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Tracks replacement project for pak 128

Started by Fabio, February 14, 2009, 03:24:48 PM

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Zeno

Hey fabio, these tracks look great!
I have a question though. I have seen that in 1995 there is availability of elevated tracks of 160 km/h only. Is that intended or you've got to adjust timeline yet?

Fabio

Thank you!
It's intended, as 180 km/h tracks (and matching elevated, bridges, and tunnels) will be introduced in 2000 to replace 160 km/h set and 140 km/h set retired in 1980 (120 km/h elevated retired in 1940 replaced by 160 km/h set).

The full set will have plenty more elevated (for each higher speed: 200, 240, 280, 320, and 400 km/h). Most of these are almost ready (and I play with them in my personal test pakset), but still some details are missing or wrong.

In recent times, speeds lower than 160 (180) km/h are considered (and painted) for freight, where players build less articulated layouts. Also, this allows to some bridge design and narrower deck which wouldn't look well with elevated.

Zeno

Mmmm... not sure. What if I say that I miss a slower elevated track? They could be used for elevated metro, like in Chicago, Vancouver or Bangkok. Metro trains are usually slower, 90 km/h or similar, so there's no sense using them in a 160 km/h infrastructure.

Fabio

My metros are usually built with 160-180 km/h tracks (used at 140 km/h by one of my favorite Simutrans trains: Renfe_447 :D), but now I get your point.

We could think of an additional family of urban heavy rail (80 km/h 1900-1960 and 100 km/h afterwards) but we should balance them to make them unattractive for freight but attractive in urban areas (e.g. plain track, tunnel and elevated costing more or less the same (say, with the proportion of a bridge, which would be cheap for tunnels) but with high maintainance, so that they are a good choice for entirely underground networks but limited in length.

Zeno

Hey, sounds good. 100 km/h is enough low but there's the point that you mention about raising maintenance so it is not used for freight transport.

Btw, the 447 is our heavy local train, that brings people from Barcelona's region to the city itself and out again in all directions. Being replaced by newer trains in the latest years though :)

Fabio

Just a question about 447... Why all middle cars have 2 pantographs? Or is it only found in 3-car layouts?
I use it as long as my network needs, e.g. the longest I built in my latest game have 12 cars :D
(Front-Car-Back-Front-Car-Back-Front-Car-Back-Front-Car-Back)
They can carry HUGE amount of people!!!

tonu

Excellent! They're great! I can solve some railways' crossings with these elevated tracks.
Is it supposed that rails' crossings change their layout according to the trains that cross?

Zeno

Quote from: Fabio on September 21, 2012, 09:24:55 PM
Just a question about 447... Why all middle cars have 2 pantographs? Or is it only found in 3-car layouts?
See image here. You explained well, FCB-FCB is the standard layout. And you're right, they are set to carry (too) many people.


PkK

#253
In general, I like the new tracks, but I have a bit of criticism:

1) In the menu the symbols for them have such a weird red circle filled with white with a black number inside in the upper left. It seems this number conincedes with the speed limit in km/h. How about using something like the German Lf 4 ot Lf 7 instead? See http://www.stellwerke.de/signal/deutsch/lf.html for two Lf 4 variants and http://www.stellwerke.de/signal/deutsch/lf.html for Lf 7. These have the speed limit in tens of km/h. AFAIK many European and Asian countried use similar speed signals. I do not know about the rest of the world.

2) The different variants of track for a given speed seem to mostly differ in the ballast and rails. In reality, however the most noticeable visual difference is in the sleepers: Concrete and Y-type steel sleepers are now commonly used for all speeds (reduced maintenance cost compared to wooden sleepers, reduced construction cost compared to classic steel sleepers).

P.S.:
3) Please give us some high-speed bridges and tunnels to test; IMO the lack of high-speed bridges is a serious shortcoming of current pak128. Even when some of the intermediate speeds are not yet released by you, this gives motivation to play a whole game using your tracks, which will increase test coverage.

Philipp

kierongreen

QuoteIn the menu the symbols for them have such a weird red circle filled with white with a black number inside in the upper left. It seems this number conincedes with the speed limit in km/h.
Britain has these type of signs on railways (and roads) but in mph. Also this type of sign (either in mph or km/h) is also used on roads in many countries worldwide so should be familiar to people.

PkK

For the 60 km/h track type, in crossings and junctions, the horizontal sleepers and rails and are missing (gravel is there, as are the vertical tracks).

Philipp


Fabio

First of all, thanks for the feedback.
Some quick reply, now.

Menu: yes, the circle signs are speed limits. As many countries have different signs, I thought to use road signs both for ease of understanding (and anyway most players wouldn't know how railways speed limits in their country would look like) and for consistency with roads menu.

Sleepers: most of faster tracks will have concrete sleepers, or even sleeperless system (for high speed). Unfortunately the scale of the pakset doesn't allow small changes in sleeper shape be visible, hence the need to change the ballast for each family of tracks (60-80, 80-100-120, 120-140-160-180, 200-240, 280-320-400), changing the sleepers inside the family (dark wood-lighter wood-concrete-lighter concrete).

Junctions: yes, they change shape.

60 km/h tracks: thank you for reporting, I'll check and correct.

Faster tracks: they are still WIP, I'll release them later for testing.

greenling

Opening hours 20:00 - 23:00
(In Night from friday on saturday and saturday on sunday it possibly that i be keep longer in Forum.)
I am The Assistant from Pakfilearcheologist!
Working on a big Problem!

PkK

Quote from: Fabio on September 22, 2012, 02:59:17 PM
Junctions: yes, they change shape.

60 km/h tracks: thank you for reporting, I'll check and correct.

You mean the sleepers and rail disappearing at junctions and crossings for some of the directions is intentional?

Philipp

Fabio

Indeed that's intentional.
I find it a decent compromise between realism and game appearance. In real world, at railways switches only small pieces of tracks move, in Simutrans scale you wouldn't notice it. But in Pak 64 also the ballast changes, and I find it too unrealistic.

PkK

OK. However I sometimes get an ugly right angle turn.
When I have to adjacent parallel tracks, and they are connected at some point, I often see the graphical configuration for a U-turn, even when no train ever uses it.

Philipp

Fabio

Could you post a screenshot?

Some possible issues are:
1) game engine picking the wrong image -- I made them based on Pak 64 ones.
2) no train is near but ths switch is reserved. Press 'b' key to see reservations displayed in red overlay on tracks.

Fifty

Great work Fabio! These tracks look good and are desperately needed in 128. A few issues/comments:

The ramps that lead onto the 100 km/h bridge lack sleepers. All of the other bridges with similar ramps have them and it looks a bit weird. See the red circle in the image below (click for larger)


One caveat is the new 80 km/h track. To me, it looks like two steel rails in a farm field. Freight networks will tend to have a lot of this track, so I would think it would look nicer a bit more like the two older tracks for 100 or 120 km/h (below the new 80 km/h in the screenshot above). Maybe a narrower and flatter grey ballast with some some weeds in the middle?

It might also be useful to keep just the 140 km/h track, and not the related tunnels and bridges, into the future to give a little bit of variety.
Why do we park on the driveway and drive on the parkway?

ӔO

one idea for that 80km/h track, would be to make it look cheaper.
Some shrubbery growing on the track and less ballast might do the trick.
My Sketchup open project sources
various projects rolled up: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/17111233/Roll_up.rar

Colour safe chart:

greenling

Opening hours 20:00 - 23:00
(In Night from friday on saturday and saturday on sunday it possibly that i be keep longer in Forum.)
I am The Assistant from Pakfilearcheologist!
Working on a big Problem!

Fabio

Less ballast is tricky in junctions. To keep the tracks alignment they should have a little offset, I wonder if it would look good.
Weeds or shrubbery could be nice but what about different climates? They could be transparent spots?

I disagree with keeping a track without the matching infrastructure. But the max gap would be 120 to 180 km/h, not a big one.

PkK

Since it is so hard to make a profit in early years, partly due infrastructure maintenance and since early railways were slow, I propose to add a 40 km/h track (which could roughly correspond to the current US class 2 track, which allows for 40 km/h freight and 48 km/h passenger operation). I'd suggest to introduce it around 1825 or 1830, before Stephensons "Rocket". This would place it in the age of iron rail (as opposed to later steel rail, which was first used in 1857).

Philipp


mEGa

Hi Fabio,

My first graphic feedback about your test submission :

I also noticed little bugs with few junctions of different tracks as joined snapshot show :

- with 120 km/h tunnels
- with 120 km/h junction bridges
- with 160 km/h junction bridges

featuring :
simutrans 111.3.1r5843
pak 128 2.1.0


As I tell it few posts later, great great works !


Current projects in progress : improvements of few designed french paks

ӔO

Quote from: Fabio on September 23, 2012, 06:35:51 PM
Less ballast is tricky in junctions. To keep the tracks alignment they should have a little offset, I wonder if it would look good.
Weeds or shrubbery could be nice but what about different climates? They could be transparent spots?

I disagree with keeping a track without the matching infrastructure. But the max gap would be 120 to 180 km/h, not a big one.

Yeah, I think a few transparent pixels might do the trick.

As an alternative, a rusty looking set of rails, perhaps?
My Sketchup open project sources
various projects rolled up: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/17111233/Roll_up.rar

Colour safe chart:

Zeno

Quote from: mEGa on September 24, 2012, 09:42:52 AM
I also noticed little bugs with few junctions of different tracks as joined snapshot show :
I also saw some glitches like the ones you show in bug1 and bug2, but I think those glitches are caused by the screen painting routine rather than by fabio's graphics; the ones I see just vanish whenever I drag to another location in the map.

mEGa

Quote from: Zeno on September 24, 2012, 09:21:55 PM
I also saw some glitches like the ones you show in bug1 and bug2, but I think those glitches are caused by the screen painting routine rather than by fabio's graphics; the ones I see just vanish whenever I drag to another location in the map.

You're right !
I use Linux and I play games of Simutrans on that OS. So I tested with game on Windows (better NVIDIA driver than on Linux) and I don't see these on same place.

@ Fabio :
Sorry for my bad feedback ;-)
Current projects in progress : improvements of few designed french paks

PkK

I noticed a graphics bug in 140 km/h elevated way junctions, where the side wall is on the wrong side (i.e. in the track instead of the opposite side).

http://colecovision.eu/stuff/elevbug140.png

Philipp


VS

If I understand correctly, the current status is "bug hunting" ?

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!

HDomos

If I want to start simutrans experimental r1011 with your tracks in the pak folder the game crashes with error:
FATAL ERROR:
way_reader_t::read_node()
Invalid version 5
PRESS ANY KEY


greenling

HDomos & Ghost-cz
The pakfiles they make for Simutrans 112 can not load with simutrans experimental r1011.
They have diverent datastructurs.
Please read those thema:
http://forum.simutrans.com/index.php?topic=10769.0
Opening hours 20:00 - 23:00
(In Night from friday on saturday and saturday on sunday it possibly that i be keep longer in Forum.)
I am The Assistant from Pakfilearcheologist!
Working on a big Problem!

HDomos

Whoops... I realized that, but only after i wrote this and i forgot to mention it...  :-X

Fabio

#277
Quote from: VS on October 07, 2012, 02:24:25 PM
If I understand correctly, the current status is "bug hunting" ?

Now that I can access freely the SVN server, I think I should plan to (partly) release and commit this set.
I was thinking of phasing the introduction of the new tracks in 4 steps.


   OLD (to be replaced)   NEW (to replace)   
Step 1   160 km/h (1932+)   120 km/h (1840-1940)
140 km/h (1910-1980)
160 km/h (1930-2000)
180 km/h (2000+)
   in r1043
Step 2   110 km/h (1870+)   80 km/h (1840-1950)
100 km/h (1870-1980)
120 km/h (1980+)
   in r1046
Step 3   65 km/h (1810+)   60 km/h (1810-1970)
80 km/h (1950+)
   
Step 4A      200 km/h (1940-2000)
240 km/h (2000+)
   in r1052
Step 4B   280 km/h (1965+)
400 km/h (1978+)
   200 km/h (1940-2000)
320 km/h (1980+)
400 km/h (2010+)
   

The steps order is due to current completion status, although it's not written in the stone.
The pre-release I made covers steps 1 to 3. I must fix the bugs found, add some snow, add a real icon/cursor, and commit.
If nobody objects, I'll start as planned.

PkK

Again, the pak128 currently lacks a fast bridge, so I would suggest to include one of the fast bridges in an early step.

Philipp

Fabio

All these steps could be done in a reasonable time (by next release? Sure I hope so!)

However, during Step 1 I could recycle existing 160 km/h bridge as a provisional 280 km/h bridge until Step 4 is completed.