'Dutch Railway Set' (pak128) - is a correct version available?

[citybus7]

I have been living in the Netherlands for more than a year now, and I was very happy to find the Dutch Railway Set for pak128 on addons.simutrans.com.

However, the data for the trains included in the pack is completely unrealistic (purchase price, running price, max load).

Does anyone know whether a correct version is available anywhere, I mean one that is balanced with the game? The set is quite old, so there may have been some improvement. There are many trains in the set, but I only care about DD-IRM and Koploper sets/modules. I think they would work well in my game. :-)

Otherwise, the question is how do you edit a pak file? (Put it simple, I'm a lawyer not a programmer! :-)

Thanks!

[Gouv]

Well, as far as i know, pak-Files cant(arent supposed to) be edited. You can only merge pak-Files into one and extract them again.

[Combuijs]

What Gouv said. The Dutch railway set was mady by Raven / Rojo. I don't think the original sources are available. He is a non-regular user nowadays, and he lost his sources more than once, I think...

[vilvoh]

However, the data for the trains included in the pack is completely unrealistic (purchase price, running price, max load).

The current version available at a.s.c is from March 2006, so it may be outdated. However, I think that set is already included at the official release, that suffered a deep restructuring some time ago, so perhaps now they're more realistic...

About the sources, if they're not in the archive (archive.forum.simutrans.com) probably they're lost in time and space.. 

[VS]

It is not included in pak128, if you meant that, vilvoh.

As to editing paks... not feasible. But let's phrase the problem differently. Would anyone be willing to work on that set to make it usable again? If I had part of the sources and shared it?

Because I indeed have them

[vilvoh]

That was exactly what I was going to suggest. I suspected you had at least the png files.

In fact, that's another good way to contribute, balancing or updating dat files.

[martin]

I also took a look quite some time ago at the dutch railway set (being dutch it also drew my attention) from Raven/Rojo. It needs some more work than just updating the dat files. As far as I recall it the images had a different alignment (maybe even scaled different) as opposed to the official pak128 set.

Raven/Rojo did also a lot of 3D stuff. I helped him out with specs for the dutch railways about 1,5 year back. Is there something left from that?

[VS]

All I have now are a) images and b) original pak files.

[Erik]

All I have now are a) images and b) original pak files.

About a year ago i had asked for this. But did not received a answer from some one.
Where can I take the PNG files so i can make it better?

[wlindley]

All I have now are a) images and b) original pak files.

A perfect example of why a "pak de-compiler" would be useful...

[Spike]

A perfect example of why a "pak de-compiler" would be useful...

[grumpy]
I still wonder why no one does it, while so many ask for it. Simutrans sources are open, and it would be possible to create a pak decompiler from those ... one just needs some code that writes the PNG files and the DAT files after reading the data from a pak (reading is already included in Simutrans sources).

I'd propose that people stop asking for a decompiler except the one who actually will make it. Why do people always expect others to do the work for them? Stop whining, start doing!
[/grumpy]

[wlindley]

In another thread I was told that anyone who wrote a pak de-compiler would violate the Spirit of Something, bringing down the wrath of all pak-writers, and be ostracized from the Simutrans community.  Which is rather off-putting.  Otherwise I would write one in Perl (along with, possibly, a more sensible 'makeobj' that understands png transparency and could separate multi-tile buildings directly from the sensibly drawn images without needing pointy-clicky frustrating 'gui' tools like tilecutter that don't run on linux, but I was told not to do that either).

[Ashley]

I still wonder why no one does it, while so many ask for it. Simutrans sources are open, and it would be possible to create a pak decompiler from those ... one just needs some code that writes the PNG files and the DAT files after reading the data from a pak (reading is already included in Simutrans sources).

I'd propose that people stop asking for a decompiler except the one who actually will make it. Why do people always expect others to do the work for them? Stop whining, start doing.

There is AFAIK already a tool which can do this, but yes, people should put up or shut up... The functionality could even be built directly into Makeobj if desired (and this would be the ideal way to do it).

In another thread I was told that anyone who wrote a pak de-compiler would violate the Spirit of Something, bringing down the wrath of all pak-writers, and be ostracized from the Simutrans community.  Which is rather off-putting.  Otherwise I would write one in Perl (along with, possibly, a more sensible 'makeobj' that understands png transparency and could separate multi-tile buildings directly from the sensibly drawn images without needing pointy-clicky frustrating 'gui' tools like tilecutter that don't run on linux, but I was told not to do that either).

Bit of a misquote there. What I actually pointed out was that being able to decompile a pak file doesn't necessarily mean that you should do so, depending on the original intentions of the author and whether they have released the graphics into the public domain, or under an open-source licence. Given the amount of legacy material available in the community the widespread availability of a tool which can do this may not be a good idea. This is certainly a position which may need review however given the widespread trend within Simutrans to moving towards open-source.

TileCutter does in fact run on Linux, most Python scripts do. A scriptable interface is also relatively easy to do (nobody has so far requested it though - most users seem happy with the "pointy-clicky frustrating gui"), and the ability to run TileCutter from the command line with a .tcp template and source images as arguments is going into the next release (which will allow for scripting of cutting during pakset builds).

Who told you not to write a tool? You are welcome to of course. I'd advise against trying to re-implement Makeobj functions though since Makeobj changes quite often (this is why TileCutter just calls Makeobj to actually create pak objects). It might be more productive to add this code directly into Makeobj, as for the "decompilation" option (certainly, being able to recognise and discard 32bit transparency would be a boon, I am not so sure you've thought about the complexity of an entirely commandline version of TileCutter though - but good luck to you with that).

[VS]

Well. If it is so highly desired, to derail another thread, here goes - UnObj from Zarevak, the archmage of Simutrans reverse engineering.

[wlindley]

*deep bow*   I believe I was reading some of my frustrations at "not knowing  everything" into those previous messages.  Omnipotence is terribly elusive, dagnabbit!  -laughing-

I have only explored tilecutter a bit, having to run it in a Windows virtual-machine on my Linux box.  Thanks VS for that, ... ok folks let's see what we can do here... cheers

[Ashley]

I have only explored tilecutter a bit, having to run it in a Windows virtual-machine on my Linux box.  Thanks VS for that, ... ok folks let's see what we can do here... cheers

You might have an older version, try this: http://forum.simutrans.com/index.php?topic=4434.0