Topic: General pak-britain v1 feedback

[wlindley]

Just to see if there were any other "holes" in the goods flow, I wrote a little Perl program, to which you give it the argument *.dat (all the data files in the current directory) and it prints a report of, for each commodity, sorted by year, the sources and consumers.  It's not quite perfect as it ignores the months and just looks at years.  Still it's interesting to see how things change over the years.  You can also see how in the 1990s the industrial base dries up.  There may indeed be a few "holes" that need checking, as how the IronOreMine1950 ceases in January 1970 but the IronOreMine1970 only starts in March of 1972. 

The output sections look like this:

### beer ###
 1750: Brewery1750 --> Pub1750
 1840: Brewery1750,Brewery1840 --> Pub1840,Pub1750
 1841: Brewery1840 --> Pub1840
 1910: Brewery1840,Brewery1910 --> Pub1840,Pub1910
 1911: Brewery1910 --> Pub1910
 1945: Brewery1945,Brewery1910 --> Pub1945,Pub1910
 1946: Brewery1945 --> Pub1945
 1975: Brewery1975,Brewery1945 --> Pub1945,PetrolStation1975
 1976: Brewery1975 --> Pub1945,PetrolStation1975

... Enjoy!

http://blog.wlindley.com/wp-content/uploads/show_industries.pl

[jamespetts]

Very interesting! The drying up of the industrial base in the 1990s is intended as realistic...

[The Hood]

@wlindley - that's really helpful.  If you get chance could you let me have a list of any of the holes that you can spot so I can fix the unintended ones?  Or things like beer going to petrol stations...

[wlindley]

Perhaps beer to modern-day petrol stations is realistic (at least it is in the 'States!).  Pharmaceuticals also are shown as going to petrol stations starting 1975, the traditional Chemist presumably being "made redundant."

I updated the script to show months as well, and to produce an overview report (below).

The only missing bit I found was that Iron Ore Mines introduced in 1750 have no consumers until 1790's Steel Mill.

Here's the overview goods flow report, for the record.  (Anyone have an idea how we could process all the vehicle .dat's and compute "how close is this set of vehicles to being balanced" ...?)

autos: CarFactory -> CarDealership
beer: Brewery -> PetrolStation,Pub
bretter: ForestSawmill -> BuildersYard,FurnitureFactory,HardwareFactory
bricks: Brickworks -> BuildersYard
bucher: Printworks -> Bookshop,DepartmentStore
cement: CementWorks -> BuildersYard
chemicals: OilRefinery -> PaperMill,PharmaceuticalFactory
china: Pottery -> ChinaShop,DepartmentStore
cider: Orchard -> Pub
clay: ClayPit -> Brickworks,BuildersYard,Pottery
eisenerz: IronOreMine -> SteelMill
fish: FishingGround -> Fishmongers
flour: GrainMill -> Bakery
fruit: Orchard -> Greengrocers
fueloil: OilRefinery -> OilPowerStationkraftwerk
gasoline: OilRefinery -> PetrolStation
grain: GrainFarm -> Brewery,GrainMill
hardware: HardwareFactory -> HardwareShop
kohle: CoalMine -> CoalPowerStationkraftwerk,CoalYard,SteelMill
livestock: CattleFarm,SheepFarm -> Slaughterhouse
meat: Slaughterhouse -> Butchery
milk: CattleFarm -> Dairy
moebel: FurnitureFactory -> DepartmentStore,FurnitureShop
newspaper: Printworks -> Newsagent,PetrolStation
oel: OilRig,OilWell -> OilRefinery
papier: PaperMill -> Printworks
pharmaceuticals: PharmaceuticalFactory -> Chemist,PetrolStation
plastik: OilRefinery -> CarFactory,FurnitureFactory
stahl: SteelMill -> CarFactory,HardwareFactory
stone: Quarry -> BuildersYard,CementWorks
textile: TextileMill -> ClothesShop,DepartmentStore
vegetables: ArableFarm -> Greengrocers,PharmaceuticalFactory
woodchip: ForestSawmill -> PaperMill
wool: SheepFarm -> TextileMill

[The Hood]

Thanks a lot - I think I get what jamespetts was doing sending beer, newspaper, etc to the petrol stations in later years, just at first it looked odd! 

As to vehicles, everything in the current pakset is "balanced", that is, I have created values for maintenance and cost using a spreadsheet I have set up which should ensure a reasonable level of profit at all reasonable game years for that vehicle, but as I don't have time for game testing, if anyone can show me any problems (too high or too low costs) then I will adjust it as necessary.  Is that what you meant?

[wlindley]

Yes.  I'd like to write some more little command-line tools that will assist in developing, and other, paks.

The latest additions in the svn here have really made PakBritain a pleasure to play. The new mail road vehicles have given my networks new life, although I still struggle to make a profit with trucks & lorries.

 I hope there will be some canal "narrowboats" for the starting in the 1830s -- it would be instructive to play two companies, one with canals and one with railroads, and see how long the canals can stay competitive!  And likewise when airplanes are added... how long can air service hold out against high-speed rail (Madrid-Barcelona air traffic is down over 30% in the wake of the new AVE there).

[The Hood]

Narrowboats and planes are both planned in the next few months hopefully, but I think simutrans standard doesn't worry about journey times so as long as there is any form of connection the goods will take the one with fewest changes (so a direct horse-drawn barge wins over a truck to a railhead and a fast train service...).  I think simutrans experimental might deal with that type of thing better though.

thanks for the offer of command line tools for developing, what did you have in mind?  I can't think of anything that's desperately missing, but then you never know what might make life easier!

[wlindley]

In considering the implications of simulating the cessation of heavy industry, I have made an extension request to define factories that must be located on a short, river, or hill.

We could then define -- with location=shore -- a Port1830 that produces lumber and demands furniture, produces wool and demands textiles; and a Port1970 that produces autos and demands passengers.

We could add location=river to the early Textile Mills, forcing them to be built next to a river.  And location=hill to iron ore and coal mines.

[prissi]

During installer trials I had also a look at pak128.britain. The style is nice, but the vehicles are all way to small for me, considering simutrans is all about transport ... They are even smaller than pak96 ones and nearly pak64 size? What is the reason for this?

Furthermore many steel structures are extremly thick. Imho the look could greatly improved by thinning those structures out a little.

[kierongreen]

Vehicle size is to try and give a more consistent scale. Although it's still not perfect by any means. Also means boats and ships can be larger to some extent. There's a limit to how narrow rendered models can be before they end up disappearing... For these pixel painting may be best solution.

[The Hood]

Furthermore many steel structures are extremly thick. Imho the look could greatly improved by thinning those structures out a little.

Any particular structures you meant?  For example the gasometer is definitely badly drawn, and needs a lot of work, just I'm trying to draw vehicles at the moment.  Any particular screenshots to show the worst offenders as well would be helpful, if you find the time.

As Kieron says, vehicle size is to have a more consistent scale with buildings etc.  Also, if the vehicles were bigger, they would either mean very long convoys or very wide and fat vehicles which had been shortened along their length to fit into tiles better (they already have been squished a bit like this), and would look unusual IMO.  It's all a design choice of course, which some people will prefer and others won't.  Ideally of course I would love double tracks on one tile, which would make the graphics even more consistent in terms of scale, but I know the deal on that one so I won't push it (although I'm very interested in Timothy's trials).

[prissi]

As you said it boils down to personal preferance. The gasometer and the large station are really striking out. But also platform high and general the buildings are way too large for me. THe double decker bus could easily drive into one of the doorways of the houses ...

[kierongreen]

Regards platform height - should be noted that platform height in the UK is significantly higher than the rest of Europe.

[prissi]

But busses driving through doorways is surely not common ... However, this was just my impression.

And nother thing: Please do not make pak128.britain default download. That should be the executable!

[Spike]

As Kieron says, vehicle size is to have a more consistent scale with buildings etc.  Also, if the vehicles were bigger, they would either mean very long convoys or very wide and fat vehicles which had been shortened along their length to fit into tiles better (they already have been squished a bit like this), and would look unusual IMO.

I agree that it's quite difficult. I feel a bit like Prissi, though. When I looked at the latest private car additions, they appeared very lost on the big roads to me. But this is just a personal opinion.

[kierongreen]

Essentially the problems in scale boil down to two restrictions:
Roads have to be wide enough to fit two lanes of traffic along with a tram in the centre.
Vehicle length has to be short enough that longest vehicles are less than a tile long.

Seeing as longest vehicles are 23m or so long (and infact pakBritain only uses length 13 maximum to try and reduce clipping problems), and typical road, even including pavements and centre land are probably only 15m wide this is where the mismatch arises.

If road vehicles (alone) are to scale with roads they will be larger than rail vehicles.
If rail vehicles are to scale with roads then they will be longer than tiles.
If houses are to scale with vehicles they will seem small compared to roads.

Never the less, a double decker road vehicle will not fit through a doorway (single decker will true).

The two scales are roughly speaking: static objects 16m/tile. moving objects 32m/tile

Platform height is also exaggerated on side facing away from tracks because as in pak128 the rails in pakBritain are offset from the base of the tile to give depth to the ballast. It is consistent with the trains running on the tracks however.

Permitting vehicles of lengths up to 32 and having roads occupy 2 tiles would solve scale problems, however is completely unfeasible in terms of the graphics system and changes necessary to simutrans.

[prissi]

As long as no artificial slopes are allowed before a track, the clipping problems would only occur on bridges though ... maybe we really need are proper imagae sorter someday.

[kierongreen]

I have tried tweaking image sorter before but without any success....

[Dwachs]

I like the look of this pak. It is unique (dark colors, less details than pak128 imho) and has a consistent style. It's all a matter of taste

O yes, the sprite sorting can create headaches. I did try myself also, but I have the impression the clipping problems cannot be solved by any sprite sorter.

I have another simple wish: please copy the citylist_en.txt to citylist_**.txt for all the languages. It looks really odd having a map with pseudo-German town names and Britain style

[The Hood]

Thanks for the feedback.  I'll leave sprite clipping to the coders, but I can certainly do the citylists. 

Off-topic: It reminds me of a pseudo-german tube map I saw yesterday (I'm sure true German speakers would have a heart attack as even my basic German tells me it's not so great!), but it is quite funny - especially Mile End becoming 2.4km Ende (although whoever did it obviously has a maths problem as 1 mile =  1.6km!):

http://www.steveprentice.net/tube/TfLSillyMaps/german_map.jpg

[colonyan]

I had chance to give pak a try yesterday.

1. I was really comforted by the initial map which comes up when game starts.
   It looked cozy and warm. Good little showcase map it was.
   And nonetheless to say, buildings looked all conformed and felt at right place.
   Also, masion which appeared as tourist attraction looked very gorgeous.
   Flying scottman and its carriage looked gorgeous too.
2. I started from early era. While carriage speed was very realistic, some people might find them too slow.
   Thus limiting the player type. Also, two horse with grain(larger carriage), was not able to move at
   usable speed.
I found really hardcore player oriented.(at least from carriage type diversification)

[jamespetts]

Colonyan,

thank you for the feedback. I am glad that you like the default.sve - that took quite some time to put together! (Although note that the locomotive is not the A1/A3 type of the "Flying Scotsman", although that is available in the set, but a GWR King class).

There are some issues that need to be resolved with the power of horses, which I hope will be fixed in the next version.

Thank you again :-)

[The Hood]

colonyan - thanks for the positive feedback

I'm not sure what you are saying about the horse and grain cart though.  I can get two horses and a fll 3t grain cart to move at 6km/h easily (which is the max speed of the convoy).

I know it's slow (transport was in those days...), so if you get bored, turn the speed up using the "." key.

[Martinwh1]

I started Pak-Britain from 1880 and have found a few minor issues:
Trams - the first electric tram becomes available in 1885 but the track cannot be electrified until 1890
Trains
The 8ton food van is made obsolete in 1903 but is not replaced by the 10ton until 1908.
A 1907 metropolitan power unit & associated coaches is announced twice I think - once in 1903 and again in 1907 but does not appear in the engine shed - is this because it is an electric unit and track electrification is not available.
Being a simple soul I mus admit that the gear ratios quoted are lost on me but I think that the greater the loco power the more it should be able to pull before a speed penalty comes in. However this following comparison of 130kph locos coupled to 25ton coaches suggests this is not the case:
GWR 4-4-0 Bulldog 1250kw 16 coaches
GWR 4-6-0 Star 1600kw 14 coaches
GNR 4-4-2 Class C1 2764kw 12 coaches 
 

[DirrrtyDirk]

Being a simple soul I mus admit that the gear ratios quoted are lost on me but I think that the greater the loco power the more it should be able to pull before a speed penalty comes in. However this following comparison of 130kph locos coupled to 25ton coaches suggests this is not the case:
GWR 4-4-0 Bulldog 1250kw 16 coaches
GWR 4-6-0 Star 1600kw 14 coaches
GNR 4-4-2 Class C1 2764kw 12 coaches

This (probably) is where gear comes into play (I say "probably" because I' not familiar with this pakset at all and can't check right now). But generally the actual power is calculated by multiplying the nominal power by the gear factor. So even higher nominal values can result in less actual power when the gear factor is lower.

[The Hood]

@Martinwh1:  Thanks very much for the feedback.  The tram, food van and metropolitan power units sound like genuine bugs to me which I will investigate and fix for the next release.

As to gear/power values, I do agree that this is confusing and not ideal.  Simutrans uses power * gear in its internal acceleration calculations, so the power * gear is the only thing that counts.  The power values are supposed to be broadly historical (where I can obtain such data, and estimates where I cannot), and the gear value is an adjustment to give sensible behaviour in game.  Strictly speaking then, the only important number is power * gear, not what power.  This is confusing though, and I have toyed with the idea of getting rid of historical values of power and just sticking in a value which gives the intended behaviour in game with all gear factors set to 1.  I'd appreciate opinions on this though.

Either way, it shouldn't be the case that the Star class can pull less weight than the Bulldog, so that may well be a bug that needs fixing.  I think vehicles are generally over-powered at the minute anyway (e.g. I've seen saves where people are using cheap tank engines to pull long freight trains comfortably!).  Any more reports/views on this would be good - I'll incorporate it into my rebalancing exercise.

[Dwachs]

I did run some tests with the AI: while in 1930 road vehicles are not profitable at all, the situation is totally different in 1960. Here the AI manages to made big profit.

In both eras it did however consider the whole coal/steel a inprofitable and did not try them at all.

I also found on th 1960 map a fishmonger and furniture stops not in cities but in the greens.

The 20t open waggon with loaded with steel seems to be misaligned.

[The Hood]

Dwachs, thanks for the report.  Costs are being rebalanced anyway, so lets see what it makes of my next effort at balancing. 

I also found on th 1960 map a fishmonger and furniture stops not in cities but in the greens.

I've noticed this too.  It seems to happen when there are already industries in every city, and then it tries placing them on intercity roads instead.  Is there a way to convince the industry builder to just build industries closer together?  It seems at the minute there is some function which spreads industries out from one another, which I'd be happy to have lifted for pak128.Britain (unless there's a good reason for it the way it is).

The 20t open waggon with loaded with steel seems to be misaligned.

Rail or truck?  Which one in particular?

[DirrrtyDirk]

It seems at the minute there is some function which spreads industries out from one another, which I'd be happy to have lifted for pak128.Britain (unless there's a good reason for it the way it is).

At least there's an entry in simuconf.tab:

Code: [Select]

# smallest distance between two adjacent factories
#factory_spacing = 6
I don't know what the default value is, though... or what value you have set for pak128.britain (if you have set it at all). But you might try to set it to a low number and see what happens.

EDIT: fixed typo and reformatted the simuconf.tab quote

[The Hood]

Never knew about that, and it wasn't in my simuconf.tab.  Adding that does the trick, thanks!

Is there a way of controlling the distance between consecutive industries in a chain though?  e.g. making sure that a coal mine is at least 20 squares from the power plant it supplies?

[DirrrtyDirk]

and it wasn't in my simuconf.tab.  Adding that does the trick, thanks!

You're welcome. But that's a typical problem: we usually only download the small nightly package (with just the executable), but once in a while more than just that changes. Especially for pak-maintainers I can only recommend to check for newer configuration files more frequently (also menuconf.tab from pak64 to learn about new functions there, too).

Is there a way of controlling the distance between consecutive industries in a chain though?  e.g. making sure that a coal mine is at least 20 squares from the power plant it supplies?

Sorry, not as far as I know...

[prissi]

Only this parameter but nothing else.

[Dwachs]

Rail or truck?  Which one in particular?

The 20t open rail car appearing 1937 but only the loaded images are misaligned, the wagon was loaded by steel.

Also there are several vehicles with maintenance=0, this causes the passenger AI to crash.

[The Hood]

OK I'll investigate.  Didn't realise maintenance=0 caused the passenger AI to crash.  I've done this for tender locos (so all the cost of the loco is visible on the first vehicle you buy).  Presumably if I increase this to 1, this will solve the problem?  As I'm doing rebalancing now, that should pick up any maintenance=0 vehicles and I'll fix them as I go along.

[jamespetts]

Dwachs,

if that is so, should vehicle_reader.cc not check for maintenance=0 and correct it to maintenance=1?