Author Topic: Maglev in pakbritain size (work in progress) (Read 43278 times)

The Hood · « **Reply #35 on:** February 06, 2010, 10:43:03 AM »

Exciting developments! Couple of comments - not sure if they are covered by your "polishing" or not, but anyway...

1) Colours - liveries working well. The whiter tracks look a little too white though.
2) Scale - looks a little small to me. Lengthwise each car is good, but I'd probably make them all wider and taller. Tracks also could do with being wider I think. (Should be obviously bigger than the IC125 you have for comparison)
3) Some of the tracks and the depot in the second screenshot seem to have white "halos" around them in places which need removing/cleaning.

I know some of those changes might take a fair bit of work (I always find tidying images up takes as long if not longer than doing the image in the first place!), but I think these would make a world of a difference - and would be well worth it.

Looking forward to more developments/improvements!

ӔO · « **Reply #36 on:** February 06, 2010, 05:50:46 PM »

okay, will do.
I'll make them 1.6x wider and 1.25x taller compared to the original files.

I'll also make some changes to the freight cars.

AP · « **Reply #37 on:** February 06, 2010, 05:55:38 PM »

Quote from: AEO on February 06, 2010, 06:14:21 AM

Something weird going on with the train which is cornering (top left)?

The Hood · « **Reply #38 on:** February 06, 2010, 07:06:24 PM »

@AEO,

Sounds good

@AP,

Not necessarily - the two vehicles are longer than 1/2 a tile so it is possible if the shot is taken in a very specific window...

ӔO · « **Reply #39 on:** February 06, 2010, 10:19:12 PM »

I believe it's just the game engine displaying things incorrectly because there needs to be an offset for elevated ways.

reworked the 3d to make it wider.

The Hood · « **Reply #40 on:** February 07, 2010, 12:59:14 PM »

I assume that is 128x128 - in which case it looks much better. I'll reserve judgement until I can see it in game next to some existing vehicles though.

ӔO · « **Reply #41 on:** February 07, 2010, 02:30:31 PM »

yep, it should be close to 128 tile size.

I've done up to the rendering it in 256 tile size now, so half way there to get some in-game images.

ӔO · « **Reply #42 on:** February 07, 2010, 06:31:41 PM »

the white track, I think, still looks a tad bit too bright.

Václav · « **Reply #43 on:** February 07, 2010, 09:35:19 PM »

Depot looks very strange. I understand you try to find british shape for this but current shape is too far from it. It is very fantastic. When I take as grant british pak is dark (for it I transferred only one building and two freight waggons to my game - based on original set) then this does not fit with it. Regardless of it should look futuristic, I would like to offer something what could be close to depot for railway.

White track is better than dark - but I would like to offer using version with dark edges (like it is in this post).

For trains I say this: I don't have any complaint against blue end cars of duplex train - but I think better colour connection between end cars and middle cars could be better.

The Hood · « **Reply #44 on:** February 07, 2010, 10:07:37 PM »

That scale is definitely much better. Trains are looking good too - not much work needed there, although I agree with VaclavMacurek that the transition between the all-blue and the blue and white cars on the duplex maybe is a bit sudden? Probably not a priority though, and that's just aesthetic preference anyway.

The white tracks are definitely too bright - I assume the grey tracks are a different speed? Even so, two shades of grey should do the trick.

Depot - again too bright, and it needs textures. I'm not 100% sure about the style, but it is futuristic and it is growing on me.

Bridges - supports aren't quite tall enough for a single-height level: if you look at the double height bridge you can see a couple of pixel gap.

Elevated ways: I think the spacing of the two-pillar variant should be wider so that the pillars don't appear to obstruct the road.

All in all though, this is coming on nicely

ӔO · « **Reply #45 on:** February 07, 2010, 11:50:07 PM »

dark edges on tracks:
when doing dark edges, there will be a lot of graphical errors at the joints if I painted the top parts to look like a regular track with all the switches.

elevated way supports:
two pillar variants. one looks fine with road, one is supposed to look fine with rails, although I'm quickly finding that this doesn't seem to be the case. I'll have to use the outer corners if that's the case.

too white:
the good thing about having something too white is that it's pretty easy to fix by just adding some filters.

depot:
it was actually supposed to become a platform, but I gave up on that.
I figured... "what's slightly futuristic? honeycombs or composite FRP. I'll make it a honeycomb pattern."

bridge support gap:
yup, I noticed that too. that should be easy to fix.

colour transition for duplex:
well, it was supposed to be an homage for the Silver Jubilee, but I guess it could use a better colour transition. I realized you can call this the Platinum Jubilee.

anyone notice the menu bar icons?

jamespetts · « **Reply #46 on:** February 08, 2010, 12:27:40 AM »

I noticed them - they're good, although the text descriptions are non-standard. I see why you've added them, though, as the objects themselves look fairly nondescript (that is not a criticism, of course - that's just what Maglev looks like). The Hood - what do you think about the text?

ӔO · « **Reply #47 on:** February 08, 2010, 01:50:27 AM »

how's this for the front end of the duplex?
colours can be changed.

@james
how about an arrow pointing upwards for elevated ways and arrows pointing in left and right for bridges?

The Hood · « **Reply #48 on:** February 08, 2010, 08:36:05 AM »

Buttons are great as they are (although I was too busy looking at the nice trains too notice first time around!). I may do something similar with existing bridges/elevated ways as it is a bit confusing at the minute.

That new duplex front end looks much better.

Václav · « **Reply #49 on:** February 08, 2010, 12:27:11 PM »

Now it looks very nice - much better than before. Gold colour makes it magic

- I vote for version in the front.

ӔO · « **Reply #50 on:** February 10, 2010, 05:53:30 AM »

freight trains.
twice the capacity (and size to match) of the last goods/cooled freight wagons you can get in rail depot.

I'm pretty sure I need to work on the offsets a bit.

The Hood · « **Reply #51 on:** February 10, 2010, 08:27:21 AM »

Getting better and better! There are also a few graphical glitches on the tracks I can see there - looks like each track section is a pixel short or something.

AP · « **Reply #52 on:** February 10, 2010, 10:27:25 AM »

I quite like those - makes it look like it's been assembled in prefabricated sections, with those being the expansion joints. Gives it scale.

ӔO · « **Reply #53 on:** February 10, 2010, 09:55:21 PM »

I think that sectioned looks are due to incorrectly rendered edges.

as far as I've seen, the joints are quite apparent in maglev tracks, even when viewed from afar.
the odd part is I made the tracks overshoot the tile by a small margin in 3D because I know the overlap/zooming issue, but I guess it wasn't enough after cleaning up the edges.

ӔO · « **Reply #54 on:** February 12, 2010, 07:41:10 AM »

update.

changes:
wider column width on elevated white tracks
toned down the brightness of the white concrete, turned up texture size so you can actually see textures in the game.
fixed column height for bridge

the gaps or indents on the diagonals are there on purpose because they'll protrude on a diagonal to straight if the ends are to be flush with diagonal to diagonal (it's a compromise).
as you can probably see, the elevated track columns don't extend down far enough for a "proper looking" double stack. if they did, they'll look weird on the ground (again, compromise)

I have no idea why the head unit on the freight train has that gap. sometimes it's there, sometimes it's not, oddity. I also have no idea what the internal names are for the piece goods and cooled goods, but there are several loaded cargo container images to choose from, and they can be flipped backwards for double the amount.

completed the on-track signals. They should be pretty clear as to which one is what, otherwise I fail my mission in making simple signals. I think They might need a few more pixels as I think it's a bit hard to see what they are when zoomed out. :p

icons for track signals are a on this shot, hasn't changed http://i199.photobucket.com/albums/aa131/AEObikes/simscrmag.jpg

The Hood · « **Reply #55 on:** February 12, 2010, 08:47:53 AM »

Excellent - I appreciate there are a number of compromises you have to make with track - they already happen in the rail and tram tracks. I agree with you on the signals - they could be a bit larger, and can I also just double check you are using the special colours for them (so they stay bright at night)?

For internal names of piece goods and cool goods - look at this file:
http://simutrans.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/simutrans/pak128.Britain/goods/goods-128.dat?revision=250&view=markup

For vehicle dats you can just reference a good of that category and it will work for goods of the same category too, e.g. Freight="Bucher" works for books, but also vegetables, china, beer, etc etc

For the freight train with gap, have you specified a length= parameter in each vehicle? Playing around with that should help. 1 tile is equivalent to length=16.

Finally, the new duplex is fantastic! Looking forward to getting my hands on the sources so I can include in a future release of pak128.Britain, but I'm guessing before then we need work on the depot and on stations (I can help with both if you want, to keep them consistent with existing ones I can adapt my blender models).

ӔO · « **Reply #56 on:** February 12, 2010, 10:09:27 AM »

@The Hood

I appreciate the goods list, I'll put in the additional parameters in the dat files for the various freight types.

As to the gaps, yes, the freight train does have the proper length specified in them. After doing some math, 1 tile = 28.6m, wagons are 28.8m, or 16 and the heads are 17m, or 9.5 (I used 10) and it gives some odd graphical behaviour. I'll probably have to play around with offsets a bit.

the signals use special colours, yes.

The Hood · « **Reply #57 on:** February 12, 2010, 10:31:58 AM »

OK there may be 2 reasons for the graphical bug:

1) Check the alignment of the png. If it's always the same rotations causing the problems, this is almost certainly the problem. You probably lined up the vehicle incorrectly (you could either change the png or mess around with offsets in the dat)
2) If (1) doesn't solve it, it smells like a code bug, although I'm not sure if I remember from the past that length=16 caused problems sometimes. Maybe one of the coders could help throw some light on this?

ӔO · « **Reply #58 on:** February 12, 2010, 05:29:10 PM »

@hood
I think the problem stems from just having bad alignment (even though I did it the way the how-to tells you to)
I managed to fix it with offsets, thanks for your help.

touched up all the stray pixels and I think it's pretty much complete, unless you notice anything glaringly wrong.

The Hood · « **Reply #59 on:** February 12, 2010, 06:27:31 PM »

The only glaringly obvious thing is the signals are shining through the trains...

Other than that, as I said I don't feel the depot is quite there, and we need stations. If you send me the sources, I can have a go at those next week.

ӔO · « **Reply #60 on:** February 12, 2010, 06:41:08 PM »

the signals shining through is a game engine problem, as far as I've read.

here are the sources.
http://files.[ simutrans [dot] us (site down, do not visit) ]/files/get/l7_3UhmQ3i/maglev.rar

The Hood · « **Reply #61 on:** February 12, 2010, 07:57:12 PM »

Cool. Tunnels would also be good too. Are you planning on doing these?

ӔO · « **Reply #62 on:** February 12, 2010, 07:58:58 PM »

the funny thing, I did make tunnels, but for some reason they (dat files) never worked.

I just assumed that it wasn't possible to do underground maglev.

rsdworker · « **Reply #63 on:** February 12, 2010, 08:10:35 PM »

Quote from: AEO on February 12, 2010, 07:58:58 PM

the funny thing, I did make tunnels, but for some reason they (dat files) never worked.

I just assumed that it wasn't possible to do underground maglev.

a underground maglevs would be cool

Václav · « **Reply #64 on:** February 12, 2010, 08:19:38 PM »

Quote from: AEO on February 12, 2010, 07:58:58 PM

the funny thing, I did make tunnels, but for some reason they (dat files) never worked.

I just assumed that it wasn't possible to do underground maglev.

Underground maglev is not possible?
Do you think trains here - or tracks and stations?

ӔO · « **Reply #65 on:** February 12, 2010, 08:37:59 PM »

I mean in-game. I could not get maglev tunnels to work through a dat file I modified.
for some reason just changing another tunnel and the images to
waytype=maglev_track
system_type=64
did not work.

I'll work on the graphics, I just need to modify the originals I've made before and make them slightly wider.

the future of maglev is underground and underwater vacuum tunnels, definitely.

Václav · « **Reply #66 on:** February 12, 2010, 09:52:32 PM »

This is important part of dat of my maglev tunnels - and it runs OK. I am not sure but I think that your problem is in system_type=64 (regardless of I don't know what this number means).

Obj=tunnel
name=Tunel550
waytype=maglev_track
copyright=VaclavMacurek
intro_year=2005
intro_month=1
cost=1100000
maintenance=5500
topspeed=550
icon=> Tunel550.1.3
cursor=Tunel550.0.3

... and (other) picture related dats

ӔO · « **Reply #67 on:** February 13, 2010, 12:39:57 AM »

ah, I now realize my mistake, thank you Vaclav.
got it working.

Václav · « **Reply #68 on:** February 13, 2010, 05:55:09 AM »

They looks great (and thanks for good idea

) - but I am worried about this: trains will be invisible for short while between coming on this tile and real missing in tunnel (or appearing on surface).

ӔO · « **Reply #69 on:** February 13, 2010, 04:52:05 PM »

hmm, I guess one could pack the wall with some concrete.

personally, I like how the first one came out, but I think the second one needs more refinement.