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Transit enabled lots - the easy way

Started by emilin, February 23, 2007, 03:46:33 AM

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emilin

This tutorial was posted in my MD Developing Islas Gemas, but I thought it might be useful as refernce material too.


Minitutorial on making transit enabled lots

I know that most of this stuff is so easy, that it's self explanatory, but it took me a really long time to find the proper tools to do it, and I wasn't able to find any comprehensive tutorials on the subject, so I decided to make a small step-by-step just for people like myself who might think that this is really advanced stuff, when infact it's dead easy.

Anyway, here goes...

Most lots can easily be made transit enabled with the brilliant SC4Tools by Andreas Roth. It's as simple as pushing a button, but I'll go through it step-by-step just for clarity.

For this tutorial we will make transit enabled beaches (very useful for... eh... GTA style beach races or... eh... I don't know, I just thought it would be funny really).

1. Open a park or plaza lot in the Lot Editor.



2. Change the base texture to "beach" (0x21f0000).



3. Increase the depth of the lot to wanted size.



4. Duplicate the base texture to cover the lot.



5. Save as "new name".



6. Now fire up the SC4Tool and chose the transit enable option.



7. Chose the "road" option called "c" and use the directional indicator to chose the possible ways that the traffic can travel.



8. Right click and "add transit".



9. This is what you should have now:



10. And add transit points for the rest of the lot.



11. Now, let's try it out. Here we have a rudimentary beach site:



12. And we add some of the new transit enabled beach lots.



13. This certainly looks transit enabled to me...



14. And it IS transit enabled. What a kick! :P



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M4346

Despite from me not being able to see the purpose of transit enabled beaches, I think this is a great tutorial and definitely very useful!  :P

:thumbsup:

Thank you Emilin!  &apls
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FromTheAshes

Great-working tutorial! Karma +1 to you ;)
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sarungman

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sarungman

#4
i think i have a problem with sc4 tool.... i've downloaded it and try to run it..... but the only thing i found, are these two error message.....

first at start...



and when i'm going to do this tutorial....



the program runs, but it wont load any lot.... what happen???


sorry if i post in the wrong place..... :P
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-AsianEvolusioner AKA Sarungman

sarungman

 i have done something with MenuShowDelay.... i add value 50 to it.... but still show the same caution message..... how do i solve this?
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-AsianEvolusioner AKA Sarungman

iamgoingtoeatyou

this is just what I've been looking for! I'm going to start it right now! Thank you !

lonedog62

Quote from: sarungman on March 27, 2007, 06:37:43 AM
i think i have a problem with sc4 tool.... i've downloaded it and try to run it..... but the only thing i found, are these two error message.....

first at start...



and when i'm going to do this tutorial....



the program runs, but it wont load any lot.... what happen???

Hi Sarungman,

I've had both those error messages myself and found that you should be able to fix that if you set the MenuShowDelay to 400 (that's its default setting). The error can be caused if you've used TweakUI or some other Windows tweaking program to modify the Start Menu speed. That should fix your problem (I say should because that's what I had to do the first time I got those errors on my old system. I've got the second error message on a new system and it's not because of the MenuShowDelay setting). Hope that helps you out.

LoneDog

Pat


Emilin it was because of this tut i learned to TE and thank you for showing this off - pat

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mrbisonm

Warning: this topic has not been posted in for at least 120 days.
Unless you're sure you want to reply, please consider starting a new topic.


Yes I am sure because I want to encourage those people who make wonderful and easy understandable tutorials like emilin.

If everyone would make tuts like this, I think everyone else would be able to create things with everything. I am a real *nogood* when it comes to tweaking lots etc and I have tried many times to transit enable lots without ever really understanding it....well you did it, and I am the king now......lol ;)

Thanks and much appreciated for a wonderfully detailed tut like this.

mrbisonm.


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City Builder

What exactly does enabling transit on a lot do?  I'll say thank you for the tutorial even though I don't know what enabling transit on a lot does because I've been goofing around with sc4tools and didn't understand how to use that option so I never bothered to look further into it to see what it does but as long as this tutoria was posted felt I'd at least ask what it does.  Who knows it might come in handy for one of my bats.

Thanks
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wouanagaine

TE Lots can be evils, so please read the following to understand the ins & outs of them
http://sc4devotion.com/forums/index.php?topic=2763.0


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Pat

TE'ing a lot can be evil if you make it completely TE'ed but if you just do the entrance to say a parking lot there is no harm or foul...  Basicly TE'ing is for that bit more of realizm.. TE'ing should be used on plops only and not growables...

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RippleJet

If you only want to be able to drag a network (street/road/rail) into or through the lot, you shouldn't make it a transit switch at all.
The transit switch properties turn your lot into a station, and will allow people to use it as a shortcut, jumping across it in no time and resetting the accumulated commute time.

If you don't want to create a mass transit station, but just want to "network enable" your lot, you must delete the Transit Switch properties. This can be done either in Reader or in SC4Tool's Exemplar Editor:



All three transit switch properties need to be deleted (one at a time):
- Transit Switch Point
- Transit Switch Entry Cost
- Transit Switch Traffic Capacity

Pat

Thanks Tage that sheds some more light on things and about how to deal with TE'ing... thank you for that info...

Don't forget the SC4D Podcast is back and live on Saturdays @ 12 noon CST!! -- The Podcast soon to Return Here Linkie

RippleJet

The Difference between Network Enabling and Transit Enabling

To further visualize the importance of removing the transit switch properties if you are not creating a station, let's take SimGoober's Heloport as an example. It's currently being tweaked to become a functional airport without causing CTD's, but for this purpose I made two other types of lots out of it.




Network Enabling

In the first test, the heloport is an eye-candy lot with an avenue and a railroad dragged through it.
All transit switch properties have been completely wiped out.

Thus the avenue and railroad that are dragged through the network enabled lot function as any avenue or railroad elsewhere in your city:



Cars are driving and pedestrians are walking along the avenue, and both passenger and freight trains are going along the railroad.




Transit Enabling

For the second test, since the heloport does have a train platform, why not make it a functional train station.
The Transit Switch Point was made as simple as possible:
  - All Sides; Outside to Inside; Pedestrians to Passenger Train
  - All Sides; Inside to Outside; Passenger Train to Pedestrians

The Transit Switch Entry Cost was set at 0.07, which is more than the time it takes for trains to drive 7 tiles (0.064).

This was done in very faint hopes that the avenue and railroad would still allow traffic going through the station, without going in and out of the Transit Switch Point. However, these hopes were severely dashed:



No cars, no pedestrians and no freight trains were passing through the station anymore.
A lot of pedestrians entered the building though and turned into passenger trains which converted back into pedestrians on the other end. A few cars entered the building, but those were only the daily workers going to the Heloport and not going out of there, and home, until later in the evening.

Every passenger going through the lot (out in the morning and home in the evening) is counted towards the Transit Switch Capacity, causing congestion and delay. And once they have passed the station, the stupid sims think they are standing at their home doorsteps, trying once again to find the shortest route to work...

The only surprise was that passenger trains were able to enter the station. Obviously it was possible for trains to run inside since the railroad was dragged into the lot, and across the station due to the transit switch point. Upon exiting the station, they were converted back into passengers though, and shortcutted a Maxis station before going back onto the railroad.




The pathfinding algorithm used in these tests was the Promote Biking, which allows people to walk extensive distances, and thus increases the number of pedestrians. It isn't the best algorithm there is, and it won't survive the next updates of NAM and CAM, but it's good for testing pedestrian behaviour.

Regarding SimGoober's Heloport; it won't be modded as a train station, it will only be network enabled! :thumbsup:

jeronij

So, I'll have to start thinking NEL instead TEL  ::) , this is a very clear and useful explanation about the differences betwwen those two entities  :thumbsup:

I makes me see that I have to remake some of my TEL .... someday  :-[
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Pat

So to understand this Tage instead of saying TE'ing as Jeroni has pointed out we should think about the Network as whole and not just the lot?   A lot can be TE'ed but will it screw up the NE, I think I truely get it now...

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wes.janson

I know transit enabled lots can't be placed next to each other, but can network enabled?


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smoncrie

Actually it IS possible to transit enable lots so that they can be placed next to each other, but traffic will not pass through both lots.  Oddly, UDI can pass through.  This one of several differences between the routing of traffic and UDI in lots.