The Noro Cooperative

[mgb204]

"Sorry, using regular LE. How do I even find the LE in PIM? Not sure why it's been so difficult for me but I just never get what you're talking about with that"

I think what Vortext is asking is if you are using the Lot Editor provided by Maxis or one for Wouanagaine's SC4 PluginManager (also called PIM-X) which has it's own lot editor. If you haven't tried it, I would highly recommend it as it has a number of features that improve the work flow of creating lots with many neat the features that improve upon both the Maxis PIM and LE applications.

As for your texture problem, I suspect you can't see it in the Lot Editor because it doesn't support 256x256 textures. You can overcome this problem by creating a second dat with a 128x128 version of the textures you need with the same IDs in addition to the 256x256 version. When you want to work on them in the LE, use the 128 version, when you want to see them in game in all their glory, switch to the 256 version.

Thank you much   As Eric mentioned I don't think it's the 256px size that's the problem though it'd be a surprise to me as well if LE can indeed handle that size texture. I'm very much looking forward to trying out the newer LE (it seems often forgotten now but Wou was one of the first four Noroites, invited along with Willy (swordmaster) just after Robin and I began and actually wrote some software for the project).

Cheers,
Noah

[vortext]

As for your texture problem, I suspect you can't see it in the Lot Editor because it doesn't support 256x256 textures.

I've used 128px textures the whole time to avoid problems making the lots [...].

Appears not to be a size issue. 

Besides, unless my sources are mistaken Maxis LE does support 256px textures. When I started working on a proper texture pack I asked some people to specifically check this and they experienced no problem.

What is true on the other hand is it probably won't support proper 32/24 bit HD textures, which the PIM doesn't support either. I suspect the latter can be alleviated simply by setting some kind of frame width to 256px, since the issue appears to be with the preview image and the ensuing error prevents it from being selected in the LE. This can be remedied in the way you described by making two sets of textures, however, I found the difference between compression is negligible and thus doesn't warrant the effort (though I did do this with my meadows). So my textures are actually faux-HD in that they're 256px yet use DTX compression, which also means file size remains within reasonable bounds.

As for accessing the LE in PIM: select the lot exemplar, right-click and select 'Lot Editor' from the menu. Two new windows will open: the Lot Preview and LE Tools, in the latter you'll find all the textures and props.

Thanks Erik! I feel fairly confident I can finally find the PIM(-X?) LE. I've since resolved the white square problem in LE, apparently due to avoiding overcompressing when gimp exports to .png as per your advice. Continuing to have annoyances with LE that should be unrelated but the possibility of never having to deal with that idiot program again now seems within sight   I'm thinking "faux HD" in the same sense you mention for these textures though a 128px version should be made available if there's demand (would the 256px faux HD require hardware rendering?).

-Noah

[noahclem]

Problem: Tram stops in the center of roads need crosswalks for pedestrians to reach them but are often placed next to intersections which have their own crosswalks--which results in multiple adjacent crosswalks often of different widths and styles that are visually disappointing.

Problem: Tram stops are TE'd lots which limit the possibilities for buildings surrounding them and cause nearby zones to align with them rather than align with TIA/TIR/TOR/TOS. Tram networks are perhaps most at home in W2W neighborhoods with numerous different buildings and those are the types of areas most inconvenienced by this problem. The longer and station and width transition, the greater the problem.

"Problem": TIA pieces shouldn't have the same dimensions as TIA stops. Converting to such dimensions would break TIA's alignment with Avenues and RHW4, look substantially different than what users have become used to over all the years of T-RAM development in SC4, and dramatically reduce sidewalk space.

Solution: A new network I'm tentatively calling D(evided)TIA but am desperately in need of a better name for    At it's simplest it would consist only of a single puzzle-piece transition from conventional TIA to TIA with medians aligned with the new stations which would alleviate the TE lot problems mentioned above and allow 2x2 station lots that could borrow all of the extremely-thoroughly-tested technical innards of the current RTMT TIA stations (paths, textures, and props would of course be different). The next step up in complexity, which would be an added bonus if it came about and not a necessary component of the project, would be a basic orthogonal DTIA piece, basic "T" and "+" intersections with RD, OWR, Ave, and a (D)TIA plus crosswalk puzzle piece. A transition to diagonal TIA* would be another useful component. If the time, interest, and motivation were available further expansion things like TuLEP intersections and NWM intersections could be made. One could imagine a massive number of different intersection possibilities based on the different networks, different tram rail connectivity including multiple tram tracks that don't connect to each other and even turning lanes (there's enough space in the basic TIA textures to squeeze in an extra turning lane with only slightly compromised lane width) if one were crazy and motivated enough. In reality the network will probably pretty limited and based on existing tried-and-true puzzle pieces rather than a more elegant solution such as has been contemplated for TuLEPs for some time now but not yet materialized.

*All talk so far has been about orthogonal changes. Diagonal TIA is something of a strange beast, puzzle-piece-based but featuring draggable connectivity and apparently directly based on OWR(2)s. As my texture changing scheme doesn't affect OWR2s (or RD2, streets, OWR1, RHW, etc) those would remain the same and they even already have "traditional" sidewalks. The middle tiles would get switched to new tram rail textures, get new sidewalk texture S3Ds, and have a median added to them similar to what I talk about in this post with DTIA to avoid having a swathe of purposeless pavement between where the inner traffic lanes and tram tracks are. All paths would remain the same as they are now and the whole diagonal area should be much easier than the ortho areas.


I'm sure a lot of people are sick as heck of hearing about mundane texture and technical details   Fair enough, I probably would be too if I hadn't become obsessed enough with this area of SC4 to want to undertake this project. But if you like trams in SC4 this will probably be a game changer:




Please direct any enthusiasm for model and concept toward the great reddonquixote

[art128]

Reddonquixote really did a good job with the tram stops, they look wonderful.

I've bee, invited to join the development of NORO by Noah. I accepted the invitation after months of thinking about it.

Been toying around the airport a lot recently. Tried a new design for the runways with 4 parallel runways. But I ended up not liking it so I went back to Noah's design which I liked a lot.
I've worked on the terminals and mainly the gate placement. It shows that there is a LOT of lotting to be done, but we'll get there eventually.
I'm probably going to replace the 747 gates of the main terminal ( Dulles building) with only A380s. Those big planes need a fantastic building to show their beauty.

[kelis]

That's a huuuuuuge airport !! I really like all those transport system and see how all of them are connected with the airport !! Fantastic job guys, Can't wait to see more.

[noahclem]

Absolutely fantastic work -- +1! All the details are fantastic and the diagonal Japanese terminal relots stand out as particularly unique and innovative. Looks like we've got a laundry list of texture/lotting work ahead of us but it shouldn't be anything too difficult

I'm also very happy to officially and publicly welcome you to the NORO team! From the time we've been working together so far the fit seems excellent--the team is lucky to have you

[Gugu3]

Great work there Art!!!

[noahclem]

Been trying to dig into the meat of the work of the texture changes to TIA. Super-happy that my width-alignment scheme has made tons of stuff copy-paste but increasingly aware of the actual scale of work that's needed to do to see this through appropriately. Without changes to paths it'd be a pain-in-the-* enough but...  Who cares, here's the latest:

[Gugu3]

Good stuff Noah!

[Simcoug]

Wow!  Excellent progress 

[reddonquixote]

Fantastic work Noah, the variations are quite amazing.

May I point out a couple of things that I have picked up on. Given how advanced you are this might be a bit late, but thought I'd raise it just in case...

1) The first thing is the colour/tonal variations between the roadway and the tramway. The older section of Collins street has stronger tonal variations, so I think that's fine, but the colour of the tramway seems to have a brownish hue, whereas its just concrete, like the pavement. It should probably be the same colour as the pavements down the sides of the roadways.



Newer sections, like down at Docklands, the tramway seems to be made out of the same surface as the roadway, and has almost no tonal variation, but at the same time, both are a lot lighter in colour as well. They are closer to concrete colour than black-tar colour.



2) The concrete the tramlines sit on only go as wide as the tracks, i.e. the outer track is the outermost part of the tramway. Then typically, there's a bit of a gap, then barriers down the sides of the tramlines preventing traffic from crossing the tracks. On the main inner-CBD roads these are small yellow barriers that you can actually drive over (but I think is illegal...) while in more outer parts of the CBD and Docklands they are more larger concrete barriers.
(Refer images above)

3) Only for interest, I saw you had one section of tramway that terminated. It got me thinking about termination points... I can't think of many places that does this, but there's one at the end of Collins Street in Docklands (soon to be extended I believe) and there's one out at Brunswick, but this is very much suburban.





Not sure whether any of this is very helpful (maybe just annoying now!) but thought it might be food for thought if nothing else

[metarvo]

Nice work on the TIA, Noah!    These textures blend in much better with dark sidewalk mods.  Oh, and that airport looks impressive, Art.  It can be easy to forget how much space a realistic airport can take up, but it looks like you're filling every tile of airport space effectively.

It's great to see NORO back up and running.  I'm looking forward to seeing what's next!

[noahclem]

I've made some more progress with the texturing--lately I've been focusing on perfecting the textures I find most difficult. It's been taking forever to do not too much but I've actually been enjoying it about as much as the fun and easy (technically) part of establishing the basic textures and their dimensions. Using GIMP for this has been kind of like SimCity in that sometimes you think you're pretty competent at something and then are surprised at how quickly you can improve on stuff you didn't know you would. Here's the latest:

Click, you've already spent the bandwidth



The TOR>TIA transition has been smoothed out as much as possible, including having the curves start a few pixels to across the edges of the tile borders since the beginnings of curves look essentially straight anyway. I've added shading from traffic to the inside concrete lanes intended to line up with the shading of the asphalt that we're all used to, faded the lane markings where they cross tram rails, and blurred teh boundaries between the two types of payments using layer masks. I'm trying diagonal yellow dashed lines to make for easy navigation and aesthetics (Euro version would also be available of course).

The TIA>Avenue+GLR(diag) transition is most noticeably different from the existing one by it's alignment: TIA & avenue are only a couple pixels apart under my scheme. Grassy median designed to appear raised, GLR crossing curb at right is at grade with little transitions on the curb I'm trying. Yellow stripe where the GLR enters the median seems appropriate.

The final intersection was the most difficult. Actual changes to the puzzle piece will be needed for it to work in game but textures should be good. In order to maximize turning radii while keeping the different rails far enough apart to trams to run parallel to each other I ended up with 4 different radii for the tram turns.

Be back to explain more and respond to comments tomorrow

[Simcoug]

phenomenal work!   

[MandelSoft]

Bloody hell! What kind of whichcraft is this? 

I really love the new textures, Noah!

[noahclem]

Bloody hell! What kind of whichcraft is this? 

I really love the new textures, Noah!

Thanks a ton old buddy!! If I keep up with the texturing work perhaps I'll be able to keep the flame of all your efforts for different locales' textures alive

phenomenal work!   

Wow!  Excellent progress 

Thank you very much! I'm very grateful for the support

Nice work on the TIA, Noah!    These textures blend in much better with dark sidewalk mods.  Oh, and that airport looks impressive, Art.  It can be easy to forget how much space a realistic airport can take up, but it looks like you're filling every tile of airport space effectively.

It's great to see NORO back up and running.  I'm looking forward to seeing what's next!

Thanks a lot as always for your support of NORO! Let us know if there's anyway you'd like to add to what we're doing now with the restart 

Good stuff Noah!

Thanks Guglielmo!

Fantastic work Noah, the variations are quite amazing.

May I point out a couple of things that I have picked up on. Given how advanced you are this might be a bit late, but thought I'd raise it just in case...

Thank you very much! I'm getting to the point where I'm pretty averse to major changes such as to the basic geometry of the network but there's quite a bit of room for alterations and improvements still. I haven't been as good as I should be at keeping layered copies of every piece so it's easy to swap parts of the textures in and out but I have enough that it usually just takes a few steps (for example I might have only a good, un-layer-merged file of a certain "T" intersection but it's pretty easy to put in new textures and convert that to a "+" intersection). Anyway, your ideas and pictures are very much appreciated, I think will be quite useful, and more will certainly be welcome

1) The first thing is the colour/tonal variations between the roadway and the tramway. The older section of Collins street has stronger tonal variations, so I think that's fine, but the colour of the tramway seems to have a brownish hue, whereas its just concrete, like the pavement. It should probably be the same colour as the pavements down the sides of the roadways.

(image)

Newer sections, like down at Docklands, the tramway seems to be made out of the same surface as the roadway, and has almost no tonal variation, but at the same time, both are a lot lighter in colour as well. They are closer to concrete colour than black-tar colour.

(image)

The pavement variation is indeed based on Melbourne but I've taken liberties for the sake of continuity with existing NAM and Maxis conventions. Since all networks besides streets & SAM streets use a similar dark tar color I've planned to use a similar color for this projects main traffic lanes. Note that a cobblestone version version based off of Vortext's brilliant HD textures has been a planned part of the mod from the beginning and a concrete version more closely fitting Melbourne would certainly be a possibility if me or someone else had the motivation to do it after the main mod is done. At this time I think a mod changing the textures would be the best way to go about it but it could potentially be done SAM style where the different styles could coexist at the same time. As I side note, I am fairly pleased with the concrete texture I've made for the tram areas and certainly enjoy it more then the bland Maxis street concrete

2) The concrete the tramlines sit on only go as wide as the tracks, i.e. the outer track is the outermost part of the tramway. Then typically, there's a bit of a gap, then barriers down the sides of the tramlines preventing traffic from crossing the tracks. On the main inner-CBD roads these are small yellow barriers that you can actually drive over (but I think is illegal...) while in more outer parts of the CBD and Docklands they are more larger concrete barriers.
(Refer images above)

I'd noticed that, and had made trial textures with concrete in the same places but decided to have them cover both sides of the tram tracks. From a practical road-marking perspective I think it makes it clearer to drivers they're in an area where trams can be encountered but the most important reason was that the look remained familiar to users of the existing SC4 trams and that I thought they were a bit better looking in general. Someone could always make a more accurate Melbourne version of the concrete following the tracks later on.

As for the yellow markings, I made a big mistake not noticing how much wider they are then normal road markings. My guess at their function was to tell traffic not to cross them but for the areas inside them to be accessible by emergency vehicles, buses, etc. Those markings are almost as wide as the narrow concrete medians so TIAs based on them could have essentially the same geometry in either case. See below for my efforts in that area...

3) Only for interest, I saw you had one section of tramway that terminated. It got me thinking about termination points... I can't think of many places that does this, but there's one at the end of Collins Street in Docklands (soon to be extended I believe) and there's one out at Brunswick, but this is very much suburban.

(2 images)

Good point and example on the terminus stations. I could make textures like those and the existing stops could work well for them the if you get the itch to do some more modeling there are a handful of specialized station alignments like that we could consider   Do suburban stops tend to be islands like that or is that because it's a terminus?

Not sure whether any of this is very helpful (maybe just annoying now!) but thought it might be food for thought if nothing else

Very helpful   There's lots of work and possibilities ahead so be sure that your thoughts are welcome. I just ask you understand the things I won't be able to fulfill at this point



I've been rolling around reddonquixote's suggestions in my head since he posted earlier and I think they can actually be done quite well without making major changes to the existing stuff. My plan since getting active on this project again has been to have the basic TIAs have Melbourne-style lines instead of a physical barrier and to have TIAs with physical barriers share geometry with the stations (much wider than standard) and to exist as an additional network or conceivably as a replacement to the existing grassy-medianed TIAs if I lacked the technical skills or motivation. I think I can keep that plan and add pieces with narrow dividers like from the pictures as well.

click


I think the new versions fit all but perfectly. The tram pavement is slightly narrowed (automata seem to have no trouble with the change) and the version with the physical barrier has the outside curb moved a couple px further out and miniscule changes to lane width and lane marking placement (if you're a lane-width purist, remember these are still substantially wider than the one-tile tram networks ). The transition, without using a puzzle piece, to avenues looks slightly worse (not a great view in the pic) but the transition to RHW4 actually looks a bit better. It looks like the two versions can share intersection pieces which means having both available at once, rather than based on a cosmetic mod, should be pretty painless. I think these are the new plan unless someone convinces me otherwise.

click


Taking ideas from Melbourne pics a bit further I got these. The amount of sidewalk room is about as small as TIR/TOR/NRD4 but the TIA footprint does seem to fit dual tramways, two traffic lanes in each direction, bike lanes in each direction, and parking on both sides. I'm not a fan of these uniform textures but perhaps in concrete they'd be better  ?  With a reasonably good fit with standard intersection pieces a style similar to this is something worth pondering.


click


Less lanes for traffic but this concept makes a compelling case for looks and realism. Note station-width-median textures to the left of the station and that there's no sidewalk mod installed. These textures also fit the existing intersection ones excellently and so could probably exist as a single orthogonal puzzle piece at minimum.


Ever thought one of these would be handy? Thought I'd include a full screenshot in case there's interest--note the excessive number of layers in the image 

click



I've marked 32px wide boxes for lane width to see where things are aligned. I almost could widen the middle lane by a couple px....  I haven't really played around with TuLEP options yet but creating this texture made me notice something: for 2x left turn lane TuLEPs  lanes wouldn't even necessarily have to shift position and it would be easily possible for there to be 2 left turn lanes, 2 regular lanes heading straight, and a right turn lane--would be kinda cool I think!

Sincerest thanks for reading and supporting and I've really got to break the habit of drawn-out, late-night posting    Cheers

edited to correct typo, style

[reddonquixote]

Oh my goodness... these are all amazing, I can't believe how much work you've done since I posted those pictures up. I'm glad they came in handy, you certainly made great use of them. These are all fantastic but I love LOVE LOVE the middle one with the dark grey tramway. It really gives that Melbourne wide-street feel. If I was clever enough to make these that's exactly how I would have done it. It's just what I envisaged I need for my Collins Street recreation.  I love the car lanes, the bike lanes, the barriers, those yellow markings you made.. LOVE it all...!!

Regarding suburban tram stops (well all stops in fact), it very much varies. Where streets are wide enough they tend to use island stops because its safer, but where the streets are very narrow its more like a standard roadside bus-stop arrangement with a pole, sometimes a shelter, on the pavement.

Nicholson Street Fitzroy just north outside the CBD


Eastern Road, South Melbourne, inner suburbs


Dorcas Street, South Melbourne.


One thing I'm glad you have omitted is the wire spaghetti in the sky... urban blight!!
Coburg, northern suburbs


I'm up for making more models, just give me a nudge with whatever you need. My machine seems to struggle with rendering really small models for some reason, but if I persevere I can usually get it to work eventually.


Wow, really happy you liked the latest work so much! These variations of straight textures are actually really easy to make since it's just copying and pasting different things I already have made--the lanes with their shadowing, the tram pavement and rails, the white lines, the yellow lines, etc....  It's taken me a while to really get comfortable with all the different bending and shading and layering and masking but the difficult job is making all the different intersections and curves and even that's really nothing compared to making the kind of models you're able to construct 

I'm surprised you liked those textures without the concrete so much as I thought there was something funny about the way the asphalt under the tram paths looked--but it sounds like I'm not going to be able to sell you on the half-concrete solution I've chosen so I'll try to keep maintaining textures without that part baked in to I can generate a texture set with only asphalt for you

I'll have to get back to you later on more ideas for models, tram stops, and other plans. Thanks again.

-Noah

[Fasan]

Very good work!
The airport is huge. So I'm glad to be out and leave me inspired by your work. 

Your pictures with the tram shows that you have a very good eye for the details. Just super!

On March 28 it was but a momentous accident. Two cars there and a tram. 

many greetings Fasan 

Many thanks Fasan! Glad you like the airport and trams   Always terrible to hear about an accident with cars and trains--trains always win 

-Noah

[Themistokles]

This is indeed Christmas all over again! I almost can't believe that trams finally get the attention they deserve. At last someone has made those vague dreams of Real Light-rail into reality, and (I'm not sure I can do this, though) if that isn't enough to earn you a +1, I really don't know what could be.

Now, in my opinion, if less means one lane for traffic and more space for bikes and trams, then less is indeed very much more. (But I do consider those Melbourne stops a dangerous affair indeed -- you seem to literally have to cross two lanes or more of traffic all in a hurry when the tram arrives!)


Wow, thank you so much!! Really glad you're enjoying the project and I really appreciate the K-point! It looks to me like I can indeed make that kind of network happen--and those stops seem sketchy indeed 

-Noah

[eggman121]

Nicholson Street Fitzroy just north outside the CBD

Ahhh!  I got stuck at this intersection on Saturday going to a comedy festival traveling on the exact piece of road on Nicholson Street in Fitzroy! Traffic Chaos

One thing I'm glad you have omitted is the wire spaghetti in the sky... urban blight!!
Coburg, northern suburbs

My friends use to live near this intersection at Sydney road and Moreland road! Oh the nostalgia! There is a nice Kebab shop at this intersection also. Yes for all the different movements there is the spaghetti catenaries in the sky!




I love the attention to detail you have given this Noah 

Can't wait to see how this all evolves!

if that isn't enough to earn you a +1, I really don't know what could be.

I concur. Being a semi Melbournite I love your attention to detail! +1 for you Noah   

-eggman121


Heh, I think I can see the kebab place   Thanks for the compliment and taking care of the karma

-Noah