The Noro Cooperative

[memo]

I would have voted for A, too, specifically because of the slope. I think it will be very hard to build such complex interchanges such as B or C on the slope (while A is located on almost plain terrain), but if you think you can handle that, I'd be more than interested to see that.

Heh, would have been fun to try, or perhaps just really frustrating   I'm sure I'll have more chances to build overly complex interchanges in unfavorable geography though...

-Noah

[romualdillo]

The Region shoot looks very good!!  I'm sorry I can't help you with your highways, but I have very little experience with them. Keep the good work!!

Thank you very much! It's great to hear from you here 

-Noah

[Gugu3]

That's some amazing stuff going on!I love the way you build your highways/interchanges Noah!they blend so well with the surrounding areas!

Excellent updates!

Glad to see Noro back!!
Cheers
Guglielmo

Thanks Guglielmo! Glad to be back 

-Noah

[isii94]

I'd probably go with a roundabout interchange there. I don't think that would fit in your region, though, so A might be the best choice.

Great to hear from you! A roundabout interchange sounds really nice actually but I don't think would be possible in this spot due to slope if located where A was or diagonal if relocated to my most recent plan. Noroway's style isn't heavy on roundabouts but there are some.

-Noah

[vortext]

Well I have no insights whatsoever regarding the interchange so I'll just say the canals are superbly terraformed! 

As for terrain paints: from what I gathered their size is controlled in the effect dir. In other words: texture size doesn't matter except for the definition, 128 px would look atrocious. And yes, I've basically made a set of texture overrides as Xannepan is the only one I know capable of adding additional effects.

Glad you liked the canals and thanks for the terrain paint insight again    I guess he made enough of those that not being able to make truly new ones isn't a big problem. Hopefully I'll get a chance to dink around with them soonish. And speaking of those, as a Poseidon connoisseur do you recommend painted water or "flooded" water for dam projects?

-Noah

[Durfsurn]

Unless the avenue is a freeway (which by the looks of it, it isn't) then why bother with a fancy interchange? Folded diamond looks good there, and if you really wanted to, you could add some "slip" ramps on the top right and bottom right from the avenue to the freeway for more capacity.

Just my two cents
-Billy

Not a freeway, no, but since it'd only be a 3-way intersection and the slope precludes a trumpet I ended up with something fancier. Slip ramps would be tricky since the highway is already descending at the max slope I want it to so ramps there would need to make up that 15m elevation difference (~14 tiles at this slope) somewhere in their approach to the highway. I don't mind making ramps a little more sloped than main sections of highway at times but even then it would be tricky. Thanks for the feedback.

-Noah

[noahclem]

There seems to be a fairly clear consensus for a simpler interchange which I'll defer to. I don't think I'm going to go with proposal A though. I just couldn't get it to look as nice as I wanted with the available pieces and in that space, not to mention issue of there being a very steep hill just across the border that the highway would head straight toward.

I drew this up as a new plan:



By following the curvature of the hill more and locating the interchange above the floodplain I'm able to keep smooth slopes with less terraforming plus there's more room for the interchange and it fits the geography of the neighboring RL geography. On the right side of the image I think the orange lines will be better to follow than moving the section of highway a little higher up the hill as marked in red.

Thoughts? Can I proceed with construction? 

EDIT: Don't forget to leave you thoughts in the new plugins discussion thread 

[Durfsurn]

Cheers for the feedback Noah and I have some back to you again . Maybe (depending on your plans for the tile) have the highway alignment now as a Rd-2 'Old Highway' road leading to a strip of shops and houses before the freeway was upgraded and bypassed the town? Connecting this road to the freeway may be tricky but maybe it connects way down to the canals and then back to that avenue from the preview update?

Just a few more thoughts to dwell on
-Billy

Very interesting idea if I understand you correctly. I had been planning on just getting rid of the old alignment and hand terraforming it back to a state approximating it's original (which would have been a pain) but leaving a relic of the old alignment could be really cool. I wouldn't connect it directly to the freeway but have it intersect with the road proposed to have an interchange with the freeway on its new alignment. At the other end it could be drawn to connect with the other roads in the valley or just left "orphaned" and leading nowhere. Of course it wouldn't be as wide as it appears now. If we went the "orphaned" route we could make a dilapidated scene in the area with old businesses that used to thrive off of the highway's traffic now in a poor state...

[noahclem]

Construction is underway



I really wish I could send the highway across the border diagonally but just doesn't seem possible. Symphony can do it--you have to create a neighbor connection orthogonally, cross it with L-rail, bulldoze the highway beyond the L-rail, draw new diagonal symphony in an alignment that would cross the border at the point where the neighbor connection is, and then place a FLUP piece with the appropriate orientation of symphony on top. But symphony can't do diagonal ramps and even if it did they wouldn't be D/E/F type. 6S diagonal ramps exist but diagonal 6S can't really cross a border....

[compdude787]

McDuell did some interchanges a while back using the DBE and diagonal filler pieces to make diagonal onslope transitions. He made a tutorial here. You could consider trying that.

Hopefully you'll have enough room to curve the RHW back to orthogonal before the edge of the city tile. It would work best if it was a folded diamond, but then again, I don't really know what the slopes are like.

[noahclem]

McDuell did some interchanges a while back using the DBE and diagonal filler pieces to make diagonal onslope transitions. He made a tutorial here. You could consider trying that.

Hopefully you'll have enough room to curve the RHW back to orthogonal before the edge of the city tile.

God bless McDuell--if you haven't already you can do a little digging to see an 8-way limited access interchange he's made. The technique you mentioned was a watershed moment for me--and I happened to have applied it in the next door tile, Qx:



So I guess that subtracts about one more km from the 50+ I claimed at the start of the month 

[memo]

I really wish I could send the highway across the border diagonally but just doesn't seem possible. Symphony can do it--you have to create a neighbor connection orthogonally, cross it with L-rail, bulldoze the highway beyond the L-rail, draw new diagonal symphony in an alignment that would cross the border at the point where the neighbor connection is, and then place a FLUP piece with the appropriate orientation of symphony on top. But symphony can't do diagonal ramps and even if it did they wouldn't be D/E/F type. 6S diagonal ramps exist but diagonal 6S can't really cross a border....

You could try to use FA3 6C for the neighbourhood connection. Not sure if it's possible though. The puzzle piece is three tiles wide, but only the center tile needs to be connected to establish a functional connection.

[vester]

Nice intersection and winding road.
Love the harbour.

Oh do turn off the UDI Icons!!!

[compdude787]

Wow, that little town just looks awesome! I'm sure that you'd get quite a scenic view of that town from the freeway.

[art128]

Great looking town indeed, Noah. I'm sure you'll come up with another fantastic interchange for the highway.

[noahclem]

Wow, can't believe it's been a week since the last post! Work continues in spurts over here, more on than off recently. Internet is cutting in and out, so it's hard to post or be around or download much but I'll see if I can fire a quick update off.

It's normally a pretty crappy time of year here due to excessive darkness but we've got a bird feeder set up and the squirrels in the forest outside my window are just going nuts (or seeds, as the case may be)    I think they've been inspiring me a bit as I've been somewhat busy

I'm rather excited to say I've made a set of water mods designed for use with the Poseidon Mod. For now there are 5 flavors tentatively named azure, light blue, emerald, gray, and muddy. I'll probably expand the set at least to the point of having a (relatively closely) matched mod for the major plop water colors. Callgrafx's latest canals, RFR translucent, and I think jrj brown are already covered, while standard RFR, peg's, and moonlingt's would be at the top of my list for additions (and hopefully colors are similar enough to not need that many separate mods. The water textures have zero detail to them so they are extremely easy to make (I'm actually not sure why Xannepan didn't use single pixel images but I went the same route as him for safety) however all the copy and pasting and entering IIDs in reader plus making gradients is enough hassle to make me not want to make more of these than I need to. So anyway, how about a couple pics? 

All can be clicked for full 1600x900 resolution

Emerald -- Taken from tile Rs, the highway is part of the motorway surrounding the bay so tick off another 0.1km from the 50 mentioned before....



Muddy

Taken from My yes that was the end of my sentence


Light blue

Taken from the town in Qx, where I've spent the most time since the project restarted. Can't say enough good things about Vortext's, Krashspeed's, and Blunder's Simcoug's work on that--this is a once in a long while level of mod. Oh, and this is the color that matches the semi-transparent RFR plop water.

edit from Noah--sorry Simcoug 

Azure

Taken from my on-hiatus Selous project. The beach utilizes Poseidon white beach effects from lots but the regular Selous beach texture appears on the margins. I'm second-guessing the exact color as it seems a somewhat surreal blue, but those of us lucky enough have seen some surreal-colored seas on vacation   In any case it prefers a fairly white beach and fairly high water transparency.



Gray

This is the one I designed with Noro's rocky ocean coast in mind--a bit dark and bleak and harsh reflecting the coast's Kamchatka origins and spectacular relief.



And what's that brown thing you ask? Finally took up an old project--and need some tusks




Let's just hope this will send 

edit: fixed image tag & added Simcoug's name  - Erik GM

Thanks Erik! edited to add apology to Simcoug   -Noah

[c.p.]

The water mod colors look great, as do your nature scenes.  The krashspeed/vortext/SimCoug mod looks outstanding.

[TheTeaCat]

Nice work!! the water mods look awesome !

[kelis]

Fantastic work as always. I like so much those water mods, are you thinking to share all of them ? because I think that would be really good for us, so please...

Share with us those water mods 

[Kergelen]

Nice water mods Noah. I like both the Muddy and the Emerald.