Would there be much of a performance hit, routing issues, or corruption if a freely placed sidewalk overlaps the sidewalk of a road like this:



I've tested it in game and sims don't seem to have an issue with it. But then again, I'm only one person who's tested this in a very controlled environment over a stupidly short (for testing) span of time, so my data is no good. Has anyone played for any decant length of time in worlds where this was done and, if so, were there any issues that arose because of this? Is doing something like this in a very small part of the world still a terrible idea?

In CAW the routing lines look good I guess... but, to be honest, I don't know what bad would even look like. Here's a screen cap of that if that helps anyone more knowledgeable:



So, is this workable (aside from the lack of intersection caps) or something that should be avoided?

I don't think anything would happen, as the routing for the sidewalk is already there in the invisible sidewalk. The only issue is, that I can see, is if you specifically told the sim to go to that sidewalk, it might be confused as to which sidewalk. But then, I would think that it would decide on it's own and go there! I could see some weird behavior at the ends, though. Say, you end that overlay sidewalk and let it just continue as a normal one, you may have the sim walk oddly toward or away from the road, then back to the sidewalk on that transition.
By the way, why do you do this? If you want to put a sidewalk on the side of the road, why not just make it on the road itself? Any time I use opacity on the sidewalk is if I either don't want any sidewalk (rural roads) or if I want to have a grass/dirt strip for trees and poles between the road and sidewalk, at which point the sidewalk is simply placed parallel to the road, next to the invisible sidewalk (not over it).
Sorry for not being of more help.

I would never do it as I know roads on roads supposedly can create major issues and lots on roads, but others can advise more. As said above, why do the overlap when you can just use a visible sidewalk with the road you are using?

hhmmmmmm, can think of different uses after doing this (side without sidewalk with clif or canal) or as mentioned for a double road with green strip in between... But I know of issues when using to much roads (once made a square out of sidewalk and the sims walked over it like a labyrinth, funny but impractical

maybe you can fix that by using impassable terrain paint BUT you have to be very precise when applying it: to much and your road won't work either

I haven't noticed any odd pathing behaviour yet... but that don't mean much. I think how the ped pathing on a road works is the sims just walk at x offset to the blue spline which made me wonder what would happen if a sim walking along the road-side encountered a sim walking along the overlaying sidewalk. In all the situations I've engineered for that to happen, there's been no weird results, lag, or increased cpu usage. But, like i said, I'm just one person testing this now and again so I don't know how valid my findings are.

As for why I'm looking into this? The short and easy answer: because i wanted a road with a sidewalk abutting it on one side but not the other The longer, less snarky answer: I'm making several boulevards with a neutral ground and those are usually laid out sidewalk -> road -> neutral ground -> road -> sidewalk like in this screen-cap:



If I end up doing this in my actual world, no matter my findings, it will be done very sparingly which might be why I'm not getting any weird labyrinth like pathing. For the most part, I can get away with faking sidewalks with terrain paint under the invisible sidewalk. I just can't do that on curves or in chunks where the road has more than 2 angels -- that pushes the texture layers a bit too far.

Either way, thanks for the input so far! If anyone else experiments with this and has different findings then what I have, please post your findings. It would be very helpful!

Maybe you could make a road with sidewalk which looks like no sidewalk and then add a sidewalk to whichever side you want a visible sidewalk? Invisible sidewalks don't work well with crossings anyway.

That there is a good idea! Which explains why I didn't have it... I'll have to see how that looks, but but definitely something to really chew on. Thanks!

EDIT: I tried it out and, you know what? I think i like it, a lot! I definitely feel a LOT better about it then I did overlaying a sidewalk onto the sidewalk part of the street. The blvds and aves I'm modelling these roads after all have bike lanes and on-street parking which that extra bit of street models nicely. Crosswalks are a bit of a problem since they look like they begin and end in the road now, but I'll figure something out.

Again, thank you!

Sounds good! I think much safer than overlaps. I look forward to seeing more.