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A New Traffic Volume View

Started by z, August 05, 2008, 08:27:13 PM

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tamorr

  For me it would be nice as I don't work with sub all that often and having the color even when plopping sub will help me in the long run... That way I could figure where my sub is being used less and get rid of the rudundant with out having to guess on the other data view. So it being permanent I like.... but that is my oppinion...
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catty

Quote from: z on May 18, 2009, 12:16:24 AM
Q:  What do you get when you cross the Traffic Volume View with the Subway View?

The pros for such an addition are simple:  If you're building new subways, you get to see what current subway usage is while you're building the subways.  This can be very helpful in deciding where to place your new subways.

There's only one downside to this addition, and that is that it becomes a permanent part of the Subway View.  Whenever you entered the Subway View, the colors would be there.  There would be no way to turn them off.

So considering the pros and cons, would people want this feature or not?

This is something I would definitely use and the permanent colour changes wouldn't put me off, the benefits of being able to see what subways are being used and how much, especially with the cost of subways these days .... outweigh any cons to it.

:)

I meant," said Ipslore bitterly, "what is there in this world that truly makes living worthwhile?" DEATH thought about it. "CATS," he said eventually, "CATS ARE NICE.

z

You can now find the Combination Subway Volume View on the LEX.  It works with all the current traffic simulators.

z

The Traffic Volume View has now been added to the NAM for all traffic simulators, along with the Combination Subway View and a new version of the game's Subway Building View.  A new version of the Zones Data View is also optionally available.  Support for all of these data views, as well as for Traffic Simulator Z, can be found in the NAM Traffic Simulator Z and Data View Help thread.

ebina

Could "Percentage refers to xxx capacity" that follows "300%(NNN)" be separated? It was troublesome to create locales for each simulator version of VDV plugins. Although there were not many LTEXT files compared with main NAM locale. If it could be separated into single LTEXT file then translating the same description again and again would not be needed, and LTEXT files for VDV plugins can be merged into main NAM locale file. It would be very convenient for users for they don't need to choose a correct file manually.

Apart from that, letter position should not be adjusted by spacing because not all language versions use the same font and font size.

"Network and Zone Data                         Subway Volume Levels:" in Japanese version without using Japanese locale. "Volume Levels:" has been hidden by map.


To prevent that effect I changed the header to "Zone Data / Subway Volume Data" in Japanese locale. Other language versions might have the same glitch. Please consider these points if you will update VDV plugins.

z

You have made good points here, Ebina.  The Traffic Volume Views were actually my first released custom content, and at that time, I didn't know how the translations worked.  But now that I do, and now that these views (and the others) are part of the NAM, they should be fixed to work properly with all languages.  I will be looking into this in the near future.

Andreas

When preparing the NAM installer, I already added German LTEXT files into the individual DATs, but I agree that the repetition of those captions made it harder to translate than necessary. It wasn't that bad, since per DAT, it was only a handful of files, where basically only the numbers were different, but that system doesn't work for including the captions into the locale files indeed.

BTW, I also noticed that the LTEXT file for "Transit Station" isn't used, since your modified map view doesn't allow displaying the stations as orange dots anymore, since you've used all nine "slots" for percentage values. I'm not sure if it is possible to add more "slots" in order to show the mass transit stations in the same way as Tropod's mod does, but maybe there's another solution to this.
Andreas

z

Quote from: Andreas on June 26, 2009, 11:59:11 AM
BTW, I also noticed that the LTEXT file for "Transit Station" isn't used, since your modified map view doesn't allow displaying the stations as orange dots anymore, since you've used all nine "slots" for percentage values. I'm not sure if it is possible to add more "slots" in order to show the mass transit stations in the same way as Tropod's mod does, but maybe there's another solution to this.

Unfortunately, it's not possible.  The game crashes if you use more than nine slots.  If you look at Tropod's mod, you'll see that he never uses more than nine.  And in the one case where nine slots were already taken, he leaves out the Transit Station legend.  So it seems that he ran into the same situation that I did here.  The orange dots are a completely separate issue, though; I left them out of the transit views because on large tiles with a lot of stations, they tended to obscure too much of the data.  But they're present in the Zones view, where there's much less data to be displayed.

Meanwhile, I left the Transit Station legend in, hoping that eventually I'd find some sort of workaround so that I could use it.  But it doesn't make sense to waste effort translating it at this point, and I'll take it out if that's more helpful.

Andreas

Quote from: z on June 26, 2009, 02:14:36 PM
Unfortunately, it's not possible.  The game crashes if you use more than nine slots.  If you look at Tropod's mod, you'll see that he never uses more than nine.  And in the one case where nine slots were already taken, he leaves out the Transit Station legend.  So it seems that he ran into the same situation that I did here.  The orange dots are a completely separate issue, though; I left them out of the transit views because on large tiles with a lot of stations, they tended to obscure too much of the data.  But they're present in the Zones view, where there's much less data to be displayed.

Yeah, I kinda figured that after having a short look at the files. I agree with you that it's probably better to reduce the amount of information in the transit views, as they tend to get pretty cluttered anyway.

QuoteMeanwhile, I left the Transit Station legend in, hoping that eventually I'd find some sort of workaround so that I could use it.  But it doesn't make sense to waste effort translating it at this point, and I'll take it out if that's more helpful.

Well, I guess we could modify the UI file that builds the legend, but at the moment, I'm not sure if it's worth the effort.
Andreas

SC4BOY

Love the view redesign.. very helpful.. though I feel that buses are weighted VERY HEAVILY.. since in sc4 1 sim=1 bus, its clear to me why it was originally counted as essentially nul.. if for example a roadway can carry 1200 units/unit time, then a bus.. even rather ordinary ones.. not modern at all, would take say 40 passengers/"big bus" and thus would be about 30 buses..basically nul.

I expect this is why basic SC4 practically ignores buses. Similar arguments for trains.. I mean a train can easily carry hundreds of sims per "big train".. but of course there isn't a "big train" or "big bus" so they resolve it by significantly reducing the count of these toward "congested"

I opened my old cities to screaming warnings of "congested" this or that, but when I checked they were almost all due to bus traffic.. or even worse pedestrians on a sidewalk.. :)

I suppose these are really arguments against the simulation modeling rather than the view.. if so, move this to a more appropriate thread...

Nonetheless.. love the view.. especially the "volume view"

z

I'm glad you like the new views!  As you guessed, the change in bus behavior is a traffic simulator issue, and occurs only in Simulator Z, which I gather you're using.  Here's a brief explanation of what's happening, taken from the middle of a much longer post over at ST:

QuoteIn Simulator Z, buses don't reduce road traffic at all.  However, road capacities are set to take this into account.  You're right in that a bus passenger causes the same amount of road congestion as a car passenger.  This is obviously wrong, but the only other alternative is to bring back Singularity Services, who run the Black Hole Bus Company in all the other traffic simulators.  You can stuff an infinite number of Sims into their buses and have no effect on traffic at all.  This seems far worse, and produces some very unrealistic traffic patterns.  I think that the only reason that other simulators don't let buses contribute to traffic, based on my experience, is that if you let them, the pathfinder isn't smart enough to prevent huge congestion problems on the roads.

Basically, the traffic simulator works much better if you're able to let it count buses as contributing to traffic.

If you're having way too much congestion using Simulator Z, there are two ways to alleviate it:  You can either use a higher capacity version of the simulator, or you can build [more] subways.  In any case, it should be possible to reduce congestion to any level you like.

BTW, pedestrians never contribute to congestion, even though the volume view for them may show red.  This is one place where it's important to keep in mind the difference between volume and congestion.

If you have any further questions about Simulator Z, I'd be happy to answer them, but you're right, they would belong in another thread, specifically the NAM Traffic Simulator Z and Data View Help thread.