Topic: [Feature Request] Direct selection of "livery"

[Ranran]

These are requests unrelated to the bug and patch posted here and here, so I have reposted them in a new thread so that they are not buried since the original thread has finished its job.

I interpret the requests posted to them as follows:

1. The livery can be selected directly, regardless of the timeline and livery schemes. (Added options to simuconf.tab)
2. Display the list of liveries the vehicle has and make it directly selectable
3. Each player can specify a default livery for each waytype

Please quote from those threads if needed.

[Ranran]

3. when picking vehicles in depot, info about available liveries would be very nice.

This is still a mockup, but I'm currently working on a patch that shows available livery schemes that the vehicle has. This is what Vladki was saying, isn't this?
Note that this is a livery scheme, not a livery. (It matches the droplist)
Probably due to space problems on the right side, if there is a lot of prohibitive information or a large number of livery schemes, it is necessary to stop the display halfway, and it is necessary to make such adjustments.
I would appreciate your feedback.

[jamespetts]

Thank you for co-ordinating this. There are two separate issues here: being able to select manually individual liveries from a scheme and being able to see which livery schemes that a given vehicle has. I will deal with each in turn.

Individual livery selection

I do not think that this request is consistent with the intention of having livery schemes in the first place. The idea of having livery schemes is that the player selects the scheme and the actual livery from that scheme is automatically selected by year. This way, one does not get liveries that are out of date or in reality existed only in the future.

It is not clear what in reality could usefully be achieved by bypassing this limitation. A pakset author wanting to create a large number of player selectable liveries can just create a large number of livery schemes. Each scheme can contain as few as 1 livery.

Display of available livery schemes

This is more useful. Ideally, one would do it by greying out unavailable options in the drop down menu (but allowing the player to select them so as to allow scheme selection), but this may be too difficult to code; the way that you have done it here is certainly preferable to it not being shown at all and is likely to be useful.

[Ves]

Looks very good!
Also bear in mind that the cargo information is living there, and if a vehicle has three or more classes, it will use the entire space over there.
Perhaps extend the height of the window, and then you can accommodate both the livery list and the upgrade list with one on each side?

[Ranran]

I do not think that this request is consistent with the intention of having livery schemes in the first place. The idea of having livery schemes is that the player selects the scheme and the actual livery from that scheme is automatically selected by year. This way, one does not get liveries that are out of date or in reality existed only in the future.

It is not clear what in reality could usefully be achieved by bypassing this limitation. A pakset author wanting to create a large number of player selectable liveries can just create a large number of livery schemes. Each scheme can contain as few as 1 livery.

Yes, livery may show the characteristics of the period, and pak128.britain seems to emphasize such changes in the times.
In modern times, there are using white paints and bright colors, but in the old days liveries are such as brown, maroon, dark green and dark red were seen.

It seems strange that modern livery exist in the old age, but on the other hand repainting old livery is often seen in Japan.

When speaking about timeline, it would be nice to be able to turn off the timeline only for liveries. However in that case it would be necessary to show not only the livery scheme (like LMS/GWR/BR/Blackpool/Sheffield/...) but a specific livery (BR-Green, BR-Blue, ...). This would be extremely handy in multiplayer games, where players could use liveries to distinguish from other players.

However, I think it would be nice for players to be able to select the old livery or to choose an option that completely ignores the timeline  in the options in simuconf.tab.
After all, if the vehicle is present and the pak does not have a prepared delivery, you cannot select a non-existing delivery. For vehicles that have already appeared, maybe it can't choose a paint that doesn't quite match the times.

Ideally, one would do it by greying out unavailable options in the drop down menu (but allowing the player to select them so as to allow scheme selection), but this may be too difficult to code; the way that you have done it here is certainly preferable to it not being shown at all and is likely to be useful.

This is difficult with the current depot dialog for the following reason

When selecting the list, the mouse has already moved from the panel of 103 series, so the 103 series is no longer selected.

Thus it is difficult to link the droplist with the selected vehicle.
That's why I created a guide to the player by hovering over the vehicle panel to indicate which livery scheme to choose.

Also bear in mind that the cargo information is living there, and if a vehicle has three or more classes, it will use the entire space over there.

Yes, that's right

Perhaps extend the height of the window, and then you can accommodate both the livery list and the upgrade list with one on each side?

Oh, I didn't think about the upgrade list. It would be useful if that is also there. But I was making the upgrade icon in another patch so the upgrade list may be better to go with it.

[jamespetts]

However, I think it would be nice for players to be able to select the old livery or to choose an option that completely ignores the timeline  in the options in simuconf.tab.
After all, if the vehicle is present and the pak does not have a prepared delivery, you cannot select a non-existing delivery. For vehicles that have already appeared, maybe it can't choose a paint that doesn't quite match the times.

This might be a sensible solution, as suggested in the other thread; this can work in the same way as the option to enable the purchasing of obsolete vehicles. One would have it turned off by default and in network games, but sandbox players might want to enable it.

This is difficult with the current depot dialog for the following reasonThus it is difficult to link the droplist with the selected vehicle.
That's why I created a guide to the player by hovering over the vehicle panel to indicate which livery scheme to choose.

Yes, of course - I should have thought of that. We do need a hover system, in that case, but you may need to consider that this may overlap with the system showing the selection of classes/capacities, as Ves pointed out.

Yes, that's right
Oh, I didn't think about the upgrade list. It would be useful if that is also there. But I was making the upgrade icon in another patch so the upgrade list may be better to go with it.

It will be interesting to see how this turns out.

[Vladki]

This is what Vladki was saying, isn't this?

Yes that's exactly what I had in mind. But keep in mind that there is not only cargo info but also constraints (electrification) info in that corner of depot.

Upgrade list would be very nice :-)

Direct livery selection would be beneficial for multiplayer games. E.g. trains in 1950-2000 have only one livery scheme (BR), but most of them have multiple liveries. So using livery scheme to distinguish players is not an option. Also in real world some engines are repainted in old "retro" liveries - so this would be nice for model railway style of playing

[Ranran]

The selectable livery scheme list runs out of space in this way depending on the vehicle.


Vehicles already purchased cannot change their livery in the depot.
So, if hover the mouse over the vehicle purchase panel below, the selectable livery scheme will be displayed, and if select a convoy's vehicle that is being assembled, list of vehicles eligible for upgrade is displayed instead of the selectable livery scheme.
Does this make sense?

[Vladki]

yes, that sounds good

[Ranran]

Selectable available livery list - now you can test this. 
https://github.com/Ranran-the-JuicyPork/simutrans-extended/tree/display-which-livery-scheme-this-vehicle-has


DEMO:

Checking multiple liveries can be a little tricky. (´・ω・｀)
This is a design issue of the depot dialog as I mentioned above and I believe solving it requires a lot of work. But it will probably see a better solution in the Ves's vehicle manager.

The currently displayed livery is displayed with "*". If it does not have a livery that matches the selected livery scheme in the list, it shows that another livery is selected by default.
The previous patch listed the livery schemes in the order in which vehicles with a livery were found, but changed them to be ordered by the index of the livery scheme.


Display of other information takes precedence, and if it does not fit on the screen, the display of the list will be terminated.

Only four!  This would also be complemented by Ves's vehicle manager.

Supplement:
The livery counter counts the number of "livery" in the vehicle.
Therefore, the livery scheme list may be less than the number shown there.




About upgrade information:
I made an upgrade icon in the past and posted the demo, but it got lost and it took time to find it. I found it here.

I'm planning to add a upgrade list display to that patch, as it has additional icons, functions and symbols available, but...

list of vehicles eligible for upgrade is displayed instead of the selectable livery scheme.

In this thread, I posted a demo showing the upgrade vehicle on the convoy detail dialog.

As you can see, the width required to display the vehicle name tends to be wider in phonetic languages such as English - when displaying on the right side, the width may be insufficient. (´・ω・｀)
Any feedback on this issue would be greatly appreciated.

[Vladki]

Both windows look good

[Ranran]

Sorry for lack of explanation.
The issue I was thinking of was out of space like this.

[Ves]

It looks very good!

To help with the very long vehicle names, perhaps do some automatic line breaking? I had the same problem in the vehicle manager, so I wrote the code to automatically do a linebreak if the name was too long, and it even looks for spaces, lines or other characters suitable for linebreaking within 5 (I think) characters from the desired linebreak. There might also exist this functionality originally in simutrans, but I have not found it... You can use my code if you whish, which is still on GitHub.