Wayfinding Bug, and more

[dannyman]

GRIPE: I tried attaching my save file to my post.  Itsaid it was over 64kb (really!?) and then I went back and the text I entered was gone.  :<


Okay, hello, thanks for the fun game.  I've tried Ex again after a while:
simutrans-exp-2012-01-22-c2259d0
Pak128.Britain-Ex-0.8.3

http://www0.toldme.com/~djh/scratch/Britain-Exp-Bug.sve

I I built a new bus exchange in Warcaster: a bunch of small bus stops and platform choose signs, to facilitate waiting-for-transfers.  It seemed to work well enough, except the platform choose at 131,11 didn't seem to work until I bulldozed the adjacent platform and put the platform choose on a straight road tile.

Bigger bug: vehicles on my high-revenue IC P1 Warcaster-Carden line hit Pentingford Parish and then can not find a route back to Warcaster.  I found a platform choose in the Carden direction near Warcaster Parish Hall, but bulldozing that and hitting update line or making a new line doesn't solve anything.  The mail trucks on the IC M1 line have no trouble getting back to Parish Hall.

Another bug: I tried running some power lines to the colliery and also to a nearby town: lost a bunch of money on infrastructure and not a dime of revenue.  Ouch!

Display bug: vehicles heading SW tend to drive too far left, running on the sidewalk/grass.  Nobody has gotten hurt ... yet ...

Thanks again!

-danny

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The big wayfinding bug I suspect is weight limits: I built the exchange with cobblestone roads, and the buses on my main line exceed the weight limit when fully loaded. 

[sdog]

Bigger bug: vehicles on my high-revenue IC P1 Warcaster-Carden line hit Pentingford Parish and then can not find a route back to Warcaster.  I found a platform choose in the Carden direction near Warcaster Parish Hall, but bulldozing that and hitting update line or making a new line doesn't solve anything.  The mail trucks on the IC M1 line have no trouble getting back to Parish Hall.

Check if the vehicles are above the weight limit for the road or a bridge, after loading fully. Weight limits apply to the weight of truck + actual load, not to maximum road. Thus vehicles can happily start their tour and get stuck all of the sudden somewhere along the way when reaching the threshold of any way tile. (which can be extremely tedious to identify)


edit: did not see your second post until after i replied, sorry

[jamespetts]

Danny,

thank you for the reports. As suspected, the way finding issue is not a bug, but a manifestation of the weight limits feature. The platform choose signal behaviour has not been altered as between Experimental and Standard, so I expect that this issue will be the same on Standard as Experimental.

As to the powerlines, I can't find these on the map to test the problem - had you removed them before uploading the game? Are you sure that electricty was, in fact, being delivered (electricity will only be demanded when the factory is producing)?

As to the graphics issue, can you show me a screenshot of the issue being manifested?

Thank you for your reports!

[dannyman]

James,


Thanks for responding.


Regarding wayfinding: maybe the "no route" hover could read "no route (overweight?)" or something ... I'm sure others have thought about this usability issue before ...


Driving too far left: http://www0.toldme.com/~djh/scratch/simscr01.bmp ... I am suspecting it may be a drawing error in those 1920s-era buses?


Powerlines: I reverted that experiment but here's a screenshot of a test run to the Colliery.  I assume that if it is producing coal and says it demands 20MW .. ? http://www0.toldme.com/~djh/scratch/simscr02.bmp

[sdog]

As suspected, the way finding issue is not a bug, but a manifestation of the weight limits feature.

It is indistinguishable from a bug for most who are new to experimental. For me it is also quite a nuisance later on. Might i suggest a little simplification?

Don't base the weight the weight limits apply to on the actual weight of the vehicle, but the empty weight + maximum regular load. That way players see it immediately if a route does not work, instead of having this come all of a sudden. Disregard overrowding, this is within tolerances, and would be hard to estimate by the player.

[dannyman]

Sdog,

I like your suggestion at first but it ends up robbing me of some strategic flexibility.  For example, I might build a cheap shortcut for empty trucks returning to load, and let the loaded trucks take the long way around, or I might route smaller buses down a different road.

Perhaps the vehicle build interface is capable of assessing the route applied to the vehicle, show an error if there is no route at empty weight and a warning if there is no route at max weight.  Or maybe the no route warnings just reworded that "no route exists for this vehicle at this weight" ... verbose but a very easy clue.  "Oh .... weight!  Ugh!!"

[jamespetts]

Dannyman,

thank you for the report: the issue in the first screenshot is a misalignment bug with that particular 'bus, rather than a game issue - I shall have to get around to fixing that one day! The problem is that there is currently no automatic alignment exporter from Blender for road vehicles as there is for other types of vehicles, as road vehicles have a different alignment.

As to the second screenshot, the colliery is not using any power because it is not producing any coal. It is not producing any coal because there is no transportation to take the coal away to somewhere that demands the coal, and the colliery has only a finite space to put stocks of coal. Your power network will only generate money if power is actually consumed.

As to the empty/full weight limits - it should already give an indication that the reason that it will not route is because it is overweight. Indeed, when I opened the saved game on my computer, it did indeed give that indication. I must confess to being somewhat confused as to why yours did not, although there have in the past been (very difficult to solve) bugs that only occur in non-debuggable release builds.

[sdog]

does for weight limitations on bridges the actual weight apply or the allowed weight of a vehicle? (the former is almost impossible to know for most drivers or police)

[dannyman]

update -- sdog does make a decent point: when purchasing a bus, I can see the vehicle weight in the garage, but the max load vehicle weight is not displayed.  So, buses are set up for a nasty surprise down the road, so to speak.

For (many classes of) freight, I can just add the max freight payload, but for passengers ... it looks like 60 passengers weigh 5t?  Metric tonnes ... ~182lb / passenger ... sounds good ... but maybe the garage can do that math for me ... so for my 5t NS-Type bus, the garage could say:

Weight: 6t empty / 11t max load


update update -- the garage already tells you this, but it is under "Pulls ..."  If many users keep missing this bit, it might not hurt to re-iterate the max tonnage as described above.

jamespetts,

Thanks!  The Colliery is shipping coal to the power station, but not much coal is being used, so I guess they're not finding electricity worthwhile.   I've started shipping coal to the gasworks ... once I have enough barges to ensure a steady supply I'll see how well they consume electricity, and maybe the mine will be ready to buy to keep up the supply.

As far as the warning messages about weight: where do you see those?  Possibly this isn't a bug so much as looking in the wrong place.  I get the popup that "Vehicle $foo can not find a route." and if I look at the vehicle there's a red box above it that says "no route" ... if your system is saying different things, that does sound like a tricky bug indeed!  (Maybe a localization / config thing?  I keep my simutrans dir in a Dropbox folder I could share to ya...)

sdog,

Here in the United States, trucks are regularly weighed at highway weigh stations, as well as at loading terminals and by police carrying portable wheel scales.  Any responsible shipper knows the weight of the vehicles, and the maximum weights they are allowed to carry on different roads.  A shipper can run a vehicle overweight, which decreases safety margins, and increases wear-and-tear on the vehicle and the road, and creates a risk of fines.


Ditto with passenger service: as part of designing a vehicle you need to know the weight of the vehicle and the maximum weight of the passenger payload.  I think US regulators have recently had to reduce the maximum capacity of ferries because the average weight of human passengers has increased.


... in Simutrans, you can see the vehicle weight in the information window.

[sdog]

The weighing is done in germany by some traffic authority. They check the weight of lorries on a random, or suspicion basis with portable scales. They used to do it back when there used to be borders within european union at the border station i was living close to.

But this was testing if a vehicle was overweight, i'd be surprised if they would check vehicles after passing a bridge with weight restriction. Especially for those very fragile bridges, restricted to 3t, where quite a lot of larger non-comercial vehicles would be above the limit.

drivers licenses are often coupled to the allowed total weight i think, vehicles are classified by the allowed total weight (eg. a 5t truck, or a 40t articulated lorry. The question is now, would one be allowed to cross a 3t bridge with a 5t vehicle, that has more than 2t less loaded than it could.

The overcrowd capacity in experimental does not mean the vehicle is overweight, but rather that people are standing (within the allowed number of total pax). Is this correct James?