Pak64.USA

[Packer]

Diverting from my F45 thread....

I think a pak64.USA set is very close to being a releasable set. I've played a little bit and so far it does pretty well on it's own. Most cargos can be carried from 1830 on up.

As of now, the set would only change the rail vehicles, roads, config file,and cargo definitions. Everything else would be default. I've kept a folder on my computer where I keep all the finished versions of the rail vehicles I've converted. Having a pak64 folder with all the rail vehicles removed would be much appreciatted, as I think it'd help with a release

What I'd like to know is what else has to be done before this set can official release? Is the change in vehicles and roads enough to constitute it's own pakset? Or ooes it need it's own industry chain, road vehicles, planes, etc.? If someone could help me out with getting a Pak64.USA Pakset released that would be greatly appreciated.

Credits: Pak64.US wouldn't be possible if it weren't for the following people:
DanmacK and Pikkabird: (from another forum, but have done some simutrans work) for letting me use their NARS2 graphics
Fabio: His "special color helper" tool for GIMP made converting the special colors a breeze. It would have taken months, even years, to do it manually.
Prissi, I would have scrapped this project long ago had it not been for his advice (especially about the diagonal length setting).
Issac, For letting me use his US roads and bridges as standard
VS and Combuijs, for their advice and help. (Especially in showing me where to get the default goods files so I could edit them for Pak64.USA)

[prissi]

Many buildings are not very US in pak64. Also the shadow of the trains is very different from SImutrans. Thus you maybe should also change the landscape (i.e. the texture_lightmap.png or so) to reflect the OpenTTD shadow direction.

You could of course release a vehicle set; if you want to make a full pak64, I would suggest to also update the houses (maybe even using some pak128 houses rescaled and mirrored).

[Fifty]

Just downloaded a bunch of this stuff. Very nice to see some Americana on the simurails!

I am very busy right now, but when I get some time I'd be more than happy to help out with balancing or testing for a future pakset.

You might want to ask rfg123 for some of his stuff. Here's a thread with some nice early roads, and I know he's done some other work in the past, and if he returns, he might be able to help convert some stuff from pak 128.

[Packer]

Prissi, I didn't notice the shadows until you mentioned it. It looks like th sun is in the lower-left in Simutrans, and I think in the lower-right in TTD. The tile thing could get annoying, I'm wondering how hard it would be to mess with the sprites to get the shading right.

As for US-looking buildings, there is a US city set grf for OTTD I might be able to use, a signal set, and a road set. I'll ask about all of them. On a side note, I've seen the half-height tile set that Carlbaker has been doing, and I think it'd would work; with either re-shaded US vehicles or reshaded tiles and buildings.

Fifty, thanks for the tips on rfg123's roads. I see he was planning a pak US almost a year before I started.  I guess a mixture of his and Issac's roads would work. Any help with balancing and testing is appreciated. I'm testing, but have only found a few issues so far (mostly some locos are underpowered, others overpowered)

[Isaac Eiland-Hall]

Personally, I don't see a reason not to distribute it as a separate pak as opposed to addons-for-pak64... Even if it's mostly pak64; perhaps one day it'll be mostly its own.

Also, at some point, I need to work on my roads... and make elevated roads and such. Or perhaps a better artist than me, as I'm honestly not good - I work on top of others' work with graphics.

[rfg123]

Fifty, thanks for the tips on rfg123's roads. I see he was planning a pak US almost a year before I started.  I guess a mixture of his and Issac's roads would work. Any help with balancing and testing is appreciated. I'm testing, but have only found a few issues so far (mostly some locos are underpowered, others overpowered)

Planning is about as far as I made it for a pak64 USA. I did quite a bit of research on numerous aspects, including industry chains, roads/bridges, buses, etc. However those roads were the only real progresss made. Unfortunately, I no longer have access to a computer, hence my absence from this forum. The files posted on my road thread are all that remains.

I wish you luck on this project, I will gladly pick up where I left off once I move to a more permenant home.

[VS]

Personally, I don't see a reason not to distribute it as a separate pak as opposed to addons-for-pak64... Even if it's mostly pak64; perhaps one day it'll be mostly its own.

Same here. Bootstrapping a pakset like this is pretty much the most efficient process. You might want to have a rough or minimal idea about infrastructure and vehicles, though, perhaps recoding some of it with just your data, using the "host" graphics as placeholders. From a pakset maintainer's POV, objects can be classified according to ease of replacement, and you want to minimize damage in this area. Or, to put it differently - players just hate when you remove stuff that has numbers they need to consider. It's understandable for both sides, but... well. OTOH "forgettables" like houses or trees are not a problem.

[Carl]

Prissi, I didn't notice the shadows until you mentioned it. It looks like th sun is in the lower-left in Simutrans, and I think in the lower-right in TTD. The tile thing could get annoying, I'm wondering how hard it would be to mess with the sprites to get the shading right.

It wouldn't be too hard to change texture-lightmap.png; it would just involve a horizontal flip-transformation on most of the individual elements. See here: http://simutrans.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/simutrans/pak64/ground/

However, note that this will make many of the buildings wrongly lit.

[prissi]

One could also use the maps of pak64.ttd from sourceforge ...

[Packer]

I tried redoing some of the grahics to correct shading. Swapping the colors around from dark to light produced some unusual results. Flipping the graphics around works for almost all of the cars and most of the locos, but there are some that would need tweaking after being flipped. Most notably the GE AC44CW, ES44AC, and the shay would have to go under some major changes if flipped. But but a good portion of the units from the 60's need some minor tweaks if flipped. I flipped and tested the Acela and the turbotrain and they look good.

IDK if it'd be easier to flip and tweak the vehicles, or flip everything else. The tracks need to be edited also. Lost of the pak64.us trains are faster than the default tracks allow.

rfg123, You lost all that research? Ouch. You wouldn't mind if I used your roads in combination with Issac's would you? (need early roads)

Issac, Thanks for the support. Fixing the night color issue on your roads wouldn't be too hard. Fabio's GIMP tools should make short work out of it. The only issue I have with it is the cityroads wind up with bridges across the map... As for elevated roads, If I had the graphics and the code for the base ones and your roads I could probably make something work.

VS, I do have an idea for road vehicles. A good portion of the Pak128 ones are based on american prototypes. (Whites, Macks, PBs, Freightliners, etc.) so they could be resized. IDK about trams, boats, citycars and airplanes. I'd like to keep factories the same, just with higher capacities and rates for consuming industries.

Carlbaker, Thanks for the link. IMO, the buildings could be flipped similarily. I also think a lot of building that are in your half-height or pak64.unity would work out pretty well for pakUS (albiet flipped). Any chance that pak.unity could be modified (mostly graphics flipped) for pak.us?

Prissi, there is that. but I'm partial to Carlbaker's graphics set. IMO it wouldn't be too hard to modify his set to work for pak.us

[checksumdigit]

If there is real movement for pak64 USA/north america, I'm up for helping in any way, especially graphics.


I don't play pak64, but if that is where a USA pak will finally get off the ground, I'll get on board with 64 tiles.


I think 64 size tiles might be better for USA, so that the vehicles cain be longer and tiles represent less space (I believe in other pak sets 1 tile represents 1 sq km?)-


IMO a 64 size tile would represent either an acre, or maybe even quarter acre. So i believe that would make 1 mile roughly 24 tiles (48 for 1/4 acre tiles)... Not really sure what pak64 looks like right now, so I don't know if that matches the current pak scale. houses around where I live are on roughly 1/4 acre plots, so that seems about right for tile size. I think the with of a 2 lane residential street is roughly the width of a 1/4 acre, or ~100ft with sidewalks/on-street parking/easement (100x100ft is about a 1/4 acre). I'm sure houses and small buildings from pak 64 would work with that scale well. I think it would be more important to make vehicles the maximum size, as trucks, busses and rolling stock are generally larger in the US. But the overall width of vehicles would need to be decreased, and the alignment of road vehicles would need to be closer to the center of the streets.    -that is, if you think scale is important for the USA pakset :-)

[Packer]

checksumdigit, any help would be appreciated.

Pak64.usa uses a different vehicle scale than normal. Most of the rail vehicle lengths that I've done are between 5 and 8. Some go as high as 10. IMO the different scale doesn't look too out of place with everything else. Buildings end up being larger, which is a good thing and station lengths aren't going to be crazy. (most I've ever need for a full-length train was 13 or 14. That was with DD40AXs and doublestack cars. If we changed the scale now, all the rail vehicles that have been done would have to go under major edits.

Buildings are sorely needed, but most of the ones patrick did for pak128 will fit in with the USA theme.

[checksumdigit]

How far along are you in putting together pak64 USA? Do you already have a basic pak together that could be uploaded and tried out? Or are you just theorizing about pak64 USA?


If you have a significant amount of time invested already, I'd be happy to start playing with the pak and looking into making graphics and/or revising existing graphics to suit the pak style. 


If not, I know myself and other members like rfg123 have contributed US ways, vehicles and buildings for Pak128 US. I believe we may close to having a pak128 US together.  I've started creating new grounds and I have several vehicles and ways in a pak with some buildings from the standard pak128. If you want to invest your time into a pak for the USA, maybe you would be interested in 128 also?


I've attached a screenshot of the new grounds I've been making.

[Packer]

It's pretty far along as far as rail vehicles are concerned. It's fully playable with rail vehciles from 1830 on up. I posted everything in this thread: http://forum.simutrans.com/index.php?topic=9364.0

It seems that all this pak really needs is buildings, road vehicles, trams, boats, and planes. I might be able to throw in signals, additional roads, and some buildings if I can get permission from some other artists.

Note that the shading is reversed from normal simutrans, so buildings and such will have to be flipped around 180. I've tried flipping the rail vehicles and it turns out a good chunk of the engines are different from side to side after the 50s. I think buildings would be easier to flip.

I wouldn't mind a pak128.USA, but given how much time that's invested in pak64.USA; I'm in favor of finishing up pak64.USA first; then working on Pak128.USA.

Your grounds look good BTW

[Yona-TYT]

I hope you release a demo soon pak

[Packer]

I hope you release a demo soon pak

I hope so too.

There are enough rail vehicles are available (download in my F45 thread, link in my previous post) to play from 1830 and up as add-on vehicles. It's just infrastructure, road vehicles, and terrain tiles that are holding it back

[checksumdigit]

Ok Packer, I've downloaded the latest pak64 release as well as everything on the thread you linked to. Are there any other add-ons you are using for your pak64 US base? I'd like to get a pak set up on my machine for testing graphics, so I'd like to have something close to what you are working with.


Also, is there source for pak64 somewhere? I could go through all the existing buildings and pull out good fits for a US pak and fix lighting etc...


So what would be like the top 3 or top 5 priorities? By infrastructure, do you mean roads, canals, etc, or do you mean extensions, stations, town halls etc?


I could certainly do create a new ground texture and ground lighting. Again, I'd be looking of existing source files I can use to modify, so if there is some pak source for 64 that I can use freely, please let me know the best place to find that.

[Packer]

Aside from a few unreleased engines (IDK if we need any more); all I've added were Issac's roads and bridges, and the food chain. I haven't added rfg123's roads yet.

Issac's roads are on the add-ons site:
http://addons.simutrans.com/?pak=All&cat=All&todo=show&id=45
His matching bridges can be found here:
http://archive.forum.simutrans.com/topic/00383.0/index.html

Here's the source for pak64:
http://simutrans.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/simutrans/pak64/

By infrastructure I meant mostly buildings and the former group. I forgot about the latter group; but both could be done. Rfg123's (provided I get his permission to include them) and Issac's have us covered as far as roads are concerned.

I'm gonna try to fix/flip the industrial graphics to reflect the new shading.

[checksumdigit]

Hi Packer,


Ok, I'm assuming you are leading the pak64 effort, so I assume you can answer or make official decisions on most questions specific to this pak.


I've downloaded everything listed so far along with the standard pak64 source. If we are changing the light source by 90 degrees, most buildings should be easy to just swap horizontally. The questions is do the current pak64 buildings represent the USA well, or are there some that we can eliminate or modify?


I've installed the paks you've created so far and really like the train additions. Love the container cars! I have a question about scale though.... how important is it? My concern is the scale of road vehicles vs trains currently. For example, the containers are 40', and are on a rail car longer than 40', assume 60'? There are some road vehicle trailers in the pak almost twice the length of the rail container cars. There aren't too many road vehicles in general, but do we want to try to reduce their size to batter match the scale of rail vehicles?


Also, the visual style of your rail cars is very nice. To me, it leans more toward a comic style, a lot smoother and the colors are brighter overall (without the hard black border), where as the pak64 graphics are a little harder on the eyes. Personally, I like the smoother, colorful graphic style. It will take some work to update pak64 buildings to match the style, but I think it's worth the effort, and I'll happily help. Have you defined any kind of visual style other than the light source change?


I could start on new grounds that have correct lighting and a little more vibrant color and texture, as well as smoothing out the corner transitions. This would help define the visual style.

[rfg123]

My roads are all yours. I look forward to seeing the end product.

For the record, none of my research or timelines were lost, I just live far from home right now. However, a lot of my research on roads survives on my road thread as the intro/retire dates in the pak files.

Another project I had was figuring out how to balance train locomotives. I biult a whole timeline 1830-2020. In general I had at least two general purpose locomotives for every year, at least one passenger locomotive, as well as "specialty" locomotives that did not neccessarily have a predessor or successor. A shame this data is not immediately available, it would save a lot of headache. I was also working on creating a balancing formula in Excel with some success.

[Packer]

checksumdigit,  Good to hear you're on board. There aren't a whole lot of buildings in pak64. A few would work, but a lot of ones from pak128 look kind of american (especially the ones from Patrick and Propermike, they even seem to match when rescaled). I've spent some time going through the commercial buildings and re-scaling and flipping the ones I think would work for pak64.us. I haven't taken a closer look at pak64's buildings yet. I've already flipped the factories for pak64, I'll have to look up how to code them though. I noticed there was a goods factory but it isn't used in the normal set. I'm tempted to include it because it looks american enough to be in the set.

IDK about how the trucks are going to look. The flat car with the containers is supposed to represent 2 shorter containers (20' perhaps?) and the dobule-stack is supposed to represent longer ones (40-53'?). As for the trailers, I'd have to look at them to determine how long they are supposed to be. For reference IIRC, a 40' boxcar has a length of 7. I'm gonna try to rescale and flip some of the semis from pak 128 to see how well they work out.

I didn't do the graphics (save for the F45), For the most part I'm using someone else's graphics or modification there of with permissions. Pakus.64 doesn't have a defined style yet. Having one style for everything would be nice; but I would like to get a playable and somewhat decent look set out there first. That being said, some of the buildings from pak 128 that I've rescaled look to match up pretty good with the vehicles.

Can't wait to see what you come up with for grounds.

rfg123, Thanks for allowing the use of your roads. I'll have to take a further look at your roads to see what you have.

I'd love to see the balance sheet or the balancing formula you have, but as you said; it's not immediately available. I just borrowed the stats from the files the vehicles I'm using came from. I researched all the diesels for their respective stats though (steamers and electrics are supposed to be generic).

I also noticed you had some skyscrapers based on buildings from Georgia. I think that they should work in the set too.

[checksumdigit]

Ok, I was able to flip the ground light texture and make some changes to the ground texture. See attached screen and compiled paks.

[prissi]

To make the pak distinct, you could use directly the shading from OpenTTD. Just remove all color from the grass, blurr them and then copy the outside back again. That way you would get interesting diagonals (maybe they are also in pakTT in sourceforge, I forgot) and half height anyway.

[Packer]

checksumdigit, The ground stuff looks good to me. I'll play with it in a bit

Prissi, You mean this: http://simutrans.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/simutrans/pakTTD/
I looked in the above link and it does have the intresting diagonals. I'll leave the decision on which tile set to use up to checksumdigit, since he's working on the ground tiles.

Should the PakUS track be modified default simutrans track,or use the PakTTD track? I think it would depend on which ground setting we use. Is the template for half-height roads and tracks different than non-half height

I managed to scale down and flip all the american looking commercial buildings from pak128. In addition, I was able to get permission for some American buildings from some others. Some of them are multi-tile though. Does simutrans support multi-tile city buildings? If not I suppose they could be coded as city attractions with somewhat low passenger and mail levels.

Is someone else willing to code buildings and industries for this set?

[prissi]

Buildings is most easy; even tile cutter can generate right building dats. The only challenge is to find the right combinations of levels and intro_date/retire_dat and weights to have nice looking towns.

You can go without industrial buildings just using commercial and residential.

Multitile only works as attraction or factory (the latter would have more local connections and could appear more than once per town).

[Packer]

Buildings is most easy; even tile cutter can generate right building dats. The only challenge is to find the right combinations of levels and intro_date/retire_dat and weights to have nice looking towns.

Okay. Intro/retire dates are what's probably going to be tricky for me. I believe I know enough to get if fairly close from the 1920s on, but I'm kind of lost before that. What are building levels and weights?

You can go without industrial buildings just using commercial and residential.

Multitile only works as attraction or factory (the latter would have more local connections and could appear more than once per town).

True, most industrial areas are seperate from cities nowadays. (at least around here)

Guess I'll omit the multi-tile apartments for now. The big office buildings could be attractions. Is there a way to get them to appear in the biggest parts of large cities? I could edit the apartments to be single-tile, unless they can be coded as a "dummy factory" (i.e. accepts and recieves nothing; but passengers and mail)

[checksumdigit]

Hi All,


I had a look at the pakTTD ground light texture and was able to do the basic reversed folds for the full height set. See attached screenshot + pak.


I like how this looks, but I need to make some changes to the lighting as some parts are washed out and do not have any definition unless you turn the grid on.


It may be possible to make the light map have some more realistic terrain. It will take some time to play around with the possibilities. for now, i think this lighting is ok and will certainly set this pak apart from the other 64 variants.


feedback always appreciated

[kierongreen]

You might wish to alter the transition textures too so that they use straight lines rather than curved and fit these lightmaps better.

[Packer]

nice work so far checksumdigit!

I've managed to go through pak128's buildings and select american-looking buildings. I just shrunk and flipped the png, so the original dat file will hopefully work.

I started looking at the American city graphics (done by Oz and lifeblood on the TT-forums) and am noticing there are some buildings that could be residental or commercial. Nearby are a few buildings that have stores on the bottom floor, but have the 2nd story as a house (both residental and commercial). Some of these buildings look like they could go either way, and I'm not really sure on the era for most of them.

• Is there anyone who would like to help with determing era of for these buildings, whether they should be residental or commercial, and their levels?
• Or is there some ratio in simutrans of commercial/industrial to residental buildings simutrans uses?
  

As for the multi-tile apartments, I think they could be another scrapyard with a very low production level (if it won't work as having 0 production). Still debating whether the multi-tile office buildings could be set up as attractions, or as a factory that takes in fairly small amounts of goods (there is an unused goods factory sprite and dat in the pak64's sources). Doing them as factories might require a run-through truck stop...

Here's a sample (there are over 200, maybe close to 300) of the American city graphics done by Oz and lifeblood: The mix and offices (3rd and 4th) files are the ones that have buildings that could be either or..

[greenling]

Packer
The Photo for the building looks good out.
Those Building be pimp the Simutranspaksets.

[checksumdigit]

I like the 1st set of apartments and the city mix because most of those buildings have space on the tile around the buildings, unlike the other ones that fill the entire tile. I think buildings should have at least space on two sides, but that's just my opinion. I see that the lighting for these buildings is also different from how I set up the light map for the ground, but it can be fixed to match the buildings... still working on that one.

You might wish to alter the transition textures too so that they use straight lines rather than curved and fit these lightmaps better.

Yes, I know what you are talking about. I'll need to re-make that texture also- next revision :-)

[Packer]

greenling, I can't take credit for creating them though. I'm using them with the creators permission

checksumdigit, I noticed that too, but I think it'd look good with a bunch of them together. How's the lighting different?

still undecided on whether the "office" ones should be residental or commercial. I'm thinking mix them up a bit. Looking at a city in one of my games (I usually play with buildings hidden) it looks to be about 25-40% commercial and 60-75% residental. I didn't spot any industrial buildings in it.Am I off on that one?

I think making those office buildings commercial would create a tall city center, with a large amount off smaller houses. mixing them up would probably look good, but might cause some tall buildings away from the others....

[prissi]

Simutrans will not put two identical buildings next to each other.

Apart from that, com is best for city growth as it satisfy homeless as well as jobless criteria. With so few houses I would strongly recommend com. Maybe levels 1 4 9 13 16 ...

[Isaac Eiland-Hall]

Great buildings!

I tend to agree about the space around buildings -- except the tallest skyscrapers. By the time the city grows to that point, I think having a larger building makes up for the lack of base room, especially since at that point, probably won't see the bases anyway

[rfg123]

Packer, feel free to use my skyscrapers if you think they will go well with the set.. I do not have many public releases but everything I have painted I give you full permission to include.

[checksumdigit]

I'm still playing with grounds. 


I think I've discovered something great. I did lots of texturing to the light map and I must say I'm impressed with the results. Corners actually appear soft and natural. This is the look I was hoping for all along.


Unless there is anything else that can be improved, I'll call it final and focus on something else. I still plan on updating the shore texture though.

[Packer]

I got the entirity of that building set coded and working (I used some as rotationsfor the same building to cut down on files) thanks to tile cutter. I found out in the process what happens if you code a multi-tile city building. The game crashes when a city tries to build it, but if I went and built it as "public service" it worked as normal. I think it could be possible in a future release of simutrans. Looks like I'll code some of them as dummy factories, a few as attractions, and 1 as a actual factory.

The only downside is that they don't appear all that often for some reason. It seems Prissi has the answer for that though.

Prissi, I split the blocks about 30-70 residental to commercial. Lowest level for the blocks was like 15. Based on what you are saying, it seems they should all be commercial.

I also had pak128's buildings rescaled and done, but they came out with whitish borders and outlines. IDK if i'll edit them, I believe I have a better (less-time consuming) idea. I'm working on pak 64's factories ATM, I have most of them flipped.

Issac, Point taken; but as I said before the graphics aren't mine. I just coded them for simutrans.

Checsumdigit, I love the ground tiles. Only question I have is how do I make them work in game?

rfg123, thanks for the full permission.

[Carl]

If you want to avoid white borders in rescaling, you have two options (I'm assuming you're using Gimp):

1. Set the "interpolation" value to "none". This will give you no white border at all but the rescaling will be less smooth.

2. Manually correct the white borders (quite easy in Gimp since you can simply select all then deselect the transparency colour only to see which bits are not quite the right colour). This gives smoother results but is more time-consuming.

[Packer]

Carlbaker, Thanks for your suggestions. I was MSpaint, but I do have GIMP.

Which option were you using on Pak.Unity?

[Carl]

Mostly the second. It's only really problematic for buildings with trees and other foliage.

[checksumdigit]

Packer, With a recent copy of pak64, I just removed the ground.LightTexture.pak and ground.ClimateTexture.pak and replaced with my compiled _US paks. If you're using a pak that had all grounds compiled into 1 pak, then I'm not sure if it will override the grounds.all.pak.

[Packer]

Carlbaker, I'll give it a go when I get the pak64 factories re-done for Pak64.US. Your advice should come in handy when some of the Pak128 factories will be rescaled and re-used. For now though, I just want to get something out there.

Checksum, Gotcha. I'll give it a go in a bit.

I've got most of the default factories done. I still have to do the food, waste, and an additional factory (pak64 shopping center, accepts goods, furniture, and maybe food; with a high pax and mail level)

[checksumdigit]

can you post the graphics for factories that you currently have and also let me know which goods still need factories? I can certainly work on some factory graphics to fill the gaps.

[Packer]

Checksumdigit, I flipped the around the stock pak64 factories and added 2 new factories and 1 new cargo. Basically it's unchanged.
http://simutrans-germany.com/files/upload/factories.zip

I think townhalls are sorely needed. I tried flipping the stock ones, but it bugged me that they always had their sides to the roads...

I've got that city set playable; but when I coded some buildings as attractions and put there location as cities, they appear far away from them. Skyscrapers don't appear in the middle of nowhere...

[greenling]

packer
the factories.zip it´s good.
And useful.

[checksumdigit]

I've started on some town halls. I haven't compiled any of these yet to test them, just working on the graphics for now. Plan to ad lost more ground cover and color to the buildings.

[Isaac Eiland-Hall]

I like the shapes! If you seek inspiration (not that I think you need to), might google for county courthouses imho

Also, if you wanted something unusual, the Dallas City Hall is http://i.imgur.com/uyKvQ.jpg

Also also, since this is a US pakset... Consider that many smaller towns use the City hall as the police and fire department HQ as well... Don't forget the US flags, which would be everywhere!

[Combuijs]

If you want to prevent relocation of townhalls, you might consider giving every townhall a 2x2 size (or at least the same size). If you are okay with relocations, then forget what I have said...

[Packer]

My town doesn't have a town hall. It uses a local school after hours or the police station. There are 2 courthouses though 

I like the shape checksumdigit. can't wait to see the finished result

I guess I'll start modifying the default tracks. Increase speeds and make them come out earlier. (concrete will be similar to wood, just cheaper to maintain).

[Fabio]

I granted this project its own board, hoping to see a release soon

[Packer]

Thanks Fabio. I hope to see one soon as well...

I hate to do this, but seeing as I don't want to overlap Carlbaker's pak.unity for building development; I'm electing to just use the City buildings I've done up for the time being.

I could get some road vehicles done up in the mean time.

[Carl]

I've sent Packer the latest pak64.unity city-buildings in the hope that this will help the USA project move along.

[Packer]

Thanks for doing that Carlbaker.

Well I found someone on another forum who's willing to let me use his TTD american trucks, in exchange I'll help him with them.

I would like to do a set of american-looking bridges (2 of the default ones will work) but there's no real template. Guess I could modify the elevated track bridge (the 450 km/h one) because it has no ties and looks like a through girder bridge.

Edit: Here's the buildings set. The multi-tiles are attractions, there are 8 apartments so they work as attractions.
http://simutrans-germany.com/files/upload/NACS.zip

[greenling]

The new Buildings be graet.

[Packer]

Greenling, I'm glad you like them.It took a while in tilecutter to cut them all out. But I can't take credit for coding them.

I managed to go through Carlbaker's buildings last nigt and coded them. I'll post them later (still trying to balance them out a bit). Looks like I'll still have to import a few others from pak128.

Well I found someone on another forum who's willing to let me use his TTD american trucks, in exchange I'll help him with them.

The reason for the above is because the TTD american trucks will be scaled to the trains. It may take a while, and I'd like to get that one done ASAP. I'll try to keep this up though.

[An_dz]

This pak is moving really nice, I hope to see an alpha soon. You should create a base texture for sidewalks and other stuffs to help painters create buildings.

[rfg123]

rfg123, You lost all that research? Ouch. You wouldn't mind if I used your roads in combination with Issac's would you? (need early roads)

Well, I finally managed to obtain my original research. Some of it is gone, such as bus timelines, architectual sytle timelines, etc. However, some of it is still intact. In addition, I have a lot of Raven's old pak64 parts including dozens of steam, diesel, and electric locomotives, railcars, trucks, and a few biuldings. It will take some time to sift through it all and see what is usable but there is some basic framework for a USA themed pakset.

Perhaps most useful is the rail locomotive timeline - it covers 1828-2015 starting with the 4-2-0 Jervis type dual purpose (passenger and freight) locomotive, and ending with the GE ES44AC and EMD SD70ACe for freight, the GE P42DC for passenger, and ABB ALP-46 for electric by 2015. At every point in the diesel era, there is at least 1 electric, 1 passenger, and 2 freight locomotives for each year. There is also room for "special" locomotives/trainsets that do not necessarily fit the timeline, such as the TurboTrain, Shays, rebuilds, etc.
I am going to continue going through what I have and see what can be used, updates to follow.

[greenling]

rfg123
You devlop Pakfiles for a Pakset?

[Emil Sawicki]

There's a problem: some steam locomotives don't have the smoke. Packer, you should define it in the dat file.

[Fifty]

Yes, known problem, fixes to smoke is on my to do list with dat file work.

[greenling]

Cool.The projekt for Pak64.usa goes forward.

[Packer]

Thanks for covering that one Fifty.

I've got some trams done up, but I really don't have any idea on how to balance them as they are kinda small IRL.

Haven't really touched the buildings recently as I've been working on figuring out what to do for those 2 towers I coded as attractions*. I got the apartments I've coded as attractions be okay in a rotated view, but am stumped as to what to do for a base tile to make those 1x2 towers be 2x2 with some base. The rotated view thing kinda bugs me.

*Well, okay that and testing the vehicles. I'm finding some that are useless due to being too heavy or not having enough gear...

Edit: Found a bug with the FEF northern's tender (an extra I threw in). Fixed it in the attached pak below

[Packer]

BUMP

Due to RL issues I haven't been able to keep at the feverish pace I was. I'm situated again and can resume work.

I'm actually considering modifying the trains to have lighting like normal simutrans. That way it'd be easier to include new add-ons from other creators.

IDK if anyone still follows this anymore, but input would be much appreciated.

[rfg123]

Is this project still alive at all? This is probably the most progress made towards a USA pakset and I would hate to see it kill over before reaching full steam.

Although I have been busy as of late, I have tried pulling a few open source TTD sprites and experimenting with coding them for Simutrans. There haven't been too many issues other than the lighting, which is easily corrected.

[greenling]

Hello rfg123
I think that packer in moment have very many trouble that he have no free time for those projekt.

[Packer]

Yeah, I really haven't had a whole lot of time. But that should change soon.

Life hasn't given me a whole lot of free time. Service industry + tourist destination + full time college + girlfriend + contract work = no free time... It's starting to slow down a bit, so I can get back to work on this.

[Packer]

*blows the dust off of this thread*

Geez. I really should get back to this. No new progress, mainly because of the lack of free time or just deciding which way I want to go..

The OTTD truck set I was helping with has been delayed indefinitely. So it looks like the truck selection is gonna be limited for a while. I can pull the American stuff out of pak64 and scale down the ones from pak128 and flip them, along with using the few North American road vehicles

Still lost about which ships to use, but there is a nicely done OTTD plane set I could probably use because it has a lot of American planes in it. I haven't played simutrans in a while, so I forgot what it has...

As far as the buildings go, I would like some other people to chime in on what they think are American-looking building. I have a few ideas, but some may have other ideas..

If I could get some people to volunteer as balancers, building pickers, and some one to keep me from waffling (i.e.; stay with reverse shading or go back to default shading, etc), that'd be great.

[rfg123]

I know this thread has been quiet for a while.. But last year I pulled some buildings from OTTD that seemed relatively North American. However, they more or less were for a personal project just to test the waters. The problem is the majority of the buildings were for two specific eras - the late 19th century and the mid 20th century. Lots of gaps time period wise, but a start none the less.

My only concern is that I do not know what the limitations were per the authors, even though the majority were created by Raven or were default buildings for OTTD. As such I am hesitant to post them here just yet. If we could figure that out we would have a decent start to this pakset building and prop wise.

[prissi]

Raven gave general Ok for all graphics including OpenTTD one a long time ago.

The OpenTTD graphics supplied with the game (not the "original" ones, but the "repainted" ones) are CC, so those could be ok too.

[Fifty]

I'm still around and happy to help, though I fear my free time will soon evaporate. I have lots of balancing spreadsheets and notes about existing fixes to be made, mostly just small errors in the dat files.

Personally, I wouldn't worry too much about balance in the first stages, the key would be to get a playable pak out there to generate interest, and then tweak pricing, etc.

In terms of shading, this is your call: which one will be less work, overall?

[Packer]

Some life, lol

rfg123, what about the building set I posted? I think that's early to mid 20th century...

Fifty, as far as shading. I'm still lost, I should probably make a poll.

Factories, grounds, trains, and trams are done if we stick with the reversed shading. Buildings are about 50/50 (although town halls are being a pain with animation), and planes and trucks have yet to be done.

However for planes and ships, I have permission to use a set for each. So if we use those (and pluck the American planes out, the plane set uses some USSR designs) they won't need to be flipped