SLT Tutorial (English Only)

[Abstandhalterin]

Sum of you meowbe don't meow yet how the SLT works, so I'll post a purrfect tutorial now ... meow.

The first digit is the ameownt of cars in the entire scenery (usually between 10 and 50). You can do more than 50, butt then you will have problems with the stability of the game.

The second digit is the visibility distance for traffic cars. I'd recommend it to set this number to 999 (meters), so you can see traffic cars very far away and you can estimeowte overtaking and so on.

The third digit is the ameownt of cars in the SLT list, so it can be anything from 1 to xxx ... you have to count the cars in the list and then you have the third number easily.

The fourth and fifth digit have always to be the same, either 220 201 or 280 201. If you have it on 220 201, the cars are spawning in a circle around you on all streets, let's say about 300 meters around you. They also disappear behind you when you have overtaken them after some time and then they respawn in front of you (which is a bit silly). If you have it on 280 201 however, all traffic cars spawn on all roads anywhere and they never respawn. That's much more realistic. My recommeowndation: 280 201 for sure.

The sixth digit can be 0 or 1 ... doesn't matter. It doesn't do anything. If you set it to 2 or more, the game could crash.

So, my SLT for Polish Roads for example looks like this: 50 999 53 280 201 0 ... have fun.

~ Jane

[Recruit Snyder]

May I just add ... if you set it on "280 201" instead of "220 201" you won't get really heavy traffic. All cars are in the scenario, of course, but they're just "somewhere", you get to see them occasionally. On "220 201", the engine tries to group traffic around the active player & opponent cars and not in remote parts of the scenario. It's not the spawning problem (they don't spawn in front of you as a surprise), it's smart traffic management so players get the impression there are lots of cars on the roads.

[Abstandhalterin]

Butt in the replay, you can see the cars suddenly "beaming" behind or in front of you, and you can only see about 10 or at highest 15 different car models in the entire scenery.

[Recruit Snyder]

Well ... I can't confirm that ... what I meant is ... 280 will spread those 50 cars all over the scenario, even in remote areas where no player car will ever be driving, and 220 forces the engine to distribute the traffic cars evenly, i.e. each active car should face about the same amount of traffic so, say, if you're chasing one or two opponent cars, there will be lots of traffic around you because 3 out of 5 active cars are in the same region = the engine will group more traffic cars around you and your opponents. I remember a remark from one of the Synetic devs who explained how difficult it was to make the traffic "dynamic" that way ...

And BTW that's what I experienced. Maybe your "spawn" problem is just linked to one or two specific "custom" scenarios. In fact, on Krom's Autobahn there's extremely heavy traffic and the spawn radius is a bit small, so you might get surprised by traffic cars that sometimes appear right in front of you (well, within 50 metres or so).

[jarfcl]

Thanx for that useful tutorial... I always forget all that, so now I know where I can easily remind that stuff... besides, I never could find what were the last 2 numbers for...so now I know

[Abstandhalterin]

And that's exactly what I don't like (what you said about Krom's Autobahn). I like to see traffic in front of me and knowing there's a realistic traffic flow. I don't like to see a traffic car beaming 50 meters in front of me and standing still before accelerating to normal speed. That's why I use 280 instead of 220 in all sceneries.

What you said about the 50 cars in the entire scenario is correct. They spawn all at the same time all over the scenery, even on roads which the player car doesn't go to. On Polish Roads, however, this doesn't really matter, it just makes the scenery look even more realistic if there's a traffic car merging from a road you're not going to, and then you have to give way to the traffic car maybe.

Heavy traffic is okay, as long as it works properly. Spontaneous traffic jams would be nice, but the problem is they can only drive in two lanes at the same time, there is no option for three or four lane behavior.

[Ayce]

Silly question time.
How do you open the .slt file? All I get is "Open" when I right click, even using shift or alt when right clicking, so I don't get the "Open with" option. Can I change it to a .txt file to look at it, the change it back when I'm done, or is there another proggie I need to open it? Thx.
Ayce

[Jeroen]

it should be possible to open it with right mouse button.
Otherwise you could take the option properties, or whatever it is called, the option far below. Than change how to open it,
I hope you understand it with my picture


ciao

[Ayce]

I thought that might work, but wasn't sure if I could do that or had to have an .xml editor.
Thanks.

[Abstandhalterin]

There's sumfin else you need to know. There's the list of cars, for example a line like this one here:

dt_police1 <tab> 1.00 <tab> 0.01 <tab> 0 <tab> car-hupe <tab> Sirene <tab> 5000

1. Car name (must be the name of the TXT file and the folder itself where the traffic car is in.
2. Speed multiplicator (can be anything above zero). For example, if the speed of the track is set to 80 KPH in the STR file, then this car will drive exactly 80 KPH when the setting is at 1.00 points.
3. Overtaking minimal difference. Must be higher than zero, otherwise the car will NOT overtake another car in the two-lane-mode. Don't make it too high either, should be between 0.01 and 0.20 points.
4. Appearance flexibility. If zero (0), the car will appear more than once. If set to one (1), the car will appear only once in the scenery, if it's a two (2), twice etc. etc. ... however this doesn't really work at all.
5. Sound (The source file name must exist in the TR_Motoren folder!) of the honker.
6. Alternative sound (can also be named NoSound to get no sound at all) for police cars or emergency vehicles etc.
7. Duration of alternative sound in seconds when a traffic car gets hit by the player car. Default is 50, do as much as you want. I always set it to 5000 seconds to make it almeowst purrmanently.

~ Jane