Topic: 128.simutrans.entropy.me.uk

[Guillaume]

Thanks, it works fine now 

[Ashley]

@Sephiroth - I will probably reset the server this weekend, can't currently log in as a player due to my PC being packed for moving house.

[Guillaume]

I hope you'll change the map, and make it bigger than this one  because a lot of players want to play on this server now 
May I suggest to save and post somewhere this savegame, we made on this map so beautiful things...

[derajjared]

I need to pack and what version? will be no way to put the link to download

[moblet]

I've lost contact with the server, I presume that's the same for everyone. Unfortunately the server seemed to crash while I was in the process of replacing a bridge on a mainline, and the line is currently cut. This is going to cause major rail jams, and in turn production stoppages, on my network (Integrated Freight) - apologies in advance if this spills into truck jams that affect anyone else. Please PM me as soon as the server is known to be up so I know it's up and can get back in there and restore flow. I guess there's a lesson in here somewhere about building a temporary alternative route before cutting a mainline...

[Ashley]

Should be back up. I'm going to start a new map this weekend (bigger map, might also start a second 128 server since it seems most popular).

Oh and all the previous save games are available from:

http://entropy.me.uk/simutrans/networksavegames/sim128/

[moblet]

Thanks Timothy. Just tried to connect from two different computers but still no response :(

[Ashley]

Looks like the map is crashing the server immediately after it starts up. I would guess the map is corrupted.

The log file (last startup is with debug level 4) can be found here:

http://entropy.me.uk/simutrans/sim128.log

I'll have to restart the map from scratch I'm afraid. The old savegame can be downloaded here. Sorry about that!

I can't make a new map right now, so I'll restart it with the same blank map for now and then put a brand new map up tonight or tomorrow.

[moblet]

No worries, we're not going to complain if someone's hosting games for us, and gratis at that.

The idea of running multiple games of the same pak concurrently raises an interesting possibility, that of having games being played according to different "rules". Guillaume and I were discussing ways of carving up a map between players in a controlled fashion, e.g. players take exclusive responsibility for industry chains (which we could see resulting in spaghetti of the indigestible variety) or each player having exclusive responsibility for a section of the map and handing passengers and products over to neighbours at designated public stops/yards (which we reckoned might be more practical). The latter case could be implemented quite formally, a map could be set up with a number of demarked zones, say with borders "painted" by trees or dirt roads, equal to the number of player slots available (if the player list isn't full some players could manage multiple zones), and the public stop locations already defined. Alternatively it could be fluid and players could negotiate it as they go along. So if we were to have two games going, could we have one that's basically a free-for-all and another that operates according to some guiding principle or even a set of rules? What do others think of this concept, and what ideas do others have about styles of multi-play?

[Ashley]

I'm happy to host such a game, maybe you could produce a suitable map? I'd also be happy to give the admin password (for the public service account) to some trusted individuals to help sort out issues caused by other players networks if need be. I don't actually have very much time to play the game and can't log in to fix things often so having some in-game admins would be very useful.

I've been working on improving the management tools I have, the next one will be a web page where you can view the in-game chat messages. When the next stable release comes out (with the nettool functionality) I'll be able to really improve things a lot.

[moblet]

That sounds great, I'm certainly happy to have a go at putting together a suitable map for whatever game style we want to pursue. For nice multiplay I'm thinking of the following characteristics:
1. Long navigable waterways and/or coastline to permit long-distance heavy transport without the need to build extensive land infrastructure.
2. Natural barriers such as waterways and mountain ranges to stop everyone sprawling wherever and force co-operation. If we go with the player-per-region idea then these also form nice natural regional borders.
3. Localisation of industries so players trying to serve industry chains don't trip all over each other, also each regional player would have an industry chain contained within their region that they could develop independently.

What size map do we reckon is ideal? From a downloading point of view I wouldn't expect we'd want to get any more than twice the area of the last one (512x512).
Also, what starting population? The last map had about 900,000 in 96 cities.

I had a browse through maps.simutrans.com with the above in mind and like the look of:
Portland
Switzerland by Groovy Kimo
Zurich Area by Statto
Romania by Joker
Poland by Joker (long rivers)

All water -2 from memory, and at high maximum heights and all except Poland at high roughness.
All of the above are available in sizes comparable to, usually slightly larger than, the last map.

[Vonjo]

How about map chalenges/competition? Some people make a map, others vote for the best map.

[Guillaume]

But there's a problem, when cities will grow, a lot of industries will be added, and randomly on the map...
May be we can make enough large cities at start to make a good passenger network, and set the growth of cities off.
A map with natural barriers as moblet said is a good idea, but we can also make a "readme" on the map when a player join the server, which will explains that there are reserved areas, because natural barriers may are very strange on a map...

[Ashley]

When you make a map for uploading onto the server make sure:

1. That you are running exactly the same pak version and Simutrans version as the server (if you can connect as a client to the server then you should be ok)
2. That the game is run in server mode, e.g. with the -server command line flag - this is important as otherwise it won't save player passwords etc.
3. Change the name of the human player to "Spectator" and set a password
4. Set a password on the Public Service player
5. Save the game when you've done this, all players joining the game in future will see the place where your screen is when the game is saved. If you want to give new players a message then use signposts on the place where your screen is positioned when saving. E.g. you could provide a link to a forum thread/website with more information about the server.

Also please let me know what the password is

Map size shouldn't be more than 1024x1024, and I'd prefer you keep it down to something like 768x768. The bigger the map the more memory is used and that's the real limiting factor.

[moblet]

I've decided to use the Switzerland map, it has a good variety of terrain and at 771x459 it's bigger than the previous map but still a server-friendly size. Am deviating a little from my original plan, am exploring the idea of setting things out in vaguely realistic fashion, meaning:
- urban centres on flat land
- resources concentrated geographically and maybe even sensibly
- building end-consumption factories in urban centres in proportion to their population

I realise that the game will build things anywhere so the map will become increasingly random as time passes, but I'm interested to see how we go trying to play from that starting point. It may lead us to a scenario where some players take responsibility for distributing within urban centres and establish public distribution centres to which other players deliver products from the countryside. Either that or we establish public stops at end-consumers and converge upon them with our various products. Having resources concentrated geographically also means that "development of an industry chain" and "development of a region" are almost the same thing, and should stop everyone trying to build over the top of each other, at least for the first hundred years or so.

Will post drafts of the map as I go along, in fact the first of these can be downloaded here (being 10Kb too large to attach to this post). For now ignore any actual industries on the map, these were auto-generated. I have scattered some signs around the map where I intend to place various resources and factories, still working on that, suggestions welcome. Seeking feedback on the following:
- Suitability of the base map
- Suitability of current city locations and sizes

Any estimates on how many end-consumption factories we need at startup?

Nominations for city names most welcome.

I don't have any need to monopolise this process either, if someone else wants to run with this, grab it and do so. I want to work collaboratively rather than in competitive isolation though.

Thanks for the checklist Timothy.

[Guillaume]

I saw your savegame, we need more industries by far...
Do you remember how fast we connected factories  
The map is very good, but I suggest to make an equitable map in number of passengers at start, you should add more larger cities in the east because the west has 2 or three big centers of passengers.

Oh another idea : maybe doing motorways as I did on the previous map; but with the public player, it will help a lot

[Fifty]

I like your map moblet, the city placements are good, my only suggestion would be to increase the size of one of the ones in the south east corner.

In terms of industries, I don't think we need many, in fact on the last map many remained unserved, and they pop up quickly when pax are transported. Prissi often placed many unconnected supplier industries in areas to simulate the fact that resources are not available everywhere, so new industries will connect to those industries.

I will tinker with this map a little, particularly with industry, and then re upload it for you to see.

Fifty / RF&P

EDIT: Here is some first work, I put in some rivers through the cities to make more realistic, and grew some cities. I have yet to do anything with industries. http://simutrans-germany.com/files/upload/Swiss_MP_50modv1.sve

EDIT 2: I placed a lot of raw material industries around the map, many in places you had signs. I increased coal mine production. I wrote some comments on signs with an * in front of the comment. By not connecting all of these raw material producers at the outset, new industries should connect to these industries instead of building new ones. I welcome any comments or criticisim. http://simutrans-germany.com/files/upload/Swiss_MP_50modv2.sve

[moblet]

I like what you've done Fifty, I think we just got a couple of steps closer.

I agree that we had too many industries on the last map, we had no hope of serving all of them, especially in the physical space available. I vote that the server's config file be edited to maybe halve the industry growth rate.

We can either expand the population in the east or give the east excellent industrial opportunities to offer a balanced set of possibilities and allow players to choose challenges according to their preference. I don't believe we need to make every region equal in opportunity as some players may have time to build and manage huge and growing networks while others may only have time to maintain something small, simple, and stable.

I was figuring that in each of these primary production regions we would only place one accompanying secondary industry (e.g. one sawmill in St Davids as the only consumer of lumber from the neighbouring plantations). This should still provide enough revenue potential while discouraging two players from working in the one place. Would that work?

On the tertiary industry side I was figuring on doing things mathematically, i.e. set rates of gasoline, food, beer, etc consumption per capita and place consumers of appropriate capacity in cities accordingly, which is totally realistic and might offer some interesting distribution opportunities, especially ones that can be shared between players. So, for example's sake, all cities get at least one gas station, bakery, and garbage dump (in tiny cities these would have low rates), medium size and up cities would also get at least one dairy, material wholesaler, supermarket, shopping mall, and car dealership (with consumption rates in proportion to the population of their catchment area), while large cities would also get shopping centres and publishing houses. Does that sound like a good approach?

Funny Guillaume, I was at the same time thinking that maybe the public player could build some railway track and maybe wharves. It sounds like an interesting idea we can experiment with in games once we're happy with our cities and industries.

You're doing a great job with the industry placement Fifty - do you want to keep going with it?

[Vonjo]

Hi, moblet, fifty, that is a nice map. 

I think it will be a good idea if we have freeway from the begining of the game, so transporting goods to a distant place can be easier. Like this.
It also makes management easier, because it divide map into 16 region.  
Save

Yes, I know it is a little bit crazy.  

[moblet]

Ha! That's a really cool way to draw boundaries.

The topology of this map means that regions would be necessarily first defined by river basins, and subsequently by locations of primary industries and of large urban centres, so a simple grid wouldn't work. On a flat, evenly distributed map it probably would work. The concept is good though, of building motorways as boundaries and killing two birds with one stone - defining boundaries and providing some public long-distance transport infrastructure. Although in this map we might not be building them along the mountain ridges!

[Guillaume]

Hi, I make a map with great lines, thanks to moblet and Fifty :
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/197/simscr78.png/

Red : motorway
Orange : 95km/h
yellow circle : canal

I divided the map in 8-9-10-11 with white lines : I think it will need some adjustements because I did it fast, and the surface is not equal, I try to make the same population in each of it, but the industry need adjustments. The grey circles means that the population of the city should be more ( see the size of the circle   ), I deleted Yessitz which is not a good place at top of a mountain...
It really needs modifications in the future, but it's a tool to think.

[Vonjo]

I didn't think about making boundaries at the first place. But when it was done, I zoomed out, and... Wow, What a nice grid!

The reason was to make it easier to transport anything far away without the need to build rail or road. At least for me, the most 'unFun' thing when playing simutrans multiplayer is building distant road/rail. I desync almost every 5-15 mins and the ping to server can reach half seconds sometimes.

It also reduce map chaos because the players build railway everywhere. Players will build their own way only when necessary. Using shared road is also more eficient than one, single line rail. The road also increase colaboration. Moreover, maybe it reduce savegame size for faster download.

That road has 80 km/h speed limit, so it wont get too congested, as every car will run at 80 km/h if we put speed limit.

About the grid: I usually divide the map into 16 areas to locate anything easily. I often name line and major station with somthing like '24 Southampton' where (2,4) is the coordinate of the grid. So It make me easily find the problematic line/station.roblematic line/station.

[moblet]

You chaps have pretty much convinced me that all that public infrastructure is a good idea, I just haven't thought that far ahead as we haven't got all the industries installed yet, which is where my head's at.

Guillaume, St Lessitz was a play on St Moritz, intended to be a mountain resort village with lots of tourist attractions. Realistic for a mountainous map but perhaps a dumb idea in Simutrans given its lack of respect for difficult topography (i.e. the little village will inevitably sprawl into a city, unlike the real thing).

As for a public railway, I was thinking of well-signalled double high speed track, maybe even two pairs, one for diesel freight and the other for electrified passenger trains. I'd be interested in trying this sometime but it doesn't have to be immediately, more than happy to work with the roads first. Roads are more space efficient at low tonnages but not at high ones, where the sheer number of trucks means congested roads and long queues - and inevitably jams affecting other players - at yards.

[Fifty]

Guillaume, St Lessitz was a play on St Moritz, intended to be a mountain resort village with lots of tourist attractions. Realistic for a mountainous map but perhaps a dumb idea in Simutrans given its lack of respect for difficult topography (i.e. the little village will inevitably sprawl into a city, unlike the real thing).

Moblet, simply turn "allow city growth" off for this city.

I am going to do some more work with industries, then we can talk about public infrastructure. A small road net is probably good, rails can be a headache to manage public. Once the game starts then players can build public freight interchanges and trackage rights with public rails. Passenger tracks should be private though, I think, with interchanges occurring only at public stops.

Also, I think areas for players are best developed organically once the game starts

Moblet, the industry growth cannot be turned down without modifying the simuconf before starting the game, so impossible without ruining all of the work we have done. But with fewer cities, the industry growth should be lower since it makes theoretical exponential population growth (which will not occur in a a netgame) linear, thus lowering industry growth as compared to the last game. (I hope this makes sense)

[moblet]

That all sounds sensible to me Fifty, and we can save ourselves work by not trying to be too prescriptive with the region boundaries before we've ever tried playing the map. Once we have our industries sorted we should keep a template with no public ways so we can develop different versions thereof.

If you think the industry growth config might be an issue we should go back and fix it now before we develop any further. It wouldn't be an excessive amount of work to simply copy what we've already done, as there's no thinking involved. I'm happy to do it if you reckon it could be worth it.

Is it possible for a private player to make their rails public? Or must the public player build them in the first place? We could even try playing with one player acting as the government, playing as the public player and providing efficient mainline and main road infrastructure that everyone can share instead of plastering individual spaghetti all over the map.

[Guillaume]

I like it. But players can't make public rails... But a player or two can have the password of the public player and make the "government" : motorways, rails, canals as moblet said.
I agree with moblet, I don't know where in the simuconf.tab, but if it will promise a nice game, we should do it by modifying it.

[Fifty]

Maybe ask timothy or a devel about it, but I am pretty sure that would require the entire map to be built again from scratch. It is much easier to remove some excess industries with public service. This is why having an active public service would be good. It takes a lot of work to do the industries, I don't want either of us to have to re do it.

Lessitz has its growth turned off.

I built the Canal G suggested.

Anyway, I think industry is done. I have built the end consumers listed below and linked them with all needed steps for production. When new end consumer industries are formed, they should build secondary industries nearby if they cannot link to others with excess capacity on the map, and those secondary industries will link to some raw material producers already on the map.

I hope that I have enough power on the map, power is a percentage of total demand, so lots of unused raw material factories mean lots of power is needed on the map. If not, then a bunch of power industries will be built first.

End consumers on map now:
1 Bakery
1 Car Dealer
5 Coal power stations
1 Dairy
7 Gas Stations (1 with ethanol)
3 Oil Power plants
1 Shopping Mall (No textiles yet)
1 Supermarket
1 Waste incinerator

G, you can probably go ahead and build some highways (not too many/not every city connected), I can easily change industries around them. I think maybe just build the roads you outlined in red, leave the orange ones for later. But do make the red autobahn go close to Capital.

http://simutrans-germany.com/files/upload/Swiss_MP_50modv4.sve

[Guillaume]

I did motorways on the map, please give me some feedbacks, I can modify it on suggestion 
Here the link : http://www.gamefront.com/files/20643732/Swiss_MP_50modv5.sve

[Fifty]

Looks Great G! You should have the public password in case we need any more public highways, obviously you are a master

Moblet, what do you think? If you think it looks good, then all we need to do is set the passwords and give the save to Timothy. Put the map at a place where we can put lots of signs.

[Vonjo]

How about completing the full circle of the freeway?
Swiss_MP_50modv7.sve

Why not building the orange line? Or should I help you to rebuild the orange line?

EDIT: I think we should protect the entire freeway with dirt road. I tried to grow some nearby city. The roads are replaced with city road quickly, even though the freeway is 10 tiles away. Cities grow fast. This will also protect the freeway from the industry, so it won't be built next to the freeway.

EDIT 2: Grammar correction.  

[moblet]

Timothy, as all of this discussion pertains to what will become a new server, perhaps we should move it to a new thread rather than pollute this one.

I think the map is looking pretty good, and that once the final touches are done on the industries we should get in and try playing the map before worrying too much about this or that. The experience of a game or two will quickly tell us what we do or don't want from here.

On the subject of public roads, we have a range of views from mine (don't build many and keep the south-east relatively isolated) to Vonjo's (build a complete ring motorway with high speed connecting roads); rather than debate it too much I suggest we try playing with what Guillaume has presented and see how it goes. I agree about protecting the motorway - what about doing that with taxiway, tram track and/or watercourses in the hope that the sim doesn't convert these into urban road? (Such ways could be declared off-limits for use by private players).

In the latest revision I've done nothing but change the city names, many are plays on real place names, and many give clues as to what can be found there (e.g. the supermarket is in Cannes, corn abounds at Cobh, and so on). There's a nod to the game's creator and also one to our server host, and I couldn't resist naming a pass after the guy who was the first to build a road over it. If anyone finds any of the names offensive or irritating I will change them. Naturally I suggest that our first textile mill be placed at Knittern, if you put the mill elsewhere Fifty I'll do some renaming.

Fifty, do you want to finish your industry work and then we'll upload the map and give it a whirl? Only questions in my mind are:
- will one initial sawmill and textile mill be enough?
- do you think we also need a shopping centre chain to begin with or do you say we just try this and see how we go?
But basically I reckon we should get in and try playing the map before thinking too much more about what it does or doesn't need.

[Guillaume]

I added old taxiways to the motorway in order to protect if from players and cities.
Here the link : http://www.gamefront.com/files/20645813/Swiss_MP_50modv7.sve

[Vonjo]

Hi, Guillaume, why dont you connect the southwest road?

[Guillaume]

I make a new version with the 95 km/h roads, Vonjo, we need to respect the mountains to make the map realistic  
Here the link : http://www.gamefront.com/files/20645866/Swiss_MP_50modv7.1.sve

@Vonjo : what you painted is done in 95km/h roads now 

[Vonjo]

Ok thanks, Guillaume.

I have 2 suggestion:
1. How about making a public interchange?
2. Just upload the current savegame to the server, and see how it work. We can fix anything else as the game progress, or just fix it in the next game.