DLC: Marvellous Monorails

[Wolfcoyote]

The images look pretty good. Though I did place a lot of criticism in this thread regarding CiM2's issues, I'll get the DLC within a couple of weeks as certain areas are hard to cover when traffic jams up the streets (and not because of lack of service). I also like that people have instantly solved the low-capacity issues by racing to the ruleset editor, a tactic I'll definitely employ once a couple of friends and I make the purchase.

How are the speeds? Are the speeds of the monorails similar to trams as well (the same speeds as the monorails in CiM1)?

 

[unmerged(482071)]

How are the speeds? Are the speeds of the monorails similar to trams as well (the same speeds as the monorails in CiM1)?

No, like I said earlier it's equal to metro (made them ride side by side to see). That's why they are so good, no traffic issues, speed of metros and maintenance and consumption of trams. The downsides are lower capacity than metros, more expensive tracks than trams and monorail's condition seems to drop faster.

 

[Marnit]

dont laugh secretly we all want flying waterbusses

 

[slornie]

I also want to contribute 2 pictures
View attachment 98466

This picture. Even more than before it makes me want a proper stations DLC with proper interchange structures (that can be built separately to the track ala CiM1). As well as metro|concourse|metro stations (which many here have asked for) CO could add metro|concourse|monorail stations too!

 

[Svip]

I'm sorry you feel let down. I still feel we have done a good job with the time, budget and resources we have had so far. Unity does allow modding, it's just a bit more tricky for a finished game. KBS is in alpha stage and has been for years, they are doing an excellent job with the mod support and I hope we can in the future learn things from them There are mods available to CiM2 on these very forums. I myself am hopeful that more mods will appear, things just take some time.

You guys really shouldn't take a lot of this anger personally. I know it's hard to do (and if it was my game, I too would be bothered). However, I don't think people are being angry for sports, but rather because they really like the game, but just wanted it to be better.

Effectively, you should take the anger as an appreciation of the base game (because this time of game is clearly appealling to a lot of people), and then try to work on that.

Personally, I don't care too much about the visuals, particularly not with there are other issues with the game. The pillars make good sense to me. All roads (that includes track, because even the tool tip refers to tracks as 'roads') are basically just slabs of path that can be elevated in different levels. If they are levelled above ground, pillars are 'drawn' below them. Of course, they are purely visual and serve no real purpose in the game.

But to avoid the game drawing pillars on roads, you 'verify' whether it is over a road and don't draw a pillar there. Unfortunately, avenues (even the middle part) count as a road object, and thus it does not draw pillars there. That will require a bit of a special hack. Because I have a feeling that the algorithm to detect whether it is above a road is very basic to avoid using too many resources.

Possible solutions would include being able to ask the specific road object whether that part is actually road. Store all 'road object specifications' in a big map (a 2d-array or something) that you ask in all cases, but when you place avenues, you don't 'map' the central part of avenues. (But if someone slabs a tram underneath your metro line and are complaining about the pillars in the way, then they are on their own.)

However, my biggest grip with CiM2 is the information availability. For instance, the Population graph is not entirely useful, because I cannot hover over the bars and see the exact numbers. Why can't I do that?

Also, why can't I see the busiest (on average) stop/station I have? Or the busiest line for that matter? For that, I have to browse through a lot of windows and whatnot to figure it out, or observe the entire map for an entire day. The game should really be able to tell that for me.

Oh, and it would be nice to be able to align stuff. Perhaps then you could 'tie' a road to another road, and then give you even more interesting pillars.

(Actually, come to think of it, the pillars are a nice programming challenge. Gosh, now I sort of wish I worked for CO so I could work on that specific task.)

 

[eis_os]

Yes, you can narrow down the case a bit to:

Create a pillar if possible, if there is an object below:

Try to create a a gate style pillar. You need to create two bounding boxes* on both side of your metro/monorail. The bounding box reaches ground.

Check for bounding box if there is an object in the way, if there is one you will move the bounding box further away until you hit a certain threshold. Still something there and you give up.
If not, you have valid pillar place. Now check the other side. You may even decide to allow inverse L shape pillars for light objects so you only need one bounding box. **

* You may divide these again, so the horizontal and vertical part are separate so there isn't an obstacle in air you hit.

Or in ascii art:

      [Monorail]
-------------------------
|AAAAAAAAAABBBBBBBBBBBBB|
|A|                   |B|
|A|                   |B|
|A|                   |B|
|A| [Street] [Rail]   |B|
#######################################

A bit compute intensive, so not doable on very frame.
However it's not rocket science...



** For L shapes you can even use the lower nibble of the map coordinates to determine if there should be build left or right so you get some pseudo random behavior on what side the pillar is preferred. (So it won't look that uniform, used as example with the catenary system in TTDPatch)

 

[Svip]

Indeed not. But I think you could save some calculations by attaching the 'pillar result' to the road objects. I don't believe that at present the game calculates every time you look at a piece of road, whether a pillar should be there. The gate style pillar might be easier to do than figuring out the other pillars on avenues.

In addition, some metros/monorails can usually be kept up by single inverse L shaped pillar (I assume you are already talking about that), which could be useful when close to the edge of a road below.

A question worth asking, should the gate pillar be 90 degrees from the road requiring the pillars or 90 degrees from the road below? Imagine a metro track going over a road at a slight angle. It would definitely look better in this case, if the gates were matched to the road below and not the metro track. But a bit harder to calculate and predict (and moreover, you'd need to store the angle for each pillar).

 

[eis_os]

As there are maybe several objects under a track (maybe crossing, junction, stations and so on) I think the position data of the monorail is a doable option.


Say we have an obstacle, like a tall building on the right side.

      [Monorail]
           --------------
 ___       BBBBBBBBBBBBB|
|   |                 |D|
|   |                 |D|
|   |                 |D|
|   |[Street] [Rail]  |D|
#######################################

A/C = Bounding Box Left vs. B/D = Bounding Box Right



Actually CIM1 used a bitmap where something could be build on a street, so the pillars had a location where they could be shown.

CIM2 lacks these option, and seems to store some Placement Data, when you move your camera, the mesh street is created/destroyed. Somehow the pillars are connected, a pillar seems to be a subobject of props. So they could technical even need energy and maintenance

 

[ThrilledCim]

I'm so sorry some of you feel the monorails are not a good addition We opted for freedom so players can build flexible systems. In my opinion, that is the most important feature of a game where the main goal is to build systems from different parts: enough freedom to be creative. I'll have a look at the floating tracks, it might be that it cannot be helped, but I would love to fix the issue.

In CiM2, the monorail differs from metro in cost and passenger attractiveness, as well as the price for building and capacity. It's between trams and metro, and I think it does visually spice up the cities nicely.

It is very nice that finally CO has created a transportation type that is in between trams and metro in terms of at least capacity (I hope speed too). There is a huge gap of difference between trams and metros that are currently making the game undeniablly skewed towards metros. I do hope monorails will fill the gap between trams and metors and will make a nice alternative to metros to give players more flexibility and more choices in the game. Having said that, there are few things that I do agree with many of the commenters that can implemented to make monorails more attractive and more functional that would make it worth to buy them. 1) The appearance of less concrete slab and instead a more lightweight glider tracks. 2) Consider making monorails bi-directional given the fact that they travel on single track and you want it to be an alternative to trams built on elevated expressways and metros on elevated tracks otherwise there is not much difference.

Personally, I would shell out $10.00 if 1) the concerete underneath the tracks are gone or less thick and 2) they are bi-directional.


Thanks.

 

[Svip]

2) they are bi-directional.

You can build two next to one another like metro tracks, but otherwise, tracks can only be one-directional. The game does not allow bi-directional tracks or roads, because it's pretty damn complicated. For one thing, you don't have signals, how will the train know the track is free until it meets another train? Tracks and roads use basically the same mechanic, they are just 'streams' of movement, and vehicles stop if there is an obstacle.

This is also why (well, one of the reasons) there are no roundabouts in CiM2. This is an issue that I believe can be resolved, but it's not trivial.

 

[XanosEU]

It is not complicated at all, it has to be just like it works with switches right now: no train is allowed to enter the switch (the bidirectional part of the route) unless is is able to pass through it completely. If the route is free, the vehicle reserves the route and no other train is able to enter the reserved area
However, I don't mind that the tracks are only one directional. I don't need bidirectional tracks.

 

[Svip]

It is not complicated at all, it has to be just like it works with switches right now: no train is allowed to enter the switch (the bidirectional part of the route) unless is is able to pass through it completely. If the route is free, the vehicle reserves the route and no other train is able to enter the reserved area
However, I don't mind that the tracks are only one directional. I don't need bidirectional tracks.

Yes, but this would also mean that one-directional parts of your track would only allow one train at the time, even if going in the same direction. Furthermore, while switches are visually obvious to the player, your bi-directional tracks may not. For one thing, what if two bi-directional tracks are attached to one another without a switch in between? Then you'll have a situation where two trains enter against one another.

 

[XanosEU]

Yes, but this would also mean that one-directional parts of your track would only allow one train at the time, even if going in the same direction. Furthermore, while switches are visually obvious to the player, your bi-directional tracks may not. For one thing, what if two bi-directional tracks are attached to one another without a switch in between? Then you'll have a situation where two trains enter against one another.

Even the simplest games can include bidirectional tracks without problems. My really short description wasn't the full solution of course but as I already mentioned: I don't need bidirectional tracks so I don't went deeper into the topic. I just wanted to say that they would be possible. However I think the devs have other more important topics to care about

 

[Svip]

Even the simplest games can include bidirectional tracks without problems. My really short description wasn't the full solution of course but as I already mentioned: I don't need bidirectional tracks so I don't went deeper into the topic. I just wanted to say that they would be possible. However I think the devs have other more important topics to care about

I am just saying, that you can paint yourself into a corner where it's no longer possible to make tracks bi-directional, without some serious re-writing of code.

 

[unmerged(273926)]

Monorails the perfect solution for traffic problems.
I think it's a good idea to buy it, and also is useful to developer support is important to make the game better.
Greetings.

 

[unmerged(759631)]

Monorails the perfect solution for traffic problems.
I think it's a good idea to buy it, and also is useful to developer support is important to make the game better.
Greetings.

Agree and agree. I was against this pack a bit, but i'm starting to like it, a lot . This is a pretty cool addition to the game. it will be probably a big support to the dev team as well.
A bit different: I don't want to be rude or something, but we have a screenshots topic where we can "publish" pictures about our creations...

 

[ThrilledCim]

2) Consider making monorails bi-directional.

Well I just thought that bi-directional tracks would be a neat feature to have in the game; it would make vehicle travelling lot more efficient, time saving, space-saving and allow for much more flexibility. Right now with everything one direction, how many times do we wish that once a vehicle has travelled its route that it can come back on its own without us having to create another track or wire somewhere and have to worry about how it's going to impact the traffic of the oppposite route or how to make the tracks turn around at the end of a line or where to place the other depot that's there just for one purpose and one purpose only - to allow the vehicle to turn around? Basically the tracks/wires are being used once for one direction. Wouldn't be nice if the same track can be used twice, for the vehicles to service the line and come back basically cutting the number of tracks/wires for each line by half, saving space and creating efficiency? And that's just for lines that service one direction only. If the line services two directions that loops around at the end of one direction, the efficiency and space-saving is even more prominent. Monorail trains can pick up passengers in one direction and then continue to pick up passengers when reversing. No more additional depots to be built on the other end. No more worrying how to turn the tracks around. And this even introduces another new feature. Vehicles that can open doors on both sides. When the train is picking up passengers when reversing back to its starting depot, the same train is used travelling on the same track and opening doors on the other side!

With switches, that can easily be managed, once the vehicle has travelled its route, the switch can automatically be activated to allow the vehicle to reverse and then once it's reached the depot, the switch will reverse direction again for vehicles to go the other direction again all on the same track.

I just thought these features would be fun to have. I mean if the whole idea of introducing monorails is to add flexibility to the game and to give players more options, why not implement these features to the monorails to really make them one of a kind transit type that's really flexible? Otherwise what we have right now in the game really comes close to monorails, the only difference being in the appearance.

Thanks

 

[Svip]

With two tracks, you can have two vehicles going in both directions at once. With a full bi-directional track, you can only have one vehicle on the entire route at any given time.

 

[Senap]

So I bought it and I am pleasantly surprised. These things are fast! I was expecting something closer to tram speeds. I still think it's too expensive considering there isn't any customization as with the metros.

I also like the restriction that they cannot go underground or at ground level. I haven't had a chance to test more and make tunnels due to work, so if someone here has tried to make tunnels with these and succeeded, please let me know!

 

[ThrilledCim]

With two tracks, you can have two vehicles going in both directions at once. With a full bi-directional track, you can only have one vehicle on the entire route at any given time.

Well when they are bi-directional, you can still build two of them there if you want and they can be going any directions you want. The one-vehicle only at one time is a bit of a limitation of bi-directional tracks. I guess to mitigate that problem they will have to be able to come back much faster.