Posts by Florian

Hi,

Quote from milosh-96

I'm sorry for a long post but I wanted to explain my workflow so you can correct me if I'm doing something wrong

that's no problem. This is why we are here.

First of all, there is a difference between the absolute height and the relative height. Subgrades, ai paths, reference lines, railtracks and some more using the absolute height. If you are working on a real map, you can probably can get the correct height from Google Earth or other programs. The height of the DEM terrain is not that precise, so I can't recommend using only the height of the DEM.

Quote from milosh-96

Now, should this subgrade be in width of road (+/- some meters) or should I shape the terrain of that area?

Area.

Quote from milosh-96

In that regard, I understand that OMSI-like terrain editing isn't yet implemented so should I just wait for that option or I should play around with subgrades?

Just play around with subgrades. When you get into it, it's a very nice feature in my opinion.

Quote from milosh-96

When that is done, then I can start placing splines there. So I use curbstones and set them to -0.15 and that will modify terrain further for road. Now, for asphalt I can use either lane splines or polygons and they need to be on -0.15 too.

This is correct, but I can't recommend the use of lane spline for asphalt. Mostly the polygons fit better in there.

Quote from milosh-96

So my question is do AI paths follow terrain or polygons/splines?

Everything is following the terrain, polygons and splines too, if you're using the relative height. This button right here toggles the height. When pressed you will use the relative height. Sometimes, e.g. when using subgrades, it is important to use the absolute height.

Greets

Hi,

Quote from Dan0731

Thank you very much for the answer, but I think it's a shame that objects and splines are locked because I like to build maps myself and there are a lot of nice objects and splines in the dlc.

of course we are aware of this problem. The main reason to lock our objects is, that freeware maps should not have payware dependencies. It would be a shame, that you have to pay up to 140 € to be able to play your favorite freeware map.

Greets

Hi,

this behaviour is likely when the cutting mesh is pointing towards the ground. Please check if the normals of the cutting mesh is pointing upwards.

Greets

P.S. It looks like your spline is only two meters long. Please make it a little bit longer, e.g. 8-10 meters.

Hi,

at first the ContentTool can only handle .bmp or.dds textures. You also have to assign these textures to your meshes in Blender. Currently you have got the .png texture assigned which leads to this error.

I‘m also a bit confused, why you name your images like „bugs“, since there aren‘t any bugs yet.

Greets

Hi, da lag ein Problem vor. Du solltest das Spiel jetzt kaufen können.

Greets

Hi,

use the refresh to recalculate the rails again. If there are many tracks on a tile, this may take a while. This should solve both problems.

Greets

Maybe timetables are also necessary in singleplayer mode?

Quote from tatratram

There are so many helper points at that corner that I'm not sure which one it is snapped to.

Did you use the CTRL key while adjusting polygons? Normally you don't use that key when placing polygons.

Hi,

Quote from matematysek

I have noticed some weird stuff.

Actually this isn't weird. In real life it is prohibited to change the direction of a switch underneath the vehicle. Also it is prohibited to change the driving direction while standing on a switch. At the moment every switch in LOTUS has a spring to revert the direction to the original one. Keep that in mind while driving to avoid accidents.

Greets

Quote from tatratram

This is what the sidewalk looks like

Wild guess: Did you snap the asphalt polygon to the white helper of the curbstone spline?

Hi, the Editor won't save your map, if the tiles are still loading to prevent issues on your map. This is also written in the lower part of the GUI in red. When you change the tile visibility in the environment tab, you can save your map earlier.

Greets

Quote from thor2950

It makes it WORSE??? The exact opposite of what you wrote?

You obviously placed the polygon at the same height as the street and this is the main error. So the subgrade sets the absolute height and the polygon affects the height as well. You have to keep an eye on the relative height too.

Greets

Quote from thor2950

But, and this is really my main confusion: Shouldn't the terrain between the rails be perfectly flat, parallel to the rails due to the absolute height of these? Why is it then creating such a spike??

No, the terrain has its height also between the rails. As usual you place spline or polygons over the rail area which flattens the terrain to the correct height. You can check the terrain in the environment tab on the left. There you have got the wireframe checkbox, which you can activate to see the terrain in wireframe mode. So if there is a vertex of terrain between the rails, the terrain has bumps between two rails. Otherwise the terrain is flat.

Greets

I spotted one difference to my tutorial so far. You use a .dds texture insted of .bmp texture. I recommend to create a new texture in plain white like 512x64 pixels big, which should be replaced. You may also have to adjust the height angle to get a better looking text.

Greets

Hi,

I will show the solution first and then we try to replicate it to your example:

This screen shows, that the lamp I've selected has its own pivot point, as every other object in this blender file has. But the pivot point is not at the center of this scene. So I guess you have to center the lamp in edit mode and then switch to object mode for moving the whole object with its pivot point. In the Content Tool you have to click on yes, when this message shows up:

Quote from thor2950

the object to be centered on the object center

This shouldn't screw the scale dimension. Did you change the scale settings of the object in object mode? If yes, you have to change the values back to (1;1;1) and scale the object in edit mode.

Greets

Quote from jor[D]1

short spines are a must for good performance. Also the lexicon makes me understand a short is better.

Short splines still does not affect the performance ingame. In theory they produce more polygons in the final mesh, so they decrease the performance ingame by 0.00001 FPS or something like that. I still don't know, where you got the connection between my statement and the performance? If there are some tutorials or lexicon articles, which may be misunderstandable, we will edit them.

The conclusion is: Using short splines will affect the stability of the Map Editor in a positive way. The integrity of a short spline is higher than the integrity of a long spline. If you use long splines and big polygons, you will likely get more errors in the terrain or they lead to a miscalculation of some properties as it was in the thread you got my text from. So there are benefits when using short splines and that why we always mention it. But there is no connection between short splines and the performance.

Greets

Quote from Holms96

I am making short splines in order to have good FPS in LOTUS.

Where did you get this hoax from? And which length do you use?

Quote from Bzmot332

One platform is an object, another one is a spline. Should I make an invisible polygon there so the game doesn't compensate the height to the ground, or is there any other setting I can use for that?

At the moment the passengers are always "attached" to the ground, but in the future it should be possible to set a specific height to the waiting passengers. The most common way would be, if the platform cuts the terrain. As far as I learned this will cause many errors in the terrain, so the most platforms are standard splines (or even objects). For now the method sziriusz12 mentioned should be fine, until the LOTUS passengers will stand on the exact height by themselves.

Greets

Hi,

Quote from Bzmot332

Is it some new checking stuff, also should I worry about it?

At first, you don't have to worry about that and this is not new.

There is already a faulty element in your map, so this message will always be displayed, when the tile is loaded. If you click on ok, the Map Editor will delete the faulty element. The faulty element is either a spline, a subgrade, a railtrack or a path. Afterwards you have to find out, which element was deleted, but do not put down the exact same element again. It is useful to split the new element into smaller length, which may help the Map Editor not getting a struggle on it again.

So basically the Map Editor prevents the map from being messed up by a faulty element.

Greets

Quote from Frank III

[MEDIA:https://youtu.be/wSYgnH07xe4]

Sorry, I completely missed this video, which has some interesting points in it.

First of all I want to point out, that investing into PC hardware is not the glory to solve all problems. It is more likely to fix some problems to get other problems somewhere else. So the second part of the puzzle are the options and I guess to optimize the graphics options has more impact on the performance than any Euro you spent.

Also this doesn't take LOTUS and its optimization out of the equation. But vice versa nobody with an average PC should play LOTUS with bunch of heavy stutters. You may have to reduce your graphics settings for a time. And last but not least there is no need to play on the maximum graphics settings. Beside that the presets are only presets and have to be adjusted for the best performance on your special system.

So let's jump into the video:

I partially skipped through the video while you were driving, but I've seen a quite stable FPS around 30 (which is quite ok regarding your settings), but there are tons of stutters when reloading. If you have a second monitor, you can put the Task manager on your second screen to watch the usage of your hard drive, LOTUS is installed on. If I'm right, there should be spikes in the diagram when a stutter occurs. To minimize them, let's go through your settings:

These 3 settings are a bit over the top. As we currently got mostly tram routes, a max visibility of 1000 m for buildings is enough imo, 500 m should be enough for trees. The settings for 3D trees can be set to the second lowest setting on the left.

The first slider defines, when the max resolution of the scenery is loaded and for now this setting gives me headaches some times. I would recommend to put this setting more to the left, to decrease the stutter. The terrain detail slider can be set always to the left on "low", because it is not needed yet, because the maps are mostly flat.

I hope this reduces the stuttering without having much impact on your graphics.

Greets