pak48.Excentrique

[Spike]

You always wanted something special for Simutrans? Bored of the common and mainstream graphic sets?

Then, welcome to pak.Excentrique! It is ... colorful, it is ... unusual and! It's growing

I'm working on this since a while, and I have some hope to get it into a playable state. Right now there is a lot missing, and quite many of the graphics are only placeholders. A lot of the graphics details will change, but the colorful appearance is set.

If the swine flu doesn't get me, I'll do my best to get this off the ground

Downloads

https://sourceforge.net/projects/simutrans/files/pak48.Excentrique/

Sources

http://simutrans.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/simutrans/pak48.Excentrique/

[Combuijs]

Nice and simple!

What's the tile size? I had in mind to make such a thing for 16x16 tiles, a kind of pak16. But I guess this is 64x64.

[The Hood]

pak.Excentrique = pak.Hippy?

[Spike]

Nice and simple!

What's the tile size? I had in mind to make such a thing for 16x16 tiles, a kind of pak16. But I guess this is 64x64.

It's 48x48. I hope to get along more swiftly in the smaller tile size. If you have ideas, or if you want to join, feel free to contact me The set is in it's early steps, and still shapeable.

Overall guideline will be futuristic/exotic.

pak.Excentrique = pak.Hippy?

One world, one people. Peace!

Well, it was more inspired by my like of colors and color contrasts, but maybe it shares that with the hippy movement

[vilvoh]

Imho, It's pretty small to appreciate the details. Anyway, a new pakset is always welcome.

P.S: That remembers me someday I should start my SpacePak...

[Spike]

It's small but a size that I can work with better than the larger sizes. So it should be alright

[Combuijs]

It's 48x48

Smaller than I expected. I'm afraid I'm not anything near a pixel-artist. I still could get 2304 pixels wrong in your format (in 16x16 only 256  ).

If you have ideas, or if you want to join, feel free to contact me

My ideas were to focus on gameplay itself, so:
- Few different houses (basically for each level and type 1, no timeline)
- Few different tourist attractions
- Introduction of villages as non-growing cities by posing them as tourist attractions
- Lots of small end-industries consuming only one product, fed by much bigger production factories (say 4 times bigger)
- Lots of different industry chains
- Provide for every waytype (road, train, ship, airplane, smalltrack, maglev, monorail)
- For each waytype per decade 3 different choices for vehicles: cheap, fast or middle-of-the-road

But of course it's your pak, not mine. I don't know what your ideas are, or what you think about the things mentioned above.

[Spike]

Smaller than I expected. I'm afraid I'm not anything near a pixel-artist. I still could get 2304 pixels wrong in your format (in 16x16 only 256  ).

Hehe I have the other problem, formats that have too many pixels I feel overwhelmed and lost with.

I've got some ideas, but I think it's too early too present them yet. I'm too impatient, and wanted to show the graphics, but still there is too much just growing ... kind of, I work on something, and new ideas pop up, get tried, some work, some don't. So it's better not to tell much yet, because tomorrow it could be all different already again. In a few weeks when the core is set, also the ideas should stabilize.

Short term plans include a number of city buildings, enough for testing, and two modes of transportation, one based on roads and one based on rails. Also, more landscape elements.

Ideas for industry chains should grow while I'm working on the basics. I have two rough ideas - ideas what industries will mean in this set - and must decide for one before I can shape the chains.

I want to present all the well known Simutrans features in a new manner, so you can expect some surprising twists in this set

Enough mystery talk for today. Stay tuned for news!

[Spike]

I'm working towards a first mode of transportation, and made a depot for them: Depot coils for energy cells. Maybe the names will change, energy cells is just a first idea. Feedback and ideas are welcome

Next on my list will be stops/stations and a few vehicles, so that one can set up transport lines.

One question I need to answer before I continue: Will icons in 24x24 pixels be alright, or should they be larger? Since this set uses 48x48 pixel tiles, I thought 24x24 icons might fit nicely. What do you think?

[VS]

If you manage to make them readable, why not?

[Spike]

That should be doable. 24x24 is quite big for icons. Handicapped people might still have more difficulty to hit them, since they are smaller than the ones found in the other big pak sets. But they leave more screenspace for the map view ... if someone has good arguments for or against the icon size please speak up, since I don't want to make them twice.

[VS]

What screen size and kind is likely to be the majority for intended players? There are many more factors apart from pure pixel numbers - display dpi, distance from viewer, brightness, even technology... In any case, what matters is how easy it is to recognize the icon on player's screen, not yours. (Or it is not the case - decide yourself )

Think HD monitors, using multiple screens, and on the other side of spectrum things like ipods or netbooks that achieve insane (for me) dpi. Making the actual controls too small to use = fail. And seeing screenshots from some people I tend to think our current standard size is getting obsolete...

[DirrrtyDirk]

Think HD monitors, using multiple screens, and on the other side of spectrum things like ipods or netbooks that achieve insane (for me) dpi. Making the actual controls too small to use = fail. And seeing screenshots from some people I tend to think our current standard size is getting obsolete...

Obsolete... in what way? Is it too big or too small?

As someone who has just recently changed from an old 17" tube monitor to a new modern TFT screen... I think 24x24 might just be too small. And even on smaller (but still high resolution) displays, like netbooks for example, I can imagine that these icons might be very small and hard to hit by mouse... which might might be a more serious disadvantage than the advantage of having more room for the actual map...

[VS]

Obsolete = getting too small. Did you perhaps notice that Vista made 48*48 icons default... which was possible at least since 98? Why change it now...?

[DirrrtyDirk]

Obsolete = getting too small.

Seems like we agree then. Although I think the current 32x32 are still ok... and a good compromise over all. At least on my screen with 1920x1080 they are still fine for me. But I really wouldn't recommend anything smaller.

Did you perhaps notice that Vista made 48*48 icons default... which was possible at least since 98? Why change it now...?

OT: Actually no... I never worked with Vista  - or Windows 7. (I'm happy to keep it that way with the former, but for the latter it is just a matter of time.) But if that is so (and I have no reason to doubt you) it might indeed be connected to the fact that average screen size kept growing bigger and bigger in the past. Checking through PC offers of today, I rarely see anything smaller than 22" (of course not for net- or notebooks).

[Spike]

Although I think the current 32x32 are still ok... and a good compromise over all. At least on my screen with 1920x1080 they are still fine for me. But I really wouldn't recommend anything smaller.

Alright, I'll use 32x32 pixel icons then. That is actually easier, because I can reuse a lot of the already made icons, so I don't say no to that

[skreyola]

Remember to keep some love for the old-school folks. I still use 1024x768 and have no intention of increasing that before it is forced upon me. Higher resolutions on the monitors I have now just make everything too small and hurt my eyes.

[Spike]

32x32 pixel icons were in Simutrans since the start and used to work in 640x480 pixel screen resolutions. So I think they are good for the old-school folks, too?

[Spike]

I was working on some new city elements, but I'm not quite pleased with the results:

I want to try some color coding: "residential" type buildings will be orange, "commercial" type buildings will be blue, and "industrial" type buildings will be red. This way it's quite easy to see how the city is structured. Simutrans intersperses commercial and residential buildings, but keeps industry to the city outskirts, or in industrial areas of their own.

I'll try to create some better buildings. But this preview might already give an idea.

[vilvoh]

The res buildings seem to be made of jelly..

[Spike]

And they taste like apricots

[Isaac Eiland-Hall]

I am fascinated by this pak.

To be completely honest, it may not fulfil my city-building dreams like currently pak96.comic seems to do best, but I fully support this idea, and I will give it a fair shake when it's playable. I think it's an awesome idea - and what other game has anything at all like this? OTTD, eat yer heart out! hehe

[skreyola]

The res buildings seem to be made of jelly..

They're huge gelatinous cubes.

[IgorEliezer]

This pakset looks so delicious.

[DirrrtyDirk]

They're huge gelatinous cubes.

That monster from D&D ? 

[Spike]

Maybe they eat stray city cars Nah, they are peaceful, I'm sure.

Making roads and rails always was a major pain in pak set creation, and it still is. I don't really want to count the hours that I have invested in the new powertrack, and it still needs some touching up for the tile joints. But at the moment I'm quite happy with the intermediate results, so I want to show them.

Powertracks will work a bit like roads, and support two lanes of floating vehicles on them. I tried to match their style with the depot coils. Also, I reworked one sort of city building, the blue blobshop. Now with more shiny! Well, actually I'm not quite sure if the new version is better than the old, but the pak set is still young and I'm experimenting a lot.

I've been quite nervous if the idea of a more exotic graphics set will liked, and I want to say I'm very glad about all the encouraging and positive feedback. Thank you

Edit:

Another preview, with improved crossings, and slight overall improvements of the powertracks.

The black cracks at tile borders will soon be fixed, too. Now onwards to stations and vehicles.

Edit 2: Old previews were lost, restored one as attachment.

[skreyola]

That monster from D&D ? 

Yeah.

[DirrrtyDirk]

...from the always popular monster group of "Oozes, slimes and jellies"  Well, they look very similar indeed.

I think some of this fantasy (but probably more science fiction) stuff might have inspired Hajo for these things already - and maybe more still to come...

Hmmm... pak.fantasy anyone? 

[Fabio]

Hmmm... pak.fantasy anyone? 

you mean with elves, dwarves, orcs and the like? sounds interesting

[skreyola]

you mean with elves, dwarves, orcs and the like? sounds interesting

Dwarves and orcs carry a lot more ore than elves can.

[Combuijs]

I must admit: transport by dragons could be fascinating 

[Spike]

I've been busy with other projects but today I had a bit of time for pak.Excentrique again.

Soooo .... castles in the sky? No islands in space

[link lost]

A pity that Simutrans can't show waterfalls off the world ends ... but pak.Excentrique now has a more spacey outside tile

[Ashley]

I really like this pakset, it looks wonderfully strange

[Spike]

Seems I did it right, then I'm glad to hear that you like it!

[smu42]

This might become the most beautiful pakset ever! (no exaggeration)

Are you still working on this?

I would suggest colour coding (or combined with patterns) also for different goods. And maybe the vehicles could be lighted when full and dark when they are empty?