Three Rivers Region

[dedgren]

I just have a few, so...

Four views of the same switch.









Here's the 45 degree curves.



You saw it here first.



...what happens next- coming up soon!...

One of the issues we deal in pre-alpha so you don't have to later on.



Later, folks.


David

153215

[newsimaddict]

looks wonderful david!

[Ryan B.]

Two words:

Game-changing.

Absolutely stunning, David!  If I hadn't lost my voice, I'd be singing the praises of everyone involved from the rooftops!

[XiahouDun]

With all the progress being made over the last few months, I am once again as excited about the game as when it first came out. You guys have done such amazing work on this. I can't even begin to express how impressed I am.

[thundercrack83]

Two words:

Game-changing.

Those would be the two words that I would use anywhere else, but considering where I am, I'd say only three characters are needed:

3. R. R.

This is par for the course for 3RR--consistent, monumental projects. You're starting to spoil us, David!

Dustin

[emilin]

This is so vere, very exciting. Really... can't wait for it (I guess I'm going to have to, hehe...)

On that note: how about releasing the fencelines for farms you worked on earlier?

Ohhhhhhhh... and what a great reminder/tribute to the TT-journal by Pvarcoe. It really is one of my all time favourites. I often go back to the MD archives to look through it for inspiration. The farmlands are among the absolute best ever done in this game. And it's such a gentle and nice approach to the terrain (actually the Teton map contains a lot of flat lands, and would probably inspire a lot of users to overdevelop the beautiful landscape).

EDIT:  Emil, I'm going to be doing some of that long-promised catch-up work in 3RR this coming week.  I will certaily put the fencelines on the "must-do" list.  Cheers, my friend! -DE

[art128]

...what happens next- coming up soon!...

Superman come 
great Work David 

[TheTeaCat]

Remember saying this David?

Its on page five

Re: Terraforming Teton
« Reply #86 on: 25 January 2007, 16:52:18 »
   
Rail along the lake and through the mountains...I've died and gone to heaven.

Makes one wish we had single track rail available.  It would be a huge undertaking (new bridges from scratch, all the crossings and such), but imagine a lone rail line snaking through the same area.

Ahhh, we can all dream...

Great work!

And  see dreams can come true


TTC

[inspecter]

LOL a head on collision but I think they passed through each other.

[sithlrd98]

 

Jayson

[metarvo]

From what I have seen, the Maxis double rails typically appear near towns where a siding is needed, and the majority of the line between towns is STR.  The STR is truly impressive, in keeping with the norm here at 3RR.  David, did you ever think that this would happen, way back when you posted in Terraforming Teton?



EDIT:  My friend, that's a hard one to answer, as I frequently can't remember what I ate for lunch yesterday.  I will say, though, that I had no clue whatsoever that I would be playing a part in bringing STR to reality. -DE

[MassHelper]

Dave, will there be some kind of STR direction pieces, like the direction pieces of HSRP?

Mass

EDIT:  Mass, there well could be.  It is simply a matter of leaving one of the bi-directional paths off, so it wouldn't be hard to do.  We are working now on a basic set, though, so one-way trackage will have to wait for V.2. -DE

[dedgren]

I recollect that I've said more than once that I've never been a fan of the game's disasters- they are simply a nuisance as far as I'm concerned.

So this (barring some unforeseen reason) is the only time you will see one at 3RR.



That bit of "prurient interest" eyecandy out of the way, I need to tell you that the disaster you just saw is entirely PhotoShopped.  Here's what actually happens when two trains meet on STR.



Yep, that's it.  Nothing.  Oh, they pass through each other, yes...



But that's about as interesting as it gets.  And that's fine with me.

Now, this situation is an unavoidable result of having STR in the game.  There's only one track, and it has to carry train traffic going both ways.  Sooner or later, the twain...

...gaaak!...

...shall meet.  SC4, as I've also said before, was never intended to be a model railroad simulation.

Why are we seemingly so unconcerned about it?  Well, the answer in the main to that is that we recognize, at least for now, that we can't do anything about it.  More important, though- it shouldn't be that much of an issue.

In order to create the two trains coming head-to-head, I laid track in a way that would be extremely unlikely to ever be done by any rational person in one of their quads.



I then set two freight trains running using Jan's (Swamper77) SW77 Train Generators, which you can download from the LEX here [linkie].  Then I waited... and waited...  and waited...

About every five minutes, you'd get a, er... situation involving the two trains.  That was with two reversing loops intended to set the trains on the same track as often as possible.  In a more or less realistic trackage placement situation in a quad, STR would go from industrial areas to the quad's edge, which would work fine for freight, as this is how the game engine sends the automata once generated.  "Ahhh!" you ask- "well, what about commuter, which would be bi-directional between populated areas on the quad in addition to from its edge?"

My response to the commuter question is, "How many single-track commuter lines do you know of out there in RL?"  If you have the commuter demand to generate rail traffic, it will almost certainly be sufficient to require double track lines.

That's the end of the discussion for now.  As we learn things about using STR, some of this may change.  We may come across ways to regulate automata behavior.  Again, at the risk of repeating myself- SC4 was never intended to be a model railroad simulation.  An automata "anomoly" every so often seems a small price to pay for single-track rail.

Later.


David

153557 - Two-thirds of the way through the month- two-thirds of the way to 20K monthly page views once again.  Thank you!

[Dark_Jedi06]

OMG absolutely amazing!!

Single rails are far more elegant then those bulky double rails.

[thundercrack83]

Thanks for addressing the collision issue, David.

Hopefully we won't get hung up on that and realize that the pros of this feature greatly outweigh the cons!

Keep up the amazing work, my friend!

Dustin

[Haljackey]

Ha!  That was awesome, I had a good laugh. 

Its something I don't usually see @ 3RR, but always expect the unexpected.

Great work David!  I really enjoyed the past couple updates! 

Best,
-Haljackey

[un1]

Interesting fact, so the trains will go through each other... How unrealistic! 
Nice work on the STR!

-un1

[nerdly_dood]

Great job with the STR - the trains passing through each other present an excellent opportunity to photoshop yet another disaster... (In the Show Us Your... section I made a thread for disasters: my first post contains almost every example of a PS'ed disaster I've done)

Looking forward to beta release!

[threestooges]

David, you had me worried there. For a second after viewing that first pic, I thought we'd be back to square one of STR development. Glad to see it's working out as planned. My class this afternoon was cancelled, so while I may not have made much progress on the 'S' thing yet, I'll take some time to work on the bridge thing (or things as the case may be). You know... if you time the pic right you might be able to make it look like a train is double heading (or that there's a support engine back in the line). Great work.

[Pat]

David that is fantastic stuff there!!! I never saw Jan's train generator and well now I am going to have to wait to play with it siigh... Anyways all is looking darn great here!!