Patch: Drive-Through Road Vehicle Stops

[R2]

I'm considereing "Middle of a City" i think you should be able to place it on town roads, but NOT competitors roads.

On the other hand side: If you allow to build it anywhere including competitors roads you can prevent people in multiplayer from destroying all cities roads and replacing them with their own in order to prevent others from building stations in that city. So, if building on any road would be possible, that wouldn't be neccessary. You could make building on cities roads 5x and on competitors roads 10x the cost from building on your own road, since money never played any role in the game...

[mart3p]

I agree with bobingabout on this for various reasons that have already been discussed above.

R2: A competitor replacing all the roads in a town, doesn’t stop you building bus stations. You can still destroy buildings to make space for you’re drive-through bus stops, in the same way as you do with conventional stops. When placing drive-through stops, you can often find two parallel roads with only one tile between them. You then only need to destroy one building, place your stop and connect it to the roads on either side.

[Born Acorn]

I agree. You can always build a side road for bustops on competitors roads.

Still however, there are a lot of people who build expansion grids to towns, what happens with them late game?

[R2]

I agree. You can always build a side road for bustops on competitors roads.
Still however, there are a lot of people who build expansion grids to towns, what happens with them late game?

Good point. I too use to build such grids all the time. I think you then have to destroy houses as said above, which I don't like to do. I always try to leave them houses alone, it is bad enough that the local authorities go mad when you modify the landscape...

[mart3p]

I don’t mind destroying houses if it allows you to build a new bus stop or station, to serve all the surrounding buildings.

There are a couple of screenshots here of my upgrade from an international to an intercontinental airport, in the middle of a busy town. Sure, the local authority hated me, but it didn’t take long to recover my rating once the intercontinental airport was built. Destroying one house to place a bus stop is nothing in comparison.

[mart3p]

I've posted an update to the Drive-Through Road Stops patch in the first post. The new version fixes a couple of minor bugs:
1. Compile warnings occurring with some compilers. Thanks richk67 for reporting this.
2. Incorrectly building connecting road on one side of a drive-through stop. Thanks to ddream for bug report.

[NoMercy]

Great addition! I just have one question (might have missed it in the topic + haven't tested it yet). I wonder, what is the disadvantage to normal stations?
These stations take up less space than normal stations, so why bother building normal stations?

[mart3p]

Great addition!

Thanks

I just have one question (might have missed it in the topic + haven't tested it yet). I wonder, what is the disadvantage to normal stations?
These stations take up less space than normal stations, so why bother building normal stations?

Normal road stops are still useful when road vehicles are set to full-load. If a vehicle using a drive-through stop is set to full-load it will wait in the stop while loading, which blocks the road for other vehicles.

[Darkvater]

How about graphics like this: http://www.tt-forums.net/viewtopic.php?p=186337#186337

[Born Acorn]

Only problems I can see with it is that it probably won't stick out as much in the cities, and to use the bays, it would need to have a new movement for busses.

[mart3p]

Darkvater: Thanks for pointing out that thread, I hadn't seen it. Interesting idea, but I agree with Born Acorn.

Adding new movement code, so the vehicle to pulls off the road, seems unnecessary when the existing (TTDPatch style) behaviour seems to work ok.

[fabca2]

I'm just back from my hollidays, I didn't read all message on this topic yet, so sorry if it's already said :

I find this feature extremly nice !
that's excatly what I would like to see for TRAM
... and only for tram : this can give interrest (I read someone who said "tram give nothing more than busses"). I wanted to reply by saying : more capacity, faster, cost more money for maintenance, tracks outside of road, and "Drive-Through Road" - but I could not find the right word for that )
I'm very happy...
very good patch ![/b]

[Korenn]

Darkvater: Thanks for pointing out that thread, I hadn't seen it. Interesting idea, but I agree with Born Acorn.

Adding new movement code, so the vehicle to pulls off the road, seems unnecessary when the existing (TTDPatch style) behaviour seems to work ok.

whoo someone dug my old thread The reason you haven't seen it is because it's 2 years old

The one advantage that these stops offer over ttdpatch style stops is that they do not restrict traffic. If a bus is stopped, other busses can pass. It also means chaining the bus stops makes sense.

plus it looks cool

[mart3p]

I find this feature extremly nice !
that's excatly what I would like to see for TRAM

Have you seen this thread?

I'm very happy... very good patch !

Thanks

[NCarlson]

As far as expansion grids, why doesn't someone implement the option to have roads that arn't used by their owner revert to town ownership, it's been in the patch for quite some time and I for one like it.

[Born Acorn]

Simkid makes an excellent suggestion. I like that idea. It means players can no longer "own" town road networks.

[MeusH]

But this can also deny service to other companies. Building expansion "grids" in cities to force faster growth will prevent people building bus stops later on, and they will have to demolish the city to build a terminal bus stop. Is it possible to keep the owner of the road the same while making the bus stop your own?

I'm not really sure about making it possible, but level crossings (railway crossing road) have two owners.

Since it wouldn't be possible to put railway tile on a road vehicle stop, there is a free space to fill with second owner. Unless this space is used for something else...

[mart3p]

Darkvater has fixed a number of bugs in the trunk that I found when testing the drive-through road stops patch. Thanks Darkvater.

I have posted a new patch against r5910 in the first post.

As far as expansion grids, why doesn't someone implement the option to have roads that arn't used by their owner revert to town ownership, it's been in the patch for quite some time and I for one like it.

I agree, having TTDPatch style Abandoned Roads would be good, maybe another one to add to my list of possible future patches.

I'm not really sure about making it possible, but level crossings (railway crossing road) have two owners.

Since it wouldn't be possible to put railway tile on a road vehicle stop, there is a free space to fill with second owner. Unless this space is used for something else...

The problem here is a station (or road stop) uses all the available attributes in the map array. It may be possible to use some attributes for road stops that are only applicable to rail stations (e.g. m3 - track type), but to do this the code would get very messy. For now I'm trying to keep the patch as simple as possible in the hope that it might be considered for the trunk.

[DaleStan]

Patch's abandoned roads uses L6; it was my understanding that no changes to the map array are going to go in until the map-rewrite is complete.

Patch has 10 apparently unused bits in L1..L5, but I don't know if this is also true in Open.

[Darkvater]

The problem here is a station (or road stop) uses all the available attributes in the map array. It may be possible to use some attributes for road stops that are only applicable to rail stations (e.g. m3 - track type), but to do this the code would get very messy. For now I'm trying to keep the patch as simple as possible in the hope that it might be considered for the trunk.

Yes, m3 0-3 is free and can be used for road-stations. Code wouldn't really get messier as this bitjuggling is happening all over the place.