How to remove wealthification effect from B1 FLEX ramps?

[gbdias]

Hi all,

After building a highway through my city, I began adding some eye candy and noticed that if I plopped grass, sound walls ou a light towers near B1 Flex Curves annoying wealthification tiles would form up around it. Any way to remove it or change it to the grass type wealthification found in other RHW pieces?

Thanks!

[noahclem]

I was able to replicate your problem and this looks like it could use a fix. There's an easy solution though, just place the non-flex version of the ramp 

[gbdias]

Was hoping to avoid that, ohh well....  Back to the game 

Thanks for the answer.

[GDO29Anagram]

I explained this elsewhere before, and it's not an easy fix. If you tried to assign proper wealth textures to the Type B1 ramps (or any ramps, for that matter), you'll end up with a situation where you have the elevated ramps (L1-L4) will end up with wealthification AND asphalt below the actual elevated highway. It'd invoke the incorrect feeling that it's a double decker RHW, and all in all, it's not too pleasing to look at.



This is because the seventh digit used for IID allocation, which is normally the wealth digit, is instead being used as the height digit. There's really no way around it without having to relocate all of the elevated ramps (and yes, I do have a solution to that).

As another note, the ideal goal with RHW development is to reach the point where, 1, Flex pieces can outperform and replace puzzle pieces, and 2, puzzle pieces can finally be deactivated, and after several years, 3, possibly reclaim the IID range that the old puzzle pieces used and reuse it for new projects.

(Side note: this also applies to draggable ramp interfaces.)

I honestly think the début of Flex pieces was insufficient in convincing people into using Flex pieces, and people are still functionally fixed on puzzle pieces. This is only the tip of the iceberg of Flex piece development. Puzzle pieces are currently on life support, and the cable needs to be pulled sooner or later.

[memo]

How about converting the affected tiles to S3D? It will remove the wealthification altogether, which is an improvement, at least.

[GDO29Anagram]

How about converting the affected tiles to S3D? It will remove the wealthification altogether, which is an improvement, at least.

That would depend on how attached people are to wealthification, and as far as I can tell, a lot of people are.

[compdude787]

How about converting the affected tiles to S3D? It will remove the wealthification altogether, which is an improvement, at least.

That would depend on how attached people are to wealthification, and as far as I can tell, a lot of people are.

Yep, I hate seeing those sidewalk textures appear near FlexRamps when I put in beautification and stuff. Part of the reason why I got a sidewalk mod was so that the sidewalk texture would be less noticeable. (and bright-white sidewalks aren't realistic anyway)

[noahclem]

How about converting the affected tiles to S3D? It will remove the wealthification altogether, which is an improvement, at least.

That would depend on how attached people are to wealthification, and as far as I can tell, a lot of people are.

I think a lot of people are quite attached to puzzle pieces as well but that's not a convincing reason not to replace them with a better system. 6S was switched to a single tile network pretty painlessly, which had the same practical effects as removing wealthification, and I've not heard many complaints about RRW moving to models. The more important question then whether there are people now that like RHW wealthification is whether those people will feel the same after a switch to a wealthless implementation. The record seems to suggest that they won't. And in any case freeways having sidewalks is a fundamentally flawed concept.

[Tarkus]

At the very least, it is looking like the elevated DRI/FLEXRamp IID scheme will be changed for NAM 33, such that the wealthification can be built back up without the issue Ganaram illustrated.  That'll require existing elevated DRIs/FLEXRamps to be rebuilt, but given that folks likely haven't built that many at this point (as that functionality is pretty limited at present), I don't believe it's going to be much of an issue.

-Alex

[GDO29Anagram]

I think a lot of people are quite attached to puzzle pieces as well but that's not a convincing reason not to replace them with a better system. 6S was switched to a single tile network pretty painlessly, which had the same practical effects as removing wealthification, and I've not heard many complaints about RRW moving to models. The more important question then whether there are people now that like RHW wealthification is whether those people will feel the same after a switch to a wealthless implementation. The record seems to suggest that they won't. And in any case freeways having sidewalks is a fundamentally flawed concept.

The switch of RHW-6S from two-tile to 1-tile actually preserved its wealthification, but only for the inner tile. The overhang pretty much leaves the area where the second tile used to be unusable. Also, the switch of 6S to single-tile did bring up an issue that only Ryan brought up: how are you gonna fill back in the overhang?

I think there's a bit of misunderstanding regarding model-based networks and wealthification, and it's that they don't go together. The thing is, they can, which is how the bug I presented can happen. Diagonal NWM networks, for example, are model-based networks that have proper wealth textures.

So, really, the issue is not conversion to models, but whether wealthification can happen. The two aren't related to each other, but if you have things becoming as dense as the FlexRamps, they will begin to conflict with each other.

FlexRamps actually have either one or two sets of textures for each tile. If you want to deactivate wealthification across the board, you will want to remove all of the textures that end in 0, 1, 2, 3, and 4, and then move those textures to A, B, C, D, and E. The models will reference textures A-E. If you ever have textures assigned to 0-4, then you will have wealthification. If you have a situation where only wealth level is assigned for 7th digit of 0 but not 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, or 7, you will have the situation with the current RHW FlexRamps showing sidewalks.

If you use the 7th digit for distinguishing something else (and typically, it shouldn't be) you'll have the situation with the L1 FlexRamp I showed above. It's the same as telling the game that all of the wealth levels are their own transit tiles.

So, in other words, the wealthification problem with FlexRamps encompasses different issues that are all just mangled into one.

[memo]

So, in other words, the wealthification problem with FlexRamps encompasses different issues that are all just mangled into one.

Nevertheless, the problem could be bypassed by switching to models (couldn't it?), as that would effectively remove wealthification from the affected tiles. Switching to models usually entails darkening the corresponding textures, which then would be moved to range A-E. Thus, no textures in range 0-4, hence no wealthification.

That said, I agree that wealthification and switching between models and textures are not exactly the same thing. But switching to models is a requirement for evading wealthification. That's why we don't have wealth textures on L1 RHW4 or Road viaducts. RRW on the other hand does have wealth textures. It also depends on the network: Avenue, for instance, will never have wealth textures on model-based tiles, which appears to be hard-coded.