Railway Addon Mod

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Revision as of 12:36, 29 November 2008 by sc4e>Dedgren (Fixed typos, flow and made minor additions)
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Single Track Rail, a key component of the RAM

The Railway Addon Mod, commonly abbreviated RAM, is a transport-related modification that is being developed as a plugin to the Network Addon Mod (NAM). The RAM Team's purpose in developing the mod is to create custom content that serves to make railways as versatile as possible in SimCity 4. The team was started on the Sim City 4 Devotion (SC4D) forums in February, 2008, by dedgren (David), who had developed rail wide radius curves previously for the NAM, and was then in the process of creating the initial Fractional Angle Railroad (FARR) puzzle pieces. David solicited members for the team, but its growth was slow at first.

In July, 2008, SC4D members Warrior (Jonathan) and Bighead99 (Dave) literally came out of nowhere with the first pieces of the Single Track Rail (STR) project. STR, as its name implies, is designed to provide the SC4 player with the ability to have a single rail line as opposed to the standard game default double track. Jonathan, who is an experienced transit modder, began creating draggable sections and puzzle pieces to make up the basic set. Dave took on the mammoth task of duplicating all of the game's double track textures in STR. Work on the STR was quickly joined by David, North Country Dude (Dirk) and threestooges (Matt). David is developing textures for wide radius STR curves and for various switches and joined Jonathan in modding the puzzle pieces. Dirk, who has been a longtime member of the SC4 railfan section of the community, primarily at Simtropolis, brought to the team his work on railyards and various switches and specialty tracks. Matt expanded his ongoing work on rail bridges to create the first STR bridges, including a trestle, plate girder and a Howe truss bridge. In November, 2008, Dave, assisted by SFBT transit modder and now RAM Team member ArkenbergeJoe (Joe), began work on STR viaducts to match the ones Joe has created for game rail lines. Longtime SC4 railfan Nardo69 (Bernhard) has also joined the team, and contributes his vast knowledge of RL railroading in assisting with the STR and other projects. Swamper77 (Jan) does the T21 exemplar work for the team, which allows signals, crossing gates and other detailing to be incorporated in the various projects.

The initial STR set, as of November, 2008, is planned to include basic straight and diagonal draggable sections, ploppable wide radius curves and switches, level crossings with other networks and a selection of bridges. It is planned to be released as a NAM plugin in 1Q09.

Future plans of the RAM team include the development of Triple and/or Quad Track Rail (three or four tracks on one tile), expansions of the double track wide curve, switch and FARR set, and additions to the STR. Although no release date has officially been announced for these, the team is following the NAM slogan of "It will be ready when it's ready."

Members and Collaborators of the RAM team

The Certified Team & Project that this article is about can be found here on SC4D.