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Liveries

Started by Sir_Tramalot, September 23, 2014, 05:23:02 PM

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Sir_Tramalot

I was just wondering, how do I change the liveries on the trains, I cannot seem to do so. Any tips?
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jamespetts

Welcome to the forum! Always good to see new members.

Firstly, I should note that many rail vehicles have not yet had a full range of liveries applied to them, and that many of the liveries that have been applied to rail vehicles are sequential in nature, as they did not in reality have more than one livery at the same time.

In general, to change a livery, one must change the livery scheme of the line on which the convoy (such as a train) is running. You can do this from the line management window. If you change the scheme to one for which any of the vehicles in the convoy does not have a current livery, those vehicles will be unaffected by the change. If the latest livery available in the scheme has changed, then updating the livery scheme (by selecting the existing scheme in the line management window) will apply the latest livery in that scheme to all vehicles in the convoy. For example, selecting the "British Rail(ways)" livery scheme on a train with a green diesel locomotive and maroon mk. I carriages in, say, 1969, will turn the locomotive and carriages into the blue/grey livery.

It is eventually planned to update liveries automatically when vehicles are overhauled, but there is currently no concept of an overhaul in Simutrans-Experimental; this is planned for a future release.
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DrSuperGood

#2
It would be useful if you could limit the selection of liveries to ones that actually exist. When playing you are shown this huge, impossible to understand, list of company names to choose liveries from. Most of them appear to have the same livery (no graphic change in the convoy) which leads me to believe that in reality no unique livery exists for that convoy with regard to that company. It is bad from a UI perspective to show users choice which does not exist. As such you should only be shown liveries that do exist, even if that is a single element (as the convoy has no alternative liveries).

Convoys composed from different liveries (a GWR engine with Midland coaches) should have an element "Mixed" which is what their current livery scheme is described at. The list should list the union of all available liveries of all convoy components. After choosing a specific livery all convoys components that can use it change to using it and if that is not the full convoy (as the livery is lacking for some components) then it again is set to mixed. The only time mixed is not shown is when all convoy components are using that livery scheme (support it).

Convoy components without liveries (if any?) do not care what scheme they are in. If a convoy is composed only of components without liveries then it should show "None" as the only option for livery.

The aim is not to change anything mechanically, but show to the user only what he needs to know. Being able to choose >30 liveries for convoys is meaningless if the convoy actually only has textures for 1 livery.

jamespetts

Eliminating options to choose livery schemes of lines whose vehicles do not have liveries in that scheme is sensible in principle, but complex in practice: livery schemes are applied per line rather than per convoy, so the program would have to check every vehicle in every convoy in the line to check whether it has a livery in the scheme, and then there is the question of what happens to convoys that have vehicles with future or past but not present liveries in the scheme and whether they should be included. Finally, there is the issue that the player might want to set a scheme for the line for future convoys that are not currently part of the line.

I was thinking of looking into improving the liveries GUI a little when I implemented overhauling.
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DrSuperGood

Another option is to list in the convoy info somewhere what liveries it can use (or even the vehicle info when assembling the convoy). The main problem is I have no clue what convoys have liveries and which do not and instead I am presented with a list of company names (livery schemes) to choose from that appear to do nothing.

Something like "Available in Great Western Railway and Midland livery".

jamespetts

That is an interesting idea; but how would that work when a line has multiple convoys each with different possible livery combinations (and each convoy has multiple vehicles each with different livery combinations)? In theory, one could list all liveries that at least one vehicle in any convoy assigned to the line supports, but it might be somewhat unclear to the user that, by changing the livery to, e.g., LMS, one might affect nothing other than one brake van on one of (e.g.) twelve different convoys.
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