[EPIC] UI: Routing Tool

This tool visually combines the features of the Lane Arrows and Lane Connectors tools.

Lane Arrows

Current implementation is floating panels with buttons for each direction. I find this a bit confusing to use, and clunky to work with. Maybe using arrow glyphs (rather than characters) on the buttons would be better, where only one button (and thus glyph) can be active at a time?

Also, it would be nice if we could add a few new arrows?

• Deflect = Driver should start moving in to adjacent lane
  • Used when a lane is closing (eg. road narrows) or some obstruction ahead (eg. roadworks)
• Merge = Driver must merge in to adjacent lane
  • Used when a lane cannot continue ‘straight ahead’
• Diverge = Driver may diverge in to adjacent lane
  • Used when additional lanes become available, or when there’s a slip road, etc.

Issue: Most roads don’t have deflect, merge or diverge arrows. Some roads do, but only via supplemental lane marking asset packs. We’d need some way for user to choose which decals to use to represent the new arrows, possibly via integration with Find It! mod.

Two other things:

• H: Hide = Arrow takes effect, but does not appear on the road
  • There must be way to do this, as on normal nodes where two segments of same type connect there are no arrows
  • Would fix: https://github.com/VictorPhilipp/Cities-Skylines-Traffic-Manager-President-Edition/issues/169
• X: Reset = Reset an arrow to game default
  • Removes any customisations; an arrow might still appear depending on what the game default is

The full list of arrows:

• L: Left
• LF: Left-Forward
• F: Forward
• LFR: Left-Forward-Right
• LR: Left-Right
• FR: Forward-Right
• R: Right
• DL: Deflect Left (new)
• DR: Deflect Right (new)
• ML: Merge Left (new)
• MR: Merge right (new)
• IL: Diverge left (new)
• IR: Diverge right (new)

They could be arranged in a grid, something like:

IL LF F FR IR
ML L LFR R MR
H  DL LR DR  X

With the exception of H (hide) and X (reset), all the arrows equate to lane connections. Depending on what’s attached to the nearby node, some arrows would be unavailable. For example, at road junction, the diverge, deflect and merge arrows would not be applicable. Diverge and merge are only available when a road widens or narrows, respectively. Deflect only applicable on normal nodes where both segments are same number of lanes. Left turn only applicable if there is a left turn, and so on…

As inferred from the above, it’s not just at junctions where the lane arrow tool is applicable; it’s also useful at nodes where different types, or even same type, of road meet.

When hovering over an arrow button in the panel, the following happens:

• Source lane is highlighted (see #33)
• Lane connectors are shown to clearly indicate what lanes it connects to
• Destination lanes are highlighted too

This way the user has zero doubt as to what effect the arrow will have if they choose it.

If any of that sounds feasible, let me know and I’ll do a quick graphic mockup of the grid layout.

[originalfoo]

UI Mockup

Please excuse the shit diagram 😉

Quite a lot of changes here, as you can see.

Less right-clicking

Now that we differentiate between incoming (square) and outgoing (triangle) nodes, there’s no need to hide incoming nodes when routing a specific node.

Right click can still be used to deselect the current source node, however users can now simply click a different source node to route from that instead.

Squares:

• These are source nodes
• Colours:
  • White square = using standard lane arrow (see later) setting
  • Coloured square = custom lane connections
• Outline width:
  • Thick = the segment you are currently altering (in this case, user is altering the lower road)
  • Thin = all other segments
• Filled square indicates which source lane is currently selected
• Right-click a square (or eraser tool it) to reset its lane arrow and connections to default

Triangles:

Note: To further distinguish between squares and triangles, the squares could be flush with the end of the road segment (like bottom and right in the image above) and triangles could be offset from the road edge (like right segment in image above).

• These are destination nodes
• They appear when a source lane is selected (filled square)
  • Only valid outgoing lanes (for selected incoming lane) are shown
  • For example, you can’t route a road lane to a bike lane
• Colours:
  • Yellow = same segment as source (eg. if you want u-turn, connect square to yellow triangle)
    • These could potentially have thinner width?
  • White = other segments
• Fill:
  • Filled = there’s a route to it from the current source segment
  • Empty = there’s no route from the current segment
  • This makes it really obvious if I’ve missed a connection
• If no incoming lane is selected, the triangles disappear. However, if there are any outgoing lanes that have no connections at all (from any source) their triangles could show (when there’s no active source lane selection). This would alert me that one of my lanes is inaccessible at the junction/node.

As I add custom lane routes, the source lane arrows are updated accordingly to best match the connections.

Lane arrows

I need to spend some time pondering the interaction model of this, but initial ideas jotted below…

When a source (filled square) is selected, the lane arrows palette appears, filtered to valid arrows for that source lane.

• Hover over a lane arrow (in palette) to see what change will be (this takes account of any key modifiers pressed)
• Click: Clear existing connections from that source and apply those associated with the lane arrow
• Shift+Click: Add lane arrow connections to existing connections
• Alt+Click: Subtract lane arrow connections from existing connections

In any case where current connections for a lane match a standard lane arrow, the connection lines go thin white to indicate a standard set of connections. This is on a lane by lane basis. It makes it easy to see which lanes are using normal road/highway rules (those with thin white line connectors) and which are using customised rules (thick coloured lines).

[kianzarrin]

No the middle lane of the round about should go to the outer lane of the roundabout. I think there should be a yellow circle in the middle lane of the roundabout. as for the connecting road, there should be a blue circle on the outermost lane but that might be hard to calculate.