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Wonka

Zig-zagging catseyes

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Ok, so the current system of protecting a 3-wide highway by zig-zagging the catseyes is apparently out.  I thought that suggestion came from a dev originally?  Ok, so how do you protect a 3-wide highway?  As I understand this, catseyes protect a 2x2 square (i.e. the 4 adjacent tiles), and they can link to (at most) 2 other catseyes.  So you can't run a double line of them (1 tile apart), unless you don't mind there effectively being 2 separate, parallel routes.

 

So are we now standardising on (max) 2-tile wide highways?  Or is there another way of doing this?

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They protect a 3x3, centered around the tile that owns the NW corner the catseye is planted on

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so we have to live with catseyes looking especially horrid on 3 wide highways, cause you can't center them on 3 wide? :huh:

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Ah, so as long as you keep the line of catseyes on the North or Western-most side of the 3-wide, it's all protected?  Can the links run over 2 tiles as well, or do you still need to plant the catseyes at 1-tile intervals?

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They protect a 3x3 but it can miss a a row of highway if you do it on the wrong side, as its sorta offset.

 

My apologies for suggesting the zig zag pattern, I came up with the idea on test server long before the wagoner, if there was only some way I could of tested wagoners on the test server before the problem would of came up earlier than now. ;)

 

Zig zag does look great but it is hell on the wagon driver, making them look drunker than usual.

 

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Many of the Zig Zagging done on Deli were done by those who heard that you had to zig zag for 3 tiles wide.  When it did come out for us to use live, those players still were under the impression of zig zagging.  The Road workers union on Deli have done a good job of getting roads made in areas where originally the owners didn't want a zig zag pattern by their deed.  Right now, if some one has their deed right at the edge of the road you have to pull away from it and offset the path, so not all the time can you be straight.  I had thought about zig zagging in those areas out of protest but then it just looked bad.  Well it looked bad already when you were doing your best to follow the center of the road and could not because of some one who put there deed up to the edge of the road.

 

In short, many people who heard about the implementations during beta of the cats eye never read the memo of the changes when it went live.

 

 

As for a three tile wide area, you still want to go down the center of the road, but the little squar in the north west area of that larger square will get the catseye.  To see what areas they protect you can right click on the catseye and show protection.  A green box will highlight the area it is protecting.  And it appears to be smart enough to know if it is on a 2 wide highway and only protect those two squares instead of 3.

Edited by Theonis

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How about being able to plant cat's eyes on a straight 3 lane highway in the centre of a tile?(Similar to how we can plant objects and decorations in the tile centre) That would resolve this stupid issue of having it look like the road is offset. I CANNOT stand having cat's eyes down one side of a 3 lane highway it drives my ocd INSANE!

 

Frankly after building a highway or two myself I'm not gonna make it look like junk so the odd person can use a wagoner faster. Seems like the issue is with design not with the folks who did the work to both make the highway and the cat's eyes and also lay them down.

 

How about fixing that before forcing us to lay them in a specific manner?

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Is the issue with just the wagoner going slow in a zig zag path or is it creating a problem with the server itself?

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8 hours ago, Wonka said:

Ah, so as long as you keep the line of catseyes on the North or Western-most side of the 3-wide, it's all protected?  Can the links run over 2 tiles as well, or do you still need to plant the catseyes at 1-tile intervals?

 

The nw corner of the middle tiles. It always protects all paving in a 3x3 area around the tile the catseye is on the nw corner of.

Edited by Nadroj

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3 hours ago, JakeRivers said:

Is the issue with just the wagoner going slow in a zig zag path or is it creating a problem with the server itself?

The major issue is the zigzagging slows down wagoners by a massive factor, as they turn slower to avoid getting stuck. We had several reports of wagoners taking an unusually long time to deliver a package, which we then investigated only to find massive parts of the highway were zigzagged and wagoners spent a huge amount of time navigating them. 

 

This also introduces numerous more chances of getting stuck while turning, and 

 

7 hours ago, Theonis said:

In short, many people who heard about the implementations during beta of the cats eye never read the memo of the changes when it went live.

Zigzagging was never intended and the implementations were there from the start, it was always protecting a 3x3 area from testing onward, people who believed a zigzag pattern was necessary were mistaken. 

 

3 hours ago, Fraeya said:

How about being able to plant cat's eyes on a straight 3 lane highway in the centre of a tile?(Similar to how we can plant objects and decorations in the tile centre) That would resolve this stupid issue of having it look like the road is offset. I CANNOT stand having cat's eyes down one side of a 3 lane highway it drives my ocd INSANE!

Due to the nature of each tile coordinate belonging to the NW corner it's not possible to shift them as it would affect 2 tile wide roads too (you'd then have a 2 tile wide highway with the catseyes running down the center of one side) with that said, using a 2 tile wide highway would solve this issue for any OCD you feel.

 

The system was built around 2 tile wide highways, but for those who have used three tile wide ones, there has to be some flexibility to cover it. if you are building a highway in the future, I'd advise doing a 2 tile wide one if you want the catseyes to run symmetrically 

 

 

It's totally understandable that many of you built highways with zigzagged catseyes prior to knowing about the wagoner, which is why we're happy to help you all correct any instances of these. Just log a support ticket for a GM to come and look over it, and we can work out any potential issues from there

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3 hours ago, Retrograde said:

The system was built around 2 tile wide highways, but for those who have used three tile wide ones, there has to be some flexibility to cover it. if you are building a highway in the future, I'd advise doing a 2 tile wide one if you want the catseyes to run symmetrically 

@RetrogradeThe problem with this statement Retro, was that prior to the very recent arch sections allowing a 2 tile wide doorway, 3 tile wide highways were the only option for anyone wishing to connect though a building without half the road running into a flat wall. Ergo more than half of the highways (number pulled out of my head) in existence are already 3 wide and the buildings that connect to them are designed so. It seems poor design planning that this new system only really incorporates 2 lane roads with 3 lanes looking terrible. On most of the old servers even there is no hope for newer highways to follow the 2 tile design (if not already) as most if not all of the infrastructure is already in place. Unless of course someone decides to go back and literally remove a tile from the edge of all the highways. 

 

I'm not asking that the tile coordinate be re-located to the centre of the tile but merely that we get an option to plant a cat's eye in the centre of one and that the highway system can recognise this and link it as normal. It's really the only option I can see where both 2 lane and 3 lane highways can co-exist equally and look equally good. If you have a 2 lane highway plant on the tile corners as usual, if you have a 3 lane plant in the centre of the centre tile. That would also match up with cat's eye placement for 3 lane diagonal roads also, both if you planted in the corner for diagonals or centrally to avoid the close placement on corners.

Edited by Fraeya
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BTW Fraeya the highway runs past your Exodus deed now. ;)

 

Wolfkita layed them a few days before I was going to do it, made my task much easier. 8)

 

 

 

Edited by JakeRivers

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5 minutes ago, JakeRivers said:

BTW Fraeya the highway runs past your Exodus deed now. ;)

 

Wolfkita layed them a few days before I was going to do it, made my task much easier. 8)

 

 

 

Hope that oak tree is still there, I planted that almost 5 years ago :)

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I was lucky that Tich called me silly when I had just started the diagonal catseyeing...

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Perhaps give us a "fake" green catseye to plant alongside a straight line of real ones? :P

 

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5 hours ago, Shmeric said:

Perhaps give us a "fake" green catseye to plant alongside a straight line of real ones? :P

 

Though that might also potentially work it would also lead to us making twice the amount of cat's eyes, which if you consider all of the time required to make and lay these in the first place, it's not fun.

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I've actually had a ton of cat's eyes made at home and since I first actually laid some down I haven't even touched the highway. Unless we can get some kinda workaround for it I doubt I will.

 

If I lay them now and it gets changed I'm not gonna re-make and re-lay them all again so I wanna make sure it's right before it gets done the first time.

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Well hook up your exo deed!

 

Yeah Wolkita actually added a few tiles to go around that oak, its a land mark for me too.

 

 

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When I first seen tich's offset cats 3 wides on the test server it really set off my ocd so I experimented and the zig zag seemed to be a good solution.

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The wagoner's movement looks silly enough following a straight line, it looks utterly ridiculous zigzagging.

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@Retrograde

Do you know if it's at all on the dev-team's table to look into this situation or is it something that we, the players, should not look forward to and just roll with what we have? :)

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On 12/11/2017 at 11:42 PM, Fraeya said:

Hope that oak tree is still there, I planted that almost 5 years ago :)

I have always used that Oak as a way point when I go up that way.

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On 11/12/2017 at 2:23 PM, Wonka said:

 Or is there another way of doing this?

 

I've cats eyed two 3-way roads with double cats eyes running down the center.
they don't zigzag, on one of the highways (trinsic to north mystic lake) they are two independant routes running alongside each other, the downside of this is that they use two of the ending waystone's links. 
I'd take a picture but im on a different server at the mo.

On the 3-way (ha! freeway) that runs from Fabled Halls to Trinsic, i couldn't do this, i think the code was tweaked since i did the first one.
so instead, one of the center link-routes goes to Fabled Halls from above my Waystone, the other leads away from Fabled Halls (alongside it), to, my waystone. 

This results in one track leading from my waystone to north mystic lake and the other parallel track, joins it when the second north mystic lake route heads toward Fabled Halls.
it stays as a double cats eye route because of the route from, Fabled Halls.
Thus, the entire network is 3 wide with 2 columns of cats eyes on every part of it.

This explanation really needs screenshots. I'll see if i can add them next time i sail back. 

edit - i have since been told that i could have adapted the first technique by making the double route one at a time tho I'm fairly certain i made them both at the same time, alongside each other,  when highways were first released. (maybe)
Course if you do that now they form zig-zag links or chase their own tail.
anyway, it's a pleasure to confuse, as always. 

Point being, there is a way.. you'll just end up consuming 2 waystone links.

Edited by Steveleeb
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43 minutes ago, Steveleeb said:

Point being, there is a way.. you'll just end up consuming 2 waystone links.

Well yea, that seems to be the least silly option right now, to run two lines parallel. Just thought to give this topic a nudge to see if we should do that or hope for some proper solution :)

 

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Roll with what we have I'd say. It'd be such a massive pain in the ass to add a junction to a 3 wide that had 2 lanes on it for aesthetic reasons. It's already a massive pain to knock out catseyes to adjust a zig zag to allow for a junction.

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