News:

Simutrans Chat Room
Where cool people of Simutrans can meet up.

How turn off vehicle range?

Started by accord2, February 01, 2017, 03:33:08 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

accord2

I just don't like this feature and I'd like to turn it off. Is it in the simuconf? I can't find it. Thank you :)
By the way, great game!
Son of a railroad man,  growing up in train stations, lover of trains

Vladki

Wow I didn't know that it is implemented at all. How does it work?

Sent from my ONEPLUS A3003 using Tapatalk


jamespetts

There is not an option to disable the vehicle range feature (although it is optional from a pakset designer's perspective as the range can be set to 0 on any vehicle, which will be interpreted as giving it infinite range).

It would help me to know, however, what you do not like about the feature. Can you give me a little more information about what sort of vehicles that you are using?
Download Simutrans-Extended.

Want to help with development? See here for things to do for coding, and here for information on how to make graphics/objects.

Follow Simutrans-Extended on Facebook.

accord2

I am in 1755 and I am using horse pulled cars to transport cargo. The problem is: I am trying to build a network for a cargo. I used waypoints between the two cargo stops. They are 30kms apart, and so I used waypoints to reduce it to shorter distances. If I use no waypoints in the way back I receive a message saying the stops distance is exceeded by 65530 km. To note I used the mirror schedule option. This range thing as it is now doesn't work with mirror schedule, what makes things a lot more non practical and not fun.  Too much micro management, I think. If I use waypoint in the way back travel, removing the mirror schedule option, I still receive the same message about the 65530 km. I think it is a bug.
Also, I think it this feature creates too much micro management and in future games makes things not fun. For example, I have several cities more than 25 km apart. If I start in 1755 I will create a line with waypoints. If, for example, in 2000 I create a motorway between those cities I will need 1)or create a totally new line without the waypoint, so buses would use the motorway 2)or edit manually every route to remove those waypoints.
I see that simutrans experimental tries to create realism, but I just can't see the use/fun of this feature.
Son of a railroad man,  growing up in train stations, lover of trains

jamespetts

I shall have to look into the problems that you report, which appear to be an error, especially in relation to the mirror schedule option and the 65530km message. The issue of range is a complex one: there is another branch of the pakset on which I have been working since Christmas, labelled the "road-vehicle-rescaling" branch. I spent a considerable amount of time adding better detail to horse-drawn transport, and of particular relevance here added a large variety of different horses broadly split into two categories: heavy draught horses and coaching horses. The heavy draught horses have a lower maximum speed but an unlimited range, whereas the coaching horses have a higher maximum speed but a realistically limited range (just as stage coach horses had in reality: hence the "stage" part of the name).

I have not merged this branch into the main branch yet because I have not finished re-scaling the road vehicles, so some vehicles are now out of scale with other vehicles (the road vehicles in the current half-heights branch are all too large, but not uniformly so). I had hoped to finish the re-scaling over Christmas, but I was not able to do this in the end, and my focus is now on coding rather than pakset work, so it might be some time before I am able to finish this (and I also want to add a lot more variety of road vehicles, too).

I wonder whether it might be worthwhile merging in the road-vehicle rescaling branch now even though some 'buses and lorries are in a different scale to the others so as to give players access to the greater range of types of horses and other improvement (including less annoying background sounds when there are trees or the sea in view, better trolleybus and tram catenary, many additional 'buses and steam lorries, a few additional trams and some miscellaneous improvements to the graphics and sounds)?

As to range more generally, there is a plan to increase the use of this feature to take account of limited fuel capacity in a wide range of vehicles to give realistic incentives to use vehicles with a greater fuel capacity (but possibly a greater weight and cost) where necessary. This is planned to be dealt with as part of a need for vehicles to visit depots regularly and the ability for convoys to be re-assembled automatically as part of their schedules outside depots (to allow, e.g. a change of horses on a stagecoach or a change of locomotives on a railway train), which is an important feature that I have intended to implement for some time that is likely to be necessary to be able to achieve a realistic balance (because it is important to be able to have a realistic ratio of asset utilisation time to asset cost, so a vehicle that must spend 25% of its time in the depot being maintained in real life must also have this in the game in order to get a realistic economic balance from using real world prices, costs and revenues).

This whole thing is likely to be a very large project, bu it is very important if a reasonable balance is to be achieved, as the costs and prices are at present somewhat arbitrary.
Download Simutrans-Extended.

Want to help with development? See here for things to do for coding, and here for information on how to make graphics/objects.

Follow Simutrans-Extended on Facebook.

accord2

Oh, now with that explanation of future fuel it makes much more sense. Sorry  :-[, I was not just seeing the point but in the future it will be important. I just need to learn some new techniques, mainly for the waypoint thing. But will it not lead to an excess of depots in the world, if the line is very large? Maybe if it not balanced in the right way it will be impossible to build a profitable line. I can suggest the creation of "fuel stations" (for trains and vehicles) with a lower maintenance cost. I can also suggest the creation of transformers to give electrified railways power. Oh, and it can also lead to the same problem as Openttd, vehicles are always broken. But I like the idea, it just needs to be well executed and I think it will be great.


I am happy to know that there will be new road vehicles. Maybe you can release the ones already in the right scale? I really don't know about that.
Son of a railroad man,  growing up in train stations, lover of trains

jamespetts

Yes, Simutrans-Experimental is still somewhat of a work in progress as far as balance is concerned at present. However, if the vehicles' ranges are realistic for the type of vehicles in question, then it follows that there would not need to be an excessive number of depots (providing that one does not regard a realistic number as excessive, which I do not, since realism is the aim). As to fuel stops, I am not aware of any significant form of public transport other than aircraft which refuel other than in depots (aircraft refuelling on the apron in most cases). I am not exactly sure of the position with ships. Some consideration will need to be given to the question of whether and in what circumstances vehicles can be replenished at stops and how to communicate this clearly to the player.

As to waypoints, incidentally, it should not be possible to use waypoints to circumvent the range feature as this makes no economic sense - the point of the range feature is that vehicles have to stop and be replenished (horses must rest, etc.): this is also a bug that I will have to look into.

Would you prefer to have access to the new range of vehicles even though some road vehicles are currently not in the same scale as others, or would you prefer to wait (possibly many months) for me to re-scale them all before merging the pakset branches?
Download Simutrans-Extended.

Want to help with development? See here for things to do for coding, and here for information on how to make graphics/objects.

Follow Simutrans-Extended on Facebook.

Vladki

Steam trains can refuel (water) on the platform.

Sent from my ONEPLUS A3003 using Tapatalk


accord2

QuoteWould you prefer to have access to the new range of vehicles even though some road vehicles are currently not in the same scale as others, or would you prefer to wait (possibly many months) for me to re-scale them all before merging the pakset branches?
If you want you can give us access, even if it in not in the same scale, I think it will make the game more interesting.


About the fuel stops, here in my region all the buses refuel outside the depot, it is cheaper for the company. But if they can go large distances (realistic as you say) I think it will be okay using a depot. The trains can only refuel at the district capital (~100km from one end of the line and ~60km from the other). But steam trains could refuel water at every platform, as @Vladki said. <- I think this happened in every country.
Son of a railroad man,  growing up in train stations, lover of trains

Vladki

The rescaled branch of pakset can be downloaded from server.exp.simutrans.com. look for pak128.brunel-ex

Sent from my ONEPLUS A3003 using Tapatalk


jamespetts

Steam locomotives are complex as far is range is concerned because they must be replenished in two distinct ways: as to coal and as to water. Each steam locomotive would use a different proportion of each and have a different carrying capacity for each. Moreover, steam locomotives could and frequently did pick up water from troughs when travelling at speed.

My view is that the best thing to do for steam locomotives is to ignore water and concentrate on coal capacity: that way, fuel economy calculations necessary in any event for calibrating the running cost can double to calculate the range.
Download Simutrans-Extended.

Want to help with development? See here for things to do for coding, and here for information on how to make graphics/objects.

Follow Simutrans-Extended on Facebook.

accord2

I don't understand economy calculations but focusing only in coal sounds more simple. Maybe it's better focus on coal and later if people want water add it? Thanks for sharing the branch :)
Son of a railroad man,  growing up in train stations, lover of trains

jamespetts

I think that I have now fixed the issue with the wrong number being shown as the amount by which the range is exceeded and the issue with mirrored schedules, but I have not had time to test the latter fix. Are you able to re-test this?

I have not been able to reproduce a bug in which it is possible to circumvent the range limits using waypoints.
Download Simutrans-Extended.

Want to help with development? See here for things to do for coding, and here for information on how to make graphics/objects.

Follow Simutrans-Extended on Facebook.

accord2

I still get the 65530km problem. :(
Son of a railroad man,  growing up in train stations, lover of trains

jamespetts

(1) Do you have binaries compiled after I pushed the fix?
(2) If so, can you upload a saved game in which this can be reproduced?
Download Simutrans-Extended.

Want to help with development? See here for things to do for coding, and here for information on how to make graphics/objects.

Follow Simutrans-Extended on Facebook.

accord2

Quote from: jamespetts on February 03, 2017, 11:45:31 AM
(1) Do you have binaries compiled after I pushed the fix?
(2) If so, can you upload a saved game in which this can be reproduced?
I'm afraid I don't know what are binaries.
Son of a railroad man,  growing up in train stations, lover of trains

jamespetts

My apologies: most computer programs, including Simutrans, are compiled from sources. The programmers write source code in a text format, and then a program called a compiler turns that source code into machine code that can be used by the computer. The files comprising this machine code are variously known as executables, binaries or object code. In Windows, they are represented by the files whose names have the ".exe" extension.

So, when I fixed the problem, I updated the source code, compiled it on my own computer to test it, and uploaded the fixed source code. However, as usual, I did not upload the binaries (as doing that regularly would be a lot of extra work that would take time away from development). Instead, the Linux binaries are built automatically every night and the Windows binaries are compiled from my sources from time to time by other helpful members of this forum (I have tried to have automatically compiled Windows builds, but have not succeeded).

So, unless the helpful people on the forum have re-compiled the code after I pushed the fixes to the source code, the version that you will be using will be the same old version in which you reported the problem in the first place and you will need to wait until this is done again (usually once or twice a week, but it varies) to see whether the problem has been fixed.
Download Simutrans-Extended.

Want to help with development? See here for things to do for coding, and here for information on how to make graphics/objects.

Follow Simutrans-Extended on Facebook.

accord2

Oh I understand now. Now everything makes sense, the files are from 1st of February, so they are the old ones. I'm sorry, I didn't noticed that before.
Son of a railroad man,  growing up in train stations, lover of trains

jamespetts

Don't worry - just let me know whether the new ones, when they are available  solve the problem.
Download Simutrans-Extended.

Want to help with development? See here for things to do for coding, and here for information on how to make graphics/objects.

Follow Simutrans-Extended on Facebook.

Ves


accord2

Quote from: Ves on February 03, 2017, 10:45:47 PM
There should be a new one now!
Indeed. Thank you. Both bugs are fixed (the one of the 65530 km and the one of reverse schedule). Thank you :)
Son of a railroad man,  growing up in train stations, lover of trains