New Additions to RTMT

[CaptCity]

Would you consider putting the RTMT logo on top of these icons, as I did (see the picture below)? The NAM people are talking about making signs like this standard for all stations, so I think it would be nice to have our logo on top of our stations. Also, it immediately lets people know that these are road top stations.

Just my two cents... I think the logo would be a nice touch. Particularly if these become the 'norm' for the various sets...

Also, just thinking out loud here... With all the possible stations and their configurations, could there be an issue of over-lapping icons; making it difficult to isolate a single station's icon with the cursor? Just a thought...

[z]

Also, just thinking out loud here... With all the possible stations and their configurations, could there be an issue of over-lapping icons; making it difficult to isolate a single station's icon with the cursor? Just a thought...

If you look at the colors from the Volume Data View in the picture above, you'll see that the colored roads never overlap; therefore, the station signs (which are generally about the size of a game square) should never overlap either.  But this could be a danger if larger sign sizes were used for the lower zooms.  Cogeo's icons appear bigger than the text signs, though; Cogeo, how big are they?  Also, since you have to combine them anyway, maybe you would want them in rows of two each, so they don't get too far from the station?  I know that the text signs can be read down to Zoom 2 without increasing their size; I'll let Cogeo tell us how far down his icons can be distinguished.

[cogeo]

Z and Captcity, here are my answers to the points you raised:

Yes I did consider putting the RTMT logo on these, but I would rather adivse against, for the following reasons:
- In the farthest zooms it's hardly readable (how would 4 letters crammed in the same space as 1 icon be readable, if the icon is not?).
- I would rather like to remove things, not add more and make the whole view more cluttered.
- With the green maxed out to 255, the colour choices are rather limited: green, yellow, cyan, white and maybe two other colours (between yellow and green, and between green and cyan) - additional colours would be easily confused as they would be too close. So I would rather leave that colour for another transit type.
- And what's wrong with the other stations having a similar (or same) icon? To the player whether a station is roadtop or not is of really little importance, so I think it would be best not to overflow the view with unwanted/unneeded information. The usueful information here is the transit types served, I think.

The offsets in RKT4 appear to be ignored for buildings, they only work for props. Most probably another RKT4 bug (like the shadows, rotations etc). So the models I made for multi-transit type stations accordingly have multiple vertex/material groups (I just shifted and appended them), with each one using one of the four icon textures.

I don't understand what you mean with RKT3 and RKT4. Let's make things more clear:
- As said above RKT4 offsets don't work for buildings, only for props (if you have evidence about the opposite, please let us know) - and these have to be displayed through a RKTx property in the building, otherwise they aren't highlighted. So you can only change the height by changing the vertex values.
- So you have made different models for the farthest zooms. The "problem" here is that RKT4 doesn't display models with 5 views (zooms) ie like the ones displayed by RKT3, it can only display models with 1 Z/R (like these ones) and with 20 Z/R, ie the ones displayed by RKT1. These are generated by BAT exporting, and in order to achieve a different height for each zoom, you will have to displace (vertically) each zoom level (4 views) separately.

I'm really questioning this feature, ie having the labels/icons displayed 1000m above ground. It's of little usufulness, I'm afraid. What's the point of having labels/icons that are hard to associate with the stations? The purpose of highlighting is to easily identify related buildings (for each DataView). Maxis does this by highlighting the building model, which is quite correct - you can immediately spot the buildings of interest. And the purpose of adding these to RTMT was to compensate for the lack of a building model (and subsequntly highlighting). So I originally made a "building" (label) with the RTMT logo. But then I thought it would be better to provide some additional information too (the transit types served); these should be helpful and meaningful. But having them 1000m above ground, and with all the big buildings shown in the same view isn't very helpful, I think. Imagine just this: the dataview you sent me (no buildings) with the stations displaying clear and colour-coded transit icons just above them; it will then be very easy to see how the transit system is setup, and information like where buses go, or the routes of your subway lines, ie what is commonly referred to as the "big picture" (of the transit system) at a glance, which is rather not the case with the labels shown 1000m above ground and above all tall buildings. Of course, this is only possibble with the buildings not displayed in the dataview, but you can't have them all. I would jsut pick what makes sense. And with the props being displayed (making it possible to identify the RTMT stations easily), this is meaningful, I think. I'm going to challenge you  , just show the same part of the city in the pic, but with the icons/stations I'll send you (today), and the dataview without the buildings, and then tell us which one is preferable and more useful.

As for the icons overlapping, I don't think this can be a problem, unless you place your stations just 2 or 3 tiles away, and using stations serving 3 or more transit types, which is rather unlikely; most stations plopped would instead serve 1 or 2 transit types, and be at least 5 or 6 tiles away, even in the most dense arrangements. Putting icons in rows of 2 is possible, and I'm open to suggestions, but it's just a matter of practicality and aesthetics; while it would look good four stations with 4 transit types, it would rather be problematic for 3 types, and indifferent for 2 types. But stations with 4 transit types will most probably be extremely rare, those with 3 quite rare, while most stations should rather serve 1 or 2 types. And for those with 2 types it might be a bit tricky to associate the station with the icons (the middle of the station would be between the two icons, while now they are jsut above). Don't know, I prefer this one but wouldn't rule out the alternative either, you might be right.

The models are 16m wide by 20m tall (this is to offset the game's "squashing" effect). They don't look very good in zooms 1 and 2, but for these ones I could enlarge them a little. However, this has a drawback too, it requires using RKT3, and this is incompatible to RKT4 (which other creators could use to combine these with a normal BAT building model and have them both displayed - and highlighted).

[cogeo]

A first version is attaced in this post.

Installation:
- Copy the ZZ folder under the RTMTV3 folder.
- And remember, these are not for playing the game, only for evaluating the highlight feature - remove them after testing.

The icons can be improved further, eg the thin outlines/items thickened so that they don't disappear at the farthest zooms, this is just version 1. Maybe height can be reduced to 18 or 19m instead of 20, they currently look a bit tall.

[z]

I don't understand what you mean with RKT3 and RKT4. Let's make things more clear:
- So you have made different models for the farthest zooms. The "problem" here is that RKT4 doesn't display models with 5 views (zooms) ie like the ones displayed by RKT3, it can only display models with 1 Z/R (like these ones) and with 20 Z/R, ie the ones displayed by RKT1. These are generated by BAT exporting, and in order to achieve a different height for each zoom, you will have to displace (vertically) each zoom level (4 views) separately.

The current signs I am using were all made with "handmade" RKT3's, which all happen to point to the same FSH file.  It's very simple and effective.  It's clear that I could do the same thing for RKT1's as well, although it would be nice not to have 20 S3D files.  Supposedly, there are shortcuts that can be used here so that only one set of zooms need be specified.  Could someone point me to some complete documentation on RKT1's and RKT3's?

I'm really questioning this feature, ie having the labels/icons displayed 1000m above ground. It's of little usufulness, I'm afraid.

Ah, but they're the very heart of this feature, as you'll see.

What's the point of having labels/icons that are hard to associate with the stations?

Agreed.  That's why the fact that the labels fit into the ghost streets of the Traffic Volume View so nicely (as shown again below, in a slightly different context) makes them so useful.  And they actually are directly above the actual stations, as I'll show below.

Imagine just this: the dataview you sent me (no buildings) with the stations displaying clear and colour-coded transit icons just above them; it will then be very easy to see how the transit system is setup, and information like where buses go, or the routes of your subway lines, ie what is commonly referred to as the "big picture" (of the transit system) at a glance, which is rather not the case with the labels shown 1000m above ground and above all tall buildings. Of course, this is only possibble with the buildings not displayed in the dataview, but you can't have them all. I would jsut pick what makes sense. And with the props being displayed (making it possible to identify the RTMT stations easily), this is meaningful, I think. I'm going to challenge you  , just show the same part of the city in the pic, but with the icons/stations I'll send you (today), and the dataview without the buildings, and then tell us which one is preferable and more useful.

OK, I'm always up for a good challenge.   First, I'd like to show some preliminary pictures that may be helpful.  In RL, if you were to take a sign the size of the RTMT signs and move them 1000m toward you, given how close you must be to see a Zoom 5, for example, the sign would obscure much more of your view then when it was at ground level.  This simply the way perspective works.  Except it doesn't work that way at all in SC4 - an object's perceived size does not vary at all depending on its height.  This is how I could get the whole 1000m thing to work, and as I said earlier, how I suspect Maxis got things such as UDI to work.  To illustrate, here is the basic view of the SAM types, with their signs illuminated.  The height of some is 16m; the height of the others is 1000m.  Can you tell which is which?



Now I'll rotate the view 90°.  Can you tell now?



Next, I'll take us to Downtown Chicago, in the standard building view, using your icons.  I know this isn't the view you designed them for, but I think it's useful when comparing to the following views:



They are mostly hidden by the buildings, as expected.  Now, here I repeat the same view with my signs as before, except I have held the bulldoze tool over a sign in the lower middle of the picture.  (You can't see the bulldozer because it's actually a cursor, which doesn't get captured.)  You can tell which sign I'm referring to because it's got the bulldoze cost to the left of it, and a red square directly beneath it.  The red square is the actual station in its proper location.  If you were to tear down the buildings in front of the square, you would find the station directly where the square is.  And the square (and therefore the stations) is always directly underneath the sign.



In your challenge, I'm not sure what you mean by "the dataview without the buildings," and I'm fairly sure I didn't send you anything.  Maybe you mean my new Network View (which shows the identical data as my new Zones view)?



Not all the signs show up here, simply because I haven't finished putting them all together.  But there's one major problem that doesn't show up in this particular area, but does in others.  Here's an area where it shows up:



First of all, to answer your question, I personally find the signs far preferable and far more useful.  And of course the signs look like they're right over the stations here, even though they're really 1000m high.  But there's a major problem with this view that cannot be overcome and that makes it unsuitable for use as a general transit station view.  When I moved into modding last summer, I no longer had time to build cities, so all my cities date from then or earlier.  Specifically, they all predate Simulator Z, and as a result, I loaded them with subways to get decent performance.  In the underground views, you can only get buildings highlighted if they contain a subway station.  There's no way to do something like turn off RCI buildings but display transit buildings.  Almost all my stations in this city are combo bus/subway stations, so you see lots of your icons.  But if you look on the left, along the lower and left edges, you can see a couple of bus stations without subway.  (One is directly above the word "question.")  There are no icons over these, nor can there be.  And in more normal cities (and my future ones, if I ever get time to build again  ), there are far fewer subway lines, and most transit stations would not contain subway stations.  This means that most transit stations would not show any icons (or signs either, for that matter).  This is why the 1000m tall signs are so necessary.  It is only in a view that shows all buildings that you can see all transit stations.  So I would ask you to reconsider your position about the 1000m height, since right now, there is no view that is guaranteed to show all your icons.

[carkid1998]

This is just a suggestion, but how about RTMT stations on intersections??

[z]

This was considered, but ultimately rejected (at least for the foreseeable future) because they'd just be eye candy.  Whenever you put an RTMT station next to an intersection, that station automatically serves both sides of both roads in that intersection.  This applies to streets and avenues as well.

[cogeo]

About the signs vs symbols thing, all I wanted to do was an easy to the eye transit view. Check the city views on Google Earth. They are right to use transit symbols, and I really find them very informative. That's what I wanted for RTMT too. But this is my personal preference.

[z]

I think your idea was well received, and I really would like to include it.  I think some people prefer text and some prefer graphics, so we might as well include both.  My biggest objection to the icons is what I stated at the end of my last post in this thread, namely that there is no view that is guaranteed to show all your icons.  And in large downtown areas that don't have a lot of subway stations, many of the icons will never be seen.  This is easily overcome by using the 1000m elevation; due to the way I use it, it doesn't really raise the signs above the stations at all.  This is partially because, taking your original suggestion, I moved the signs forward as well as up, and the result is that they look like they haven't moved.  The y offset is roughly comparable to the z offset.  Also, by centering the building in the lot exemplar, it became possible to have the signs perfectly centered for all rotations.

The only other thing I was thinking was that your icons look very similar, and it would be nice if you could tell them apart a little easier.  For example, if you were to give side views of the vehicles, that might be clearer, and the space is such that rectangular icons should fit well, especially once the building is centered.  Now that the development work on the El Road over Rail stations is finished, I'm going to be finishing up the signs for all the stations, and centering the buildings for all the lots.  I'll be getting the signs to work with RKT4 one way or another.  When I finish this, it will all be posted as Part 3 of the beta test (it's the last part); this should make it easier for you if you want to use a similar system for your icons.

[z]

RKT4 offsets don't work for buildings, only for props (if you have evidence about the opposite, please let us know)

I have done some experiments that confirm this - the RKT4 offset is completely ignored for buildings.  But what's even worse is that in my experiments, I found that if you use an RKT4 to specify multiple models for a building, all but the last model are ignored.  This eliminates the usefulness of RKT4 for highlighting completely.  If anyone knows how to make RKT4 work for multiple building models, please let me know.

[z]

I have finally got the station highlighting finished the way I originally envisioned it.  Here's an example; remember that this only shows up when you're using the Traffic Volume View.

One of the keys to this system is that the station types themselves never appear in green, which is reserved for describing other attributes of the station.  The "RTMT" is always present and indicates that this is a road top station.  The "==EL==", like "RTMT", is green and in slightly smaller letters than the station type; this indicates that the station has an el rail running over it.  (The equals signs represent the el tracks.)  If there were actually an el station here, the "EL" would be yellow and the same size as BUS and SUB, and there would be no equals signs.

The BUS and SUB names indicate the types of station stops.  Finally, the smaller "STREET" indicates that this station is located on a street.  So a quick glance at this sign tells you that this is a Bus and Subway station for el rail over street.  In this case, that's rather obvious without the sign; where this is most useful is in cases like the pictures of high-rise buildings above, where it is impossible to see the stations themselves.  With a number of station signs like this, it is even possible to see what your road network looks like, even though you can't see the roads themselves.

This feature is planned to be fully implemented in RTMT V3.60, which is approaching completion.  Comments are welcome, as always.

[tamorr]

   I like that idea. The additions to what was before, defininately would be even more helpful at a glance as you said. I can see myself using this to locate what and where in my networks. I'll definately being looking forward to the finished version. 

[0rion79]

Me too. Can't wait to have it! Hope you'll post it here the download link when it shall be finished.

[0rion79]

Hello everybody. Sorry if I'm next to make a stupid question, but I would like to know what shall it happen when I'll replace the actual files with the new RTMT ones. Shall I have to bulldoze & rebuild my stations? Or the game shall automatically update all new informations, as the passenger switchin from bus to subway?

Actually I'm building cities without buss-subway stations because I'm unsecure about the future!

[z]

It's not a stupid question at all - there are some properties in plopped stations that can be changed simply by changing the station's exemplar, and other properties that are stored with the station in the city file (such as the station capacity) and cannot be changed globally.  There's no simple way to know which type a given property is, except through experience.  Unfortunately, the transit switch points are like the station capacities; they are stored with the station and can't be changed for stations that are already plopped.

However, you don't need to hold off building new stations because of the subway bug.  Simply use the workaround to this bug when building new stations containing subway switches.  The bug only affects stations not at subway intersections or within one square of them.  Simply creating a one-square stub from the station going perpendicular to the subway line passing through the station is enough to ensure that the station will not be affected by the bug.

As for the station highlighting signs, these will automatically appear on all plopped stations.  However, for stations prior to the V3.60 release, these signs will not be exactly centered on the station, though they will be very close to the center in all zoom views.  If you don't like the way they look, you can always bulldoze the station and replace it with a new one.  But I would guess that for most people, the signs will be close enough to the station's center so that they will not feel that it is necessary to do this.

[z]

I've decided that the UI queries could use a bit of modifying.  Here's a sample of one of the new ones:

This is from a combination bus and GLR stop on a GLR-in_Avenue.  There wasn't a really good tram icon anywhere in the game for these queries, so I found one and stuck it in here.  And as you can see, the queries will now all have the NAM Team Certified and RTMT logos.

[0rion79]

IMHO, the logos are just a little bit too big: I would resize each of them to 85% of the original size, but I like them a lot anyway

[Andreas]

Yeah, it looks a tad too cluttered indeed. You probably could try to omit the background of the RTMT logo as well - it looks good as your avatar, but next to the NAM Certified logo, something more minimalistic might be worth a try. I do like the blue tram icon, though.

[z]

Yeah, it looks a tad too cluttered indeed.

I'm afraid I have to agree.     Unfortunately, the logos are at their limit of readability; shrinking them doesn't work.

You probably could try to omit the background of the RTMT logo as well - it looks good as your avatar, but next to the NAM Certified logo, something more minimalistic might be worth a try.

That's one possibility, though personally I like the full logo.  Another possibility is simply to stretch the query box a little bit to space things out some more.  What do people think of these two alternatives?

[Andreas]

Yeah, making the UI window a bit larger could work, I guess. What you could do is to get rid of the Maxis lightrail (subway) icon completeley and use one that represents mass transit in general, i. e. a combination of the logos from this picture.