Topic: Great Britain simulation in Simutrans Experimental

[jamespetts]

Gosh. Impressive!

[Carl]

A new video! This time we're headed from Bristol Temple Meads to London, via Swindon and Reading.

http://youtu.be/rq5c9Pl_OB8



Here's a screenshot of Bristol Parkway, which we don't see in the video, but is nearby. The line to Avonmouth and the airfield are just here for show, and aren't (yet) used in the simulation. Once all the passenger lines are built, if there is any CPU power still left in the bank, I might consider adding some freight services too, since OpenTrainTimes now gives some schedules for these.



As I say at the end of the video, the next video will showcase Swansea and Cardiff. After that, I suspect the Birmingham area will be next in line...

[kierongreen]

Impressive as always

[Carl]

Here's an updated savegame (with pak folder):
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/61716/GB-Jul13.rar

West Midlands local services are now mostly complete, and I've moved on to the East Midlands region. As for videos, South Wales and Birmingham will be coming in the next few weeks.

[Carl]

Another video, this time of the South Wales mainline. We follow a Swansea to Paddington service as far as Bristol Parkway, before switching to a local train to Weston-super-Mare.

http://youtu.be/n4R_rwmoFMg



I mentioned the Valley lines in the video. Here's a view of them from high zoom. At the bottom left is Cardiff, and the bottom right is Newport.

[jamespetts]

Looks rather impressive!

[greenling]

Hello Carl
I have your gamesave look on and find a problem:
The Map it a little bit to big i have get problems to load the save.
And i have fund some new parts they not know there it came.

[Carl]

Thanks James!

Greenling: this is now a very large and CPU-intensive map, so this may be why you couldn't load it. Or were you getting an error of some kind? If so, make sure that you've copied the pakfolder over fully from the archive.

[Carl]

I've been working on beautifying the map a little. First steps have been "gapless" double track rails and some elevated rails adapted from Pak128. Here's a flavour of the changes in East London (bigger version here, or click to embiggen):



I was unsure about the gapless rails for a while, but once I played with the underlying texture enough, I really think it adds something.

[jamespetts]

Yes, I think that it adds something, too. I wonder whether one could change the code to detect automatically when two railway tracks are next to each other and change the ground texture between them as a result? Hmm.

[Carl]

Today we get a different perspective on the map! I've been building some of the motorway network, and this video is a full trip around the M25, London's orbital road. In the process we cross all the major rail lines in and out of London, as well as a big portion of the south east of England!

No commentary on this video -- I thought I'd let the annotations do the work this time.

The M25 is replete with all its junctions, although most aren't as complex as they are in real life. The details of some motorway junctions are quite difficult to replicate, and since this isn't the main focus of the map, I didn't want to spend a disproportionate amount of time on it. You'll see some citycars in the video, but not many -- I don't usually run them for performance reasons, so they were switched on purely for the purpose of making this video.

Here's a screenshot of the M25's junction with the A1(M) near Potters Bar -- with the East Coast Main Line in frame too.

[kierongreen]

Very nice I like the details at Dartford Crossing and Junction 5. Also the tunnel near Enfield. Although I'm sure some of the sections where the motorway is on a bridge over a railway should be the other way round :p

[Carl]

Thanks Kieron!

I'm also very sure that some of the crossings are inverted, as you say! I think I forgot to check in many cases and so just built the motorway over the (pre-existing) rail. I'll go back and fix these at some point.

[Carl]

A new line video today, showcasing the Chiltern Main Line from London Marylebone to Birmingham Snow Hill.

This video debuts some cosmetic upgrades to the map. As well as the new motorways and gapless double tracks, I've altered the standard intercity roads. Furthermore, I've added some farms to beautify the dull land between cities. Here's an example in a screenshot from the video where you can see all of these cosmetic features (this is just west of Beaconsfield):



I got the 'fields' idea from Sarlock, and I've adapted some of his farm graphic concepts as well as creating some of my own. The idea is to add some flavour to the long stretches between stations.

Here's another screenshot, of the busy area around West Hampstead in NW London.



The Midland Mainline heads up past Cricklewood, while the North London Line crisscrosses around the various mainlines and London Underground routes.

[kierongreen]

Nice - look forward to seeing the WCML Really must think about getting fields and ways without gaps done automatically...

[jamespetts]

Nice - look forward to seeing the WCML Really must think about getting fields and ways without gaps done automatically...

That would be very useful. Indeed, if there exists a means of graphics determining when to do this, that has two further interesting consequences. First, it should enable things like motorways to be built properly (consisting of two parallel roads) and actually look like motorways. Secondly, and more importantly, it should enable the construction of a parallel way to be at a discounted cost (to reflect the fact that building a single motorway is less expensive than two separate roads, and a double track railway is less expensive than two single track railways, and so forth): if the detection mechanism can work for the graphics, it should also work for the economics.

[Sarlock]

Wonderful!  I really like what you've done with the diagonal farm sections, it buffers up nicely to the diagonal rail and road ways.  You've given me some great ideas... another superb update!

[siefc]

Hi Carl,
I've been watching this thread with interest, superb map and I'm loving the fields and cosmetic changes you've made, keep up the excellent work!
Any chance of a save game?
Simon

[Carl]

Thanks for the comments! Here's an up-to-date savegame with pak folder included. Note that you'll need at least version 11.0 of Experimental to run this savegame.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/61716/UKmapAug2013.rar

[Sarlock]

Thanks, Carl!  I look forward to watching this map in motion.

[sdog]

[...] Really must think about getting fields and ways without gaps done automatically...

This would be speaking for the previously discussed separation of balast and rail/sleeper images. Only four sets of balast could cover all track types (which would also be easy to make). In comparison now four sets would be required for all rails.

[...] Secondly, and more importantly, it should enable the construction of a parallel way to be at a discounted cost (to reflect the fact that building a single motorway is less expensive than two separate roads, and a double track railway is less expensive than two single track railways, and so forth): if the detection mechanism can work for the graphics, it should also work for the economics.

Here the cost of building the way/ballast could be distinctive from the rails. Where adjoining balast would be cheaper in construction. While it would not influence the rails upon it.

[jamespetts]

Here the cost of building the way/ballast could be distinctive from the rails. Where adjoining balast would be cheaper in construction. While it would not influence the rails upon it.

Yes, the separation of initial building cost and renewal cost is already planned for Experimental.

[Pottsy]

Hi When I run the pak file included in the save folder i get this message;

'FATAL ERROR: stadt_t::init() - Can't read cityrules.tab
Aborting program execution ...'

As this only happens with your pakset, (all the standard ones work fine) I thought it  appropropriate to post it here. How can I fix this?

[jamespetts]

Pottsy - welcome. Which version of Simutrans are you using? This saved game is designed for Simutrans-Experimental, version 11.0 and above, and will not work in Standard or an earlier version of Experimental.

[cousjath]

Could you add the VT Vienna Plank Car to your pak? I very much enjoy using it (its my now my favourite experimental pak) but there is a large difference between that car and the one in the pak which only holds 7t and is limited to 90km/h, and the addition of the the larger plank car will make it perfect.

[Pottsy]

Pottsy - welcome. Which version of Simutrans are you using? This saved game is designed for Simutrans-Experimental, version 11.0 and above, and will not work in Standard or an earlier version of Experimental.

The version says
112.3 - r6520. Where can I download experimental?

[Carl]

Experimental version 11.4 can be downloaded here:
http://forum.simutrans.com/index.php?topic=12307.0


If you're using the savegame above in 11.4, you'll notice a couple of problems on the WCML and the MML as a result of the reversing waypoints bug. I've manage to remove most of the errors generated by this via tinkering, in advance of a bona fide bug fix, so this won't be present the next time I upload the save.

Cousjath: the folder distributed with this pakset isn't really intended to be a fully-functioning pakset, but rather a collection of files required to run this specific map. Maybe one day it will become a fully-fledged pakset, but if that ever happens it is a long way off. For now, you can add any addons or native pak files from any other 64-pixel size pakset to this pak folder to add the functionality you're after. I'm not sure whether the plank car you mention exists in pak64 or pak.German (or even perhaps pak64.Japan?) -- but if it does, this can be added to the folder without functionality problems.

If you can't find anything meeting the specifications you need, drop me a PM and I'll see if I can modify an existing file to distribute as a standalone addon.

[Pottsy]

Thanks but even with 11.4 experimental, I am still getting the 'can't read cityrules.tab error. Is there anyway to fix this on the GB pakset?

[Carl]

Hmm. Since this works on mine and others' machines, I suspect there must be some kind of file mismatch somewhere. I suggest downloading the configuration files from the Experimental 11.4 topic, and writing them over whatever you already have in your directory. If that doesn't work, I'm not sure -- perhaps James has some idea how this error could arise with Experimental?

One other thing to check is whether you have sufficient free RAM -- this map occupies 1.8GB of RAM whilst open. I don't know why this would give rise to a cityrules error, though.

[greenling]

Carl
It's Possible to update the scoure from those pakset?
I go on the 28. 8 until 15.9 in holiday there i have not Internet.

[jamespetts]

Pottsy - can you give me a step by step rundown of what you have done to install Simutrans-Experimental and Carl's pakset?

[Pottsy]

Okay. First I downloaded the 112.3 installer and set up simutrans with most paksets.
After this ST worked fine at all times.
For Carl's Pakset I simply opened the Winzip file and moved everything to it's own pakfolder where the other graphics sets are held
Finally, to install experimental I moved the simutrans-experimental.exe and the pthread files to the simutrans folder  where the vanilla exe was and merged all the config files.

[jamespetts]

Are you using Windows? If so, might I suggest doing this instead: download the complete Simutrans-Experimental package, unzip it into its own folder in your Program Files directory, then extract Carl's pakset and add it as a subfolder to the /simutrans folder?

[Pottsy]

I've tried using a separate folder but whatever I do, I still get the can't read cityrules error even if I delete cityrules.tab . Is there any solution now or will tech support have to deal with still error?

[jamespetts]

Can you go through precisely and step by step exactly what you have done to set up Simutrans-Experimental?