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#41
Community Discussion / Re: Re: About the Community Ma...
Last post by prissi - October 07, 2026, 11:32:23 PMYou never had to review code? This is not the most pleasant thing to do. Moreover, I am not fully convinced of AI for generating new code. It does generate code (and verbose documentation at times too). But it is rarely the most elegant or "best" solution.
Coding alone is not the bottleneck.
Reviewing and bug hunting is way more time consuming, as any programmer will tell you. Coding is 15%, documentation is another 15% and bug hunting is 50%. The rest is maintenance. (Although, I have failed to see AI help me with bug hunting. But then, I never invested much time in learning this.)
AI certainly has its problems. For coding, it should be possible to train an ethical AI on open source code only. But it would not understand simple instructions, as it needs to get that context from manuals and other stolen literature. And it is not just the stolen content.
Generally, I am with Roboron in a broad sense. Current IT wastes already bits by the billion and trillion (literally), and AI takes this another billion higher. Honestly, 100 GB in weight to produce a sentence of text? (Considering that wikipedia is less than 27 GB in size without images ... ) This cannot be the final answer. But sustainable IT is something every tech giant strongly avoids to ever mention, out of fear of not being able to deliver. (Just thinking that my Atari ST in 1992, where I wrote my PhD thesis, had 1 MB of RAM running at 8 MHz, and the TurboC IDE and word processor was not my lacking 12000 times in comparison to the 12 GB requiring office 365 and MSVC. Or my Palm from 2000 with 2 MB and running a month on two AA batteries and current phones barely running for a day with 2GB. All the efficiency lost to lousy software, bloated libraries and interpreters on interpreters, trying hard to burn the 40000 times increase of the bare calculation speed.
Coding alone is not the bottleneck.
Reviewing and bug hunting is way more time consuming, as any programmer will tell you. Coding is 15%, documentation is another 15% and bug hunting is 50%. The rest is maintenance. (Although, I have failed to see AI help me with bug hunting. But then, I never invested much time in learning this.)
AI certainly has its problems. For coding, it should be possible to train an ethical AI on open source code only. But it would not understand simple instructions, as it needs to get that context from manuals and other stolen literature. And it is not just the stolen content.
Generally, I am with Roboron in a broad sense. Current IT wastes already bits by the billion and trillion (literally), and AI takes this another billion higher. Honestly, 100 GB in weight to produce a sentence of text? (Considering that wikipedia is less than 27 GB in size without images ... ) This cannot be the final answer. But sustainable IT is something every tech giant strongly avoids to ever mention, out of fear of not being able to deliver. (Just thinking that my Atari ST in 1992, where I wrote my PhD thesis, had 1 MB of RAM running at 8 MHz, and the TurboC IDE and word processor was not my lacking 12000 times in comparison to the 12 GB requiring office 365 and MSVC. Or my Palm from 2000 with 2 MB and running a month on two AA batteries and current phones barely running for a day with 2GB. All the efficiency lost to lousy software, bloated libraries and interpreters on interpreters, trying hard to burn the 40000 times increase of the bare calculation speed.
#42
Community Discussion / Re: Re: About the Community Ma...
Last post by Mishasama - October 07, 2026, 09:01:04 PMHere's what I'm thinking: since the investment in AI makes it difficult for humans to keep up, why not let AI handle the workload it brings?
Perhaps we could adopt a structure similar to traditional publishing houses, where AI acts as editors and humans handle the review and approval process. This should significantly reduce the time required for creation while maintaining a certain level of content quality.
As for ethical considerations, I don't think this harms open-source projects. After all, AI's knowledge comes from the "unpaid" contributions of humans, and then the AI's content benefits humans unpaidly. I think this is not much different from real people participating; rather, it can be understood as AI allowing more people to participate in open-source public welfare activities in another form without having to pay any additional price.
Perhaps we could adopt a structure similar to traditional publishing houses, where AI acts as editors and humans handle the review and approval process. This should significantly reduce the time required for creation while maintaining a certain level of content quality.
As for ethical considerations, I don't think this harms open-source projects. After all, AI's knowledge comes from the "unpaid" contributions of humans, and then the AI's content benefits humans unpaidly. I think this is not much different from real people participating; rather, it can be understood as AI allowing more people to participate in open-source public welfare activities in another form without having to pay any additional price.
#43
Pak128.Britain-Ex / Re: [ex-15] Recalibrating indu...
Last post by martin509 - October 07, 2026, 07:39:29 PMAnother update on this grind: I have realized this is too complex and interconnected to both accomplish and review without some massive spreadsheet that lets me redo calculations easily, so my next goal is to get exactly that put together, with common reference points, assumptions and hard data. Once this is done I'll be able to get a real PR together.
Unrelated to ALL of this, I have also put a tiny tiny PR up for Pak128-Ex that adjusts the costs of various bus stops to not be prohibitively expensive.
Unrelated to ALL of this, I have also put a tiny tiny PR up for Pak128-Ex that adjusts the costs of various bus stops to not be prohibitively expensive.
#44
Patches & Projects / Re: Simutrans 32-bit graphics ...
Last post by makie - October 07, 2026, 03:45:56 PMAnother comparison of the cigarette factory.
Left: 16-bit; right: 32-bit.
At the bottom, I smoothed out the dithering using a blur effect.
The magnification is 8x, without anti-aliasing.
The small is 1x
Left: 16-bit; right: 32-bit.
At the bottom, I smoothed out the dithering using a blur effect.
The magnification is 8x, without anti-aliasing.
The small is 1x
#45
Patches & Projects / Re: Simutrans 32-bit graphics ...
Last post by makie - October 07, 2026, 12:25:31 PMI'm a bit disappointed; I had expected more. The 16-bit and 32-bit versions look so similar that I initially suspected something wasn't working. It seems Pumuckl999 rendered most of his graphics in 16-bit color, so there's no difference. Many are dithered too. Though, I've often done that myself to avoid ugly-looking surfaces.
You really have to look closely to spot the differences.
Take a look at the roof inside the red circle in the image; the difference is only really visible when you zoom in. The onion dome above it to the left also has a slightly lighter, greenish sheen. The green area above the text and below the onion dome is smoother as well; however, Pumuckl did some tweaking on the onion dome itself with a pattern to prevent the surface from breaking up.
From my perspective, the 32-bit color is working fine.
I'll let you know if I find any later issues.
Nevertheless, the change is worthwhile because, in the future, there will be no need to account for the problems arising from 16-bit colors.
[DE]
Ich bin etwas enttäuscht. Ich hätte mir mehr erwartet. 16bit und 32bit sehen sich derart ähnlich dass ich anfangs glatt vermutet habe dass etwas nicht funktioniert. Pumuckl999 hat anscheinend die meisten seiner Grafiken auf 16 bit Farben gerendert, so dass kein Unterschied ist. Auch sind viele gedithert. Ok ich habe das auch oft getan um hässliche Flächen zu vermeiden.
Man muss wirklich suchen um Unterschiede zu finden.
Siehe Bild das Dach im roten Kreis. Den Unterschied sieht man erst in einer Vergrößerung wirklich. Auch das Zwiebeldach links darüber hat einen leicht hellern grünlichen Schimmer. Auch die grüne Fläche über dem Schriftzug und unter der Zwiebel ist glatter, aber dass die Zwiebel ein Muster hat, da hat Pumuckl nachgeholfen dass das nicht aufreißt.
Aus meiner Sicht funktioniert das mit den 32 Bit Farben.
Wenn ich noch einen Fehler finde melde ich mich.
Trotzdem lohnt die Änderung, weil man in Zukunft nicht mehr Rücksicht nehmen muss, auf die Probleme die sich aus den 16 Bit Farben ergeben.
You really have to look closely to spot the differences.
Take a look at the roof inside the red circle in the image; the difference is only really visible when you zoom in. The onion dome above it to the left also has a slightly lighter, greenish sheen. The green area above the text and below the onion dome is smoother as well; however, Pumuckl did some tweaking on the onion dome itself with a pattern to prevent the surface from breaking up.
From my perspective, the 32-bit color is working fine.
I'll let you know if I find any later issues.
Nevertheless, the change is worthwhile because, in the future, there will be no need to account for the problems arising from 16-bit colors.
[DE]
Ich bin etwas enttäuscht. Ich hätte mir mehr erwartet. 16bit und 32bit sehen sich derart ähnlich dass ich anfangs glatt vermutet habe dass etwas nicht funktioniert. Pumuckl999 hat anscheinend die meisten seiner Grafiken auf 16 bit Farben gerendert, so dass kein Unterschied ist. Auch sind viele gedithert. Ok ich habe das auch oft getan um hässliche Flächen zu vermeiden.
Man muss wirklich suchen um Unterschiede zu finden.
Siehe Bild das Dach im roten Kreis. Den Unterschied sieht man erst in einer Vergrößerung wirklich. Auch das Zwiebeldach links darüber hat einen leicht hellern grünlichen Schimmer. Auch die grüne Fläche über dem Schriftzug und unter der Zwiebel ist glatter, aber dass die Zwiebel ein Muster hat, da hat Pumuckl nachgeholfen dass das nicht aufreißt.
Aus meiner Sicht funktioniert das mit den 32 Bit Farben.
Wenn ich noch einen Fehler finde melde ich mich.
Trotzdem lohnt die Änderung, weil man in Zukunft nicht mehr Rücksicht nehmen muss, auf die Probleme die sich aus den 16 Bit Farben ergeben.
#46
Web & Wiki / Re: OpenTTD on Steam cost mone...
Last post by prissi - October 06, 2026, 11:23:02 PMQuote from: martin509 on October 06, 2026, 04:19:10 PMThe main way I see OpenTTD separating from Atari would be if they developed a resource pack that replaces every single asset from Transport Tycoon Deluxe with a generic equivalent, like how Freedoom did the same for Doom. However I'm not aware of any plans in the OpenTTD community for doing this.They did, but still have the TTD in their name which IS copyrighted. Also, OpenTTD started from a assembler to C translation of the original code (of which very little remained). This is probably the point where nobody wants to did.
Quote from: victor_18993 on October 06, 2026, 03:38:40 PMSeriously? I thought that since OpenTTD was based on Transport Tycoon, which was practically abandonware, they couldn't enforce a patent or copyright. So did OpenTTD become paid?No, it is only on steam and GOG.com, where Atari (who bought the license from Chris Sawyer for pennies) released the old version with a few fixes, barely running on Linux. It is GPL, so the source and downloads from OpenTTD website remain free. Fully covered by GPL (but would not by the artistic license yeah!).
#47
Pak128.Britain-Ex / Re: [ex-15] Recalibrating indu...
Last post by martin509 - October 06, 2026, 04:51:38 PMA short update: I am considering reducing clothing consumption, mainly due to the strain it places on wool production. The main input for textile production is currently wool from sheep farms, which produce relatively small amounts of it, and in-game this manifests as essentially all available space that can host sheep farms (mountains, etc) being taken up by them, especially on smaller maps.
In real life, most clothing purchased is made of cotton and polyester, materials not produced in-game, and only <10% of clothing items are made of wool. Representing cotton is way out of scope as it would have to be imported, while representing synthetic fabric such as polyester and latex is possible, via making a new textile mill variant that only takes in chemicals and plastic as inputs.
I'm currently split between two options, then:
- Add synthetic fabric textile mills that appear from the 1950s onwards and massively outweigh woolen textile mills in the spawn distribution.
or,
- Reduce clothing shop numbers by a factor of 10 so that effectively only the supply chain for specifically wool garments is represented.
I'm leaning towards the former, but am curious about opinions.
In real life, most clothing purchased is made of cotton and polyester, materials not produced in-game, and only <10% of clothing items are made of wool. Representing cotton is way out of scope as it would have to be imported, while representing synthetic fabric such as polyester and latex is possible, via making a new textile mill variant that only takes in chemicals and plastic as inputs.
I'm currently split between two options, then:
- Add synthetic fabric textile mills that appear from the 1950s onwards and massively outweigh woolen textile mills in the spawn distribution.
or,
- Reduce clothing shop numbers by a factor of 10 so that effectively only the supply chain for specifically wool garments is represented.
I'm leaning towards the former, but am curious about opinions.
#48
Web & Wiki / Re: OpenTTD on Steam cost mone...
Last post by martin509 - October 06, 2026, 04:19:10 PMThe main way I see OpenTTD separating from Atari would be if they developed a resource pack that replaces every single asset from Transport Tycoon Deluxe with a generic equivalent, like how Freedoom did the same for Doom. However I'm not aware of any plans in the OpenTTD community for doing this.
#49
Web & Wiki / Re: OpenTTD on Steam cost mone...
Last post by victor_18993 - October 06, 2026, 03:38:40 PMSeriously? I thought that since OpenTTD was based on Transport Tycoon, which was practically abandonware, they couldn't enforce a patent or copyright. So did OpenTTD become paid?
It's a shame, because the work done by the OpenTTD community doesn't belong to Atari, but to the OpenTTD community that has kept it alive. I don't like this kind of news; I hope OpenTTD can somehow separate from Atari.
It's a shame, because the work done by the OpenTTD community doesn't belong to Atari, but to the OpenTTD community that has kept it alive. I don't like this kind of news; I hope OpenTTD can somehow separate from Atari.
#50
Web & Wiki / Re: OpenTTD on Steam cost mone...
Last post by martin509 - October 06, 2026, 02:51:49 PMYes indeed, though OpenTTD is still available as a free download outside of Steam.