolkien fan I really enjoyed what Peter Jackson did with this first installment in the epic saga. A long year ahead indeed!

Quote from: dedgren on December 31, 2012, 11:11:04 PMHappy New Year, everyone.  I'm going to do my best to start 3RR off in 2013 with a bang.

Happy New Year to you too David! And here's to one filled with bangs and bucks and general awesomeness, here in 3RR and life more generally!  ;D Judging by your post above, it does look promising indeed.  ;)

M

Edit:  Double-0 Club for you, Marius.  You've been there before. -de
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