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PakBritain - Releases and progress

Started by The Hood, February 03, 2009, 09:49:19 AM

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The Hood

I am finally making progress with releasing a new version of PakBritain!  :)

I am slowly adding the sources to the simutrans sourceforge site:
http://simutrans.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/simutrans/pak128.Britain/

So keep checking there for the latest developments.

At present you need aspects of standard pak128 to run - currently it's best just to use pakBritain stuff as replacements for certain bits of standard pak128 until I can get a standalone release together.

Current progress is in this thread: http://forum.simutrans.com/index.php?topic=1467.0

Watch this space - but if you want to help, then get in touch and it will probably happen quicker!  The aim is for graphical consistency so if you do want to draw stuff, please ask first and either Kieron or myself will help make sure that it looks right with the rest of the set.

jamespetts

Excellent, glad to see progress on this! What there is of PakBritain so far is rather good, and I am very much looking forward to seeing more. I should strongly encourage anyone interested in British transportation to get involved - it's open-source, so just find the source files, tinker with them, and upload something! The more people who help the better.
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IgorEliezer

A little question:

why pakBritain.128? It would be better to call this pakset pak128.Britain like pak128.Japan and pak96.comic?

I think we could keep a standard about pakset names.

jamespetts

#4
After some testing with the new industries in place (thank you, The Hood!), might I suggest the following additions to the to do list:

(1) some sort of means of boats serving the fishing ground;

(2) new menu buttons (PakBritain themed);

(3) a means of producing "planks" (for the furniture factory - at least, in 1910, furniture factories appear but wood yards do not);

(4) translation texts for the new factories and types of goods;

(5) PakBritain themed warehouse (etc.) buildings for the stations and/or freight-specific stations;

(6) a fix for the issue that I have just noticed in which passenger vehicles get added to the freight tab with the new industry/goods set installed;

(7) some level of rebalancing of production - production at the grain farm, for example, is 1,000 bags, which totally overwhelms even a fairly substantial railway train making regular trips to a very nearby factory (similarly with coal and iron ore - the stations fill up completely seconds after the train has left); and

(8) PakBritain coloured rivers.

I also notice that the system of factories not letting the stop get more than slightly overcrowded works well (thank you, Isidoro).

Edit: It has occurred to me on reflection that there is a potential problem with the industry chain structure in the new British industries set - as I understand it, most of the industry chains end in a shop of some or other sort in the towns. However, Simutrans has a system in which finished goods can be delivered to towns themselves; indeed, the delivery of goods to towns is part of what makes them grow. So, if all industry chains end in shops in towns, the shops will consume all the goods, leaving none to be delivered directly to the towns to enable them to grow.

Generally, in the standard Paks, ordinary goods are left to be delivered to towns, whereas specialist items such as cars go to a separate specialist retailer in the towns. It might be worth trying to pick apart what would count as ordinary goods (hardware, pottery, groceries, etc.) from extraordinary goods (cars, etc.), and remove the shops for the ordinary goods (perhaps making them ordinary town buildings instead, which might go some way to increase variety of buildings in the towns).
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The Hood

@Frank:
I wasn't aware of that.  I generally merge the pak files to avoid clutter in the folder (and paks can be unmerged with makeobj extract anyway?).  And is it not possible to view the sources anyway, so you can see the goods types in there without needing to view separate goods.*.pak?  But if you still think it is best to go down the goods.*.pak route, I can do that.

@Igor
We've had lots of debate about what it's called - somehow much confusion over the real name of the pak, but never has anyone suggested Pak128.Britain (until you!).  Kieron started by calling it PakBritain, and we added the .128 to make it clear it was a 128-scale pak.  I don't have a huge appetite for re-branding it, and in any case it's probably Kieron's to decide!

@Jamespetts
1) Not sure what you mean - boats should be able to serve it already (or do you mean we need to draw them for PakBritain?)
2) Eventually maybe...
3) You can change this in the .dat file - if there is anything that isn't "right" in the current set just email me a version with proposed changes.  Chances are I will accept it!
4) Will do
5) Agreed
6) ???!!! - will investigate but I don't remember that happening to me.
7) see point 3 - if you have time to do this I will have more time for drawing.  Besides, I can't remember what works properly in the game anymore balancing wise as I haven't actually played for so long!  Would you like to volunteer yourself?  As long as it works OK with PakBritain vehicles, then I'm happy (vehicle capacities in PakBritain are greater than in standard Pak128 I think).
8 ) See the first post :-)

Spike

Quote from: jamespetts on February 03, 2009, 05:24:47 PM
Edit: It has occurred to me on reflection that there is a potential problem with the industry chain structure in the new British industries set - as I understand it, most of the industry chains end in a shop of some or other sort in the towns. However, Simutrans has a system in which finished goods can be delivered to towns themselves; indeed, the delivery of goods to towns is part of what makes them grow. So, if all industry chains end in shops in towns, the shops will consume all the goods, leaving none to be delivered directly to the towns to enable them to grow.

It seems I missed much while being away from Simutrans. In the past there was no "direct delivery to towns", but actually good chain endpoints were factories that only consume goods and produce none. (Shops are such factories, too, just with a constraint to be built in/near a town).

This means, I'll have to change pakHajo.Evolution, since otherwise towns cannot grow properly? How is this "deliver goods to town directly" done?


The Hood

Now I'm confused.  Where in towns accepts the goods?  I have never seen a factory in simutrans wanting to supply goods to a town, only to another industry.

I thought the linking of town growth to industry was just a case of towns will grow more rapidly if you supply the end-consumers based there (i.e. the shops of the PakBritain set).  It makes no sense to send goods straight to a house or whatever in the town - goods should be delivered to shops or whatever, as is the case in PakBritain.

VS

Goods move only between factories, nothing new there. Goods supply to factories (production) stimulates population growth by some %; no idea if it's counted for "workers from" or just factories within city limits rectangle.

PakBritain has small shops (1x1 factories) that are built in towns. That might be where your confusion comes from.

My projects... Tools for messing with Simutrans graphics. Graphic archive - templates and some other stuff for painters. Development logs for most recent information on what is going on. And of course pak128!

Spike

Thanks for the clarification :)

pakHajo.evolution has such small shops, too, although only one sort if I remember correctly. Good to know that this scheme still works.

The Hood

Phew, my sanity remains intact, the world is as it should be (well...)!

That means there should be no problem with the current set-up in PakBritain.  :-)

Stubbsy

Is there anything that you need help doing? I really want to see the pakBritain to go far as i live in England. I'm not all that good with painting but can do the odd thing, but i can help out with some coding and testing?

The Hood

Testing and balancing are always welcome.  A big thing with the industries is the capacities and productivity, and balancing that against goods costs.  All the sources for industry and goods are on the sourceforge link, so if you wanted to have a play and see whether you can make things work sensibly then go ahead. 

The other thing that needs help with is compiling timelines for vehicles.  Jamespetts did some buses, and trains are pretty complete anyway, but we need trucks and boats as well. 

If you do manage to do anything like this, post it in the forum or PM me.  Thanks for the offer.

The Hood

Quote from: jamespetts on February 03, 2009, 05:24:47 PM
(6) a fix for the issue that I have just noticed in which passenger vehicles get added to the freight tab with the new industry/goods set installed;

Update: It's doing this on mine too.  I have managed to fix it, but I am not sure how yet!  I think the problem is related to the BritGoods.pak - once I have worked out exactly what I did to fix the problem I will update the SVN.  Can you make sure that you only have BritGoods.pak and not also good.Passagiere.pak or good.all.pak in your pak folder?

Stubbsy

Okay :D i'll start having a look, the weekend as tonight i'm busy and it's my dad's b'day tomorrow :)

jamespetts

The Hood,

oops - sorry about misunderstanding how towns accepting goods works. That actually makes far more sense than how I imagined it to work anyway. (Although, this does perhaps show the need for better documentation somewhere...).

I may well have a look into doing some of those things when I have a chance (am currently working on industries closing down when they pass their retirement date: the complicated bit is de-linking them from the chain and then checking that nothing in the chain ends up orphaned). It might be helpful if there were a universal to-do list including all of these items that people can come along and decide to work on (posting here when they start work to avoid duplication), which can then be crossed off one by one when complete. (Indeed, maybe, not just a forum thread, but some free, web-based project management software?)

Any progress with the passenger/goods vehicle issue?

VS,

there is a code comment that states that the "workers from" has no effect on the game and is just there for cosmetic reasons. From what I understand of the passenger code, towns generate passengers; a fixed proportion of those go to industries, and, those that do go to industries select a random one to go to. It would not be too hard, I imagine, to make the passengers actually come from the stipulated towns and nowhere else, or even to count the industry as a building in that town that provides that town with "jobs", but the issue is whether that would slow things down too much (I imagine that it was set up as it was for a reason).
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The Hood

You're right, I will start a new thread as a to do list.  Passenger/goods vehicle issue fixed, still not sure how but it seems fine, so I will update svn.

kierongreen

Seems fair enough to call it pak128.Britain

VS

#18
You forgot to include depots.

I love the unified look of everything.

Sadly here it's mostly shades of grey, brown and black. That is a design choice I guess... Prepare for some complaints about that. On LCD screens it probably looks way nicer - I turned contrast and brightness all the way up to 100% and then it was a very different picture -  but I don't want to burn out my eyes :)

Industry chains are quite nicely simple, starting transportation should not be a problem. At the same time there is lots of variety, so it does not feel too simple.

What I really liked was the multitude of chimneys rising from most of factories. It certainly gives an industrial feel. Also no qualms about industry sizes... it certainly works :D Industries are a bit bland graphically; when comparing to 128, there are large empty spaces. Add some... stuff. Piles of dirt, machinery, whatever. But that is up to you.

Technical note, you have somewhere in the process a wrong template for tile shape, when moving the info-tool along edges of industries, yellow bits stay visible. Or the tile from render is too short in front. Anyway, that is absolutely negligible inconvenience at worst.

One bad thing I noticed was that the small end consumers in city are not distinguished enough from regular city houses. I guess it was bad luck, but the first three I looked at were rotated away and most of their banners were hidden. I had to "grapple" with info-tool around the city and hope I hit them. You may want to reconsider giving all four rotations to them, so that the banner always faces screen and is well visible.

My projects... Tools for messing with Simutrans graphics. Graphic archive - templates and some other stuff for painters. Development logs for most recent information on what is going on. And of course pak128!

The Hood

#19
@VS
Thanks for the feedback. 

Depots are on my to-do list.
http://forum.simutrans.com/index.php?topic=1467.0
Currently you have to use pak128 depots.  That will change once I've finished doing the wretched trees! :P

The colour scheme was Kieron's idea - I'm just keeping with that.  I have an LCD screen and I've not noticed a problem, in fact IMHO pak128 is too bright and garish!  Different preferences I suppose but we will see what people think.

Re industries, are there any in particular which are too empty?  I will probably revisit some of them over time, but currently it's time to draw other stuff.  Also if you could let me know which ones have a problem with the info-tool and I will try to fix.  I probably didn't line up the image properly in tilecutter.

About the end-consumers, the idea is to have them blend in with the city.  That was a design choice, as most shops tend to do that.  I personally prefer it the way I made it, but if lots of people think it is bad this way, then I will consider changing it.

jamespetts

I am definitely looking forward to British depots!
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The Hood

Another thought about end-consumers.  I wanted it so that they would always face the road, as the normal 1x1 citybuildings always do.  Apparently this needs a code change, but I don't know if anyone (jamespetts? ;)) is able to create a patch to do this?

Oh, and the quick way to find out which are industry and which are just citybuildings is to use the " key :)

jamespetts

Hmm, I'm not familiar with that bit of code - I'm still trying to get industry retire dates to work properly! Do you know how the .dat file is set up to enable city buildings always to face the road the same way?
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VS

Hood: You're absolutely right about that. It makes sense that if 128.Britain looks well on your monitor, 128 must be too bright and oversaturated. Part of the problem is - I can't test on LCD as I do not have one.

About the small shops, take it all just as a suggestion from one player. If it keeps coming, maybe change it. I would agree that it is not really so important to know where the shop is, once you have a line serving it.

I will take a look at the empty parts.

My projects... Tools for messing with Simutrans graphics. Graphic archive - templates and some other stuff for painters. Development logs for most recent information on what is going on. And of course pak128!

jamespetts

I prefer the idea of shops blending in, but I have noticed that they always seem to be rotated so that the canopy faces away from the user. Perhaps the .dat files could be changed so that the images are listed the other way around?
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The Hood

Here's the old discussion.

http://archive.forum.simutrans.com/topic/07269.0/index.html

I think at present, it must always face away, in which case I will alter the dats.  I would like to see behaviour like current citybuildings where they align with roads.  Presumably the code is already there for citybuildings so it can't be too hard to achieve.  There is nothing different in the dats, so it must be in the code.

Edit:  I have checked and with 1x1 industry you always get the rotation to face away!  I will change this in the dats to face forwards, but that still doesn't make it always face road.

VS

Empty factories:

refinery
both pits
coal mine
brickworks
slaughterhouse
steel mill
grain farm

I realized that what makes them look somewhat empty is
a) lack of things as mentioned above,
b) very clean pavement texture and
c) pavement going all the way to end of tile.

Eg. refinery has just lots of empty asphalt. Where are the trucks? Same for, say, grain farm - the paving inside is so clean, where has all the hay and farm tools gone? No idea how farms in Britain look, but here you always find them surrounded by a lot of junk like derelict tractors. Paving is partly to blame, since it is clean everywhere and lots of it. I'd say, (c) could fix a lot of that very fast.

But this also depends on rotation... sometimes some areas are visible, sometimes not. And sometimes industrial areas really do have these large spaces...

I can not find the building with missing line any more. Guess it was some weirdness then :-\

My projects... Tools for messing with Simutrans graphics. Graphic archive - templates and some other stuff for painters. Development logs for most recent information on what is going on. And of course pak128!

jamespetts

Ahh, I see from that old thread that one of the main problems is that not all industries abut roads at all...
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kierongreen

Colour scheme was just what I felt to be 'right' - I've never actually seen screenshots on a crt because all my development work was done on lcd monitors.

VS

Screenshots never help, you would have to take a photo of monitor ::)

My projects... Tools for messing with Simutrans graphics. Graphic archive - templates and some other stuff for painters. Development logs for most recent information on what is going on. And of course pak128!

The Hood

A glimpse of the latest progress:
A modern train depot and a couple of trees.

jamespetts

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The Hood

And a steam era depot (and more views of trees)

jamespetts

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The Hood

Here's some more new stuff.  Old tram and bus depots, along with electrification for tram and trolleybus (even though there are no PakBritain trolleybuses yet!).

If you think the electrification looks similar to standard pak128, that's because it is - thanks to Timothy for letting me use his electrification as a template!