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PakBritain: Addons.

Started by fam621, October 19, 2016, 07:39:13 PM

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fam621

Hello, this is a addons request for Pak128.Britain-Ex-0.9.X. Do NOT ask for new liveries here. To request liveries, go to this link: http://forum.simutrans.com/index.php?topic=15665.0. Thank you for your co-operation. :)

jamespetts

Generally, there is not a great advantage to requesting new things in the forum as the totality of all requests will usually equal the totality of all things that exist after a fairly short time, and also those who actually do the work (which, of course, is voluntary) will tend to have their own ideas as to priorities in any event; the more important thing as far as requests on the forum is concerned is to identify anything that is missing from a gameplay perspective (e.g., if one is missing a certain type of 'bus or railway track that existed in a particular era and served a particular function which function is missing in the game causing gameplay problems) and, of course, to identify any bugs (i.e., things not working as intended).
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HarrierST

Sounds like an answer  in the old TV show - "Yes Minister" from the P. S. to the minister.   :) ;)

fam621

I see. I see. I know that time is limited James but if The Hood is available in is own time. It would be fantastic and saving me time asking you James (no offence).

jamespetts

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Vladki

Fam621: stop pestering the guys who did (and still do) a lot of work for pak.britain and simutrans. James, Hood and Kierongreen (sorry if I misspelled) dedicated a huge amount of time to simutrans, and you should be thankful to them for creating so nice and complex pakset. The best way to show your thanks would be to further improve their work. Stop asking for addons and liveries. Move your lazy ****, and learn how to make addons. It is not that hard. Making new liveries might be the easiest starting point. The modelling is all done, you have just to put different colours on the models. Just like in kids coloring books. I hope you will find creating addons just as entertaining as playing simutrans. And remember there are many things more important than computer games. We all do contribute in our free time and that is very limited resource once you have kids. So stop whining, start painting.

jamespetts

Also, if you have a go at some new liveries and get stuck, I should be more than happy to provide advice.
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fam621

Can I have a livery maker via the site you that you gave me the forthcoming release on or a post with the vital software to make them and has to Vladki, as soon has I get the vital software, I will not be a lazy ***** and in return **** you for saying that! xD

jamespetts

What do you mean by a livery maker? I can give you links to the software that you need if you like (assuming this to be what you mean).

You will need:

* Blender (this allows you to modify the 3d models);
* This Blender plugin for Simutrans;
* The GIMP (this allows you to add the special colour for the transparent backgrounds and make other adjustments to the images produced by Blender); and
* Render Post Processor (this allows you to consolidate the 8 (for vehicles) or 4 (for other things) images that you get from Blender into a single file to make them easier to manage; this is not strictly necessary, but it is advisable).

See the thread here for an explanation of how to get the things that you create in Blender into Simutrans, and see this free e-book about how to use Blender (you will only need to learn the basics, described in the first few chapters, as Simutrans graphics are very basic).

All of the software listed above is free. I hope that this helps!
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kierongreen

Thank you for your interest fam621, I note that jamespetts has given a lot of pointers. I simply don't have the time to contribute regularly to Simutrans these days but I'm more than happy to give help as well if required.

fam621

How do I install the blender? :) How do I get the trains and make liveries with them? :)

jamespetts

As to how to install Blender, may I suggest a Google search for "how to install Blender"? It comes up with a clear answer immediately; far better than I could give by remembering what I did with it.

As to how to get the .blend files for the rail vehicles, see this thread in the Pak128.Britain subforum.

As to how to change the liveries, you will simply need to load the .blend file of the vehicles whose livery that you want to change, save it with a new file name, alter the actual 3d model itself so as to give the vehicle a different livery (see the free e-book linked above for details on how to work with 3d models in Blender), and then produce the .png files as described in this thread. You will then need to modify the vehicles' .dat files to make reference to the new liveries.
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Spenk009

While on the topic, the Render Post Processor asks for two versions of the images that it wishes to consolidate into one. I understand that these come from two different ways of rendering the images in Gimp, but which two settings or types are expected/wanted? The Gimp steps for creating petty edges are beyond me. Also, when working with partially obstructing objects, how is it best to separate these in blender? Separate layers, deleting parts of the model, manually removing the parts that are background?

jamespetts

The render post processor tool was designed to deal with a different workflow for anti-aliasing edges, used in Pak128. The practice in Pak128.Britain has been simply to use the same image twice, which makes the render post processor tool nothing more than a way of combining images (for Pak128.Britain purposes), but if the substitution of the default black background for the transparent colour is done in the GIMP after processing with the post-processor tool, this still makes things easier, quicker and more manageable overall.

I am not sure that I fully understand your last question; can you elaborate what you mean by partially obstructing objects? Are you referring to a situation in which there need to be islands of transparency in an object surrounded by graphics such that using the flood fill tool in the GIMP will not give background colours in these interior parts properly? If so, just use the flood fill tool (always with a tolerance of 0) in the GIMP on these interior sections, too.
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Spenk009

Thanks for clearing that up, I've been using the tool as you suggest.

I meant for example how on a bridge, the pillars can be hidden and way on top be kept visible. Similar to streetlights on the far side of the road disappearing behind a vehicle and the close ones remaining visible.

jamespetts

Ahh: that requires use of the frontimage and backimage system: the basic idea is that "backimage" graphics are displayed behind vehicles and other objects, and "frontimage" graphics are displayed in front of vehicles and other objects. There are separate images for each, and the two are only combined in game.

I do not know in detail how this works from memory as I have not produced any bridge graphics myself, but this is the same as for Standard, and I believe is fully documented somewhere.
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fam621

I give up, too hard to even make a single livery. :(

jamespetts

I am sorry to hear that you are having trouble. Which parts of the process could you not manage?
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Vladki

Fam621: it may be easier to repaint vehicles in gimp or some other bitmap editor - modifying the png files. Although the results will not be that nice. Once you master how to modify png and dat to make new livery, you can give blender another try.

fam621


jamespetts

I have to say, I find it much easier to use Blender than to try to modify the .png files; I tried modifying a set of .png files once to create a player colour livery on a railway locomotive, and it was extremely difficult. Using the Blender process by comparison is quite straightforward once one has set up the workflow.
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wlindley

I'd love to use Blender but just can't get started. In AutoCAD I could take a floor-plan drawn on graph paper and type something like:  LINE (0,0)-(100,0)-(100,10)- ... and so on, to create a polygon for my base; and then extrude that through three dimensions to make a solid.  I can't find a tutorial anywhere that explains how to do that with Blender. Do you really start with a cube and then poke and prod at it until it looks like a building? Ugh. I must be missing something basic.

jamespetts

Did you ever look at the Blender tutorial ("from noob to pro")? That does make it quite straightforward.
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fam621

#23
Vladki, I've made 2 liveries for pak64 (pak.ngb) today, so I'm I a lazy **** NOW? xD

jamespetts

May I ask whether these were made with Blender or by some other process?
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Vladki

Fam21: great. I'm really glad that you made it. And I hope you had fun while proving that you are not lazy any more >:D :thumbsup:

jamespetts

You do need to understand that I have an extremely long list of high priority tasks, which will take many years to complete without very substantial (and unexpected) assistance from others. It would be an excellent thing to have all significant British vehicles of all sorts (road, rail, water, air, etc.) in every livery in which they ever appeared, and perhaps one day we will, but I am afraid that asking for specific things will not make things happen any faster. It is not as if I do not understand that we do not have every livery in the set; it is just a matter of priorities.

It really is just me working on this at present: The Hood, who had been working on modern rail vehicles until recently, stepped down from pakset development after becoming a new father. I am entirely self-taught in coding and do this in my spare time in between a busy and unpredictable full-time job. To give you an idea of how long that my to do list is, have a look at this thread. Each one of those tasks may take many months (some might take a few weeks, others might take over a year in themselves). There have been times when fixing a single bug has taken four months.

That list does not include pakset tasks, and there is plenty of pakset work that needs doing, too. For example, at present, I am staying away from home for Christmas and have no access to my ordinary computer that I use for development, so I can only undertake pakset work. I am using the time to re-scale all the road vehicles, which are out of scale, and add more road vehicles as I do that. Road vehicles are a priority at present because there are far fewer road vehicles in the pakset than rail vehicles, and thus far more gaps. It will therefore add more to the game to fill in those gaps than produce additional railway graphics. The priority needs to be filling in gaps.

It is one thing to identify functional gaps (i.e. there is no vehicle that does X thing between years Y and Z) of which I may not be aware (thus identifying a previously unknown problem in the pakset), but it is another just to ask that I produce more liveries for existing vehicles when I already know that the set of liveries is not complete but have decided to prioritise other things. Asking me to produce a specific livery amounts to asking that I stop work on other projects that I have already identified as higher priority in order to do that. Even the time that I am spending writing this message is time that I could (and would prefer to) be spending undertaking other tasks.

I do not want to discourage you from contributing to the forum generally or playing Simutrans(-Experimental), but I do want you to learn what sort of contributions are helpful and what are not. I believe that you have been asked by other forum moderators before not to beg for items, which is generally discouraged because it is intrusive and demanding for those who spend their free time creating content for the game.

I understand your passion for the game, and I know that it can be frustrating if there are things missing that you would like to see, but asking others who have a very long list of other things to do to produce the things that you specifically wish for is not the solution.

You did try previously I believe to have a go at making graphics yourself, but you gave up after a while; I did ask you what the problem was to see whether I could help you, but you did not respond with any detail beyond that you were having trouble with Blender.

As you may see from this discussion, I am experimenting with a simplified workflow for producing graphics that should make producing new graphics for the pakset much easier than it has been before by eliminating entirely all post-processing, meaning that you only need to learn how to use Blender (and then only its most basic features) and edit the .dat files in order to produce new items, rather than working with the GIMP and Render Post Processor as well. You are welcome to use that method for the graphics that you would like to produce, as the experiment seems to me to be successful so far.

Realistically, it is likely to be many years before the things that you are asking for will be produced if it is left to me alone to do them, so great are the demands on my time. The only way in which there is any likelihood of these things being done sooner is if (1) you learn to do them yourself; or (2) you find some other people who are willing to work on the pakset and produce these graphics. This will not change by you asking for more things (unless you identify an error or functional omission that becomes a high priority task by virtue of the "bugs before features" principle).

If you or someone else does produce them, provided that they are to a reasonable standard, I will happily include them in the release (and you are free to use them yourself even if they are not included in the release).

I hope that you now understand why the response to your requests has not been - and is not likely in the future to be - immediately to act on them. If you want to have another go with creating graphics but get stuck again, please do post a message (in the public forum not a private message, please: private messages do not allow multiple people to respond, nor do they allow others in the future to see how your problem was solved) and we will try to assist you as much as we can. Indeed, assisting others to learn to produce more items for the pakset is itself a high priority task, as it will ultimately allow more new items to be produced in any given time if the person does indeed succeed in producing new things.
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fam621

Ok. Downloading the blender stuff now.

jamespetts

Excellent. Have a look at some of the information in this post about how to get started.
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fam621

I would like a 4 aspect (both colourlight and LED) choose signal with LED metric's for route indication rather than the 45 degree one please? I'll try and make one still. If you can supply one, that would be grateful.

jamespetts

Quote from: fam621 on December 29, 2016, 03:35:52 PM
I would like a 4 aspect (both colourlight and LED) choose signal with LED metric's for route indication rather than the 45 degree one please? I'll try and make one still. If you can supply one, that would be grateful.

You are certainly welcome to make one, but I am concentrating on road vehicles at present (and please see the long post above regarding requests). Do let me know if you get stuck with producing the graphics and I shall try to explain how to overcome whatever difficulty that you might be having.
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