Are there any smaller ships usable for rivers and channels for 128packs, as add-on or whatever? ;)
Something like this post-boats just for passengers would be nice or the 320pax steamship without the sails,
they just should pass below the bridges and don't look like a monster passing through the land.
Currently I am using this steamship, beside of the for rivers unusual sails they are at least better than going up the river with an ocean liner and I also need something from 100 to 400 passengers, not 2000 :o
If you could provide me the sources for postboats and steamship I would try to make something out of that. :)
Ok, I found the openpak sources in an old topic from january here and tried around ;D
I started working on some smaller ships for rivers and channels,
as I am not a graphic artist this work is based on other ships from the pack I modified and copied together stuff.
What I want to create are some passenger boats (200-400 pax) and 3 pulling ships based on the european rivers
1850-1890 steamship with side paddle wheels
1890-1930 steamship with propeller (this one is almost complete, see screenshot)
1930-1960 diesel powered
and cargo boats for gravel, agriculture products, wood (something important missing?)
I thought about allowing to pull up to 3 boats, however the game requieres some kind of placeholder (imagine the rope) in between to avoid that the next boat is eating up the previous one ;D
That would mean 7 slots (pulling ship + placeholder + boat + ...) and the game (or pakset?) only allows 4,
I have the next boat marked greeen in the deposit but when clicking on it nothing happens - no error in console.
See the screenshot to see what I mean, behind the ship is the rope/placeholder and the first boat fits perfectly - next boat connected without placeholder ends up half sized; any idea how to fix that or to change this limit? ???
Can't you just make the cargo boats smaller and include the "placeholder" in their graphics (by leaving some room at the front of the boat)?
Otherwise you'd have to download the source code, change some value (I have no clue which one) there from 4 to 7 and compile it - but that would only work for you, nobody else could use your boats then, as these changes will probably not be made in the official versions.
Ok, I think I have a solution for that...
first: two cargo boats should be enough, in reality they used often 8 and up to 10 but this convoy has to enter somehow into the harbour
and we don't have the space in simutrans, especially in the often hill-surrounded rivers ;)
so I will try:
pulling ship + placeholder + front cargo boat + rear cargo boat
cutting the boats a bit (but not to half size as it would be necessary) and make the rest with different offsets
for front and rear boats to get some space between them :-*
If there are some graphic experts interested in this project, any help would be highly apreciated, especially for drawing the side paddle wheeler (I can provide images of real ships from this type and templates for alignement of the graphics)
If you take the first barge and give it some length, then it should "push" the following barge further. Default (not written) is length=8.
Rope can be part of the barge graphic, as Dirk says. If you run out of space in tile, take a look at planes (assuming the source you got includes the new ones?) and learn how to use bigger tilesizes with offsets to defeat this restriction.
Well, the result of my try+error testing is that in the ship-convoy a fixed space for each unit is reserved,
does not matter what is the graphic size. My now invisible rope is reserving the same space as the boats...
I now included the rope into the ship (is added automatically) and made the two cargo boats with different offsets,
so far working perfectly - it is just limited to two pulled boats.
However I encountered just another kind of problem :D
The convoy is loading correctly the goods (oil in this case) but the unloading at the destination seems to fail,
I still see it full going the way back (another oil transporter serving the same route works correctly).
Am I missing something in the boats dat-file?
obj=vehicle
name=Oelschute1
copyright=paco_m
waytype=water
engine_type=none
freight=Oel
payload=120
speed=24
power=0
weight=90
cost=782042
runningcost=320
intro_year=1890
intro_month=3
(image and constraint stuff skipped)
EDIT: Seems that defining a payload for the pulling ship with Freight=None was not a good combination,
now it is loading/unloading correctly ;D
Of course space is not reserved based on graphic :) That's what length=? in dat file is for. See http://www.simutrans-germany.com/wiki/wiki/en_VehicleDef#length
Quote from: paco_m on October 06, 2010, 09:16:50 AM
Well, the result of my try+error testing is that in the ship-convoy a fixed space for each unit is reserved,
does not matter what is the graphic size. My now invisible rope is reserving the same space as the boats...
As VS said: have you tried different
length settings in the .dat files? That alone defines the fixed space for each unit, not the size of the drawn graphics.
Edit: VS was faster thereAnd freight=None should work... at least it should not behave like you describe it...
Thanks, VS that was it ;D
@Dirk: The problem was the combination of freight=None with a payload, without the payload definition everything is fine ;)
Now as it should be (with length 24 for the ship and 16 for the boats):
Nice! :D
As to freight=None... it isn't 100% special value, but is usually assumed to be. Perhaps no programmer anticipated a vehicle with None+capacity and some logic check fails...
The first test-version is available ;)
http://uruk-online.net/simutrans/river_pulling_ship_set.pak
This is mainly to get feedback for the buy/running-cost definition,
my idea was to make it nearly equal per km and ton as the transport with the MHz push-tug (the next vehicle in the timeline to replace mine).
The benefit of the push-tug and motivation to upgrade is the higher speed...
And here we go, this push-tug has a running cost of 0,30c/km (yes, the engine-ship) :o
Something wrong here, I guess.
Some words about the motor-settings and capacities:
I orientated the capacity of the full convoy (3 cargo boats) by long freight trains, this is also a realistic value..
the main limit of the ship is its speed (fully loaded it will keep below 20 km/h) and the low gear value,
so it takes quite a while after starting with heavy loads until it reaches the normal speed - avoid too much stops. ;)
If you use the river/channel cargo-station from the pak take care to make it long enough for the convoy or it will not load...
and consider: this is just for testing, cargo boats have still some graphical glitches etc.
Hey, that looks nice! Maybe you could check my ship set posts (http://forum.simutrans.com/index.php?topic=4307.0), as long as it is thought to be released somewhen within the main pak. Maybe it could help you to take some ideas :)
Btw, I like the idea, and that thug looks very nice!
Edit: If you need help with the dat and/or economy, feel free to ask.
Well, if it will be included in the pak depends on the maintainers and if most players want to have it in -
I am adding things that I miss personally in the pak and share the results, also to get feedback and hints (like the "length" option).
Btw, great project, Zeno :award:
However I am not going to make 3D models of real ships for my river pulling ships,
I prefer fast results with the necessary amount of work (even the cable spool is copied from a rail steel wagon) ;D
Referring to the economy:
I made a comparison-tab with the current small (river) cargo-ships - the push-tug is in my opinion overpowered (a suggestion to change its values is included)
EDIT: New version with the values from the table available (same download-link, just replaced the old one^^)
Quote from: paco_m on October 06, 2010, 09:16:50 AM
The convoy is loading correctly the goods (oil in this case) but the unloading at the destination seems to fail.
[...]
Seems that defining a payload for the pulling ship with Freight=None was not a good combination,
now it is loading/unloading correctly
I found nothing in the code that would support this observation ??? Might it be that in your first test the ship convoy was too long for the halt on a canal/river? And in your second test, you accidentally had a station that is long enough to hold your convoy? On canals / rivers the length restrictions apply to boats too.
Quote from: Dwachs on October 07, 2010, 12:34:17 PM
I found nothing in the code that would support this observation ??? Might it be that in your first test the ship convoy was too long for the halt on a canal/river?
Remembering the situation I think that it was so, I was a bit confused with the ocean-harbour that works also with just one tile for every kind of ship/convoy ;)
Returning to my strange idea with the offsets and without using the length-parameter;
well this was not really my own invention as the current MHz Push tug ship and its cargo-boats as well as the wood and coal barge
are designed in that way.
On the other hand I am not happy with the push-tugs values so a decided to make a new version of this ships with length definitions and
values that correspond to the other existing ships, here are the first results:
By the way: I am surprised a length=24 works at all (even 16 could give problems on a lot of other way than water).
Good Day
I Have the Shipset from Paco_m saved.
The Shipset from Paco_m have now a new Downloadlink:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/simutranspakset/files/Only%20Addons%20in%20128%20Pixells/river_pulling_ship_set.pak/download
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