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Canal Overhaul

Started by TygerFish, December 07, 2012, 03:28:45 AM

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greenling

Thank you on all they help by the canal overhaul.
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Working on a big Problem!

jamespetts

I have now processed all of the vehicle graphics (not yet way graphics) for the canal overhaul, all of which can be found in the "Awaiting dat files" subfolder of the "images" subfolder of the "boats" folder in the Github repository, here.

There are too many to post here in full, but here are some choice samples:


The Bantam "pusher" diesel tug from the 1950s, used on barge canals


The box boat, the forerunner to the more familiar narrow boat (and a very early use of the inter-modal container concept)!


A diesel powered barge


A lightweight diesel powered barge of the 1950s, able to carry more cargo due to its lighter construction


A diesel powered narrowboat, filled with iron ore


An unpowered "dumb" steel barge in British Waterways livery


A wooden "dumb" barge


A "semi-diesel" powered narrowboat loaded with coal


A steam powered barge tug of the sort used on the Grand Union Canal


A steam powered narrowboat, carrying a load of stone


A towpath tractor, a curious device used to replace horses to tow unpowered narrowboats in teh 1950s.


A steam powered narrowboat tug


A tiny "tub boat", of the sort used on the smallest canals, loaded with grain.


An unpowered narrowboat with a composite (iron/wood) hull, loaded with coal


A fast "fly boat" of narrow beam


A narrow passenger flyboat of the 1830s


An unpowered narrowboat with a modern steel hull, from the 20th century


An unpowered wooden narrowboat, with a load of iron ore


A barge canal sized passenger fast boat, based on the famous "Paddington Packet" boat that ran between Uxbridge and Paddington in the 1830s on the Grand Union.


A slower passenger carrying "market boat" of barge canal size.
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greenling

Jamespetts
The Boats there you have make looks very cool out. :thumbsup:
Opening hours 20:00 - 23:00
(In Night from friday on saturday and saturday on sunday it possibly that i be keep longer in Forum.)
I am The Assistant from Pakfilearcheologist!
Working on a big Problem!

The Hood

Just trying to understand I've got all the above correct before I compile the graphics and attempt to make dat files and also draw aqueducts:

You have 5 types of canal:
    Large ship canal
    Ship canal
    Barge canal - existing graphics
    Narrowboat canal
    Tub boat canal

- The smallest three should have bridges, but none should have elevated ways
- The narrowboat and barge canals have tunnels, but not the tub boat or the ship canals
- masonry, brick and concrete aqueducts for those types with bridges
- something related to the pontcysyllte aqueduct for the narrow canal only (I've been across it- it's very narrow indeed; narrow boats in one direction only)
- the tub boat canal doesn't have inclines?

jamespetts

Yes, that's about right, apart from the tub boat canal inclines, for which I thought that we could use the existing plateway graphics - unless you think that we need special graphics for it...?
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The Hood

So the tub boats used hauled inclines rather than locks? I'm not that up on the history of these things...

jamespetts

Yes, generally. The actual history was more complicated (tub boats sometimes used locks, narrowboat canals sometimes used hauled inclines), but having tub boats use hauled inclines and other canals using locks is a good enough approximation (as tub boat canals used proportionately far more hauled inclines than other types).

Tub boat canals were to canals what narrow gauge railways were to railways, more or less.
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The Hood

OK. I still think some new graphics would be good - they shouldn't be too hard to knock up.

jamespetts

I shall look forward to seeing them!
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The Hood

#79
I've just started putting the different graphics together and I noticed the shadings are off - see here comparing the large ship canal and the existing barge canal.



Oddly the locks have the same shading as before. Was there any reason for the change?

PS James if you could fix this and re-export the pngs from blender I'd be grateful. I still can't get Zeno's script to work in the latest blender and your blends don't open properly in the previous version where it still works for me. Also could you send me the script (and which version of blender you use) you're using because obviously you've got something to work...

The Hood

OK, I've now set up all of the alignments, but I can't proceed without fixed water graphics/blends.

Here's the inclined plane for the tub barge - essentially a doubled version of the plateway graphics.


greenling

The Hood
That looks very good out what you here be paint have.
Opening hours 20:00 - 23:00
(In Night from friday on saturday and saturday on sunday it possibly that i be keep longer in Forum.)
I am The Assistant from Pakfilearcheologist!
Working on a big Problem!

jamespetts

I think that I might have spotted the issue: I had "shadeless" selected for the water texture. Unchecking it produces the result as in the attached image. Is this correct? I have also attached the render script that I use for the latest version of Blender (2.65, last time that I checked), which should allow you to export the .blends yourself. Apologies for the delay in replying - long week-end.
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The Hood

Thanks. That result isn't quite correct (although it's closer). For some reason the textures don't appear to be identical. I suggest we replace the water material with the equivalent from the lock blends each time. There also appear to be some discrepancies with the tarmac, but I haven't got time to investigate further now.

I got the blender script working - I'm not at all sure what you have different to me that makes it work but glad it's sorted. One thing however is that all of the images now get rendered off-centre because the camera locations are different. This appears to be a difference in the script. Was there a reason why you moved all the cameras away pointing at the originof the blender axes?

jamespetts

Hmm - I'm not sure that I understand the texture issue: the texture is the same as in the lock - water.jpg. I also checked to make sure that I had all the same settings, and the "shadeless" thing was the only difference that I could spot. As to the pathways - perhaps they need "shadeless" unchecking, too? See the attached graphic for the amended version.

As to the rendering script, this was produced so that rail vehicles would be automatically aligned, which is why things are off centre (indeed, this works for all sorts of vehicles save for road vehicles, which have a different alignment). With these camera positions, vehicles do not need any manual alignment after exporting: they just need to be combined in Image Masker and have their backgrounds set to the Simutrans transparent colour, and they are ready to be used.
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The Hood

OK, the camera repositioning makes sense if it cuts work elsewhere. However it now chops off the bottom of the canal renders (taken directly from your repository) and also for buildings. Not sure what's going on there.

The textures are definitely not identical in the rendered output to the locks. I think the difference is due to the diffuse intensity (the grey) being 0.8 for most images but it should be 0.5. Correction - the edgings are fine I think; it's just the water that is off.

jamespetts

Yes - what we really need is the ability to select between automatic alignments for non-road vehicles, road vehicles, and buildings. Were the original alignments correct for buildings without being adjusted? If so, it might be possible to produce multiple versions of the render script for these different purposes. I had to export the canals manually because of this.

As for the towpaths - is it right in the original or later version?
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Zeno

Quote from: jamespetts on February 24, 2013, 11:43:57 PM
Yes - what we really need is the ability to select between automatic alignments for non-road vehicles, road vehicles, and buildings.
You could add options in the current drop down selector for the views, such as "8 views centered" and "8 views train align", e.g. That would mean checking out the option selected in the script and use different camera positions during the render.

The Hood

I'd thought of implementing something along those lines. I've never coded python before, but I'm sure I could adapt the script to do that fairly easily.

Zeno

Oh, I'm sure you will. I had never used phyton before when I created that script! :P

jamespetts

This would be a good idea indeed.
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The Hood

Here it is - not thoroughly tested yet but seems to do the job. There are now three options:
8 views base alignment and 4 views base alignment (as per original script)
8 view vehicle alignment (as per jamespetts' modified camera positions)

jamespetts

Thank you very much for this - I have tested it and found it to be thoroughly satisfactory. Here are the re-done canal graphics produced using it. Also contained in there are the unprocessed graphics for a new city building based on the Shell Mex building in London: I had produced the .blend file years ago, but had not been able to export it because I had not appreciated that buildings needed a different alignment to vehicles. Let me know whether you think that this building fits in with the pakset, and I shall produce a .dat file if so.

I hope that these are all in good order - do let me know if there are any problems. Thank you for your help with the canals - this is much appreciated.
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The Hood

#93
Unfortunately the towpaths are way too light - I think they need to be "shadeless" to match...

I've already fixed the ship, large ship and narrow canals, now working on tub...

Ugh, even now the shading is dodgy - there's a gradient from one end of the tile to the other :s - I've given up in blender and I'll just apply a mask in GIMP with the same water texture copied from the existing canals.

jamespetts

Hmm - I hadn't noticed your edits until now. As I think that I mentioned before, I don't have any experience in producing ways, which is probably why they are a bit off. Do you have any tips on getting them right in future? They seem like a very difficult thing to do properly compared with vehicles and buildings.
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The Hood

It's not that - there'll be a setting somewhere in blender that's different, or perhaps a change in the way renders are done in 2.6x. But ways are harder to get right because you have to tesselate so many different tiles to make it look good.

kierongreen

Materials should not be shadeless. Having this saving previously on roads and pavements meant that sloped tiles were the same colour as flat tiles. I can't remember off the top of my head whether 0.5 or 0.8 was correct for diffuse but it should be the same across all textures and models.

jamespetts

That is useful - thank you!
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kierongreen

If you copy the setting for the new roads it should be ok.

jamespetts

Thank you. The Hood has finished the canals now, I think, but this is useful for future reference.
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The Hood

#100
Yes - I corrected it with an additional layer in GIMP using the texture in existing canals. I'm working on tunnels and bridges for the canals next but that will be all in GIMP again, so no need to worry in this instance. Always good to know why though.

EDIT: James I notice you didn't do tunnel graphics for tub canals. Is that because you don't want them (i.e. they never had them in RL) or because you intended to overlay the same portal graphics over the tub canal graphics or because you didn't get round to doing them?

jamespetts

I don't think that there were tub-boat canals with tunnels - they were all built very cheaply. I thought that people could use the narrowboat tunnels if they really wanted a tunnel on a tub boat canal. Remember, the only way of propelling a boat through a narrowboat canal tunnel was by the boatman lying on his back and legging the boat. This would not have been possible with tub-boats (as they would have been too small and probably too unstable), so the tunnels, if anyone had built them, would have had to have been built large enough to take a towpath - bigger, then, than the narrowboat canals.
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jamespetts

Here is a summary of some of the data needed for canal boats, taken from excerpts of posts in this thread:

Capacity:

Barges: ~50t (the lightweight diesel barges should have a higher capacity)
Narrowboats: 25-30t
Fly boats: 15t (these were fast narrowboats)
Tub boats: 5t

Introduction dates:

Barges and barge canals: From game start
"Starvationers": From game start
Narrowboat canals: From game start
Unpowered wooden hulled narrowboats: early 1760s approx.
Tub boats and canals: 1761
Composite hulled canal boats: mid 19th century
Iron hulled canal boats: late 19th century
Steel hulled canal boats: early/mid 20th century
Steam canal boats tugs: 1850s
Integrated steam canal boats: 1889
Ship canal: 1822
Large ship canal: 1894
Canal tunnel: 1773
Semi-diesel boats: Early 20th century (say 1905)
Diesel narrpwboats: 1920s
Diesel barges ("River class"): early 1930s
Lightweight steel diesel powered barge: early 1950s
Bantam tug: late 1940s/early 1950s
Fly boats: 1830s (approx. 1835)
Packet boat (wide canals): 1802
Diesel canal tug/tractor: 1950

Speeds:

Normal canal boats (unpowred types): 7km/h
Diesel narrowboats: 11km/h
Fly boats: 18km/h
Towpath tractor: 14km/h*

Horses:

For standard canal boats: 1 horse only
For fly boats: 2 horses (necessary)

Mail:

Carried alongside passengers in packet boats/fly boats




I think that this is all of the information that I have been able to find to date - I can find no information on the deadweight of canal boats, and retirement dates are always going to be somewhat approximate in any event (although I do know that fly boats were not used after the 1840s owing to rail competition). I hope that this suffices for the present.
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The Hood

Thanks for this. I'll see what I can do about putting the dats together before I leave for holiday on Friday. Can I check - the existing canal boats and barges in the set: are they intended to be replaced or kept in addition to the new things?

jamespetts

Oops - forgot to answer that question: apologies. The existing canal boats are intended to be replaced. I hope that this helps, and bon voyage!
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