Customizable depot groups

[DirrrtyDirk]

Hi everyone (especially the Dev Team  )!

I've had this idea running around my brain for quite some time (at least a year or so), but I was almost convinced from the beginning, that it would never be accepted... but since the only way to find out is to actually go ahead and ask, I have decided to do just that right now.

1.) The "What?"...
Introduce a new parameter for vehicle .dat files called e.g. Depot_Group= with a range of values. .. let's say 0...15 (0=default).

Alternatively, allow free text for the parameter, defining the groups in simuconf.tab, similar to city roads...
for example:
Depot_Group[0]=Abc
Depot_Group[1]=Xyz
etc.

All existing vehicles would use the default value of 0, and for all those, nothing in the depot would change from the current version.

Allow new tabs in the depot window next to the standard ones. These tabs would each only show vehicles of a certain group (1-15, or as defined above), and nothing else. (Whether these vehicles would only show there, or be also still displayed in the normal tabs, is up to discussion, I have no preference as of now.)


2.) The "What for?"...
Pakset-Developers / -Maintainers (or advanced players with access to sources) could group certain vehicles together, as they wish. Be it for real-world issues, or in-game reasons, or both...

3.) The "Why might this be useful?"...
Generally, I like the possibilty for Pak-Developers to have a large amount of freedom to customize their idea of Simutrans. But honestly, I'm not sure if there are other people out there who might be interested in such a feature, or if it is only me, but I will show you a quick example of what made me wish for this at least:



This is what a depot full of japanese narrowgauge EMUs looks like - and "Show all" is deactivated, so you only see the front vehicles of trains here. So, can you blame me for hoping I could have a different tab for "JR East", one for "JR West", etc. ? 

I think chances are very low to get that dream fulfilled, but I have to ask at least.

[Zeno]

Could be applied by pakset mantainers for things such as having urban/line buses in different tabs, or underground/regular trains, etc.

[VS]

Full support from this non-dev! I had an almost identical request some time ago. The pak128.cz guys also asked me about this a few times.

[jamespetts]

We have something vaguely similar in Experimental, although it wouldn't help with the Japanese narrow gauge EMU collory - depots can be limited to certain traction types (steam, diesel, sail, biological, etc.) or any combination thereof, so that one can have a shipyard for sailing ships, one for steamships, a stables for horse trams, a depot for electric trams and so on.

[The Hood]

Support - would help with the large number of vehicles in pak128.Britain and help give some way of describing vehicles to the uninitiated.

[greenling]

That it avery good idea.

[prissi]

In your case a depot filter string (like filter for JRE) would nearly achieve this. Also since often paks are without source, I think a system relying on dats may never come close to what player would like (as taste vary greatly).

[yoshi]

I would like to support this as well. I want to separate at least DMUs and locomotive-hauled passenger carriages. However, preferrably such setting should be done by pakset maintainer I think. It's a tedious work to edit dat files to sort your vehicles just for your own.

By the way there are actually many 1435 mm gauge vehicles and some 1372 mm gauge vehicles in your screenshot.
Please don't assume every Japanese railway operator uses 1067 mm gauge.
And thank you for using vehicles I have made. There are at least 4 vehicles I have made under a different name.

[rainer]

Without being able to weigh the technical problems, I would like to support DirrrtyDirk's request.

[DirrrtyDirk]

In your case a depot filter string (like filter for JRE) would nearly achieve this. Also since often paks are without source, I think a system relying on dats may never come close to what player would like (as taste vary greatly).

For me as a player this would of course also be a viable option (for which I'd be thankful), but from a pakset-creator's point of view, I'd prefer something like I described above.... or better: both! As I said, I like the idea of Simutrans being customizable quite a lot, the more freedom the engine allows for pakset-creators and maintainers, the better (of course everything has its limits).

By the way there are actually many 1435 mm gauge vehicles and some 1372 mm gauge vehicles in your screenshot.
Please don't assume every Japanese railway operator uses 1067 mm gauge.
And thank you for using vehicles I have made. There are at least 4 vehicles I have made under a different name.

Yes, I know that these are not all 1076mm gauge, but the vast majority is.
Believe me, I've done my best to learn all I could about japanese railways during the last couple of years ... but in Simutrans I use the "track" waytype only for Shinkansen, and "narrowgauge_track" for all other ("normal") railways regardless of their actual real world gauge. Otherwise vehicles like e.g. Tokyo Metro Ginza and Maronouchi lines would have to be among the Shinkansen... and that doesn't seem quite right to me (even though both use 1435mm gauge). And if I am willing to put some 1435mm gauge vehicles among the 1067mm, it's small wonder I treat the 1372mm equally, right?

Oh and yes, these vehicles are all from the japanese simutrans pages... most only mildly, others heavily modified - only for my personal use so far (as I would never even think about re-publishing anything without contacting the original creator(s) and obtaining their permission first). Actually these pages with their dozens of addons started my interest in japanese railways all these years back (in 2005 or so?) So if some of the vehicles were made by you, I have to thank you for making them and making my interest in Japan and its railways grow. 

[greenling]

It's heavy to build in A Word search filter?