Rivers, Traffic and Trees - Oh My!

Hello, forum. I've been saving up some questions as I do some route creating and now it's time to hit you with a trio of queries:

1) I noticed from a search of the forums, that long rivers may change height throughout the route and to be able to display a continuous stretch of water is not possible without making it shallow at one end and really deep in the other and possibly covering up nearby land areas. At least it was that way in TRS 2009, I think. Another set of posts said that you can fake out the river height by doing it in separate dis-jointed sections of different heights and using waterfalls, bridges, locks, etc. to transition to the next level. Is this still the case in TS12?



2) I see a "toggle traffic" button when laying road splines and I'm using some very short sections to get to parking lots. Now the manual says this "toggle traffic" button is global and affects all road splines on the route. Well, I'd like my highways to have traffic, but not my parking lots. Is there another way around this limitation? Or will I have to use some "no traffic" roads for my parking lot entrances (which may not match in color or design)?

3) Now to trees - I see basically 2 types of trees. One is very realistic looking and waves in the breeze. Are these Speed Trees? Another is a static + or x shaped tree that looks like pretty good. Anyway, my main question about the moving trees is can they be re-sized any further than moving them a little bit? They seem to jump to different sizes as I move them slightly. Even at the smallest size I can get them the pine cones on a Norway Spruce seem about a meter tall!



Thanks for your consideration! :wave:

Andrew

SharkNose said:

... Is this still the case in TS12?

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yes.

2) ... use some "no traffic" roads for my parking lot entrances (which may not match in color or design)?

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that's the way it is done. Hopefully the road creator will have made a set that includes a "no traffic" version. But even then, these sections of road often have a different surface in real life so I wouldn't worry about matching textures.

3) ... re-sized any further than moving them a little bit? They seem to jump to different sizes as I move them slightly. Even at the smallest size I can get them the pine cones on a Norway Spruce seem about a meter tall!

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bury them in the ground and only expose part of the top. The same can be done for many objects, increasing the visual variety in your route.

Thanks for your consideration! :wave:

Andrew

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Andrew,

You can also modify road splines to not have traffic or have extra traffic. I can't remember the different settings offhand, so please look around for them.

For the trees, I find the built-in SpeedTrees to be a bit on the large size. Instead I use those made by Pofig, Gaupo50, and McGuirel. These other developers have made much smaller trees that don't move around quite as much, and look extremely nice on the route.

As Martin said in his post, there's not much you can do with the water as you've found out. I use dams and rocks to hide the transitions. The alternative is to use spline water objects. They're great for canals and channels that have straight sides, but are a bit snotty to place on slopes. The alternative to these is textures. There are some water textures that are great for falls, slopes and narrows.

John

Thanks for the responses! I'll look for trees by the creators you mentioned. Even shoving the Norway Spruce way into the ground, it shortened the height of course, but the visible pine cones are still super-sized! :hehe:

I did find a "lane" that looks like my parking lot surface and doesn't seem to run traffic.

Speaking of canals, I do have a route that has one. Since it is so thin in width, I might cheat and lower the ground underneath it so I can attempt continuous water. Otherwise, I'll have a bridge or rocks every few meters! I could use fallen trees too, which hurricane Sandy left a lot of in this area!

Thanks again.

Andrew

looks good! what is that apartment/hotel that you are using?

justinroth said:

looks good! what is that apartment/hotel that you are using?

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This is from one of the German creators. I think his name is Icemanxxx where xxx is a string of numbers. He did a bunch of buildings like this with awesome textures. I've used them on a route I was building, but lost due to a hard drive crash a few years ago.

John

Surveyor says: "Apartment Building 06" kuid:117608:70125. They're not perfect, but close. I'm being very nit-picky about this area because it's where I live!

Very nice, dude!

A friend of mine lives in a place that looks just like that down in East Parlin.

For garden type apartments, I've used the UK townhouses. They look similar to the ones we have near where I live like Village Green, Forrest Acres, etc.

http://binged.it/12qO4sp Village Green

http://binged.it/12BocZR Forrest Acres

http://binged.it/WquTuw - some place outside of London.

John

I find the easiest way to deal with water splines is to lay them on the surface following your map (use mesh view to compensate for any map offset or inaccuracy against the terrain), then drop each spline point by 1.5 - 2 metres depending how steep a bank you want. Don't worry too much if you get the odd section going back up hill, if it's not too obvious no one will notice. Unfortunately there's not that many good river splines built in or available off the DLS they are starting to look a bit dated. Probably the best are those created by sirgibby but only available via the Murchison 2 payware pack (along with a great many other useful assets) so if you were planning on sharing the route, potential users will need to buy Murchison 2 for the assets.

Along with all the other enhancements requested for the "next" (tm) version, a major upgrade in how water is handled and can be placed in the game would be most welcome.