importing roads

[subroc 4]

i sat and played with one of my many unfinished maps and discovered that the export net button in the road tool was pretty handy and this gave me some ideas.

I found that it is possible to export a roadnet from one map and import it to another map, you just have to set up the same typ of road as in the original map.

The exported roadnet is plain text:

<table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tr><td>Code Sample </td></tr><tr><td id="CODE">

- //marks the beginning of the road

( ca\roads\sil10 50 //right turn of type sil10 50

| ca\roads\sil12 //straight road sil12

) ca\roads\sil10 25 //left turn sil10 25

- //end the road

Now to my idea. would´nt it be possible to make a program where you could import you satmap as an background image, choose what type of road to lay, draw the road over the background (with splines for example) then export the splines and let the program konvert it to a plain txt file that could be imported in visitor.

wouldnt this be very neat? so i hope someone with a little more knowledge in programming could take up this idea.

[opteryx 1562]

I know the VBS terrain devs have such a similar program, sadly we don't.

Such an application would kill an enormous amount of time laying roads. However the road tool as far as I know is hardcoded, so you can't use the import feature because the angle and snap point isn't affected by anything in the p3d. Therefore the application would have to create a bunch of custom shaped road tiles, this can be counter productive in terms of load time, performance etc.

erm.... that's at least my understanding of it.

[subroc 4]

well as i understand the road is imported and snapped to the "key part of road" that is selected when you choose to import a net.

what i can under stand from the exported file is that a T crossroad would look like

<table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tr><td>Code Sample </td></tr><tr><td id="CODE">

| ca\roads\sil6

..etc

- //end of part A

| ca\roads\sil25

..etc

- //end of part B

| ca\roads\sil6

..etc

- // end of part C

my thought was that it would be possible to select a "key part" in the program, build the road with splines from that and export the roadnet than jump in to Visitor and insert a similar "key part" (T cross or whaterver used) and import the file.

so maybe it would not be possible to make a completly finished roadnet in "The program" all ready to import. but it would make it a whole lot easier to place long roads.