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Pak128.Britain: Busses (now getting artwork)

Started by jamespetts, December 24, 2008, 06:55:44 PM

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jamespetts

I have recently been working on some British 'busses for PakBritain. I am not really an artist, but I have researched the 'busses and produced all the .dat files, each referencing a generic .png file, which references will need to be updated when graphics files are added.

The main intention is for the usual PakBritian development team (Keiron, The Hood) to work on the graphics, but I should be more than happy if anyone else could produce graphics for the vehicles, too. All the work that I do for Simutrans, whether on the code, or on a pakset, I make available as open-source under the Artistic Licence. If any other graphic artist than the usual contributors wishes to make graphics for this, the original (Kieron and The Hood) would prefer that the graphical styles are kept consistent with the existing PakBritain, available here. In the comments to each .dat file is a web link to a web page that contains pictures and/or drawings of the real 'bus to make things easier for any graphic artists.
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kierongreen

If I get some spare time I may have a look at drawing some of these.

jamespetts

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The Hood

Quick question - has anyone had a go at any of these?  I'm going to start them soon hopefully (watch this space...)

jamespetts

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vilvoh

My two cents:

If you want colour blueprints of English Buses, the best site is Ian's Bus Stop. It has tons of blueprints and pictures of buses from 1930 to 1990.

Escala Real...a blog about Simutrans in Spanish...

The Hood

Yes thanks, I think Jamespetts found that when he was compiling his list - there are links to pictures in each of the dat files which is very useful!  Unfortunately actual drawing is currently hindered by lots of other things at the minute - I hope to have something soon though!

The Hood

OK, I've finally found time to draw something, so here it is - the AEC Regal.

jamespetts

Excellent! I love the colour scheme. I shall very much look forward to seeing some of those in the game...
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The Hood

More late 20s/early 30s buses:

bottom row: l-r: AEC Renown, AEC Reliance, AEC Regent
top row: A1 Diddler trolleybus

jamespetts

Gosh - you wait forever for a 'bus, and four come along all at once! I'm very much looking forward to those being in the game - it will make road transport very fun indeed!
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The Hood

Two more buses arriving next to each other, in time-honoured tradition...

AEC Q2 (double decker) and Q4 (single decker)

jamespetts

Very nice! Those were elegant 'buses, and the graphics capture them delightfully.
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Michael 'Cruzer'

Nice, but aren't this busses a little bit to small?
The house next on the screenshot are much bigger, this looks a little bit strange...
Founder and Ex-Maintainer of pak192.comic. Provider of Simutrans Hosting rental service.

The Hood

If anything I would say rather that the house is too big... That is one problem of simutrans (and all other similar games) - some things have to have distorted scales to fit in the tile-based system and also to make the game playable (e.g. 1 tile = 1km approximation!)

kierongreen

Essentially the problem is the scale of the road (~16m per tile) vs vehicles (~32m per tile). Not an easy way around this, if buildings are drawn to vehicle scale then they will appear small compared to the road (which already appear wider than most in real life), and if you try and increase the vehicle size you run into more problems with regards vehicle length.

The Hood

I've had another look at the scale thing, and I decided that some of the buses were a bit small compared to other vehicles so I made them a bit bigger (esecially double deckers).  However, Kieron is still right, there is a fundamental scale problem, so they still probably look a bit small compared to buildings, but hopefully this is a bit better.  I'd be interested to know what other people think.

Also included is the AEC-STL (the double decker at the back).

jamespetts

Looking very good! They do look a tad better in that scale, actually - better in comparison to the scale of the overhead wires and road.
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kierongreen

Looks great :) Can you do a comparison of sizes with the existing 3 buses in the svn and check the scale is the same for them?

The Hood

@kierongreen - I actually started working on these from your blends of the previous buses, so the scale should be similar.  The main problem was double deck (I had made it too low, especially in comparison with the trams), but also a few of the new buses were a bit narrow as well.  I can post a screenshot later to compare them if you want?

kierongreen

It's alright, I'm sure it'll all fit together :)

The Hood

Here's some more:

top to bottom, l-r:
-Dennis Dominator (trolleybus version), Dennis Dominator, Dennis Enviro400, Dennis Dart
-AEC swift, Daimler Fleetline, Guy Arab
- B-Type double decker, B-Type single decker, Horse-Drawn Hackney Carriage

jamespetts

Jolly excellent work! And so many of them, too! Shall very much look forward to seeing those in the game.

As to the horse-drawn vehicles - I don't think that I'd put a Hackney carriage in my original set, so I assume that that's your addition? If so, that's quite sensible, as it gives passenger transport pre-1827, which is a good thing. Another thing that I forgot to put in my original set was a stage-coach - i.e., a long-distance version of the Hackney carriage, which should probably be added, too (faster, requires more horses, more expensive to buy and maintain, more comfortable).
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The Hood

The Hackney Carriage was my addition, but you had a stagecoach in your list.  It's only got a capacity of 5, so not very useful, but it's available from 1750...  Also the Dominator trolleybus was an addition too, apparently one trolleybus version was built so I added that to the trolleybus list. 

I've now done all the horse buses - I changed your timeline a bit here James, because I couldn't find any reference to a double-deck horse omnibus earlier than the knifeboard (which seems to have appeared around 1845).  I also reduced the speeds somewhat - I doubt any horse-drawn vehicle like that could exceed 15kmh in any normal circumstances! (Happy to be corrected though)

So here they are (l-r)
- Garden Seat Omnibus (1882-1918)
- Knifeboard Omnibus (1845-1890)
- Single-deck Omnibus (1828-1888)
- Stagecoach (1750-1840)
- Hackney Carriage (1750-1918)

There are single and double horse configurations too, which can be added together if necessary.

jamespetts

Excellent! It's good to see all the old horse 'buses. PakBritain will undoubtedly now have the most comprehensive selection of horse-drawn transport of any of the paksets. I particularly like your idea of having a one horse set and a two horse set that can be combined together to produce a three horse set. Also, good idea about the Dominator trolleybus - that should help to fill a gap in the trolleybus timeline at a time when trolleybuses had decidedly gone out of fashion, but where players might want to take different decisions to those taken by actual transport companies.
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The Hood

Latest progress - sorry if these look fairly samey now, there's only so many ways you can draw a bus in so few pixels (they all tend to look quite similar especially the modern ones!):

top to bottom, l-r:
- Leyland Olympian, Leyland Atlantean, Leyland K2 Trolleybus
- Leyland Titan B15, Leyland Leopard, Leyland Tiger
- K-Type, Leyland Lynx, Leyland Olympian Coach

jamespetts

Don't worry about them looking samey - that is quite realistic! You sensibly distinguish them by livery, which is good. They do look lovely, as always. One thing that I was wondering was whether I had omitted to include enough minibuses and coaches - do you think that I should research a few more?
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The Hood

There may be a need for a few more coaches and smaller capacity buses, but I think we have enough for now.  But if you want to research them I will draw them at a later point once I've done some different things.  What would be really useful in speeding up the next release would be a similar thing for trucks/goods vehicles, if you have any time for that?

The Hood

Some more buses, including the iconic routemaster series (pakBritain will feel more complete now!):

top to bottom, l-r:
-MCW Q1 trolleybus, routemaster trolleybus (fictitious), routemaster, long routemaster, RT
-Mercedes Citaro K (non-bendy!), Optare Excel, Optare Tempo, Mercedes G ("bendy-bus"), RF
-S type, NS type, early petrol electric bus, Plaxton Paragon coach

jamespetts

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The Hood

Here's the last set of additions for the time being:
- Volvo B7TL
- Volvo Citybus
- Volvo Olympian
- Wright Electrocity
- Wright Streetcar (not in the original list but I added it).

I've dropped the future buses from the list as there are no other future vehicles in pakBritain - that can be a later project.  I'll release the sources hopefully tomorrow, once I've had chance to do some crude balancing, and probably a pak file as well.

jamespetts

All lovely. The choices of liveries in all the sets are good, too! I am currently working on early steam and horse-drawn goods vehicles, which I'll release in stages so that you can be drawing the first batch while I'm researching the second batch, and so forth. Excellent work!

Edit: I've just counted - that's exactly fifty 'buses, including trolleybuses. To do those, to such a standard, in such a short time is very impressive indeed!
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The Hood

Here's the release (beta version):

http://simutrans-germany.com/files/upload/BritBus090512.zip

Costs are crudely balanced with the speedbonus.tab file included.  I will update the balancing for trains and trams to be roughly compatible before the next release of PakBritain.  Sources are on SVN.

Enjoy! (and let me know if anything is wrong)

jamespetts

Having downloaded the release of the sources, and compiled them, I am most impressed! The graphics look even better in the game than in your screenshots, if that's possible. They really are all rather excellent.

However, I have noticed that you have missed three of the non-future 'buses from the original list: (1) the front-loading Routemaster; (2) the Volvo B10M coach, and (3) the Denis Dominator coach. On looking at my original files, it appears that I had provided incorrect information in the comments in respect of the two coaches, which made the types appear identical to other included types: apologies. In fact, the correct links should have been:

Volvo B10M (general information)
Volvo B10M (picture)
Dennis Dominator coach (information and picture)

Apologies for the errors originally. Those two coaches are fairly important, because otherwise there are big gaps in the coach timeline!

Finally, would you like me to provide translation texts for all of these 'buses?
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The Hood

Yes I was a bit confused, and decided on the information there that they were too similar to draw twice.  Thanks for that info, I'll have a go at those when I next get chance.  The front-loading routemaster was a deliberate omission as I think only a couple were made and there are plenty of other buses in the timeline then. 

If you want to provide translation files, that would be great!  (Note I have changed a number of the names to fit the current naming conventions in pakBritain, for the sake of consistency).