Streets & Road Vehicles

[rsdworker]

2014-02-05T22-36-40_small.png

wow that's amazing so its moveable? maybe a short video of it - looks amazing now

[smallfly]

2014-02-05T22-36-40_small.png

wow that's amazing so its moveable? maybe a short video of it - looks amazing now

the cars are driving around. yes. i will post a video, as soon as the game has a reached a more dynamic level.

[rsdworker]

2014-02-05T22-36-40_small.png

wow that's amazing so its moveable? maybe a short video of it - looks amazing now

the cars are driving around. yes. i will post a video, as soon as the game has a reached a more dynamic level.

looking forward seeing a great game so i heard you have to delay till 2016 now

[smallfly]

deleted; see next post for up-to-date screenshot

[smallfly]

2014-02-08T15-37-29_small.png (114.55 KiB) Viewed 29579 times

[smallfly]

2014-02-11T18-15-06.png (93.35 KiB) Viewed 29537 times

[rsdworker]

ah a car lights - looks good - its getting better and better

[Ameecher]

Looking good.

[Pyoro]

Bah, completely unrealistic. Not even one car with AFS ... and should be more like this anyways:

[smallfly]

Bah, completely unrealistic. Not even one car with AFS ... and should be more like this anyways:

Yeah right. What a crappy game. (But at least I already tried stuff like adaptive curve lights )

[glenjimen]

I was thinking about the problem of 45 degree roads looking too think or thin, and this is what I can up with.

My idea was to try to get the angled roads to have a cross sectional width of 1 unit, or as close to 1 unit as possible. With 45 degree roads, you can get 1.4 or 0.7 units wide, but with 60 and 30 degree roads you can get 0.87 units wide. This looks much better, in my opinion.
This looks like you need to program two angles, but both the 30 degree road and the 60 degree road are the same 30 degrees from the horizontal or vertical grid lines.
Where the 30 and 60 degree roads meet, you would need a special module. I've noticed there is a pattern here that repeats every 3 lanes. So... 3 separate modules? (My idea is in the red triangle)
A problem is that these roads need to be built in two "grid tile" lengths at a time. That is, two over and one down. If you build it one tile long, you move down 1/2 a tile.
Also, the grid space this takes up is... awkward. My idea for this is in the middle of the pic, shaded in yellow.

What do you guys think?

- glenjimen

[LocoMH]

What do you guys think?

By no means am I involved in the development with more than ideas, but as you wrote guys, I'm guessing you're happy about answers from anyone

I like the idea. It could really look better, however there are a few problems around this, as well:

- it makes the whole process of building streets yet more complicated (more tiles, which tile to use, etc.)
- one could, compared to a simple 45 degree solution, not really build the shortest way between two points
- there needs to be an additional connection between 30 and 60 degree angle

However, maybe smallfly will find solutions. Or anyone else. I think it could be doable.

[smallfly]

Currently there are 24 supported path node orientations in P1SIM (compare screenshot)

16-03-2014 16-39-49.png (8.53 KiB) Viewed 29221 times

Adding 30/60 degree path nodes would increase the number by 8 more orientations (North-North-East, East-East-North, East-East-South ...). Technically should work fine. But the user interface will get very messy. Thus I probably won't implement that feature in the near future.

But I like the idea. And I will play around with 30/60 degree logistics paths. And if I find a user friendly solution, I will get back to this point later.

[Hyronymus]

Maybe you don´t have to implement it as a UI feature: players choose from a simplified UI and the game eventually constructs the road pieces as sections of 30 degrees.

[smallfly]

Maybe you don´t have to implement it as a UI feature: players choose from a simplified UI and the game eventually constructs the road pieces as sections of 30 degrees.

Would be an elegant solution. But that conflicts with the module based character of the game, since I want the user to be able to construct modules himself, whenever s/he misses a module. And your solution would imply, that there are hidden features (namely 30/60 degree orientation nodes), that cannot be used by (modding) players.

But again. Yes, it would be an elegant solution and thus I will keep it in mind, as well as the general idea of 30/60 orientations.

[Hyronymus]

Maybe you don´t have to implement it as a UI feature: players choose from a simplified UI and the game eventually constructs the road pieces as sections of 30 degrees.

Would be an elegant solution. But that conflicts with the module based character of the game, since I want the user to be able to construct modules himself, whenever s/he misses a module. And your solution would imply, that there are hidden features (namely 30/60 degree orientation nodes), that cannot be used by (modding) players.

But again. Yes, it would be an elegant solution and thus I will keep it in mind, as well as the general idea of 30/60 orientations.

I don't expect a revolt if you go for an elegant solution as long as the inner workings are clear. But I'm aware that I can easily think so when it's your game development .

[glenjimen]

OK, 30 and 60 degree roads seem to mess everything up.

Here is another possible solution to 45 degree roads looking to thin or fat. Double the size of the road. This allows the diagonal road to be 2.1 grid tiles wide, while the vert. and horz. roads are 2 grid spaces wide. (see the attached picture). I know I won't notice the difference!

This does lead me to think the whole map will basically shrink to 1/2 its usable size, if everything is twice as big as it used to be.

This might help to solve another problem down the "road", What if a player wanted to add one lane to one side of an existing street. Would that lane use up 1/2 a grid tile?
My double-wide-road-idea makes this one added lane exactly one grid tile wide.

Any thoughts?

[robo]

Does the game really need multi-lane roads?
A "normal" road with two directions can easily absorbe thousands of vehicles in a short time. There are a few free java traffic simulations on the web to show this.
A simple road consisting of only two directions (one direction per tile) and perhaps some advanced traffic management at crossroads could already simplify a lot of things. And overtaking doesn't really work as you can see with one-way roads in locomotion, because all vehicles drive more or less at maximum speed.

[glenjimen]

We have already seen multiple pictures posted by smallfly of the game with multi-lane roads. If you don't like them, don't use them. But I don't think there is a strong enough argument to remove a feature from the game.

I like the idea of being able to bulk-up my town's roads

[robo]

@glenjimen: Diagonal roads don't look good in isometric games, most games don't use them. Diagonal roads look better in topdown-view, but so far I know no tilebased 2Dgame which has solved the issues with diagonal mulitlane-roads, most games don't even have a good collision detection. I would suggest to build the roads in the same way as you build railroads, apart from the intersections.
Locomotion would be better without the feature of overtaking, because slower vehicles strangely stop if overtaken and the simple traffic priority "right before left" at crossroads is problematic in reality, too. In locomotion vehicles often get stuck at crossroads consisting of one-way-roads, which can be annoying, although the simple pathfinding in locomotion generally can add some fun to the game in other situations.
Of course, I don't how flexible the design of smallfly is and if it could easily be changed.