[Suggestion] Standardize rail ramps and supports

[PianoAddict]

TL;DR

Allow rail ramps to curve 1 rail earlier

What?

The top of a ramp looks identical to a rail support, but the support can begin a turn 1 rail earlier.

Screenshot 2025-02-13 142335.png (872.68 KiB) Viewed 545 times

I suggest allowing the curve to begin at the same location as it can on the support. There is 1 straight rail at the top of a ramp before a turn can be initiated, visually it seems as if this should be able to curve in the same location.

Screenshot 2025-02-13 142121.png (579.71 KiB) Viewed 545 times

Why?

The identical graphics at the top of a ramp and the support seems to imply similar behaviors. The 1 extra straight rail at the top of the ramp creates a discrepancy when designing curves off of ramps vs curves off of supports.

[Muche]

The one seemingly straight rail on top of ramp is actually slightly sloped (the slope begins halfway that rail piece).
So a solution could be to not allow curved rails directly on top of rail support, only two straight rails.
(I doubt this is what you envisioned your suggestion would lead to.)

[PianoAddict]

The one seemingly straight rail on top of ramp is actually slightly sloped (the slope begins halfway that rail piece).
So a solution could be to not allow curved rails directly on top of rail support, only two straight rails.
(I doubt this is what you envisioned your suggestion would lead to.)

If supports couldn't bend then you couldnt do the 90° directly off of the supports at all. Currently you cannot do a 90° bend off of a ramp like you can off of a support.

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I do see what you mean, it is just a few pixels off...

Screenshot 2025-02-13 191126.png (1.41 MiB) Viewed 500 times

Regardless, this change would be very nice.

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[Xerkus]

I came here for the same suggestion.

Ramp might not be able to allow curved rail to start same way as support because of the rolling stock sprites.

In that case I would like to have ramp consider its support point to be where actual rail piece is connecting rather than the middle of the built-in support. That would allow for better raised curves without an awkward support forced in the middle. It is very inconvenient when trying to design compact junctions, especially with diagonal rails.

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For example, this sidestepping:

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[boskid]

Unfortunately i do not want this to be ever happening. Ramp length was heavily based on the amount of space needed to rolling stocks to correctly transition between collision masks and render layers and it is already tight on the rotated/sloped rolling stock sprites margins (in some cases when having curved rail right after a ramp it is possible to notice rolling stock turning while still being sloped and there are some tiny sprite selection artifacts there). Just because graphics team decided to embed part of the rail support into ramp does not mean i would be giving up on the margings since there is still height change happening on the ramp and if a ramp would be allowed to turn 2 tiles earlier, it would be even more visible when rolling stocks would still be sloped and turning at the same time requiring all rolling stocks sprites to be extended with more slightly rotated while slightly sloped sprites to hide the gap, also ramp itself would need to be rerendered and rail collision logic would need to be custom made to allow for elevated rails over elevated 2 tiles of a ramp. There are way too many technical obstacles making this change not possible. In order to not violate ramp margins, if this would be ever required to be done then i would make ramp longer by 2 tiles just so the embedded support graphics are where the ramp ends right now.

[Xerkus]

I imagined that would be the case. Diagonal ramps my beloved will never happen.

What about the slightly worse alternative I mentioned: modifying ramp so as not to consider built-in rail segment for the supported length? Particularly to allow the use case in my second screenshot.

I can make it a separate suggestion post if you like.

Edit: Supports give longer rail segment between them even visually. Was it intentional limitation?

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