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View Full Version : Tutorial: creating the perfect highway exit in CAW.


Elmigo
13th Feb 2012, 02:16 PM
Hello guys,

I've created an awesome highway exit and I'd love to share it with you. So there's this
nice highway exit right here:
http://i39.tinypic.com/wgxnd1.png
...and we would like to have a closer look at how it's built.

First of all, some of the stuff is from an expansion pack, I don't know which one, but I'm
pretty sure you can replace it by a base game or other expansion pack item.

Alright, let's get started. The first thing we do is creating a new road with the same
texture for the street, sidewalk and corner so it'll look close to this:
http://i43.tinypic.com/m9bvus.png
Also make sure you use the right transparency map for the sidewalk. It's called
dirt_street_opacity.dds and it should be available as a default map into your CAW
textures folder. I've chosen to add custom made stripes for the road and a custom made
sidewalk which actually shows no sidewalk. I think that's more realistic because this is a
highway.

Good, now we've created a new road, we can start creating a highway. This requires a little more attention, because one mistake can mess the whole thing up. It's VERY IMPORTANT you put the pieces of road in the right order.


1) First, create four curved pieces of road as in the image below.
2) Then create two straight pieces of road fitting the length of two curved pieces.
3) Now create two intersections and six shorter straight pieces of road.

(see the image below and check if you have all the pieces + make sure you have them in the right direction)
http://i42.tinypic.com/fyefiq.png

Alright, now connect all the pieces of road as in the image below! Make sure you connect them in the right direction, else cars won't be able to leave or enter the highway.
http://i42.tinypic.com/2ep2eqs.png

Now you should have something that looks like this:
http://i41.tinypic.com/orpi7c.png

Looks pretty cool already, but now we're going to finish it! Just drag the two long straight pieces of road all over the curved pieces.

Now we've got some ugly intersection pieces that look totally unreal! Just paint the ugly pieces away with the same texture as the road and sidewalk:
http://i44.tinypic.com/r0cv84.png

To finish the highway exit, I've found some cool objects (in the image below). Now all you have to do is put them on the right places and it'll look really cool!
http://i43.tinypic.com/2w4yxrt.png

THE RESULT
http://i41.tinypic.com/11jt768.png
http://i44.tinypic.com/10qjg4g.png

I hope I helped you guys!

~Elmigo

simsample
13th Feb 2012, 02:29 PM
Excellent, what a great idea! I've moved it to tutorials. :)

Could you post a picture showing the routing? Can sims and cars travel along the roads as normal?

Elmigo
13th Feb 2012, 06:45 PM
Excellent, what a great idea! I've moved it to tutorials. :)

Could you post a picture showing the routing? Can sims and cars travel along the roads as normal?
Hey,

Thanks. Good to hear that. Well actually I don't think the cars travel like they should on a highway. Sims and cars will treat it like it's two normal roads next to each other. The routing doesn't change to highway needs, sorry for that. This is how the cars actually treat the road:
http://i39.tinypic.com/2m43jbp.png

So, this nice highway exit is more like eyecandy.

simsample
15th Feb 2012, 08:46 PM
That picture is useful, but what I was actually thinking of was the CAW routing data, as I just wanted to see if there were any visible routing problems there.

I know that someone on the CFF had a highway that ended with the roads merging into a single lane, and whilst it looked excellent I got a momentary lag each time a sim or car attempted to route there in testing. So have you tested in game, and do you notice any problems?

Elmigo
18th Feb 2012, 03:20 PM
That picture is useful, but what I was actually thinking of was the CAW routing data, as I just wanted to see if there were any visible routing problems there.

I know that someone on the CFF had a highway that ended with the roads merging into a single lane, and whilst it looked excellent I got a momentary lag each time a sim or car attempted to route there in testing. So have you tested in game, and do you notice any problems?

Hello,

I didn't get to test it for a while, but now I finally did it, and I found nothing. Only thing is, the cars drive as on the image in my previous post. If you have any problems, I'd like to hear them. I found nothing so far.

simsample
18th Feb 2012, 10:19 PM
Thats good then, I will definitely test this out. Thanks for the info! :)