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Companies thoughts

Started by Ves, November 15, 2014, 03:13:22 PM

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Ves

In the process of painting trains, I start to get out in the sphere where vehicles where owned and operated by other companies having their own paintjobs (Bergslagens Järnvägar (BJ), for instance). My initial idea is to "have it all", but how should we handle the fact that most companies where adopted by the state railways (SJ) in 1948?
If I want to play the game as Bergslagens Järnvägar, then when 1948 arrives, my "Company" dissapear and i have to choose a paintjob from another company if I want to continue playing. What should be the obvious thing to do in this situation?

Then there are vehicles that where only operated by some companies. Should I put in the name of the company in the name and its up to the player to 'follow the rules'? Im actually leaning towards adding playercolors to all vehicles as a livery, so that if you want a certain vehicle that in real life wasnt operated by *that* company, you choose the player livery to get a fictive 'unique' vehicle. obviously this involves more work, so what do you think?

Junna

I think maintaining fictional liveries for what-if scenarios is just fine (I made a few such, for prototype trains and units that never entered serial production for the British Railways, for Pak.Britain). But since you're the one drawing them, you can do whatever. I think it would probably be best if you started with a smaller range of liveries, and then added additional ones by whatever rate you are able to do so.

Apropos of nothing but bloody hell, how I hate TRAXX and Class 66. Should banish them from the network. Hideous monstrosities. I often see parked at the Västerås East goods yard this disgusting Class 66 (or T66 as I think the Swedish classification is) in some vile private hire-load livery, Rush Rail. What an abomination. Almost vomited up my breakfast.

Ves

ok, nice to hear you also have made some fictional paintjobs on the brittish set. I will experiement a bit with playercolors! :-)

QuoteApropos of nothing but bloody hell, how I hate TRAXX and Class 66. Should banish them from the network. Hideous monstrosities. I often see parked at the Västerås East goods yard this disgusting Class 66 (or T66 as I think the Swedish classification is) in some vile private hire-load livery, Rush Rail. What an abomination. Almost vomited up my breakfast.

Haha! I have never ever heard about that company, your right, its maybe not the nicest paintjobs :-P And the T66 is not too beatifull either, but I allways liked the Traxx! :-)

Ves

I was thinking the other day of what buissnes could be fun to play in the game so I just sat down and draw some maps and these five different industries appeared. What do you think? This is just a rough painting and I probably missed something or made something overkill, so please lets have a discussion! :)
Maybe someone even could get inspired to work on some industries?

A small supermarket, should exist in every town:


Big supermarket, should exist only outside bigger towns:


The car production. Ideally only a few of these factories should exist and lots of car dealers around the map:


The big furniture shop, who havent eaten meatballs there? The blue lines express my thoughts that some "furniture factories" could need glass in addition, some textile, some both for variation:


The transformator production. Alse here, ideally only one or very few on the map, and the "Transformator Shipping Station" as a way of getting rid of the transformators again:

Ves

#4
This is a merely proof of concept and a test to see what it actually looks like ingame!

I have experiemented with using 10 meter/tile for buildings and painted three houses in this scale:

a Stationhouse
a cityhouse
The Big Furniture Shop

here are some pictures of my buildings mixed together and also together with stuff from pak.britain and standard pak.128

In this picture, some pak.britain factories are placed next to my house and station building


My house at a visit in pakbritain. It is a little bigger, but its also the one having more stores than the other. Also its thicker.


This is a passenger and a freight train parked at a station next to the quite big building:


And at a higher zoom the entire, very unpolished and wrong roof colored, shop comes to view:

This was a pain in the * to cut out. The Tilecutter program wouldn cut buildings bigger than around 10^2 so I had to improvise making this building and it only has one rotation.
Maybe I didnt get the height correct but it is actually measuring almost like the real thing is: 160x140 meters wich with 10 meter scale is 16x14 tiles. I dont know if this is overkill, but must say it looks quite cool with such a big house! Only other concern is the train looks terrible small next to it, and that applies also to most other buildings.

What do you all think of this?

wlindley

Don't use Tilecutter at all. Instead, draw or render a variety of 1x1 buildings that can stand alone, or that you can combine in the pak definition.  See the stone cathedral/university buildings in Pak128.Britain; I did them that way.  The Ikea store can be drawn with one or two yellow "Lego-like" buildings, plus one 1x1 blue building with name, and a bunch of 1x1 taller and 1x1 shorter buildings.  In fact your pak file could even call for the logo block and the yellow block, leaving the remaining 1x1 add-ons as "fields."

Vladki

The station and house look ok. Ikea seems too big. Why didnt you try the same scale as is used for trains? Iirc it was 24 m/tile.

Ves

That was very clever, then you automatically get rotations too! Thankyou Wlindley for the tip! :)

I did actually try the station house and the city house in the half of that scale. the blue thing I havent had time to test in a smaller size yet.
But here is a picture of the two buildings in app 20m/tile. the city house has been doubbled its lenght so it can stay in a row:



In one way it looks better, in some other I think not. It will also not be more dificult to reuse any thing from other paks, look at the british shop next to the station.

Reason Ikea is so big, is I wanted it on the same scale as the other buildings, but maybe thats redicoulus with such a big building?

Ves

This was a brilliant way of creating multitile buildings fairly easy! Made some modules in blue and yellow, combined them together and voila! :D



.... and even made some "fields" on the fly! In case you wonder, the parking lots are the fields, and yes the cars are not really finished. Didnt want to paint a bunch of cars for the moment, so I just made some 'blobs' to simulate them and get variety.

What do you think?

By the way, anyone figure out how many different blocks this (rotation) has? ;)

wlindley

I count... eight building blocks?

For cars, try copying from the citycars images.  Change the light-blue to transparent and copy-and-paste away.  That's what I did for the citybuildings/images/ind/1950parking.png image in the Britain paks.  The cars in each rotation are deliberately different.

Ves

hehe almost, there are 12. I guess you forgot the half roof, the squares and the two entrances ;)

I was actually thinking about stealing some cars from other paks as painting citycars is not my first priority. would you suggest pak britain cars, or standard cars? what did you use to create you graphic?

edit: looking again, it must be britain cars you use :P

Junna

Do I spot some goods wagons at that station?

Ves

That is indeed goodswagons. I tried to do some littera Mas cars (bulk good) a time ago. They do only have the N-S E-W rotation, not the diagonals.

Ves

So.. Did a little painting of 'bricks'



It consist of a number of different kinds of blocks: The bottom with/without windows, the roof, The additional doors which are used with frontimage and therefore can be put wherever wanted. Its designed so no transitions should be visible between bottom and roof. I have several more block and roof types not used on this building.

Do you think the size compared to the train look ok?

Junna

Size looks fine. Are you going to add some overlay thing to make the façade look more dynamic? It looks quite pristine now, as if the structure was just recently erected or similar.

Ves

Do you mean weathering in general (like dirt)? The building is made out of blocks, as described by Wlindley in this thread, and therefore all the elements need to look quite similar in order to be able to be put anywhere. I have plans later on for making several versions of the blocks (different color, without lines, ornaments etc) but I want this to be good first as a base.
maybe you could elaborate a bit?

Junna

Yes, weathering, some dirt, details, you know, variations (you don't need to have any that goes between the modular blocks that would look odd, but the structure as it is now looks a bit cartoon-ish and overly neat, and not sufficiently... industrial.

Ves

Ok I think I get what you mean!
By details, you mean objects like a fan or pipes? I already have some ideas how to make pipes (completely modular) but it will take some time.
I thought about adding chimneys on the roof, just need to make sure it won't look bad when roof is repeated.
I will try some stuff and post a new picture soon!

Ves

Made some dirt on the building. No details added but dirt. Dirt under the windows, dirt under and on the roof and dirt from the ground up the wall sides. And added to that, a gerneral dirt layer that adds 30% dirt to basicly everything ;)



I also made a new building, which actually is the inspiration source for these brick-textures. Someone recognize the shape of the building and where its located? ;)



I think im almost satisfied with the dirt. My only concern is that it tends to look odd if no windows and in some ways looks like its been in a fire instead of just beeing dirty. What are your experience with painting dirt (asking everyone who reads this)?

pumuckl999

Looks great - buildings will use after a fire sometimes or smoke/dirt from inside can left windows. Maybe in the front of the first image you can disturb the smut a little, looks too regular.
If you want not an after-fire-look: Fire/smoke goes up, dirt over edges is more intensive. Dirt from rain and so on - rain is going down, dirt should more intensive under edges. Exception: Near ground the wetness (not only) comes from bottom.

Ves

Yes for sure buildings could be used after a fire, but not all buildings have been in fire :P Its the wall you mentioned that i also find much disturbing with the artificial looking dirt.
To rephrase what you write, you basicly mean that the dirt should apply under the roof and windows fading downwards and also from the ground fading upwards?
Which colors would you use? I have currently only have time to test with one color, a kind of dark grey brown, would you use different colors depended on where the dirt is?

Thanks for your reply! :)

Isaac Eiland-Hall

(This thread has been moved to the new board for the pak. Just a heads up. Apologies to everyone who sees this message multiple times)