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Multiple lane roads graphics

Started by Spartanis, October 08, 2011, 11:26:23 AM

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Spartanis

consider this image



this is a pak 64 game, that contains my creation of road and curbs. To further understand, the road is nothing more than a simple dark square tile. And the curbs are "res" building (of which i painstakingly select, rotate, and place the tiles accordingly). Note that the road is two tiles wide in most areas.

This method works fantastic, if only you place "ONE WAY" signs are various strategic locations. Plus also , making the vehicle paks bigger and placed in correct position, to fit into the scale of the road.

The next problem i faced is line markings. That is, those white (or in US case, yellow) lines on the roads. Some are solid, some are dashed, some are dual  and so on and so on. Creating this is easy enough but the problem is ROTATING view. To make LINE MARKING tile that is not mirrored, will create a rather nasty result of tile displacement when rotating. eg: Double line on right hand of the tile that fits nicely on the road, but when rotating the view from NORTH to SOUTH (or east to west) the double line ended up on the field, rather on the road.

The reason why this is so, that the tiles are suited for BOTH Direction. For example, the NS tile can be used for NORTH view as well as SOUTH view, as both views shows the exact same image.

The only solution, is to make the tile direction unique. That is, a North view of NS tile, and a South view of NS tile.

However, with my understanding of RIBI's and whotnot that the coders carefully explain, this is rather impossible. And i understand it is impossible.

To make it the tile unique, one would have to recreate simutrans with a massive overhaul, along with few broken abacus and slide rulers. Its a massive feat to undertake! (it is possible, but are you game enough to recode simutrans? lol)

So there's my conclusion of my many months of careful study, researching, and experimenting with simutrans pak creations.

Spartanis

Isaac Eiland-Hall

Quote
The only solution, is to make the tile direction unique. That is, a North view of NS tile, and a South view of NS tile.

I don't know if roads can interact with different kinds of roads, or only with themselves; but if they can, then it requires two road types that interact, at least. I don't know about special cases. heh.

Also, those are huge sidewalks. ;-)

Spartanis

HOLD THE PRESS!!!!!


Solution found. Therefore.. IT IS POSSIBLE!!!!!!! (without recoding simutrans itself. its merely thinking outside the box to create graphics only, to acheive this)

Currently working on a pakset that includes this solution for making Roadtile as a single lane. Expected to be released by beginning of next year....

Spartanis

sdog

Spartanis, you might want to take a look on this thread:

http://forum.simutrans.com/index.php?topic=8906.0

there's more required to enable two-lane roads than graphics. It's also not a "it can't be done" problem, but a "it's a lot of work" problem.

Spartanis

Thanks for the link. Im pleased they are working on the coding side of this "idea" of one lane road.

My Graphics solution is simple: Scale. Thats it.. Scale.
What I have done, is using pak32 size, is create:
1) Sidewalk Way (top speed 7)
2) SOLID LINE MARKING way(top speed 0)
3) Asphalt way(top speed 999) <-- Vehicles usage
4) Dashed/Double Solid lines(top speed 0)

This creates 7 lane way to create two lane roads.  With careful planning and construction, the vehicles moves along these roads, turn at intersections (any kind) with perfection.
Doing this way creates a pak32 look like pak128!!!
of course, this makes everything else (Buildings, tracks, vehicles etc etc) a huge project of rescaling to suit.

Having said this, their Coding idea from the link you directed me, would STILL need to create a whole new pakset to suit scale. (assuming one tile is a lane in their mind)

Isaac Eiland-Hall

Graphics are the LEAST of the things stopping this from being in the game.

isidoro

@Spartanis: what you propose is to make roads behave like railways.  Have a look at how far apart two adjacent diagonal railways must be and you can see other things to consider.

In fact, if you follow the technical thread about that, the idea is not far from yours.  Instead of tiles, they would be sub-tiles.  But some technical (and not so) problems arise.  It is not a question of graphics indeed, as Isaac points out.


el_slapper

Here is the Iceberg secret Revealed. main point is :

Quote from: Joel Spolsky(.../...)You know how an iceberg is 90% underwater? Well, most software is like that too -- there's a pretty user interface that takes about 10% of the work, and then 90% of the programming work is under the covers. And if you take into account the fact that about half of your time is spent fixing bugs, the UI only takes 5% of the work. And if you limit yourself to the visual part of the UI, the pixels, what you would see in PowerPoint, now we're talking less than 1%.

That's not the secret. The secret is that People Who Aren't Programmers Do Not Understand This.

That's what Isaac & sdog are trying to say(the part that is not the secret). Graphics is easy, behaviour is hard. And this specific problem has everything to do with behaviour