Ground Highway Diagonal Bridge Enabler Problem

[mgb204]

Hello,

I've been trying to get a diagonal Ground Highway bridge so I can make an important connection between two sides of a coastal area. I tried before when I was less familiar with mods and failed completely to understand how it worked... Now I've a bit more understand of the game, I'm revisiting my first decent region and thought I would have another go with the DBE.

I installed the required files, and without too much difficulty (some leveling in the water was required before I could drag) made a road bridge successfully which was really pleasing. However this should ideally be a ground highway bridge, so as per the instructions I deleted the road bridge and tried to drag RHW across instead. I get the error "Failed Leveling Terrain" using the exact same path as the one which worked for the road bridge, which seems odd. I tried some other locations, and whenever I drag RHW without the previous error, it levels the road at the lowest point, what would be the ocean floor, not the highest one, again this works fine with road.

I'm using the latest NAM 32, so I did wonder if there was any problems with this mod and the new NAM? I also thought my other slope mods might be a problem and tried removing them but again the same issues persist.

Is anyone able to explain what I'm doing wrong here? Thanks.

[Tarkus]

I just tested the Ground Highway bridge with a relatively clean Plugins folder, containing NAM 32 and the DBE.  I had no issue building the Diagonal Ground Highway bridge as per the standard instructions.  The DBE can be a bit finicky when you're trying place a bridge--you have to have just the right terrain to pull it off, and it may require doing some alteration at the bridge approaches.  The Road network is generally the one with the least restrictive slope properties of all the networks with DBE support, too, whereas the RHW's properties are more restrictive.

-Alex

[mgb204]

Thanks Tarkus for taking the time to check this/respond.

I'm not quite there yet (still need to work out a slope that the game is willing to work with), but I'm pretty sure I've found the error I was making.

I drew the Shared Tile RHW network first on the bridge edge, and realised the bridge overrides need to connect to the "shared" part where the two RHW's connect, previously I had two diagonal RHW's but without this connection, and the override piece refused to plop and I couldn't drag the RHW end from the puzzle piece. Now when I add the override it's no longer looks to be digging to the lowest point, although I'm yet to find a slope it will build on.

I think with some playing around terraforming there should be a new highway bridge sometime today. 2 Days to build such a large bridge is good for the real world I suppose

If anyone is able to suggest a good way to get the right slope I'd be very grateful. I'm using a 15m trench, then used the soften tool until it would soften no more, and still it appears it's not smooth enough.

[mgb204]

So after many hours of constant frustration, there is something very wrong with dragging RHW for use with the DBE on my NAM 32 installation.

Today, just for kicks, I moved the Network Addon Mod and Z___NAM folders out of my plugins, then switched them with the equivalent NAM 31.2 folders from an old region. Without any fuss the RHW Drags at the exact spots in a blank test tile that it absolutely refuses to with NAM 32.

With NAM 31.2 Just dragging the RHW network will snap to the highest point and give you the road on stilts.
With NAM 32 The RHW always snaps to the lowest point it's dragged through, with the road along the seafloor and creating two valleys where the road should meet land also at the level of the seefloor (I hope that's clear, sorry it's not easy for me to upload a picture).

The only difference I can think of is that I'm using an install with sims driving on the left, could it be something that got messed up because of the workarounds needed to install NAM 32 for RHD and with Euro RHW textures? If you'd like I could PM you with a directory listing or provide some images, but I have no account to upload them too, so I'd prefer it if I could e-mail them, but there is something wrong here and I haven't played with the NAM installation anymore than absolutely necessary to install it correctly, and all tests are with a clean plugins folder. This leads me to believe this problem should not be unique to me. Please get in touch if you'd like more information from me.

[memo]

I just tested the DBE with NAM 32 and, just like Tarkus, I cannot observe any issues.

By any chance, did you move any NAM files manually? You should leave this to the installer as potential side-effects are rather complex. The following files are absolutely necessary for building a diagonal groundhighway bridge. Make sure they are present in your plugins and that they are in exactly the same locations.

Code Select Expand


Network Addon Mod\NetworkAddonMod_Controller.dat
Network Addon Mod\NetworkAddonMod_BridgeSupport.dat
Network Addon Mod\NetworkAddonMod_IndividualNetworkRULs.dat
Network Addon Mod\Real Highway Mod\L0\RealHighway_L0_RHW-2.dat
~Diagonal Bridge Enabler (Temporary Files)\DiagonalBridgeEnabler.dat


It is crucial that you don't have a slope mod for RHW in your plugins that loads after the DiagonalBridgeEnabler.

[APSMS]

^^^This would explain an awful lot about my issues with the DBE. Primarily, this information should be stated in the DBE use files, as all of my organized files are in appropriately labeled files.

Slope mods are in the Slope mod folder, which seems to me to always load after the DBE (iirc, ~ loads first?). So then we should stick our slope mods in a folder above the DBE?

I'm going to have to try this out. A whole host of new options have suddenly revealed themselves.

(I also had this problem with avenue/streets, but not road, for some reason...not sure why, even w/o Ennedi's sslope mod. But I'll try this out anyways)

[memo]

Even though ~ gets displayed at the top in Windows Explorer, it comes after all the other common characters and digits in ASCII order, so that it loads last. You shouldn't have a problem with your slope mods unless you have them in a folder that starts with a tilde, which is not an awfully common case. I am sure the readme states that the DBE folder must be moved to the root directory of the plugins which should ensure that it is loaded last.

Still, what kind of issues did you have with the DBE? There aren't any street- or avenue-based diagonal bridges, so street and avenue slope mods wouldn't have any impact. Road, OWR, RHW and rail slope mods are needed to ensure that the dragged network is level. If you are experienced, you can even modify the DBE slope mods to build sloped diagonal bridges, but only a subset of diagonal bridge models is slope-tolerant. I once built a (somewhat) arched groundhighway bridge that way.

[mgb204]

OK, it seems I don't have RealHighway_L0_RHW-2.dat installed, this is because I don't use RHW-2 so I choose to leave it out of the install for NAM 32, I wouldn't have done this with the previous NAM, but this time I tried to get an optimised controller so removed all dead weight. I'll re-install the NAM with RHW2 as well and confirm if this is the problem. Thank you for your assistance.

[Tarkus]

There shouldn't be an option to skip the RHW-2, as that's the base network.  Without the RHW-2, the whole RHW system will have issues.

-Alex

[mgb204]

I'm looking at the installer now to re-run it, the checkboxes under NAM Networks and Network Expansions / RealHighway Mod (RHW) for the following entries:

- RHW L0 Networks
- RHW L1 Networks
- RHW L2 Networks

For each of these has the RHW2 option unticked, which I did without error on a custom install, and I can tick/untick at will now without any indication of a potential problem. Can you confirm, do I need every elevation of RHW2 or just L0? Additionally the same goes for RHW3, is this also required and if so for all elevations?

It's a simple answer as to why I've noticed nothing wrong with the RHW... I'm not using it at all as the region I'm testing NAM 32 with is an old one with only MHW and I didn't want to reduce the number of interchanges therefore I've only used MHW with NAM 32.

Sure enough, DBE is now working with NAM 32... A lot of time wasted because I had no way of knowing about any of this, perhaps someone would be kind enough to add this info to the instructions so no one else suffers the same fate? I picked up on the problem immediately when I knew which files had to be installed.

Thanks again for everyones help, this bridge serves a special purpose so I think it's been worth it, hopefully my 2nd diagonal crossing will be easy sailing!

[Tarkus]

For each of these has the RHW2 option unticked, which I did without error on a custom install, and I can tick/untick at will now without any indication of a potential problem. Can you confirm, do I need every elevation of RHW2 or just L0?

Just L0.  That's the base network that you get when you drag the RHW Network Tool, so it's the absolute bare minimum.  The DBE was originally released about a week after NAM 30, so it was before we went to the Monolithic NAM--the original requirements for the DBE listed the NAM and the separate-download RHW Plugin as dependencies.  There has been discussion of some minor updates in the near term (supporting the RRW and special ortho bridges--necessitating a rename of the plugin), so it'd be most likely we'd update the documentation then (unless we decide to give it a thread before then).

-Alex