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Announcements

Started by z, September 20, 2008, 02:56:58 AM

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z

I am very pleased to announce that ebina has joined the RTMT Team.  As many of you know, ebina designed the original RTMT Underground Rail stations, and he also did most of the work designing the second generation that will be incorporated into the main RTMT release in Version 4.1.  Ebina's knowledge of RTMT is quite extensive, and we are truly honored to have him on our team.  On a practical level, his presence should help speed up RTMT development in various ways.

z

I am happy to announce that b22rian (Brian) has joined the RTMT team.  Many of you have seen posts of his in various places here; what is less known is that for a while now, he has been helping me behind the scenes with the work on RTMT.  I expect his involvement to continue to grow, and that he will be making contributions in more and more areas as time goes on.

I am also happy to announce that Orion79 will be joining the RTMT Team in February.  As many of you know, Orion has already contributed to RTMT by designing a new, easy-to-use set of menu buttons, which we plan to make available in our first release.  The new button style will become even more helpful down the road, as new types of stations get added to RTMT.  We look forward to having Orion work on other aspects of RTMT for us.

I am very pleased to see the team growing like this, because it means we'll be able to get our releases out to you faster, and do more with RTMT in general.  But as you probably know, we have a lot of work planned, so we can still use more team members, especially people with BATting experience.  And of course, people who want to do occasional work for RTMT but don't want to make the full commitment of being a team member are welcome to participate as well.  If you're interested in either of these options, please send me a PM.

z

#2
With the release of the new NAM, Simulator Z has officially become part of the NAM.  While Simulator Z was in alpha and beta test, I included with it a modified version of one of the RTMT station files to better support Simulator Z.  I am including here a more complete patch.

For the next release of RTMT, we are going to have exactly two versions of each station - Low and High capacity.  The Low capacity version is designed for rural areas and/or small- or medium-sized towns; it is basically designed for regions where there will never be a need for a traffic simulator with a capacity higher than the Hard version of Simulators A or B, or the Low version of Simulator Z.  In numerical terms, this translates into a road capacity of about 2500.  The High capacity version of RTMT stations is designed for all regions above that limit.  The High capacities were originally designed to be sufficient for the old CAM simulator, which has capacities not too far from the Easy level of Simulators A and B, but testing has shown that these capacities are sufficient all the way up to the Ultra level of Simulator Z.  This patch includes versions of these files that have been modified to work with RTMTV3.

The included files are changed in the following ways from the original RTMTV3 files:


  • The file RTMTV3_Stations_NAMCapacity_High.dat has significantly higher capacities for streets, roads, and plain avenues than any of the existing capacity files.
  • There are now Low and High versions of the NonRoadTop files (both US and UK), which use the same capacities as the Roadtop versions.  You should use these files only if you have the NonRoadTop stations installed, and if you use them, you should use either the US or UK version, depending on what you currently have installed.
  • There are now Low and High versions of the GLR Capacity files.  You should use these only if you have the RTMT GLR stations installed.
  • With the new files, hovering the cursor over one of the RTMT Menu buttons will show you the same capacity you see in the station's query.
  • All the roadtop stations previously caused a small amount of congestion around them, which was occasionally a problem if the road became congested.  Simulator Z unfortunately magnifies this problem as a side effect of increasing the intersection and turn effect.  The new roadtop stations included in this patch do not cause any additional congestion around them.

Due to this last point, this patch is strongly recommended for users of Simulator Z; it is recommended but less necessary for users of other traffic simulators.  You should use the points above to decide which files you need to replace; the files can usually be found in the RTMTV3 folder under your Plugins folder.  You should install either the Low or High version of the appropriate files, but not both.  The files you should remove have identical names to the files you are installing, except instead of "Low" or "High" in their names, there will be something else.  If you cannot find those files, then that feature is not installed.  If you are in the proper folder, you will always find a file that begins "RTMTV3_Stations_NAMCapacity".

This patch affects only newly plopped stations.  Existing stations are unaffected, and may coexist with the newly plopped ones.  If you are having no trouble with your existing stations, you can leave them alone.  But if you find that they aren't of sufficient capacity, or if you're having trouble with the congestion effect, bulldoze the affected existing stations and replace them with the equivalent new ones.

z

I'm very happy to report that in the last week, we've had a number of talented people join the RTMT Team.  In order of their joining, they are deathtopumpkins, Blue Lightning, SimFox, Xyloxadoria, and pagenotfound.  Not only will our new members help us to complete our current work faster, but they will also allow RTMT to take on more projects, some of them bigger in scope than what we've done before.  If there is anything in particular that you would like to see done that isn't already on our lists, please let us know in the New Additions to RTMT thread.

z

The RTMT Creations child board is now ready and open for business.  This is a place for RTMT team members to post information and pictures of their current projects, and for our users to see what's going on and perhaps leave comments or suggestions.  To start things off, I posted a little preview of the SAM Station work.

z

#5
The RTMT Interim T-RAM Stations pack was never officially announced in this thread, but I think that at this point, most people know of its existence.  What's new is that another, rather unique station has been added to the pack - Xyloxadoria's GLR Station for T-RAM.  You can see a picture of the basic station here.  This station is a bit longer than most other GLR stations, so be sure to read the Readme file in the T-RAM Stations pack for instructions on plopping this station.  If you already have this pack installed, it is only necessary to extract the file with Xyloxadoria's name from the Models subfolder and install it in your Models subfolder; if you wish to use the station itself, you should extract the file with Xyloxadoria's name from the Props subfolder and install it in your Props subfolder, while deleting any other prop containing the string "GLR" from that folder.  Note that if you do this last step, all your existing RTMT T-RAM stations will become Xyloxadoria's.  This step is reversible, and in RTMT V4, it will be possible to have multiple styles of T-RAM GLR stations coexisting in your city simultaneously.  Also, if you are currently running RTMTV3, the selection of a T-RAM station does not affect the station you are currently using for GLR-in-Avenue.

z

I would like to welcome CaptCity to the RTMT Team.  CaptCity has a long history of working with RTMT, and has helped us out in a number of debugging and testing situations.  We have found him to be very skilled in these areas, and we look forward to his contributions to RTMT development.

z

I am pleased to announce that RTMT is now NAM Team Certified.  The certification logo will gradually be appearing on screenshots and UI queries over time, and in the case of the UI queries, it will be joined by a form of the RTMT logo.  BTW, if anyone has ideas for a custom UI query for RTMT, please don't hesitate to post them in the New Additions to RTMT thread.

z

I would like to welcome catty (Cathy) to the RTMT Team.  Catty has been one of our most active testers, and has been extremely helpful in bringing the upcoming RTMT release to fruition.  She also has a lot of experience with and knowledge of many of the skills required for station building, and we expect her to be a big help in our upcoming work.

z

#9
A major update of the RTMT Interim T-RAM Stations is now available on the LEX.  This update features the following:


  • The new high definition (HD) tram shelter by SimFox, which can be seen in this post
from the RTMT Creations board, has been included.
  • Shmails' GLR Shelter, Xyloxadoria's GLR shelter, and the SFBT Historic Tram shelter have all been upgraded to HD.  It has been verified that in Zoom 5, all the HD versions of these stations look as good as their SD equivalents.  In Zoom 6, they all look much better.
  • The new Station Highlighting and Queries features are now fully implemented for all the stations in this pack.  These features will be implemented for all the remaining RTMT stations with the release of RTMT V3.60.
  • All stations have been adjusted slightly so that low platforms show up better.
  • Installation of these stations has been simplified.  See the Readme for details.

For those people who have not seen the high definition GLR shelters before, here's a quick look at SimFox's:




Although this shows a GLR-in-Avenue station, the shelter is the same one being release in the T-RAM Stations pack.  The new and updated shelters will be available for GLR-in-Avenue with the release of RTMT V3.60.

z

The RTMT Add-On Pack V3.60 has now been officially released; it can be found on the LEX here.  This Add-On Pack contains a number of new stations and new features, which are summarized below:

SAM Stations:   There are 15 new stations for seven of the eight  currently existing SAM textures.  (There is no room for stations on the parking lot textures.)  All stations are single-square.  For each of the four paved textures, there is a bus stop, a subway station, and a combination bus stop and subway station.  For the two dirt textures and the gravel texture, there are simply bus stops.  These stations can be plopped successfully whenever there is at least one square of SAM texture on either side of the station.  However, demolishing these stations may cause the surrounding pavement to revert to the default street texture if there are not enough SAM squares present.

SAM streets may be dragged through these stations with no ill effects.

El Rail over Road Stations:  Six new stations are included here.  There are bus, subway, and combination bus and subway stations for El Rail over Road, as well as similar stations for El Rail over Street.  Both Standard and Euro road textures are available for these stations.

GLR Transitions:  This Add-On Pack features two GLR transitions, one from GLR-in-Avenue to Underground, and the other from GLR-in-Road to Underground.  For both transitions, "Underground" may be subway, underground rail, or both.  As of this release, there is no underground rail network for avenues, so that particular connection cannot be made.  However, when such a network is made available, this connection should be usable.  These transitions are also being released simultaneously in a standalone package for non-RTMT users.  In future RTMT releases, the versions of these transitions bundled with RTMT will also have optional bus, subway, and underground rail stations that will be accessible by pedestrians.

New Station Information Displays:   Information about each RTMT station now shows up automatically in all of the NAM Traffic Volume Views.  Additionally, information about all stations containing subway stops shows up automatically  in the NAM Subway, Subway Building, and Zones Data Views.  This information includes the type and size of the stations, as well as the type of network they're located on.  These new displays allow previously hidden RTMT stations to be seen, queried, and even demolished.  For a detailed description and illustration of how this works, please see the Station Highlighting and Queries thread.

New Station Queries:  The RTMT station queries have been expanded considerably, providing significantly more information about both the queried station, similar RTMT stations, and the network on which they reside.  An example of such a query is shown in the previously mentioned thread.

New Menu Icons:  The RTMT menu icons have been replaced with a set that is based on the actual network textures, and that is much easier to read.  Station types are spelled out in the icons.  Although the station type names are currently available only in English, the additional station information that appears when mousing over these icons is available in other languages as well.  Some of the newer stations do not have alternate language translations yet, but these translations will be coming.  If you would like to contribute to this translation effort, please let the RTMT Team know.

DAMN Menus:  DAMN menus are now fully implemented for all RTMT stations.  These menus allow a hierarchical arranging of the stations, and are implemented via the game's News feature.  For dealing with a large number of stations, they are much easier to use than the traditional flat menu structure.  However, these are currently implemented for RTMT in English only; other languages supported by RTMT will be converted soon.

The RTMT version of DAMN menus has an extra feature known as the RTMT Root Menu.  At the bottom of each RTMT DAMN menu, there is an RTMT icon.  Clicking on this icon will take you directly to the top level of the RTMT menu hierarchy.

For those who have Urgent Advice Dialogs turned off in the game options, the DAMN menus will show up in the News window.  They work just as well here as in the separate popup window.  However, whereas the popup window will disappear when you finish using the DAMN menus, the menus will continue to be displayed in the News window after use, but become grayed out.  In both cases, clicking on the "Open Additional Menus" link will reactivate them.  Also, if you are using the News window for your DAMN menus, you may wish to use the Bigger News Window plugin.  You may also choose to have the DAMN menus show up in the News window even if you have Urgent Advice Dialogs turned on.

More Custom Props:  A number of new props are included in this Add-On Pack.  Some of these have already appeared in different form in the RTMT Interim T-RAM Stations pack, some are from previously optional downloads that are now incorporated into the main distribution, and some are completely new.  From the RTMT Interim T-RAM Stations pack, the GLR shelters by SimFox and Xyloxadoria are now available for GLR-in-Avenue, while the existing shelter by GShmails and the Historic GLR Tram Station have been upgraded to be HD models.  The Berlin props and the additional Ninja subway stair sets are now included in this add-on pack.  Finally, Gwail is working on a complete New York City transit prop pack; his NYC bus shelter and bus sign are now available with this distribution.

Additionally, SimGoober, Antoine, and GShmails have all kindly given their permission for their models to be distributed with RTMT.  As a result, they are included in this distribution, and there is no need to download them separately any more.

Subway Station Bug Fix:  This Add-On Pack fixes a bug that has been present in all versions of RTMTV3.  Until now, subway stations that were on subway lines not located at an intersection with another subway line, or within one square of such an intersection, did not work properly.  Subway usage at these stations was low to nonexistent.  This bug affected all RTMT stations containing subway stations, with the single exception of the combination GLR/Subway Station for GLR-in-Avenue.

A while ago, a workaround for this bug was published in The RTMT V3 Support Thread.  To fix this bug for any given station, it is sufficient to create a one-square stub of a subway line leaving the station (or a square on either side of it) in a direction perpendicular to the subway line passing through the station.  This workaround still works, and may be preferred where you don't want to replop stations. However, the main bug has been fixed in all RTMT subway stations, and any new stations plopped will not have this bug.  Therefore, demolishing an older station and replacing it with a newer station will also fix this bug for that station.

z

Due to an error in building the RTMT Add-On Pack V3.60 distribution, the DAMN menus always show up in the News window, no matter which installation option you choose.  This has been fixed in the version uploaded to the LEX earlier today.  If you have already downloaded and installed RTMT V3.60 and would simply like the fix, then download the attached Zip file and take the customMenu.dat file that it contains and use it to replace the customMenu.dat file in the DAMN\Support folder.

z

#12
The RTMT Add-On Pack V3.60 has been updated so that the SAM Station main menu items now have translations for all languages supported by SC4, with the exception of Italian and Norwegian.  Those will be added if and when we find translators for them.

If you are updating an existing installation, you merely need to replace the file SAM\RTMT_SAM_Locales.dat with the one from the same folder in the Core Add-On Pack in the current upload.

z

One problem with building RTMT stations is that if adjoining residential or commercial zones don't also adjoin a network at some point, the residential zones will have only abandoned buildings, and Sims will not be able to access commercial jobs.  Key methods for getting around this limitation are outlined in the Readme and in the FAQ thread.  However, memo has posted an elegant alternative solution in his new tutorial, RTMT stations with zones having road access, where he demonstrates how to give RTMT stations the properties of a network, thereby allowing residential and commercial zones to develop right next to them.  Although this does not work for all networks supported by RTMT (due to a lack of suitable transition pieces), it works for the most common ones, and it is and extremely valuable addition to the list of station-building techniques available to RTMT users.

z

As of NAM 31, the RTMT GLR Transitions have been moved to the NAM, and their download page will be locked.  These transitions are loaded by default when you use the standard NAM installation.  They are identical in functionality to the older transitions, but a number of bugs have been fixed, including the lack of UDI support.  Furthermore, the following instructions will be included in the next edition of the NAM documentation; it is necessary to follow these instructions to get these transitions to work properly.

QuoteWhen constructing the Tram-in-Avenue to Subway transition, the subway portion must be constructed in a very specific way in order for the transition to work properly for both morning and evening commutes.

Here is a picture of the subway view of the transition:


Note that the main subway tunnel must emerge from the side of the avenue transition that is under the incoming traffic.  For most countries, where people drive on the right side of the road, the subway tunnel must emerge from the left side, while for countries like the U.K. and Japan, where people drive on the left side of the road, the subway tunnel must emerge from the right side.

Each square on both sides of the transition needs to be joined to the other side with a cross tunnel.  You can see this in the first and third squares of the picture; the second cross tunnel is hidden from view.

For avenues, you can have subway tunnels emerging from both sides of the transition, but they will have to connect at some point if you want traffic to flow properly.

This method of construction is necessary to make the evening commute work properly.  The morning commute is less picky about construction methods, but if you don't follow the methods described above, you will get little or no traffic on your subway line during the evening commute

If you already have these transitions installed, then the newer NAM versions will automatically override them when you install NAM 31 or later.

b22rian

Global Annoucement..

Just wanted to mention that the RTMT has reformed yet again  &apls

Our main objective is to complete the long awaited 250 station + release of RTMT version 4

thanks, Brian

noahclem

Congratulations to the RTMT on reforming  :bnn:  With the talented and thorough people taking part I think we have great things to look forward to!

b22rian

Hi everyone,
first i want to apologize for any lack of RTMT updates in this thread..

This pertains mostly to comments I have been reading over at Simtropolis. But i would guess others feel the same here about the helpful comments i was reading there from RTMT Users,
So thanks for all your comments !

As a part of the small RTMT team we have left, we are still plugging away at getting version 4 out the door..

Comments pertaining to the complexity of the props install will be taken into consideration to be sure. I am also hopeful we can make this next version dependency free :yes:

All testing has been completed now and so we are on the final stages of getting the install package together..
However this process may still take some time as we are a small team now lacking in - install files knowledge..

More later on our progress ...  :thumbsup:

brian

catty

Quote from: b22rian on December 13, 2015, 03:33:19 AM
...As a part of the small RTMT team we have left, we are still plugging away at getting version 4 out the door...

We are also giving serious consideration to letting a few people try it out before its officially released on the LEX and STEX, whether you will need an account over on the CB website to do so is also to be decided, while I'm in favour of public downloads it does mean we could end up with a large number of test copies with people which could prove a problem later on, especially if we need to do any bug fixes on any of the files.

-catty
I meant," said Ipslore bitterly, "what is there in this world that truly makes living worthwhile?" DEATH thought about it. "CATS," he said eventually, "CATS ARE NICE.