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Realistic time/Game time

Started by bigliettiperfavore, October 26, 2017, 02:35:14 PM

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bigliettiperfavore

Hi,
I was playing pak128Britain on Experimental/Extended version a couple of months ago. The default setting of time and distance seemed very realistic.
The clock is veeeery fast in my pak192 (Standard) games, however. On a stretch between two stations not placed too far from each other in my pak192 it takes hours in game time whereas in Experimental it would take perhaps 15-20 minutes in game time.
I haven't played around with these settings too much, but is it possible to change some settings in the Standard game (specifically pak192) as well?

thanks a lot for replies or clarifications.

Leartin

There is only one setting for the time flow, called "bits_per_month" in the general settings when starting a new game. The more bits there are in a month, the slower time will pass. Note that vehicles will still move at the same speed, and all monthly payments are increased/decreased accordingly - so it's really just the ingame timer and with it, the rate at which new vehicles are available.

jamespetts

Extended works differently to Standard in so far as the computation of time is concerned. In Extended, there are two explicit scales of time: the short term scale (measured in hours and minutes) and the long term scale (measured in months and years).

The short term scale is related to journey and waiting times, fixed costs, passenger generation and industry production. The long term time scale is related to capital costs, seasons and the advancement of technology. (I may have missed some things from either or both lists). The short term time scale is precisely calibrated with the distance scale (which can be customised, but which is set at 125m/tile in Pak128.Britain-Ex) so that, for a journey of x kilometers, a vehicle travelling at an in-game speed of x kilometers per hour will take 1 hour in the short timescale to complete the journey.

Standard is different. Standard does not have such precise relations between distance, time and speed. All of the speeds (and therefore journey times) do scale properly relative to each other, but there is no explicit relationship between distance and time, no journey time tolerance, and no relationship between speed and the in-game time. The idea is that Standard is a simpler variant of the game in which precise timings do not matter so much - just like the older games on which Simutrans was based, such as Transport Tycoon and Railraod Tycoon, which also do not have precise timings for journeys. When using the clock display, therefore, it will be based on the months/years that pass, and will not have any relationship to the speed of vehicles. It will thus appear to pass very quickly.
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bigliettiperfavore

Thanks a lot. You can't play pak192 on Extended I guess, so I have to tweak the bits_per_month setting..

Do you have an example of a somehow realistic setting Leartin?

I usually always play games where all vehicles are available (95% of my total time in Simutrans is pak192), but tweaking this could open up for new possibilities.

Leartin

Quote from: bigliettiperfavore on October 27, 2017, 06:48:56 AM
Thanks a lot. You can't play pak192 on Extended I guess, so I have to tweak the bits_per_month setting..
I'm not following Extended, so I might not be up-to-date, but as far as I know you can play any Standard-Pakset in Extended. It just won't use any of the additional features that Standard is missing, like liveries, comfort, upgrading,... since obviously, there are no values set for those things. This will probably lead to some strange behaviour in the Extended environment, eg. trains which are clearly depicted with a control car at the end won't be able to reverse.
It's a bit sad, since I don't think it would be a lot of work to make it ready for Extended compared to the work of actually creating the pakset in the first place, but none of the pakset devs would be very interested in it. Perhaps with the Source Release at the end of the year, someone else could create a proper fork.


Quote from: bigliettiperfavore on October 27, 2017, 06:48:56 AM
Do you have an example of a somehow realistic setting Leartin?
Not really, no. Just take the highest number available, I think it's 24. At least time won't fly by as quick, but it would still be a bit too fast compared to what you see on the map - at least that's my impression.
You could also try to change the setting "Show Month" to 1. This would change the way time is displayed, instead of having 30 days of 24 hours each month, the month will be divided into 24h directly. On one hand, that is completely unrealistic - but on the other, it allows the "time" part to move much, much slower. In combination, if you use both settings, you might get something that feels appropriate for you, personally, and your playstyle. Note that the pakset not just has a different scale, but a different concept of scale. It's not linear. That means double the amount of tiles would not mean twice the distance, it's much more. Or the other way around: If something is twice as long in reality, it would be shorter in the game. With such a concept of scale, time can't ever make much sense.

jamespetts

The pakset becoming open source will be a splendid thing. There was a release of this pakset years ago for what was then Simutrans-Experimental, but this was discontinued for some reason. Perhaps it will be revived one day; that would be a lovely thing.
Download Simutrans-Extended.

Want to help with development? See here for things to do for coding, and here for information on how to make graphics/objects.

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bigliettiperfavore

I have been satisfied with the default settings in pak192 for years (I guess I have lowered the amount of passengers generated setting but little else)
but thanks for the info, seems to be several other options to set that I should play around with.. There is no way to change these after you have started playing a map?(simuconf)
I have an enormous 400 city map which I really have put a lot of 'work' into and would be a shame to give it up.

Leartin

Many can be changed even though there is technically no option for it, by choosing "new game", changing the setting, and then, instead of starting a new game, you abort and save your old game. Or something like that - it's possible, but generally not recommended since your game might break.

...about this map of yours, the next version is around the corner, and I'd like to make sure that it's at least somewhat possible to continue old games (it won't work completely, but I'd like to make the inconvenience as little as possible) - could you send my your map please?

Isaac Eiland-Hall

Hah, I didn't know that trick.

Well, sounds like a good idea would be to make a save, then make the changes and carefully not overwrite with the same name, thus giving a backup. :)

bigliettiperfavore

Will give it a try as soon as possible (with backup of course!). I guess it wouldn't hurt to start over, I am playing a v4.1 map with some new 4.2 vehicles/buildings added.
I can send you the savegame as well, hopefully tonight.

On a completely different note, half-height will be implemented alongside double-height in pak192? 

Leartin

In the past, there was only single-height. Then double-height came along - double, because there are two different heights for slopes (twice as many as with single-height).
Double-height can be implemented either by having slopes twice as steep as the original ones, or by having slopes half as steep as the original ones. They are called double-height or half-height.
It's unfortunate the naming became such a mess - P192C will implement double-heights of the half-height variant.

Isaac Eiland-Hall

I should make an extension request next April 1st for triple-height. :D

Leartin

Quote from: Isaac.Eiland-Hall on November 08, 2017, 09:52:34 PM
I should make an extension request next April 1st for triple-height. :D
It would need to be quadruple height, since you'd need a "one-and-a-half" slope height as well.