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Boats, barges and ships

Started by The Hood, September 27, 2009, 09:05:40 PM

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JS

For the purpose of windjammer: you can use the Flying-P-Liner if the graphics (pak128) is suitable to pak128.britain I made it long ago and it's now under free license. I think it is one of the only bigger sailing ships available in simutrans. And it was a hard piece of work.

Maybe it is a good idea to unite the shipping departments of the different paks, unless there are enough ships in every pak available. Shipping in 128 right now is impossible in earlier times.

But don't be chauvinist: the Flying-Ps were from a german shipping company.

The Hood

JS,

Thanks for the offer.  That's more or less what I want, it looks great, but I think to fit the pak128.Britain scale it would need to be bigger and also I'd need to tweak the colours.  Colours I can do in the GIMP, but scale is tricker.  The easiest solution would be if you made it in blender or another 3D program, and then I could re-render it to the same scale and colour settings as the rest of pak128.Britain.  Does such a model exist or did you draw it pixel by pixel?

As for uniting the shipping departments, the main problem is consistency of scale and size.  There will be more ships in pak128.Britain than current pak128, going right back to 1750 as you can see.  Of course these are all open source so no reason why they can't be used in 128 if people want to adapt them!

As for them being German, we'll just have to keep that quiet!  But then again, I think the design looks the same as what I want, I'm just after a generic windjammer.

JS

It was hard work: that means pixel to pixel, in principle. I created some modules, like mast, shrouds..., to put them together time by time. But everything happened in the Gimp (the next time I will take another prog). So there is no easy scaling. I don't know the British rules of scaling, and I never rescaled something before. Did you rescaled a pixeled picture so far? Along with this work might come some slight easy modifications (e.g. color of hulk, height of last mast) to keep the British ship distinct from pak128. I can't estimate the amount of work, it might be easier to just draw a new one in a scalable programm. With new modules, for the next sailing ship getting easier painted. Drawing a sailing ship can be really painful, as there are only few straight lines or forms. But the result is much more satisfying.

The case of the two paks: I don't think we should mix the ships alltogether (this would be the beginning of the end of pak.britain), only the ships that are missing in one pak. Marked clearly as non-native, so hopefully someone will start to work on them sometime. Right now me, and I don't think no one else, knows the status of pak128 shipping. This will a future project.

The Hood

Rescaling with pixels is a nightmare, and the results aren't great either.  I don't think sailboats should be too much work in blender, as I've already got some small sailing boats (e.g. the humber keel and thames sailing barge), so I have some of the "components", which I can re-scale and copy until I have a new boat.  But I will do some trials with your existing windjammer just to see what it is like, but I'd say it's more likely I'll draw a new one.  Thanks for the offer though, and no offence to your graphics skills (it looks amazing, just in a pak128 way rather than a pak128.Britain way!).

jamespetts

Am a bit behind the times, as I've only just had broadband enabled in my new flat, but - lovely latest editions!
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druid

Just uploaded to files.[ simutrans [dot] us (site down, do not visit) ] a 1906 scottish Seine Nette fishing boat th "Success". Got information on build and that but could not find data on carrying capacity sorry. But at least thats another boat.

The Hood

Cool.  Don't worry if you can't find all the stats you need, I can just invent some that seem to fit for what we need. 

I'm also hoping for some time to start converting some of these next week, but still there's plenty of potential for that time to get hijacked!

druid

not to worry at least we are getting these ships built. Another one added a 1970 to present day Shell Handysize Tanker on files.[ simutrans [dot] us (site down, do not visit) ].
working on some other ones not in your list but used by uk between 1850 and 1945

The Hood

It's been a while since anything new, so here's a quick preview of the clyde steamer (again another joint effort between druid and me).

jamespetts

Very lovely! And it's excellent to see new contributors working towards Pak128.Britain, too, especially with quality like that.
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The Hood

#45
I decided the Clyde steamer was too small compared to the docks and buildings.  Hopefully this one looks better, but I'd appreciate other people's thoughts...

Also below is the Clan Line cargo steamer, also by druid, using the Zeno "big ships" technique (it's 192x192).

jamespetts

The larger steamer does look better, I think. The new Clan Line steamer is also delightful - an excellent contribution! Are there any plans for ocean going sailing ships of earlier eras?
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druid

Yep currently working on some uk ships from 1700 to 1850. Hopefully have them done and sent off to the hood soon. Also I have a pirate ship if we want to include piracy.
8)

TheMacpau

Awesome new graphics, you guys have gotten me fully converted to pak britain and creating a large new game from a blank map upwards. Any spoilers on the capacities and cargo's of the boats so I can plan my network a bit more fully?

The Hood

@jamespetts - yes, a full boat timeline is intended, either by me or druid, but at the minute I'm just bringing druid's boats into the game as I get time.

@druid - cool, looking forward to the new batch of boats.  The pirate ship definitely sounds like a great idea, but what would it transport?  Maybe I could do a slightly random pirate add-on (bringing back "pieces of eight" from the "high seas" industry to a "smuggler's cove" on the land?)

@TheMacpau - capacities not yet determined fully - the small boats are around 20 crates of cargo, but the larger ones I need to work out what would balance well in the game.  Quite large though.

Anyway, here's the seine netter type of fishing boats by druid.  I've done two versions, one steam (first picture) and one diesel (second picture).  These work with the new fishing chain (with a special fishing port building that acts as an intermediate industry between fishing ground and fishmonger - you can see the artwork for this in the first shot).

TheMacpau

Thanks Hood, I'll leave space for some of the station addition buildings to act as smoothing for the large shipping surges. A capacitor in my circuit diagram.
Will the new stage in the Fishing require the creation of a new transportable product
Because:
Fish (Fishery-Fishing port)
followed by
Fish (Fishing port-Fishmonger)
seems rather odd, or are you thinking "raw fish" and "processed fish" or "fish fillets"

The Hood

The new fishing chain will be:

fishing ground ---(Fresh Fish)--> Fishing port ----(fish)---> Fishmonger

Fresh fish is a unique goods type, only transportable by fishing boats.  The idea is that this allows specialist fishing boats, and that other boats capable of carrying cooled goods (e.g. container vessels of cooled goods) cannot pick up from fishing grounds (fairly sensibly!).  When I release this in v1.06, it may break existing saves with the old fishing chain.

TheMacpau

#52
So if I just leave out the fishing chain is an old save likely to work, or is it a more likely a total loss?

jamespetts

Looking very lovely! The Hood - you could make it work more or less (i.e., load without crashing, if not have a fully working transport network involving fish) by using compat.tab, I think.
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The Hood

I've done some tests - no crashes, but you may get funny behaviour with the fishing chain for saves <=v1.05 (this chain may be broken or fishing grounds still producing cooled goods).  Nothing a bit of work with the map editor shouldn't be able to fix if you really want the new fishing chain working in old saves.

TheMacpau

Thanks for the reassurance, I really don't want to have to re-do all my ground work :-)

The Hood

One more - here's druid's handysize tanker.

@druid - can you give me a list of what you are planning to draw so I don't draw the same things?

jamespetts

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The Hood

I've also adapted the handysize ship to produce container and bulk variants, as you can see in these screenshots. 

wlindley

Excellent work!  Eagerly awaiting the next release and hoping it includes these!


sojo

This ships looks nice and big. Is a ship only one tile?
"English is a easy language. But not for me." ;) sojo

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The Hood

Thanks for the feedback.  The ship is only one tile but uses a graphical hack.  The image tile size is 192x192 and is packed using makeobj pak192.  I have used offsets to centre the images on the centre of a 128x128 tile.  pak128 Still recognises the pak file and you get what you see in the screenshot.  The only problem is when it is docked, it can sometimes look like it is over-riding the dock, but I prefer that to an obviously tiny scale ship compared to the dock.

jamespetts

The Hood,

good work! As to the hack - does one compile all boats with makeobj pak192? If not, it might be helpful to put those that are compiled in that way into a separate directory (perhaps subdirectory), to avoid confusion.
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The Hood

@jamespetts,

No, 192 dats and 128 dats are in separate directories as they require different makeobj parameters.  You'll see when I upload them to sourceforge.

druid

New boat added to [ simutrans [dot] us (site down, do not visit) ] It is the schooner "Nancy" . She was ocean going and commissioned: 1784. She was still in service until 1850 when she was sunk by a privateer. Used to carry spices, tea, Chinese jade and porcelain as well as jewellery.
Hope you like it.

The Hood

And here she is in the game...

TheMacpau

#67
OK I've just compiled the Newest revisions and had a quick mess about, to see how things worked.

My first impression is that the graphics are great and the 192 graphic boats look suitably imposing when moving into port.

As I look further into the dat's they are obviously unbalanced atm and the prices and costs will be updated as people work out how much they need to be.
However the relative power of the Schooner when compared to the, 192 ships, looks ridiculous (80T sail boat at 200kw compared to 150kw for the 320T steam powered ones.)
Secondly I get an odd artifact, where the speed of some of the boats, seems to vary rather a lot under stable conditions ie. running on a canal. Furthermore the speed of the boats with this odd variation, but not the others, seems to change when I alter the game speed.

I'll post a save game if you can't replicate.

The Hood

Sorry, I know the boats are completely unbalanced.  I'll try and do something crude before the next official release, but I'm kind of leaving balancing till all ships and planes are done.

TheMacpau

I understood that that was kind of the plan, (I'll just have to remember to buy my stock of boats for my game before the update then ;-D )

Could you replicate my boat speed anomaly, if I've explained it well enough?