The next project for Pak128.Britain, as I understand, is road haulage, right from horses and carts to the most modern super-articulated juggernauts, and everything in between. I am interested in producing the .dat files for lorries, but should like to know a little more about how goods are organised - there seem to be a *very* large number of different sorts of goods in PakBritain - are they all used, or are some leftovers from Pak128? What eras does each type of goods cover? (I mean, presumably, I don't have to produce .dat files for horse carts that carry electronics?).
Information would be much appreciated :-)
Edit: I have been looking at all the industries to get an idea of the categories. However, it seems that some of the categories are a little idiosyncratic. Newspapers as farm products, for instance? Can someone confirm that this is as it is supposed to be:
Clay bulk goods | Coal bulk goods | Woodchip bulk goods | Iron ore bulk goods |
Crude oil oil/petrol | Fuel oil oil/petrol | Petrol oil/petrol | Chemicals oil/petrol |
Plastic piece goods | Pharmaceuticals piece goods | Vegetables piece goods | Fruit piece goods | Flour piece goods | Books piece goods | Beer piece goods | Textiles piece goods | Furniture piece goods | Hardware piece goods | Cider piece goods | Paper piece goods |
Milk fluid foods | Bricks farm products | China farm products | Grain farm products | Newspapers farm products | Wool farm products |
Planks woods |
Meat cooled goods | Fish cooled goods |
Cement special freight | Cars special freight | Livestock special freight |
|
Some are leftovers from pak128. They will be removed in the next release. You will need to use this goods.dat file which I have been working on (it's newer than SVN), but no guarantee its 100% correct. Goods types should be:
-bulk
-piece
-cooled
-fluid (oil)
-long (wood/steel)
-livestock
-cars
-mail
Let me know if there are any anomalies you can spot.
Thanks for tackling this!
The Hood,
ahh, thank you. Are livestock and cars still special freight?
Yes, livestock and cars are special freight. I should probably add I don't think you need to have as many lorry types as you did for the buses - (a) it will take ages to draw them all for each combination of goods and (b) I don't think people will be as interested (although feel free to discuss and correct me!).
What sort of level of variety do you think that we need? I mean, presumably, we'll have to go from horse carts to futuristic hydrogen powered vehicles, and everything in between...? It might well be, of course, that lorries for some cargoes are very similar to other lorries from that era for other cargoes, with minor adaptations, which would make your job of drawing them much easier.
Also, I have found it harder to research lorries than I did 'buses. Does anyone have any suggestions of good places to look?
There needs to be a complete timeline from horse carts to present day, but I meant that with the buses there seems to be quite a range available at any one time, and new ones get introduced every few years, but with trucks I think we can have fewer at any one time, and longer between new vehicles. What do you think? I also know nothing about trucks, so can't help there. Don't be afraid of just getting some generic designs (and one design with a variant for each goods type sounds good too).
I have been researching horse drawn forms of transport. It seems that we need a new form of stop to go with them: a staging inn for stage coaches, mail coaches and stage wagons. Perhaps you could use the existing graphic for the early "depot" for a staging inn, and draw some stables instead for the depot...?
Edit: I am having some difficulty deciphering the correct names for categories of goods. Passengers and "Post" are straightforward enough, but what do I put in freight= for piece goods, for instance?
I don't think new stations are necessary, certainly not for the time being. Maybe as an extension, but there are more pressing things to draw.
For use in the dat files, I think if you put freight=[example good of that type] it works. E.g. if you look at the dat files for bulk wagons in the rail set, they have freight=Kohle, but the game knows they can transport anything of the same goods type as coal.
Ahh, I see, thank you!
Attached is my first tranche of road goods vehicles (without artwork), from the year dot to 1934. All non-internal-combustion-engine vehicles are included. For horse drawn vehicles, the horses made for 'buses/trams can be recycled. This set incorporates horse drawn, steam powered and miscellaneous vehicles, as ever, with links to pictures where appropriate.
I will start work on pre-war internal combustion engined vehicles shortly, which will be the next upload, but I thought that it would be more productive if I uploaded in stages, so that drawings could be done on the first batch whilst I am researching the second batch. As with the 'buses, a number of the settings (particularly relating to price) will probably need refining and rebalancing.
I shall very much look forward to seeing the artwork!
Thanks for that. I'll have a go after I've completed the rail timeline. Not sure about the "man on a bike" though - I think this could be a little too small in terms of goods volume to be worth it!
Ahh, I wondered whether you'd spot that one ;-) The reason that I included it, though, was because it is used for mail. Mail, especially if the "passenger level" is set sufficiently low, is often generated in really tiny quantities. The man on bicycle may well be useful in small towns in respect of which mail delivery/collection may otherwise not be economically viable, to connect to a road or rail line.
Edit: As to the rail timeline - presumably, that means goods wagons and mail coaches, or are there other things that you were thinking of, too?
Well I might draw it for a laugh (and I will need cyclists for use as pedestrians / citycars). If so, I'll leave it to players to decide how useful it actually is!
Re: rail timeline, all I'm doing for the next release is completing the mail and goods wagons. I'll open up a new thread about that.
Mail is hard to transport profitably, so if the bicycle postman is cheap enough and reasonably (in)expensive bus stops enable mail, too, it might be worth the work.
I have now completed part 2 of the lorry timeline, being all pre-war internal combustion engined vehicles, including postal vans and articulated lorries. Part 2 is available here (http://simutrans-germany.com/files/upload/lorries-part-2.zip). Since part 1 seems to have been deleted when the forum went wrong, I have uploaded that also, and it is available here (http://simutrans-germany.com/files/upload/lorries-part-1.zip).
The next part will be lorries of the 1950s-1960s.
QuoteClay bulk goods
Coal bulk goods
Woodchip bulk goods
Iron ore bulk goods
Crude oil oil/petrol
Fuel oil oil/petrol
Petrol oil/petrol
Chemicals oil/petrol
Plastic piece goods
Pharmaceuticals piece goods
Vegetables piece goods
Fruit piece goods
Flour piece goods
Books piece goods
Beer piece goods
Textiles piece goods
Furniture piece goods
Hardware piece goods
Cider piece goods
Paper piece goods
Milk fluid foods
Bricks farm products
China farm products
Grain farm products
Newspapers farm products
Wool farm products
Planks woods
Meat cooled goods
Fish cooled goods
Cement special freight
Cars special freight
Livestock special freight
Hello everyone! I do not agree with the freight type classification.
Vegetable, fruits and flour should be classified as farm products. Everyday we can see many trucks transporting vegetables. Vegatables are stored in brackets or foam packing during transportation. It is totally different from pieces goods.
Fruits should be farm products or cooled goods. Tuck transporting Fruits are open sides if the fruit can be stored in room temperature for some time. Cooling trucks maybe used for some kind of fruit that cannot be stored in room temperature for a long time.
Flour packed in bags. The packing of flour like the packing of rice. This kind of packing should be consider as farm product rather than pieces goods.
Newpaper is transported in small vans (at least true for the city I live in). These van will transport other pieces goods in daytime. Newspaper transport only at night time/early morning. Therefore, Newspaper is pieces goods.
China is packed in crates/cartons. It should be pieces goods rather than farm products
I don't think that list is correct. The current system is quite simplistic, to reduce graphics drawing. Basicly anything that gets packed onto a crate or into a container is piece goods, with meat and fish being cooled goods. There is no category for "farm products" in pak128.Britain (at least not in my development version, which will become the next release in a couple of weeks).
Quote from: The Hood on June 15, 2009, 09:55:12 AM
I don't think that list is correct. The current system is quite simplistic, to reduce graphics drawing. Basicly anything that gets packed onto a crate or into a container is piece goods, with meat and fish being cooled goods. There is no category for "farm products" in pak128.Britain (at least not in my development version, which will become the next release in a couple of weeks).
I'd better get working on the rest of the lorry timeline sharpish, then! :-D
And welcome to the forums, Steve :-) Thank you for your interest in PakBritain. I do agree that it would be helpful to have a separate category for newspapers one day (because they would have a high speed bonus rating compared to other goods; and it would be very easy to adapt mail vehicles as newspaper vehicles just by changing the livery slightly), but, because at present there are few people actively working on PakBritain, we need to make compromises at this stage in order to get it released within a sensible timescale. Of course, if you're interested in contributing to the effort, the number of compromises needed for future releases may well be reduced ;-)
I was thinking of dropping lorries from the next release as I don't have a lot of time over the next couple of months, and a new release is long overdue. Current thinking is to finish the wagons, do some very crude balancing of the rail vehicles, and then release. I can then do the lorries as and when I get time without worrying about needing to do a release.
Ahh, that's a pity. We need to find a way of cloning you :-D. Perhaps a release will spur more people to be interested in contributing, though.
As to balancing, one thing that will need to be looked at is the cost of buses/trolleybuses against the cost of trams, as the trams seem to be far cheaper than trolleybuses, which is not correct (they would be a little cheaper than motor 'buses to run, as they would not have a prime-mover on board, but not cheaper by many orders of magnitude as they are now).
Here's some graphics, finally!
-livestock drover
-mail coach
-horse & cart
-horse & wagons
-postal bicycle
Excellent! *Is excited*. I love the livestock drover and the bicycle ;-) The mail coach graphic is rather splendid, too. I shall have to get around to doing all the post-war vehicles at some point!
Here are the traction engines and trailers. One thing though - is there a way to offset the smoke? It is quite off in some rotations...
Nice!
Here are some steam trucks (unfortunately not so many, it takes a long time to get all the goods types and full freight graphics done!):
travelling l-r: Sentinel S series
travelling r-l: Sentinel DG series, Foden Compound (the small black one)
Those are superb! I am most impressed.
Incidentally, I noticed that you have done the horse carts - but I think that there were some stage wagons in the set, too...?
Yes, I couldn't quite see what they added. I have therefore done one set of wagons (4 wheels, capacity 5) and one set of carts (2 wheels, capacity 2). I think that should cover everything well enough.
Stage wagons are larger, faster, more expensive types of vehicles used for longer distance journeys. The standard wagons are really meant only for use within towns.
Maybe the way I have drawn things it would be best to think of the wagons as the stage wagons you talk of, and the carts as the short distance ones? That's more or less how I saw it...
Hmm, but stage wagons were covered...
OK, I will add a piece goods and cool goods stage wagon then (I think that the passenger and post ones will end up duplicating stage coaches and mail coaches though in terms of what they do).
My research suggested that the stage coaches were the fast, comfortable, more expensive (and later) variant of the stage wagon, the latter of which lingered for a long time after the introduction of the former, well into the period that Pak128.Britain re-creates.
Here's the rest of the lorries from part 1 of the timeline, including a stage wagon.
- Stage Wagon
- Sentinel Standard
- Thornycroft Wagon
- Thornycroft Steam Van
- Yorkshire Steam Tank
Sources are now available in SVN revision 177, so if you can't wait to play with them, go there and makeobj is your friend :)
Looking very good - and worth the wait!
On to part 2 - here's the Austin Seven Van in post, piece, and cooled goods variants.
Lovely!
Here are some translations for the lorries so far released:
LightRoadLocomotive
Road Locomotive
HeavyRoadLocomotive
Heavyweight Road Locomotive
ThornycroftWagonLivestock
Thornycroft Livestock Wagon
SentinelStandardLivestock
Sentinel Standard (Livestock)
FodenCompoundLivestock
Foden Compound (Livestock)
SentinelDGLivestock
Sentinel DG (Livestock)
SentinelSLivestock
Sentinel S (Livestock)
LivestockDrover
Livestock Drover
ThornycroftSteamVanPiece
Thornycroft Steam Van (Goods)
ThornycroftWagonPiece
Thornycroft Goods Wagon
SentinelStandardPiece
Sentinel Standard (Goods)
FodenCompoundPiece
Foden Compound (Goods)
SentinelDGPiece
Sentinel DG (Goods)
SentinelSPiece
Sentinel S (Goods)
ThornycroftWagonBulk
Thornycroft Steam Wagon (Bulk)
SentinelStandardBulk
Sentinel Standard (Bulk)
FodenCompoundBulk
Foden Compound (Bulk)
SentinelSBulk
Sentinel S (Bulk)
SentinelDGBulk
Sentinel DG (Bulk)
YorkshireSteamTank
Yorkshire Steam Tank
ThornycroftSteamVanCool
Thornycroft Steam Van (Foods)
ThornycroftWagonCool
Thornycroft Wagon (foods)
ThornycroftWagonLong
Thornycroft Wagon (Long Goods)
SentinelStandardCool
Sentinel Standard (Foods)
FodenCompoundCool
Foden Compound (Foods)
SentinelSCool
Sentinel S (Foods)
SentinelDGCool
Sentinel DG (Foods)
ThornycroftSteamVanLong
Thornycroft Steam Van (Long Goods)
SentinelStandardLong
Sentinel Standard (Long Goods)
FodenCompoundLong
Foden Compound (Long Goods)
SentinelSLong
Sentinel S (Long Goods)
SentinelDGLong
Sentinel DG (Long Goods)
EagleTrailerLivestock
Eagle Trailer (Livestock)
CartPiece
Cart (Goods)
WagonPiece
Wagon (Goods)
StageWagonPiece
Stage Wagon (Goods)
EagleTrailerPiece
Eagle Trailer (Goods)
CartBulk
Cart (Bulk)
WagonPiece
Wagon (Goods)
WagonBulk
Wagon (Bulk)
StageWagonBulk
Stage Wagon (Bulk)
EagleTrailerBulk
Eagle Trailer (Bulk)
CartCool
Cart (Foods)
WagonCool
Wagon (Foods)
StageWagonCool
Stage Wagon (Foods)
EagleTrailerCool
Eagle Trailer (Foods)
EagleTrailerFluid
Eagle Tanker
CartLong
Cart (Long Goods)
WagonLong
Wagon (Long Goods)
EagleTrailerLong
Eagle Trailer (Long Goods)
MailBike
Postal Bicycle
CartMail
Mail Cart
ThornycroftSteamVanMail
Thornycroft Steam Van (Mail)
StageWagonMail
Stage Wagon (mail)
MailCoach
Mail Coach
Also, I have noticed that the "Eagle Tanker" is set incorrectly such that it carries food rather than fluids.
There should be translations already in r177. Thanks for spotting the eagle tanker bug.
Some more early diesel vans:
McNamara van (the small red one)
Maudslay van (the larger ones, 4 variants)
@jamespetts, if you have time it might be good to start getting part 3 dats ready...
And some more trucks/vans...
The top road is the Morris Eight, the middle one is Thornycroft Amazons and the bottom one is Thornycroft rigid BTs (I decided against doing articulated BTs as they apparently were only in production for one year and have a limited capacity which is covered pretty well by other vehicles already).
I've added these and all the rest of the part 2 lorries to SVN just now, but unfortunately I don't have time to do a screenshot of the Q, QC, or Stag. Maybe someone else could, as I doubt I'll have time for another week?
Sorry that I haven't done any more recently - I have been busy of late. I'll do some when I get a chance :-)
Time for some more - this time the Leyland Comet rigid 4-wheeler and the Morris Minor Van, both from the late 1940s.
Lovely!
Here's a collection of Scammell trucks.
The top row is the "mechanical horse" series, including the 1934 original mechanical horse, the 1947 Scarab and 1967 Townsman. These were small articulated trucks for urban use.
Next down is a series introduced in the 1950s - the Highwayman and Handyman artics and the Routeman rigid 8-wheeler.
The bottom row has threetwo examples of the Crusader, from 1969
Very nice indeed! (Except, the bottom row has only two lorries, not three as the message suggested...)
Here's three more, this time a series of 4 wheel rigid light trucks:
- Morris FG (1960) in green and postal livery
- Leyland G series (1975) in blue and postal livery
- Leyland Roadrunner (1984) in orange/white and postal livery
Looking very lovely! Well done!
A couple of very similar car-based vans (anyone want to play sot the difference?) :p
- Morris Marina (1973)
- Austin Maestro (1984)
The colour...?
Clue: there are three of each (cool. piece, mail)...
Quote from: The Hood on October 04, 2009, 03:50:49 PM
- Morris Marina (1973)
- Austin Maestro (1984)
Where have I heard these names last time (or actually ever)...? Somehow I have the voice of James May or Jeremy Clarkson in my ear right now... ;D
Anyway, without cheating (= zooming into the picture) I cannot spot enough details to see a difference - apart from color (any mabye a different logo on the sides?)
Feedback: Around 1930/1940s it seems nearly impossible for lorries to make a profit transporting goods. (100% full, return empty.) Part of this challenge may be that different goods have different revenues. I've tried hauling books, textiles and china in the available lorries, and in the end had to build rail lines to haul goods to the department stores instead.
I'm mostly looking at short-haul deliveries from a station in or near town, or the next town over, to a downtown area.
I recently started hauling meat in the chilled goods trucks from well outside town to the far side of town. I was scared this would lose money but this route is profitable.
Yeah there are very subtle differences in colour / logo / shape, but the two vans look pretty similar on that scale unfortunately.
@dannyman - thanks for the feedback. Is it particularly piece goods that are unprofitable? The base price for all piece goods is identical (or at least should be), but speed bonus falls into a low and high category (all those three you mention are low speedbonus). As you've probably realised by now, there are quite a few balancing issues to sort out.
The Hood,
I haven't tried much beyond the goods and cold goods. Cold goods fine. The books were a slight loss. IMHO, it shouldn't be hard to break even without the speed bonus.
Buses too have been harder to turn a profit than I am used to. I did a lot of experimentation, even to having 100% load stops, and short runs on twisty streets might still lose money. In the end I decided to worry less and make buses wait at certain stops for 1%-20% load (to reduce bunching) with the theory that if passengers circulate in-town effectively they'll keep the railways fed. When I let the bus lines run more at a loss, overall profits were fine.
I built a tram network in one city and that thing makes money hand-over-fist. Well, operations-wise. The per-mile cost drops substantially and the maintenance costs go up. Is there a report somewhere that breaks out maintenance costs by, say, track types, signals, stations?
Here's the latest save file . . . my current project is auditing station coverage in the towns to improve coverage and bus service.
(I may have to grab your latest ships and see about floating sheep to the slaughterhouse. ;)
NOTE: Save file is too big to post to forum, so I posted it here:
http://dannyman.toldme.com/scratch/Caernarvon.sve
Cheers,
-danny
The Hood,
had we better experiment with increasing all the cargo rates by, say, 50% to deal with these issues? The trams are profitable in Standard because of the speed-bonus, I think.
James, as you say, one thing to try would be to have a blanket increase in goods payment rates. Danny, if you have time, would you mind experimenting with this (as I know you are familiar with makeobj). If you take the sources for the goods of SVN, you can increase the revenue for each by however much you want, and try again. It would be interesting to see what you think represents a good balance (and it would be a fairer test if done on the same save/setup)...
Quote from: The Hood on October 05, 2009, 07:55:37 AM
James, as you say, one thing to try would be to have a blanket increase in goods payment rates. Danny, if you have time, would you mind experimenting with this (as I know you are familiar with makeobj). If you take the sources for the goods of SVN, you can increase the revenue for each by however much you want, and try again. It would be interesting to see what you think represents a good balance (and it would be a fairer test if done on the same save/setup)...
The Hood: I've run makeobj, I guess the next step is fiddling under the hood. (*cough*) I'll try when I can, though this week is gonna be busy.
Offhand, I'd say my game is workable but would probably work better if goods trucks cost 10% less to operate. I'll try to test this soon.
What would be really nice if there isn't one already is a configuration knob to allow players to adjust global revenues. Call it "difficulty" :)
-d
Danny, I think it would be useful to see your saves if possible, just to get a flavour of what is going on with the balancing. Thanks for offering to test some different things though.
Back on topic, here are some more light commercial vehicles (top-bottom):
- Morris J4 (1960)
- Leyland Sherpa (1976)
- Leyland DAF 200 (1989)
- Morris LD (1952)
- Austin Morris EA (1968)
*Drool*
The Hood:
There's a save file at:
http://dannyman.toldme.com/scratch/Caernarvon.sve
Only one truck line, though, for cold goods.
I might be able to find an older save from back when I had a goods run for books.
danny, for some reason I can't get at that save from the link - it just gives me a webpage full of random characters...
Anyway, here are some more trucks:
- Leyland T45 Roadtrain (articulated truck available in every goods type from 1978)
- Leyland T45 Constructor (rigid 8-wheeler for bulk, long and fluid goods from 1978)
Right-click, save link **** . . .?
Keep up the great work!
-d
I love those!
The latest additions are 4 Leyland DAF trucks of the late 80s and 90s:
- Leyland DAF 65 (4 wheel rigid)
- Leyland DAF 85 (8 wheel rigid)
- Leyland DAF 85 (Standard sized artic)
- Leyland DAF 95 (Large artic)
Very nice!
And some more... These are the DAF range from the present day, which are essentially upgrades of the design of the ones in the previous post as far as I can tell, hence they look similar.
- DAF LF (4 wheel rigid)
- DAF CF (8 wheel rigid)
- DAF CF (Standard sized artic)
- DAF XF (Larger artic)
You do like your DAF! Looking lovely...
Here's the final instalment (unless anyone points out any glaring omissions), this time some Ford vans which bring us up to the modern day:
-Ford Transit (1986, represents the Mk3 onwards)
-Ford Escort Van (1986)
-Ford Transit Connect (2002)
Sources are going up on SVN as I type, but please note (a) they aren't balanced and (b) they are missing translations.
Impressive work!
could you please release a preview pak for lorries and boats?
I was going to release one at the weekend, but then I thought to wait until 103.0 is released. In any case the lorries (along with everything else) are not balanced well, and that really needs fixing. Is there general demand for an unbalanced release?
Quote from: The Hood on October 15, 2009, 06:49:26 PM
I was going to release one at the weekend, but then I thought to wait until 103.0 is released. In any case the lorries (along with everything else) are not balanced well, and that really needs fixing. Is there general demand for an unbalanced release?
YES!
Or, at the very least, keep tossing things into SVN.
If you make unbalanced stuff available you suddenly have a pool of potential balancers. ;)
I haven't tried your new lorries yet, but I imagine it might be fun to balance them, maybe shooting for a baseline of operating cost = 40% of non-bonus cargo revenue on year of introduction . . . (I figure most freight is going to run at least 50% empty.)
I'd be happy to consult the conventional wisdom on balancing methodology, do a bit of grunt work, and submit diffs for your pak files . . .
-d
OK, I can put together a release. I need to test against the latest nightly to check nothing is broken, then that should do for the stable release of the exe.
And thanks for the offer of balancing. I'll open up a new thread with for discussion on proposed balancing methodology.
Very late reply, but the Eagle trailers are introduced in 1857-01 and cannot be used for half a year until the matching LightRoadLocomotive is introduced in 1857-06 ... do we know which month might be correct? Those two surely should be the same.
I do wonder what prototype was used, as the Wikipedia entry on Traction Engines (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traction_engine) suggests 1859 as a more commonly accepted date of introduction.
Well, according to that Wikipedia page,
"James Boydell worked with the British steam traction engine manufacturer Charles Burrell & Sons to produce road haulage engines from 1856 that used his Dreadnaught Wheels which were particularly suited to bad roads or off-road use." Hope this helps.
Thank you for this - I have now adjusted the date of the Eagle trailers to match the light road locomotives in the Extended version of the pakset.