Transport Tycoon Forums

HEQS "Heavy Equipment" Road Vehicle Set

I like big trucks and I thought it would be nice to have some for OpenTTD, so I created the Heavy Equipment Set (HEQS).

What's included in HEQS 0.7?
- Nine enormous dump trucks (first one available around 1955)
- Two awesome log trucks (available around 1972)
- Ten powerful tractors and bulldozers (first one available around 1937)
- Two brawny Foundry Transporters (first one available around 1967)
- (New): Three industrial trams (first one available around 1902)

HEQS 0.7 has vehicles in a range of sizes from 19t to 390t.

Great for many kinds of routes...especially short deliveries, or feeder routes transferring to trains or ships. Frequent service using road vehicles can also help get good station ratings!

They look good too HEQS mostly uses the second company colour, so different colours can be used for 'normal' road vehicles and HEQS.

HEQS is compatible with most industry sets and cargos, including default industries, FIRS, PBI and ECS.

For a fun game, try HEQS alongside eGRVTS (enable multiple newgrf engine sets in the advanced settings menu).



Latest Release

Attachment:

File comment: Also available on Bananas :)
heqs-0.7.1.zip [151.03 KiB]
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Alternative download location, and previous versions

Requires OpenTTD 0.7.x or a nightly build (r14745 or newer).
New in v0.7.0: Industrial Trams, improved graphic support for FIRS mineral cargos; plus more internal reorganisation.
New in v0.7.1: wood and livestock graphics for Industrial Trams.
See changelog for details.

May not be save game compatible with v0.5d and earlier

Or try a nightly build of HEQS (for the adventurous - things may break)
http://mz.openttdcoop.org/bundles/heqs/nightlies/

User Guide (does need updating - sorry!)

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HEQS_User_Guide_v0.4.pdf [118.06 KiB]
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The user guide contains info about the vehicles. It's also got info on licensing etc. It's partly inspired by the excellent user guide from the Canadian Train Set. I hope you find it useful.

Please provide feedback on the set (simply reply to this thread), this set has had more than 500 hours of work on it, I would love to know what you guys think!

No TTDPatch support I'm afraid, but I would be open to the idea of someone else doing a Patch version, it would need a separate grf file due to ID constraints, and wouldn't feature all vehicles. Basically involves remapping a bunch of IDs, if anyone wants to try, contact me for the source code and sprites.

UPDATE 6th June 2009: the source for HEQS is now stored in the #openttdcoop public repository.
http://dev.openttdcoop.org/projects/heqs
Repository includes fully commented NFO files. I hope this helps other people learn how to code newgrf sets

Original Post
I am a big fan of special vehicles: trucks, tractors and heavy equipment for construction, mining, forestry, farm and other off-road use.

This equipment would fit well into a niche in TT/OTTD: feeder service. I extensively build feeder services to consolidate the output from several industries to a rail station, and I figure I'm not alone in playing that way. The benefits of feeder service are:

• Improved station ratings and industry production due to regular small pickups by RVs
• Can use longer trains which are more efficient on track usage and running cost
• More realistic (for those who play that way)
• More vehicle/route optimisation (for those who play that way)
• More fun/eye candy (for those who play that way).

We have some great road vehicle (RV) sets already for highway use: GRTVS, a partially complete UK (HOVS) set, and George's Long Vehicles. It would be neat to have off-highway equipment to use as well.

I am proposing to create the following list, which would be relevant from about 1975 (older vehicles could be suggested for earlier in the game):

• Articulated 6x6 dump truck (ADT): mineral products.
• Heavy haul mining truck: mineral products. This would have to be a small version due to scale issues.
• Logging harvester or forwarder: wood / lumber. Great for getting from the cutting zone to the loadout.
• Heavy Industrial Transporter: any cargo, but intended for steel, paper, copper, goods. Don't know much about these, but the key thing would be to design them to match scale and offer something different to regular RVs (high capacity, low speed, high purchase cost, low running cost).
• JCB Fastrac + trailer: any cargo, but intended to get farm products to the elevator (35 tons at 50 mph!)
• Foremost vehicles: eye candy cos I like them, but can carry any cargo including passengers (slowly!), realistic for oil fields in snow and desert, and tourists. Would like to include Delta, Nodwell, Terrabus.

Okay, so it's easy to make a wish list, how about putting my money where my mouth is: a single view of an ADT.


This is the first time I have drawn a TT graphic. I think it's ok, but is a bit too realistic - needs the colours softening. I am not familiar yet with how the TT pallette works and would be grateful for any advice (I do have Oskar's example pallete).

This truck would need to be articulated, but would work well with how the RV articulation functions in TT. I am not able to code GRF files, and I am a bit too busy coding in real life (python, html, css) to get my head into GRF coding! But I am prepared to draw (as far as my abilities take me), so if any coders want to lend a hand it would be greatly appreciated.

Other comments:

• I wouldn't want the set to be huge or complex. It's not intended as a complete RV set. I would rather have something finished that is fun and useful than a long tracking table which becomes overwhelming (I'm sure some of you have faced that before)
• The intention is to put some extra variety in the game, I would look to balance reality with gameplay. The vehicles would principally be realistic, but often not based on any specific model, more a blend of what's typical.
• There's room for other suggestions - but they've got to be useful in the game. More farm tractors are an obvious choice. Of course everyone has their favourite, but I'd probably just blend a few together, some people get passionate about tractors, I don't want the set to become a homage to tractor history!
• I'm drawing with realistic colours, but it would be very interesting to see how company colours could be applied - I'd prefer a grf parameter to randomisation, but either could work.
• I'm not sure about dimensions. I have the bounding box from Purno's tutorial and have used that as the limits. Can sprites be bigger? George uses bigger sprites, but the side-effects can be a bit odd at times as he says in his tutorial.
• To be really useful, this grf may depend on OTTD's increased vehicle limit. I've had the idea for a long time, but my understanding was that RV IDs were very limited. Now that limit is being removed (for OTTD) it looks worth putting some time into this (sorry to Patch players in advance I guess).

In the long term, it would be neat to add another class of roads to the game: off-road trails. These would:

• Be very cheap to build and it would be possible to build them on almost any combination of slopes within the limits of the tile engine (advice?)
• Only allow off-highway vehicles (which could also travel on-highway, similar but slightly different to the way RVs cannot travel on grass tram tracks).
• Would be dirt in temperate and desert; ice-roads above the snow line in arctic.

However a new road type is not necessary for this set to work, and it's extra complication that can be ignored for now - if there were good grf sets that could use such a feature, perhaps devs might consider it?

And here's a teaser: ADTs haul ore downgrade to the loadout where a couple of GEVOs wait to take 1000t over the weigh scale and up the valley to the north.

Sorry, that's just photoshop - the GEVOs are real though, you can thank the CanSet guys for those

Also,

• I nicked ore loads from Zephyris (GRVTS) - hope that attribution is correct, and that's ok. I can modify, it's just for the teaser.
• Can articulated RVs use traditional truck stations? GRTVS won't in OTTD - needs drive-thru. I don't mind either way, it's just a minor, possibly wrong detail in the teaser image.

cheers,

Andy

I didn't read your entire post, but I think they look fantastic. I don't think they look too realistic, they'd match very well with the bigger trainsets.

Another quick one, Foremost Delta with flat deck:

• Could really do with more height, these are strictly within the bounding boxes from Purno, but it's a tall vehicle and it's not going to look right in the default max dimensions. How are double decker-buses done in other sets?
• Cab isn't right, and shading is just done very quickly. This is about an hour's work. Another hour would fix it up I think.

Obligatory teaser (it's a mockup): couple of deltas haul wood out of the forest. Slow on the road (21mph), but they can go where few others can.

(Wood load borrowed from GRVTS)

It's freeze-up in the oilpatch: a Delta heads into the lease from Corner Brook, while another one unloads at the rig. In town, the ADT driver might be in the pub.

Mmm, nice stuff! Keep up the good work and I'm sure someone will want to help coding, possible even me! To get people interested in coding it would be good if you could make a table of the vehicle statistics and a proper tracking table so a grf can be planned out - the road vehicle IDs are very limited, it may have to rely on the vehicle pool.

The graphics so far are excellent, but I would recommend using the company colours (and preferably dual company colours) - a player will always have the option of choosing a "realistic yellow" if they want, but for casual players company colours make things a lot clearer. Feel free to recycle my sprites, especially the cargoes if you want a consistent look with the GRVTS.

Wonderful! I'm especially looking forward to the heavy mining truck This would work out very nice in a dense industrial area where there is no place for a large railway station at the sight.

As a realistic player I have no choice other than supporting this set.

Okay, can do. Would be great if you were prepared to code. GRVTS is a very coherent and functional set, and I'd be looking for something similar with these.


I figured that would be the case. I was going to start drawing this a year ago, but didn't see how IDs would be made available - and it's intended as an add-on pack of specialised equipment, not a full RV pack, so would have a been a flawed set of limited use. Hopefully engine pool will make that a non-issue.


Okay I think I agree - most of the vehicles don't have livery as such, they are mostly just yellow in real life. So company colours would work well (they could just be green, red etc, it would be fine).

The only reason I am reluctant on this is that it's nice eye-candy to have vehicles in the same company with different colours - especially with a realistic trainset like CanSet.

I was thinking about doing it like PlaneSet where the choice of company colours or real livery is random on build. I like having that choice but it can also be frustrating in the game.

Another option is to have full company colours for some vehicles and then use those colours in patches on some yellow vehicles - similar to how ISR does company colours on buildings.

Either way I want to keep it simple to code and draw to get a release of the set done.



Thanks, I will do that, it will help a lot. I'm going to ask about permission to use some of the ISR cargoes as well, some more really nice graphics there.

Zephyris - do you have any advice on bounding box sizes? How did you do double-decker vehicles? Do they go outside the box from Purno's tutorial?

Double decker vehicles you just make taller. The bounding box can be enlargened in the .grf which is why LV4 can get away with such ridiculously huge vehicles which cause graphical errors at places like truck stops.
When I drew the double decker trams for the UK tram set I just made the tram a few pixels taller and when it came to coding the bounding box was increased to fit the tram.
To put it simply, just draw it, as long as all the views are in proportion with one another and all the vehicles in the set are in proportion, there shouldn't be an issue*

*Trying to get proportion between different transport types will be a waste of time.

Thanks - that is all very helpful.

Try decoding GRVTS to get the sprite sizes and offsets I used for double deckers - they clip a bit going under tunnels, but generally work quite well.

I must say I like these vehicles... Good work

Wow they realy looking good:P
Go on!

Thanks for the tip. I'm using OS X, so I think decoding grfs will involve a whole world of either compiling GRFCodec from source, or installing Windows on a VMWare image. One day I might do that, but that sounds like my day job, so for now I'm sticking to drawing. I'm going to use your double-deck sprites as a max height guide if that's ok - I can get them from the GRVTS thread.

cheers,

Andy

Enjoy...

Ooh nice one, thanks.

Those sprites really do look good. I'd support the set simply because it's something completely different.

Mining truck:
This one is tricky: the truck needs to look big, but within sensible dimensions for OTTD. It's not supposed to be enormous (50t payload - not big for a mining truck), but it definitely needs to look chunky.
I am happy with it for a quick sketch, but might need more work to fit in with GRVTS: either redrawn to be a bit more dinky and in scale, or a bigger sprite - but that will need to be wider, probably cause clipping issues?

Teaser: mining trucks haul to the lakeside where an ore barge will pickup for the mills on the north shore. Two SD40s leave the yard with heavy flat cars, having just dropped more high-wide machinery loads for the mine (new trucks?)

Wider is probably less of a problem than taller, give it a go!

Hmm they've got to be able to pass each other without looking like they should crash. I might mod the existing sprite to look like a 35 ton truck, and grab a few extra pixels for a bigger 50 ton version. But not until tomorrow!