FLexible UnderPasses (FLUPs)

[LOPAN]

Do you have any simulator with park and ride enabled? There are no people paths in the tunnels, so if that mod is installed and there's no parking lot on the jobs side then people won't get through.

- Allan Kuan

I don't remember installing any park and hide... which mods do this job? The transit and major mods I've installed are:

NAM
CAM
SAM
Road to Mass Transit v3.51
Side Street Mod

[Diggis]

Which of the NAM traffic simulators did you install when you installed it?

[z]

I don't remember installing any park and hide...

Maybe that's why that option never works.  (Just kidding!)

To elaborate on Diggis' question:  In your Network Addon Mod folder, you should probably have a file that begins "NetworkAddonMod_Traffic_Plugin_".  If such a file exists, what is its full name?

[LOPAN]

I installed everything with standard option.

The file name is NetworkAddonMod_Traffic_Plugin_C_Standard.dat

[Chrisim]

LOPAN, what happens when you drive a "You Drive It"-Car through? If it passes, the problem is not related to the FLUPs. If not, I would have no clue why not in your case. It should.

[LOPAN]

LOPAN, what happens when you drive a "You Drive It"-Car through? If it passes, the problem is not related to the FLUPs. If not, I would have no clue why not in your case. It should.

Yes Chrisim, I was going to try that, but everytime I click the You-Drive stuff, some guy says that this mission isn't available anymore... I don't know why. 

UPDATE: For some odd reason my game is set to LEFT HAND, like in UK... I don't know why, I always install everything with RIGHT HAND, I think the problem is because the FLUP is right handed and some other pieces are left handed... how do I know which mod is causing some parts to be in LEFT HAND?

[Andreas]

If you have a UK version of the game, you have to install the LHD version of the NAM Controller, otherwise the puzzle pieces will not work correctly.

[LOPAN]

If you have a UK version of the game, you have to install the LHD version of the NAM Controller, otherwise the puzzle pieces will not work correctly.

That was exactly it... I got myself the UK version! Now it works fine.

Thanks everybody 

[SC4BOY]

id-host.de doesn't seem too reliable for having the pic's available.. about 2/3 of the pic's in this thread as of the time of this posting.

The reason I'm browsing is getting the following "string" to work
Surface "heavy" Rail to Underground transition (ramp looking like and labeled "railway tunnel entrance", *, next is a "underground to subway under plaza connector" followed by subway tube to next station, etc.. yet it seems to not be able to carry traffic.  When it failed I added next is a "underground rail under plaza" in place of * above. Also no go.  Its hard to guess what I'm doing wrong since "drawpaths" doesn't work on the underground rails pieces.. I'll come back when I can see pictures.. its possible there are some clues there.

Edit: Hmm.. apparently the "subway-ugr" won't connect to the "entrance piece".. Further if you place it "entrance", "ugr under paved", subway.. the subway won't place (touching TE'd lot?).. if you place it "entrance" "subway-tgr" THEN put the "ugr under paved".. with the path the correct orientation in between it will place and it will work.. So I solved that.. don't know if there is some "always true" rules for the placement of these.. its important since you can't path-verify except by running the simulator..

[Chrisim]

Unfortunatley, the picture hoster ld-host.de had some problems during the summer holidays of their IT administrator, but it should be stable again. I am using it more and more because Imageshack has been quite unreliable for quite a long time.

@SC4BOY sorry, I do not understand what your question is. Please ask again differently

[SC4BOY]

Would it be possible to make some FLUPs that look like they are going further down?  I just rebuilt one of my main cities to take advantage of the new NAM stuff and thought FLUPs would work good with the CAN-AM.  It works and all but they just look weird, because they don't go down far enough, so only a small layer of water over them.  Nothing to pressing, just more austetics then anything else.  And for the record... I LOVE the ave FLUP, looks so amazing in the central city.

The problem with this is it is equally unrealistic.. who wants cars dropping off a ledge? lol
Properly you should put the ramp SPACED BACK further from the canal, that way one could easily imagine that as it passes those extra 2 or 3 tiles, the road drops further. Personally I'm against haveing steep access/egress in these tiles as they don't reflect a realistic situation and they just add more graphics models to have to tab/flip through

wow, i would love to have that in my cities working with road, grl and rail.

Those photos are of working pieces (the GLR-in-avenue going under the rail underpass made with NAM puzzle pieces) so yes it could be put in your cities working.. .. and you don't need FLUPs

Please ask again differently

OK, well as I mentioned I did get it to work, but it was a LOT of TRIAL AND ERROR.. and it wasn't a matter of not reading the material available. Here's an example of my issue:



In this image, my editing should make it clear what pieces I have used, etc. Basically this is a small "sandbox" of some R, C, and I set up to force the R's to use the rail/subway connections in order to find work. I noted several things while trying to make it work, and I'm sure there are other things I still haven't figured out.

1. In A and B, there is simply a "rail to underground" piece followed by a "underground to subway" piece. In A the placing "ghost" arrow points one way (to the track piece). In B it points crosswise to this. Clearly only the "toward" works.. which is especially a problem because if you are around a road, the piece does not naturally align this way. Even after "properly" placing them they would not work until I dragged the subway THROUGH the peice.. as I recall the normal subway connections (stations, etc), only dragging to touch is required.

2. In C an "underground rail 4-way connector under plaza" piece is used between the subway-UGR and the UGR entrance. This piece seems to not function at all in this placement. I tried all I could think of to make it work. If anyone has suggestions, the sandbox is still set up for me, so I'll be happy to try them.

3. In D there is a "UGR under plaza" piece between the UGR-subway and the UGR entrance. It also required that I drag the subway track THROUGH the UGR-subway piece. If I delete this "overdrag" piece, even after it is working, it will STOP working.

So much for the specifics of my test case.

My issue that all this playing around brings out follows. I think there need to be added to the lots "pointer props" and expanded explainations to guide users to proper placement to make the pieces work and to "coach" the user in proper placement and alignment of the pieces.

Perhaps this is already planned, but I consider this whole "FLUP's" thing to sort of be in beta release.. I don't think they are up to the par of the NAM product. The fact that it doesn't have  all the pieces that people want is NOT the problem.. this always happens..

What I mean is I think the basics of usage guides, tutorials, implementation, etc aren't really "up to par". Trust me this isn't a "complaint" but simply points  to the current state of the product.. by all means all interested parties appreciate being able to get hold of these new gadgets and play with them, but many average users are going to have problems with these (and for better or worse I consider myself to be much above the average user in terms of understanding the products, knowing lots of tips and tools usage, knowing where to generally look for help, knowing a lot of the games little "quirks", etc)

Thanks to all for their continued work and explorations in SC4

[Chrisim]

SC4BOY, your picture does not show FLUPs pieces.
I believe that you are using rail ramps (from NAM's underground rail pieces) and lots that convert underground rail to subway?
The NAM underground rail pieces exist for several years, and strictly speaking they are not FLUPs. The FLUPs have road, avenue or oneway ramps. However, I have no problem to discuss them, because technically the FLUPs are similar to the NAM underground rail pieces.

NAM underground rail pieces are not intended to be used in the way you do. The idea is to have two ramps (the rail track moves below the surface)
that are connected by underground rail puzzle pieces.

I do not know the Lots that you use to convert underground rail traffic to subway. Lots are not included in the NAM. You may want to tell the lot creator about your suggestions.

[z]

First of all, I want to say that I agree with everything that Chrisim says here.

As for why SC4BOY's lots have problems, this is undoubtedly due to the flaky nature of subway transit switches.  The obvious way of making them often doesn't work.  When RTMT V3.60 comes out in the near future, you can see how subway transit switches are used in a variety of lots in a way that works.

There is a further problem if your subway switch points are asymmetrical - whether or not they work may depend on the alignment of the pieces (north-south, or east-west), even though this may not seem to make any sense.  The easiest solution here is to make sure that your switches are symmetrical.

As Chrisim points out, this is not really FLUPS, so further discussions should probably be moved elsewhere.

[CaptCity]

I know this doesn't seem to be a FLUP issue, but I thought I would throw my two cents in... I thought maybe some of the pieces in question could be the ones provided by the ESURE beta. Out of curiousity I tried a similar setup to SC4BOY and saw some of the same issues he raised. I did manage to get this...



Now the pieces I used, from right to left were the following...

1. the underground rail ramp piece
2. a regular underground rail straight piece
3. the four-way underground rail ESURE piece
4. a regular underground straight piece
5. an underground rail-to-subway transition piece (also ESURE)

The underground four-way piece didn't seem to work unless there was a regular piece next to the sides.

I know this brings up the ESURE pieces that I know are in beta, but I thought I would bring it up as a possible explanation. And I could very well be mistaken as it was just a quick test...

[SC4BOY]

I am sure there are why's and wherefore's to the whole issue, I just don't know what they are..   As to this not being FLUP's, I apologize.. Since I put the whole thing in with the new NAM revision, I clearly confused them.. Its probably a topic worthy of discussion... I suggest a moderator with power to do so clip the last few messages out and move them to their own thread in order to avoid a "topic highjack" as that certainly was not what was intended.. thanks all.. looks like a fun investigation topic..

[z]

Just a quick post to hopefully clarify this whole issue...

The underground four-way piece didn't seem to work unless there was a regular piece next to the sides.

Yes, this is exactly true; the general rule is that you can't put any two TE lots right next to each other.  This is one of the reasons I'm converting the FURLs to puzzle pieces before releasing ESURE on the LEX.

Any further questions about ESURE should go in the ESURE thread.

And now back to our regular programming...

[sithlrd98]

Just roaming through here and saw your post about ESURE. Never heard of this and the link you posted is not complete.

Jayson

[z]

Sorry about that - I don't know how that happened.  Anyway, it's fixed now.  ESURE needs a few fixes, though, so I wouldn't recommend using it on a production city until it's released on the LEX, which shouldn't be too long from now.

[acidoverride]

This is looking damn nice and handy!
Where can I download these tools?

[z]

FLUPS is a standard part of the NAM.