Overcrowding indication

[Vladki]

Hello,

I very appreciate the dark purple color at overcrowded lines/convoys. However this is show only if the used vehicles have any overcrowded capacity at all. It would be nice if the colour would change also in case there are passengers left waiting on stops that could not board because the convoy was full. Maybe even a bit different color that would show that even the overcrowded extra capacity was not enough...

[jamespetts]

This is an interesting idea, but this would potentially involve some considerable complexity to implement, as detecting the state (passengers unable to board due to overcrowding) and assigning this to a specific convoy is not straightforward, especially as to the question of until when that status should last.

[Vladki]

Hiw long? Probably same as normal overcrowding indication.

What about a simpler solution. Trigger the overcrowding indicator whenever the vehicle is full (i. E. 100% of non overcrowded capacity)

[jamespetts]

The normal overcrowding indication does not have the same issue with duration: it is active when the any is overcrowded and inactive when no vehicle is overcrowded.

The "full" indication may be more straightforward, although it would subtly change the meaning of the current overcrowding indicator. I should be interested in people's views as to whether this changed indication would be clearer and preferable or whether there is any difficulty with this.

[ACarlotti]

I think having overcrowded as an indication that the convoy is at least full (not including overcrowded capacity) is probably pretty good, as long as this indication is disabled if the convoy is set to wait for 100% loading at any point in its schedule (in which case it is deliberately being run at full or over-capacity).

[jamespetts]

I think having overcrowded as an indication that the convoy is at least full (not including overcrowded capacity) is probably pretty good, as long as this indication is disabled if the convoy is set to wait for 100% loading at any point in its schedule (in which case it is deliberately being run at full or over-capacity).

This latter exception concerns me a little: I imagine this being very confusing for players to understand, as it is very subtle. I wonder whether there is a way to avoid these problems while addressing the issue that this exception was intended to address?

[Vladki]

Perhaps showing overcrowding only for passengers (and maybe mail)?
100% load is usually done only for freight.

[jamespetts]

Perhaps showing overcrowding only for passengers (and maybe mail)?
100% load is usually done only for freight.

That is one possibility: but I wonder how clear that this distinction would be to the user?

[jamespetts]

I think that this becomes complicated is that the current capacity may be mixed with non-passenger cargo in same convoy.
Even if the standing space of it is full and lowest level passengers can not ride, for example, the first class may have vacant seats.
In that case some vehicle overcrowded but the capacity is not 100%.

Yes, that is complex indeed. One solution might be to show purple if any type of goods/passengers in the convoy are full, but that might make mixed trains appear to be overcrowded when they are not.

[Vladki]

I think that it is desirable to show overcrowded if any cargo is overcrowded. Typically combined pax+mail trains where there is a lot of space for mail, but not enough for passengers.

For classes, it should show overcrowded if the lowest class accommodation is full.

[Ves]

Ive been working in the convoy info window and I found that it can easily become many messages that one wants to display in the window. I believe that there are a bunch of disabled messages already in the window but which is disabled due to information clutter.
Your idea with the overcrowded icon I think is a good approach, and I believe it could even be expanded:
A green version of the icon shows if the convoy is 100% loaded, but not overcrowded
The purple existing icon shows if the convoy is overcrowded, but not maximum capacity
A red version of the icon shows if the convoy is max overcrowded.

You could even expand further and draw icon with only two people or one person to demonstrate that certain capacities within the convoy (for instance a particular class) is running empty.

[Vladki]

One more idea related to this.

convoy/line windows shows green bar about how much capacity is used. But it takes into account total capacity of all cargo types in convoy/line. It is quite useless for mixed pax/mail convoys, with capacity e.g. 24 pax + 200 mail. (one of the small ships).  So if this could show separate bars for each cargo type (pax, mail, bulk, piece, long, oil, ...), then it would be much more useful. Spliting further into standard (sitting), and overcrowded (standing) would be a nice bonus.

[jamespetts]

Thank you for all of your thoughts. I do like the idea of an overcrowding (purple/red) icon in the convoy information window - but we still need the text colour in the line management window. If this is to be changed, it may be better to have it go to purple if any class of passengers is overcrowded.

[Vladki]

Just wondering if situations A, C, H, I - are possible? Oh yes, lower class is overcrowded, but higer class has still some extra capacity...
So I think it should be split by classes.

[Ves]

What I proposed was a simple alert function showing overcrowding. It is a display to notify the player that overcrowding is degrading convoys comfort and passengers may be left behind.
Like the image below for example.

Perhaps it is relatively easy to implement. It does not conflict with the status bar representing the wait state.

Ah, I see!
Honestly, I never really liked that icons where shown in the view window, since I tend to mis them there. Granted, this particular view window is moving (whenever the convoy is moving) making it easier to spot that there is an icon present, but having icons in the view window in general is another subject for another thread.
In this particular case, having a "negative" icon in the view window that encourugates the player to perform an action might be confusing, since all the other "view window icons" as far as I know delivers "positive" messages (in the factory window) that the player would not be harmed to mis out on.
For better visibility you could put the icon somewhere close to the loading bar, for instance right in front of it where there tends to be alot of space. It would make it easier to spot at a glance and the player would understand that the icon is connected with loading the convoy.

Just wondering if situations A, C, H, I - are possible? Oh yes, lower class is overcrowded, but higer class has still some extra capacity...
So I think it should be split by classes.

I am unsure if I agree that it would be good to show a loading bar for each type of class and good category in the convoy. That could potentially lead up to 5 (pass) + 2 (mail) + (number of unique goods) + (number of additionaæ good categories) and then we are not talking about other paksets which might have 10 or 20 passenger classes....
Also, the overcrowded capacity is not tied to a particular class, but rather individual vehicles.

This is an image of the boarding rate (passengers and mail) of the convoy based on the waiting bar. (I think that the bar proposed by Vladki is like this)
The standing capacity is on the upper right of the bar.

It is like these examples that I think this is complicated.
It is also possible that certain classes are full.
I like this approach. But some issues, placement space, size and visibility, goods bar color, wait for loading display ...
Note that the capacity bar is also used in vehicle list and line manager.
I do not think it appropriate to represent it in green.
(Eg express train seat is full)
The train may have left passengers who could not sit at the station. I suggest orange or something.
And F and G are the same for passengers, but G is not 100% loaded.

Passengers are moving by different mechanisms such as mail and goods. For example, they may cancel a trip if they are kept waiting for a long time, a decline in comfort due to standing or overcrowding affects the allowable journey time.
So I think it is better to use overcrowding icons exclusively for passengers.

I like the loading bars if I understand correctly that it means one loading bar for passengers with its additional overcrowded loading bar, and then one loadingbar for all other good combined.
I suppose that if a particular class is full or overcrowded the overcrowded bar starts to fill as well as the overcrowded icon appears. It could be cool if you made the overcrowded bar proportional in size to the ratio between normal seats and overcrowded capacity. That would mean that if a convoy has 100 seats and an overcrowded capacity of 100, the bars would be equal in size. But maybe that would just be confusing.
About the case of a full good category, perhaps some good icon displays next to the loading bar?

[ACarlotti]

but having icons in the view window in general is another subject for another thread.

Another forum, perhaps, if this is also present in Standard. In that case, whatever comments you'd make here would presumably apply also to Standard.

[RESTRICTED ACCOUNT]

Aside from places to display, I thought of icons. (´・ω・｀)

[Ves]

I liked the idea with two different loading bars, but you are right that it doesn't go well with the "wait for load" setting. The easiest way to keep the dual loading bars would be to abolish the yellow bar when it is waiting for loading. After all, the feature with the yellow loading bar was implemented in standard long before the status text of the convoys (and hence also the loading text) so the information would not be lost, only visible another place.

As to the icons and colors, I think it should be kept as simple as possible. For instance, although the different icons perhaps show more precisely what they mean, they are small and might be hard to differentiate. Especially the two purple ones, where one has three people and the other has four people.

Instead I would propose to use the same base icon (three people) and only alter the colors. For instance in this arrangement:
When one or more classes are full and it goes into overcrowding. I don't think it's necessary to have different icons for one full class, two full classes etc, one icon should suffice
-> purple icon.

When a class is full as well as the overcrowding capacity is full, meaning that no people for the particular class can board the convoy.
-> orange icon

When one or more cargo categories are full. Same here, I don't think it is necessary to have different icons, although a new good icon. Perhaps a dedicated mail version, but not necessarily.
-> orange good/mail icon

I don't think it is necessary to have the loading bar change color when it is full. It is rather obvious when it is full, and it might add confusion as to what it means when the color changes.

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[jamespetts]

Thank you very much for your work and feedback on this respectively, and my apologies for not having had time to respond until now.

This does look very interesting. I do like the green/purple divided loading bar: that works well, I think. I agree that the yellow loading bar should be retained for waiting for full load, as this is clear and visually useful.

Can I check, as I am not entirely clear, which of the GUI features discussed at various points in the thread have made it into the latest version of this branch, and, Ranran, do you believe that this is ready for final testing and integration yet?

Thank you again for your work on this.

[jamespetts]

Thank you for that summary.

Looking at this in testing, a query about how this works, if I may. I am looking at a train which carries both mail and passengers. The mail has a capacity of 210 and the passengers a capacity of 310 in a single class (low). The mail section is empty, and the passenger section is overcrowded: there are 358 passengers aboard. What I see on the graph in both the line management window and the convoy information window is a green bar filling about 1/3rd of the horizontal graph, then a grey section filling about another third, and the final third has about a quarter purple and the rest grey.

I am not entirely sure that I follow what this is intended to represent - are the grey sections referring to the mail capacity? What about the grey section to the right of the small purple section?

[jamespetts]

Thank you for that explanation: that is helpful.

It is probably not wise to merge passenger, mail and goods capacity like this, however, as, when we add the overcrowding indicator, we get a very confusing graph: it looks as though there is overcrowding despite there being spare capacity, which makes no sense. Indeed, because of the way in which mail units are counted, a single mail carriage can have as much capacity (in terms of number of units) as a whole train of passenger carriages, which significantly distorts the numbers.

We probably need to re-think this aspect before the overcrowding graph can be meaningful without being confusing.

[jamespetts]

Thank you for your thoughts on this. I recognise that this gives rise to difficult and complex issues.

Can I clarify one or two things about the most recent post: do I understand that the  horizontal bars represent, in descending order, the loading of mail, passengers and goods? Further, does the purple at the right hand side still represent overcrowding? Does the yellow represent the wait for load proportion; and do the pink/brown represent different categories of goods?

I can see that there might be some real advantage to dividing it in this way, although I can also see that it might be harder to fit in the dialogue.

I should be interested in people's views on these various possibilities and which would make more sense and be easier to use and understand both for new and experienced players.

[Vladki]

I think this has gone far beyond my original idea - changing the color to overcrowded (violet) even if the vehicle is running full (for vehicles with no standing capacity), or showing some other color - maybe orange - similar to orange horizontal bar on overcrowded stops, if it is leaving passengers that cannot board on stops.

I think best way would be multi line display for passengers, mail, and all goods categories that are present on given convoy/line (IMHO there would not be more than 4 most of the time). The graph for mail/goods can be as it is, as it does not involve overcrowding. For pasengers I think it can be the classic green/yellow/gray for sitting capacity (and wait for load), and (dark) grey/violet for standing capacity (scaled proportionally). Using pink/orange for pax/mail and other cargo colors is OK too. However I do not like combining everything in one line, it is quite confusing. I prefer multi line display.

[Ves]

I too think that it has gotten a bit too complicated. I would not understand without a good explanation how to interpret the loading bars you show in the last post, and I think that that would make the loading bar redundant, since it anyway can't show very detailed info due to its relatively small size and lack of text (color explanations) and it would just be much easier and much more precise to just look in the cargo manifest directly.

I believe we need to agree on what information the loading bar actually should show us, as I believe one single bar cannot show us everything.

I agree with Vladki that more bars increases precision, however I'm unsure how it should work with lots of classes and lots of cargo categories. As those are predetermined only by the pakset the window need to be able to cope with multitude of bars, not to forget some way of clarifying which bar goes to which category.
And there is the issue with the overcrowding capacity that is not tied to the specific classes, so there would somehow have to be a completely separate "overcrowded bar" to accommodate for that.

As to the yellow wait for load, I still think it can be scrapped, due to my earlier reasons.  The issue with the other windows, I believe it could be worthwhile to have the "speed text" in those windows as well (that would be the text that for instance shows the speed when the convoy is driving, and "wait for load" etc..). I think in general that would be useful information for those windows.

So, what do I suggest:
I think the loading bar(s) should be kept simple. It's after all duplicating the information from the cargo manifest, so it doesn't need to be very detailed.
I liked the split between passengers and the rest of the cargo, so the passenger bar could have its own layout with the separate small overcrowding bar. The colors of the bars would be green for loaded cargo and passengers, purple for overcrowded passengers and just dark grey for empty space. No yellow wait for load and no changing of color based on cargo or full classes, that would only get confusing. Instead, I liked the icons to show up on different occasions, for instance when a class is full or when a cargo category is full.

Again, the detailed information is already present in the cargo manifest, so the loading bar(s) with associated icons should only be for quick overview to check that things are running ok.


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[Vladki]

Ves, overcrowding is class sensitive too.

[Ves]

Ves, overcrowding is class sensitive too.

Are you sure one can specify overcrowded capacity per class in the datfile? As I recall it you only specify overcrowded capacity for the whole vehicle across all classes?

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[jamespetts]

My apologies for not having had time to look into this again until now.

I do agree with Ves that this overcrowding indication needs to be clearer to somebody who has not read a detailed description of what the bar is intended to do. I do like the suggestion in the last post made with the composite image of having separate categories indicated with symbols clearly. I wonder whether we might actually have one bar per symbol laid out vertically, or else I fear that trying to fit all that information into one bar will make it too confusing and hard to read. Most vehicles would only have one or two categories, so this would not unduly affect the layout of the window.

Is that a realistically possible solution?