Diagonal railroad crossings

[Aegir]

I know one in South Australia, it's a suburban train line that crosses diagonal with an large 4 way intersection (Under a major road-bridge overpass like thing), with two of the roads being two seperated lanes, so it's like two 4 ways packed side by side. Under a bridge.. Now, the trains never park on the crossing to take passengers, but the signalling block the station is inside also includes the crossing that goes diagonal over the two intersections under the bridge.

It's a fun little piece of road . These are two major roads aswell, Cross-road and South-Road, two major artories, you could say, in urban South Australia.

Relatively safe aswell, no crashes lately that I've seen. Almost nothing inolving a train either.

[VIPStephan]

[...] the train actually stops in a diagonal level crossing to pick up passengers, and the car drivers must wait at the lights until everyone gets on and the train starts again.

That's common practice in the US too. On my way from New York to Chicago with Amtrak the train stopped in small towns and the station platform (if there was any at all) was only as long as the first two cars. There was a crossing next to the station and the cars had to wait at least five minutes because the train was blocking the crossing... and if there is a delay (which happens quite often) they can't do anything but wait patiently.
No surprise that Amtrak isn't very popular.

[suttonc]

I'm not a coder, so I'm not sure if this is possible, but you could make TTDPatch recognise it as TWO crossings with different graphics (say, as a different track type (I read somewhere TTDPatch can hold 8 track types)). This will also keep MB happy as the RVs will be almost one whole square away from the track! And by the way, do the trucks have to see what's coming? That's why they have flashing lights!

[michael blunck]

you could make TTDPatch recognise it as TWO crossings with different graphics (say, as a different track type (I read somewhere TTDPatch can hold 8 track types)). This will also keep MB happy [...]

Yes, please. Do you have any idea about the vast amount of sprites this would need? Sheer madness.

regards
Michael

[Louie Armstrong]

Most urban crossings in England are being phased out all together, AFAIA.

Indeed they are dave. But i read somewhere that some may not be able to be replaced as such so new improved safety devices are being made/researched etc.

But i think the diagonal crossings would be a great feature. Adding a certain amount of realism.

[Dave]

Indeed - is it possible then?

[michael blunck]

> is it possible then?

Many things are possible as we know, but diagonal crossings require a real bunch of additional tiles (some hundreds) given the current graphics engine (apart from other problems, e.g. pathfinder, landscape arrays, ...).

You may check out that OTTD discussion about the graphics issue though.

regards
Michael

[krtaylor]

Well, diagonal crossings are found all over the place, and it would be very nice to have them. However, if we are going to do major tinkering with this sort of thing, then while we're at it we should also do diagonal roads.

And then, we'd need double-diagonal crossings - I mean, crossings shaped like a plus sign + instead of the X that they've been up until now.

[Dave]

If anyone in Britain has seen the Level Crossing advertisement campaign on the telly, they'll see that the crossing in question is diagonal...

Interesting... And is referring to the start of the topic. Apologies.

[DanMacK]

I'd like to add my 2 cents to this. I agree that diagonal crossings would be a boon to us rail builders instead of jogging them straight to cross a road. Just means we won't be able to bridge them.

[Patchman]

I just build tunnels... safer for the RVs too

[Snail]

I just build tunnels... safer for the RVs too

Yes.. but if you haven't money, It can be interesting (Examle with OTTD: crossing costs 630, and tunnel (with lowering four points) 2500, The cost of a MPS regal bus is 5227).

I agree. And sometimes there's not even the room for a tunnel. Think of what happens when building in the middle of a town...

[eis_os]

There you have autoslope... so actually that shouldn't be much of a problem.

As it seems the OTTD discussion will never end, I will remove this feature from my todo list.

[Raichase]

Aplolgies if some quotes don't make sense, or some posts repliing to others don't make sense, I split this as best as I could.

Took the OTTD stuff to the spam-bin as I figured there was plenty of topics about this in the OTTD section, and it can be discussed there.

Now,

This is the TTDPATCH Suggestions forum, not the OTTD Problems forum. Whilst I appreciate people are going to say "hey thats in OTTD, here it is and blah blah blah", can we PLEASE not discuss it in this thread, which is CLEARLY a suggestion thread for TTDPATCH.

I don't see herds of TTDpatch minions flooding into the OTTD suggestions forum trying to sidetrack discussions in there, and if it does happen, then the OTTD mods have full right to kick such people back to the ttdpatch forums.

Now, can we please keep to the forum topic? Sorry to sound harsh, but it annoys me to see a patch developer take a perfectly valid suggestion off their "reaserch" or "to-do" list simply because certain forum members can't keep things on topic.

Finally, I know who sent this thread off topic, and will be keeping an eye out for more such topic hijackings in this ttdpatch suggestion forum in future. It's silly, pointless, and just creates bad blood between two perfectly fun games.

Thankyou, now we can get back to the topic at hand.

Sorry to interrupt.

[VIPStephan]

Well... that makes me think twice whether I should state my opinion (or if it may be taken wrong?)...
It would be very sad if Oskar takes the development of this feature off of his todo list 'cause I think I'm not the only one that would like to see it and I think that it's worth a thought as it would make level crossings much smoother if you have diagonal tracks crossing a straight road.
Plus building tunnels doesn't make sense (or a difference to current level crossings in regards to the path of the track) if your track is diagonal... or has anyone developed a "diagonal tunnels" patch yet?

[eis_os]

Ok, I will leave it in and see what the future will be, ok?

[Dave]

I don't see herds of TTDpatch minions flooding into the OTTD suggestions forum trying to sidetrack discussions in there, and if it does happen, then the OTTD mods have full right to kick such people back to the ttdpatch forums.

*Cough*.

Glad to see you're still willing to work on this Oskar - keep on rocking and dancing your way through all those impossible thingys.