OpenGFX - Temperate Town [Coder Needed]

[Zephyris]

04/03/2008
The OpenGFX Temperate Town set will be a complete replacement and extension of the existing temperate town graphics. Graphics are currently being drawn, and need a coder for coding! Features anticipated are:
* Road-sensitive graphics orientations
* Full snowline support
* Tourist acceptance/production
* Lots and lots and lots of graphics!

Previews of the work in progress can be seen here, here and here.

What is OpenGFX?
As you may or may not be aware, there is currently a large effort to produce freely distrubutable replacements for TTD's trg**.grf graphics files. It is the latest attempt at a full 8bpp graphics replacement, see this thread. In addition to simply replacing graphics this project also intends to provide basic generic newGRFs, which, for example, will provide livery overrides for double headed trains, provide snow in temperate and complete shore lines, etc..

NOTE!
This thread is an advert to find possible coders. To avoid double/cross posting (and anoying mods ) please keep all comments in this thread about the coding of this set. All discussion and posting of graphics should be in the OpenGFX thread.

[Zephyris]

Sadly no coders yet ! The graphics are still progressing well (see here and here) and the following graphics will probably be ready for coding in the next week or so:

* Houses (Generic)
12 variants

* Terraced Houses (Victorian) [Road location sensitive]
4x 8 variants

* Small Flats (Generic)
8 variants

* Old Shops (Victorian/Mixed) [Road location sensitive] [2CC]
4x 8 variants

* Old Offices (Victorian/Neoclassical)
2x 16 variants

* Modern Offices (Modernist/1960s)
2x 16 variants

These will all have corresponding snow-covered graphics.

[mph]

If you can't find anyone... I can maybe have a go. Although I'm really really busy up to easter. I want to have a final crack at my stations too, so whilst im there....

I have some buildings of my own which i have just had a go at coding, and it seems to have gone alright. I can certainly code something basic.

But I can't really promise anything at all, and certainly nothing for two weeks at least. I will get back to you on this one...

(get those buildings looking really good in the meantime)

[Purno]

Possibly I could code something for you in GRFMaker, but I'm only figuring out how to code buildings since a minute ago. I don't know how complicated buildings are compared to railway vehicles

[Zephyris]

I'm afraid I have absolutely no knowledge of coding buildings either... The impression I get is they are quite similar to coding trains, best of luck!

[Purno]

It seems per building I need two sprites: The ground tile and the building itself. If you provide me with a few sprites I could try some stuff.

EDIT:

Question to coders; The documentation for Action 0 for Houses mentions 'town zones' for property 13. Where can I find what zone is where?

[Purno]

Zephrys, I picked a sprite from the OpenGFX topic in the OpenTTD Graphics forum...

You're using action colors...

opengfx_test.GRF

(2.49 KiB) Downloaded 117 times

opengfx_testw.GRF

(2.49 KiB) Downloaded 108 times

Question for GRF Maker Expert: How do I make building stages in GRF Maker?

[Ameecher]

Not being funny Purno, but surely telling him which sprites are the problematic ones would be far more useful than just saying that he is using action colours. Indicating which tone would also be far more helpful in helping to identify if he used action colours in another sprite.

[Purno]

I don't know if you followed the OpenGFX topic in OpenTTD Graphics forum, but AFAICT he had some tool giving all the buildings textures, meaning all buildings got the same textures, resulting in all buildings having action colors.

Besides, there's only one building in this dev-GRF.

[Zephyris]

Palconvert will sort the action colours out for me As soon as the windows are done I will finalise the sprites...

[mph]

For the town zones, 4 is the centre of town. I think zone 4 and 3 have streetlights. Zone 2 has trees, and zone 1 and 0 are not paved.

To do the construction stages, you can either specify them with variational action 2, variable 40, or I think that if you are not using any variational action 2s you can just do them all in the normal action 2.

Just look at the docs, that bit is all fairly straightforward if youve done variational action 2s for trains. I had no trouble working that stuff out. (Ive been coding some stations, and they drove me crazy)

I have no idea about grf maker though so I cant help you there.

[Purno]

For the town zones, 4 is the centre of town. I think zone 4 and 3 have streetlights. Zone 2 has trees, and zone 1 and 0 are not paved.

So it goes from 4 (center of town) towards 0 (out of town)?
Does that mean zone 0 is far out of town in the countryside, or at the border of the town?

To do the construction stages, you can either specify them with variational action 2, variable 40, or I think that if you are not using any variational action 2s you can just do them all in the normal action 2.

What would the sprite order be then? If I take a look at GRF Maker's interface, I can only define 1 ground sprite and 1 building sprite...
I could take a look at Variable 40 later this week. Thanks for your help so far

[mph]

Ok- this is a bit of a long rambling post, and im no master coder or anything, so I hope its all correct, but I find that when someone breaks down some of the NFO its so helpful.

I think this is the way to go. It makes more sense to me to use variational action 2s, particularly if youre going to do snowy buildings and random ones (which I think there will be in the end wont there)

Im just going to post an example of an variational action 2 that will choose all the construction stages.

You first define all the stages of the building, with a normal action 2s. eg finished, snowy, and 3 construction stages

Then you want a variational action 2 to choose the action2 in which you told it to draw the construction stages.

Code: Select all

 
   0 * 0  02 07          // action2, feature 07 (houses)
          ??             // id of the action 2
          81             // type : "to decide upon a general variable, or a variable of the object in question."
          40             // variable 40 "Construction stage"
          00 03          // varadjust, do nothing, and no. of variables, 3. The 3 construction stages
          02 00 00 00    // Use house defined in action2 id 2, if construction stage is between 0 and 0
          03 00 01 01    // Use house defined in action2 id 3, if construction stage is between 1 and 1
          04 00 02 02    // carry on as above
          05 00          // id of action 2 to use if none of the above match (ie, not in construction stages)
                         // in my case it points to a var action 2 to decide upon whether it is snowy or not, 
                         // but it could be just the plain finished building, or something else. 

oh, and construction stage 0 is the first or least finished building.construction stage 02 is the most. You can if you want use stage 3 to mean the finished building.

As I said- I dont know really know about grf maker, but I think it will be the somewhat similar to above. Isn't it at these points where it becomes more or less entering the same things as you would if you weren;t using it?

And also, town zone 0 is still the town, so no. Not in the countryside (so yeah, at the border of the town and countryside)

[Zephyris]

The hierachy of choosing building graphics should probably be:
1. Orientation according to road
2. Random building/colour scheme
3. Snowy/not snowy

ie. choose set of buildings for a particular road orientation, then choose the individual building style/colour scheme then choose graphics according to snowyness.

All buildings have dedicated building stages so all stages of building (not just the final stage) should be chosen at each step...

[mph]

Yeah. The 4th var action 2 in the chain would be the one to decide the construction stage then. With the 3rd (well 4th, except we you start from 0) construction stage being the appropriate finished building. This would require some changes to the example I posted, but not much.