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Pak128 temporary "strip" map story/progress/screenies

Started by Isaac Eiland-Hall, January 16, 2014, 02:55:40 PM

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Isaac Eiland-Hall

To be honest, it's been a while since I've put in much Simutrans time. Life happens.


Around the time I lost spare time for Simutrans, the ability to connect elevated ways to non-elevated roads at the same height was relatively new; so I hadn't gotten to play much with it. I started a strip map under pak German 64, whose graphics I adore, but there appear to be no elevated ways, and I wanted to play with them — so now I've got a pak128 map started.


I'm actually going to re-start it, because I want to create a map organically - starting with no cities or industries, and creating them in what feels like organic growth. Basically to create a map that would be ready for transport players to play on it - although I might well set up a company to have some vehicles floating around. I'll evolve the road structure through three, and possibly four, different levels: (maybe dirt roads that connect to every last little thing), Cobblestone as an early city-to-city connector, highways, then freeways.


I plan to have a couple at least metropolises that consist of a large central city with suburbs that are taken in.


But this thread is a sort of preview and introduction to all that, because on my strip map, I was working on a freeway, and I'm just so happy with the abilities that Simutrans has nowadays, I wanted to share the freeway as it runs through a city and splits into a circle around the city as well (a freeway loop - a good example would be I-220 as it loops around the outskirts of Shreveport, Louisiana - and attaches at both ends to I-20 - so through traffic doesn't have to deal as much with local traffic jams)


Anyway, here's some pictures:





The above is an overview of the city in question. I'd originally built the freeway that goes around the city, with its frontage roads - [size=78%]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frontage_road[/size] - as walls, then decided to make them frontage roads instead. That has to be done to protect them from the city connecting to the freeway and taking it over.


I forgot that cities would take over roads on different levels, so most of the freeway into the city was taken over - but still, it's hard to see, but I'll do this again: It's a sunken freeway, with a set of exits in the city. I used elevated roads to allow surface streets to connect to each other on top. It needs refinement, but I just love that Simutrans allows this now. :D


Here's one side:





I love that the signs are all aligned on slopes. :)





And I exist in this screenshot. :)


So this shows the freeway running through downtown. I think I got all the visible road tiles corrected, but the city took most of them over. There's a set of entrances/exits around city hall.





And here's the other end. A pretty compact layout, and definitely would be a lot larger before elevated roads. This is, in case it helps the eye, three levels.


And finally, showing a compact intersection between a freeway with frontage roads and a crossing road. Two versions - one compact, and one that's more visually appealing to me, but too large to use in-game (and would be taken over by city tiles anyway):





Now, the ramps (access to/from freeway) could be closer, but they're usually a bit back in the US. A better example - and the last thing before I destroy this map:





I'd still like to be able to extend the ramps a bit to make them more realistic, but at least here they *are* ramps, and properly diagonal, not curved. hehe.


Anyway, this is a mini-story to get me started on my next journey, which is to make a nice big map with lots of cities and grow it.



isidoro

Very nice, Isaac!  I'm following more or less the same path in my new scenario game (organic growth from the beginning following some rules).  Here is a link just in case you want to have a look at it:
http://forum.simutrans.com/index.php?topic=13059.msg132379;topicseen#msg132379