pak72.Elegance half height, a "pak.Classic" renovation project

[Yona-TYT]

[Yona-TYT]

This is a minor detail from Iron Bite, but I always liked seeing the fields group together, it's those nice details that make the difference.
 Edit. Is fields no capos
Will this type of fields ever return to the pak elegance?.

[_Hajo_]

Will this type of caops ever return to the pak elegance?.

It required changes to the pak files to store the grouping information. If I find a way to do it again while maintaining compatibility with Simutrans Standard, I'll do it again.

Today I had some time to give the road vehicles little shadows. I think it helps to visually "glue" the vehicles to the ground. Can't turn them off in the depot view, but I think it's ok there, too.

[wlindley]

What's a caop?

[Yona-TYT]

What's a caop?

my mistake, I meant fields.

[_Hajo_]

I could emulate the field grouping, using the latest nightlies of Simutrans GL and pak72.Elegance. I also added the small shed that I made meanwhile into the field groups.

Edit: There is a problem in Simutrans GL that makes it crash occasionally after creating a new map. I have not yet fully understood why that happens. If it happens, just try to make a new map again. At least on my computer chances are good that each other attempt succeeds.

[Yona-TYT]

I could emulate the field grouping, using the latest nightlies of Simutrans GL and pak72.Elegance. I also added the small shed that I made meanwhile into the field groups.

Edit: There is a problem in Simutrans GL that makes it crash occasionally after creating a new map. I have not yet fully understood why that happens. If it happens, just try to make a new map again. At least on my computer chances are good that each other attempt succeeds.

wow this is great! Can you make it work in standard simutrans?.

Edit.
Is this a new type of object? or a variant of the ground objects?.


Is the placement like in factories, (a building surrounded by fields)?.

[_Hajo_]

They are ground objects with additional grouping information. It needed extra code in Simutrans GL to read this information and produce the groups accordingly during map generation.

[Yona-TYT]

Arid climates are not the most suitable for this type of fields, you may prefer to adjust the climatic parameters so that they are more appropriate.

[Yona-TYT]

They are ground objects with additional grouping information. It needed extra code in Simutrans GL to read this information and produce the groups accordingly during map generation.

Can you open a merge request on GitHub? It would be nice to see this in the next simutrans release, which is very close.

https://github.com/simutrans/simutrans/pulls

[_Hajo_]

I'm afraid I can't do it this way. There is a new file in the pak set which describes the grouping. I had to put that information into an extra file to keep compatibility of the created pak files so that both Simutrans Standard and Simutrans GL can use them (if I alter pak file format, Standard cannot read my paks, so I cannot do that).

Simutrans GL reads the paks and also this one special file, and uses the extra information for placement. I am somewhat certain that Prissi will disagree with the idea to have the grouping information in a separate file, and for Standard that totally makes sense. Standard should have the information as part of the pak files, because Standard defines the pak file contents.

My solution is a workaround, in order not to alter pak file format and still supply that extra information to Simutrans GL. I don't think it will fit to Simutrans Standard coding standards.

[prissi]

I think a grouping function could be incorporated. It will only slow down map creation at worst. Adding that to the groundobj files seems straightforward. I mean, that is why there is the version information in the paks, to be able to extend it ...

The changes to simworld.cc do not look too bad ... I would suggest the percentage in the simrand call to be configurable. Also I noticed a totally different bracket convention, but not a show stopper.

[_Hajo_]

I've started to work on new maglev tracks, inspired by the old TTD style of partly earth-embedded tracks. There are no vehicles, stations or depots in the set yet, but I hope I can add these during the coming months.

[_Hajo_]

Rushed it a bit, using downscaled elements from pak144.Excentrique and some quickly freshmade. It works, but I think it needs a bit more polish to look real good.

A download for testing is available here:
https://github.com/Varkalandar/pak72.Elegance/releases/tag/Nightly