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New Half-Height Pakset: Preview Screenshots

Started by Carl, March 19, 2012, 09:24:50 PM

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Carl

The working title for this pakset is Pak64.Unity. It doesn't aim to re-invent the wheel: instead, it aims to modify lots of existing open-source material and bring it together into a visually consistent style* -- a style which is noticeably less 'bright' than many other paksets. It's also a half-height pakset. It will have branches for use with both standard Simutrans and Simutrans-Experimental (in the model of Pak128.Britain).


(click for larger)

My emphasis in Pak64.Unity is more on curation than creation. The pakset takes standard-Pak64 as its starting point, but almost nothing remains visually unchanged**. Lots of open-source material has been adapted from other paksets (including Pak128, Pak128.Britain and Pak128.Japan), as well as some other free material in the community which has not been released as part of a pakset before. (I'm trying to be very careful about content, so if you see anything here that's been adapted from an object which you think isn't open-source, let me know. All copyrights are, of course, retained.)


(click for larger)

There's a lot more work to do, of course, but I hope to have an initial release (on both Standard and Experimental branches) available soon.


(click for larger)

Constructive feedback is very welcome!



* Obviously there's still plenty of work still to do on visual consistency, along with everything else.

** The exception is vehicles. I'm not planning to substantially alter pak64's vehicle-set before the first release -- though I will add a few vehicles. The train you can see in the first screenshot is my own, for instance.

ӔO

yay, I can finally see the backsides of slopes :)
My Sketchup open project sources
various projects rolled up: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/17111233/Roll_up.rar

Colour safe chart:

prissi

Very nicely update on pak64, as it should be. Only a few pak128 houses imho do not really match well. This makes me really wish I could spent more time on pak development again. Actually, this could even be the new default pak64.

colonyan did a lot of citybuilding, which may fit this look. I have a zip if they are not there any more.

Halfheight or not is only about ways, bridges and tunnels; stuff which is available in full version anyway. Halfhaight tunnel and bridges are somewhat problematic as they are very flat visually ;)

The pak64 has careful selected max levels for different introduction data. Did you do something similar?

The Hood

Pretty! I seem to remember ages ago some discussion / aborted work on double height slopes - from a graphics perspective it would look great if that were ever possible as we could have half height as the default. Taking it further you could also ban trains from going up steeper slopes and insist on two levels clearance for tunnels/bridges - but I'm getting carried away now... And I deviate - it looks great!

colonyan

Very consistent in building style uniformity. Really good to see. Hope to see more.
(I'm currently frustrated not being able to get into pak development...)

transporter

It's definitely more aesthetically pleasing. You could probably fix the flat tunnel problem by making it narrower couldn't you? Or use The Hood's idea on reserving 2 levels for tunnels.

Carl

Thanks for the kind comments, all :)

Bridges have been the biggest headache in half-height conversion, which is why you don't see any in the screenshots yet! Tunnels don't look too bad, but -- as prissi says -- bridges look quite flat in half-height.

Quote from: prissi on March 19, 2012, 10:00:46 PM
Only a few pak128 houses imho do not really match well.
Yes, there are certainly some buildings I need to tweak (or remove). It'd be useful for me to know which ones stick out most to you.

Quote
The pak64 has careful selected max levels for different introduction data. Did you do something similar?
I'm gradually working on this. I'm getting good results for the beginning and middle of the 20th century, but I need to do more work on 1970-2020+.

Carl

Pak64.Unity is still under development -- I have, however, been somewhat distracted by a certain high-profile RPG in the past few weeks  ;)

The status of the project is as follows:

-- City-buildings will probably not be edited too much between now and release (except to make some of the pak128 buildings more congruous with the style.

-- Most of the work remains to be done to convert bridges and tunnels to half-height -- this is rather fiddly.

-- Once bridges and tunnels are complete, I can make an initial release.


Carl

Progress has been slow. However, I don't want this project to die before a first release is even achieved.


Here are the sources thus far: https://github.com/downloads/jha4ceb/pak64.experimental/Pak64.Unity.rar


Anybody should, in the mean time, feel free to use parts of this for other projects.




Milko

Hello Carl

The sources are visible (for example with a github repository)?

Giuseppe

Carl

Not yet -- but I should certainly create one as well as merely providing a complete rar dowload. I'll make sure to do that soon.

Milko

Hello Carlbaker

The screen shots are really interesting. Also good idea to provide two versions: one for standard and one for experimental simutrans. You will continue to maintain / develop the pak 64 exp? Thank you!

Giuseppe

Carl

The plan is for pak64.exp to be maintained only as a mirror of pak64 with experimental features from hereon out -- so no big changes, just bugfixes and updates as necessary.