Tropic Frozen Over Set

[fonso]

So, I have that idea and I'm wondering if it's feasible. I'm currently researching the details, but maybe someone can give me some comments up front. Another problem is that I can't draw. I can probably learn it, but it will be a lot of work. So, maybe someone feels inspired by this. The idea is a variation on that alternate economy idea I had before, but implemented with a newgrf instead of a patch. I'm thinking about replacing all sprites and game elements in tropical climate with snowy ones like in arctic. In fact I could probably reuse some arctic sprites from OpenGFX. Additionally there are a few sick twists:

First about terminology: desert becomes "the plains" and "rain forest" becomes "the wasteland".

• less details. I want a more schematic design of things. Not all that baroque pixel art. And I want everything but lakes and sea to be frozen solid and covered with snow. No brown spots in the snow like in arctic climate, for example.
• less complexity. There will only be 6 kinds industries, 10 cargos, about 4 kinds of locomotives, 3 kinds of road "vehicles", 3 kinds of planes and 3 kinds of ships. All of that is available from year 0 and forever. You don't get any new toys during the game.
• all things are drawn in the current scale of vehicles - so you can only fit small houses in the available space and you can draw people which will be in scale and visible.
• houses and industries are mostly underground. The only thing you see most of the time is a small dome of ice (or metal or glass or similar) protruding from the ground. Those domes have a color-coded ring around them to make it easier to tell them apart.
• generally you cannot make a lot of money and you don't need to spend a lot of money on most things. You need to spend a little money on buying and building things, but none for maintenance - except for vehicles that carry the special cargo "mana". In general you can survive with your starting capital for about 10 to 20 years without earning money, depending on how much you build. Eventually the interest and the small things will kill you if you don't start shipping mana.
• trees are rendered as piles of scrap, they all look the same and it's insanely expensive to remove them.
• the sawmill is morphed into a scrap yard and that produces "metals" and "mana"
• There's a special building called "the tower" which only exists in "plains" towns in zone 4. The tower is actually a stalagmite kind of thing made of ice with a big torch on top. This is the only sink for "mana" and bringing mana to the tower is the only way to make money.
• Goods replace water for the town effect.
• There is only one kind of house that can exist in wasteland: The cave. It doesn't accept anything but produces another special cargo named "the force". This cargo is accepted by all industries and boosts their production. It can be transported by the same vehicles as mana (via refitting).
• All industries accept and produce small amounts of passengers. Delivering passengers to them also boosts their production a little.

The point is: Eventually you have to grow the plains towns in order to make towers appear as that's the only way to get money and buy additional stock or build things. In order to grow plains towns you have to transport their passengers or mail and get them food and goods. So you have to make use of all the industry chains in order to earn money. Furthermore, in order to make the wasteland usable you have to clear it of scrap. So you have to occasionally fund scrapyards. Funding or prospecting industries and even towns is generally cheap, compared to the normal ratio between building things and funding.

Now, primary industries would be:

• algae farm. Can only exist in water, has a port. produces large amounts of algae.
• greenhouse. Produces small amounts of fruits.
• scrap yard. "Cuts" scrap piles. Produces metals and mana.
• forest. Produces wood.

Secondary industries would be:

• factory. Accepts metal and wood. produces goods for consumption in towns.
• food factory. Accepts algae and fruit, can only produce if both are present. Produces food for towns.

That means, the list of cargos would be:

• algae
• fruit
• metals
• mana.
• wood
• goods
• food
• force
• passengers
• mail (in fact, we don't strictly need mail, but I guess there's a lot of places in the code which expect mail to exist)

The only cargo you get paid for is mana. This is done with callback 39. We just always return 0 for everything but mana. Mana is very picky about fast delivery. You get very high cargo rates if you deliver very quickly, but the rates fall rapidly for slower delivery. For other cargos you don't get any positive payment, but if you're excessively slow you have to pay for delivering them. This can also be done with callback 39, it seems.

And we'd have a few town houses:

• tower, 2x2, is created in zone 4 only in plains (via callback 17, with the drawbacks mentioned in the spec)
• maybe 4 regular houses, one of them 2x2, the others 1 tile, but they all are only created in plains.
• cave, 1 tile, is only created in zone 0 in wasteland; basically it looks like a black hole in the ground, that's it.
• maybe we need some dummy building for the other zones in wasteland. I don't know what happens if the game doesn't find a house to build.

rail vehicles: building electrified rail should be about double as expensive as normal rail.

• small steam engine. goes about 100 km/h, is 1/2 tile long, generally sucks but is relatively small and can be used in tight space.
• huge steam engine. can be regeared to either 150 km/h and insane power or 400 km/h and less power. Is 2 tiles long, costs more than 4 small steam engines.
• small electric engine. Is 1/4 tile long, goes 120 km/h and is underpowered. However, by multiheading those you get more power from them than multiheaded small steam engines, but even 8 of them are less powerful than the huge steam engine. They're a little more expensive than small steam engines.
• fast electric engine. Goes 500 km/h, is 1.5 tiles long, costs double the amount of the large steam engine.
• passenger car
• wood truck
• hopper for metal
• mana tank. Looks like those old sea mines, with spikes all around, but mounted on wheels. Can be refitted to mana, then it's purple, or force, then it's black. Costs maintenance.
• box car for all other cargos (via refitting, color-coding shows the cargo it's carrying)

All rail cars carry 50 units of their cargo, exept for the mana tank which can only carry 20. All rail cars are 1/2 tile long.

road "vehicles": building road is almost free

• mammoth. goes 10 km/h, can be refitted to everything but passengers, mana and force, carries about 10 tons and looks like that.
• horse sledge. goes 20 km/h, can only carry passengers, about 15 of them.
• alonso. looks like a purple horse when carrying mana, or a black horse when carrying force. goes 70 km/h, costs maintenance and can carry 10 force or mana. It can also be refitted to carry one passenger.

"planes":

• rocket bird. looks like a crossing between a rocket and a huge bird. Works like a helicopter. Is insanely fast (1000 km/h) can carry 10 mana or force and has the highest maintenance of all vehicles. Using it should only be profitable if it's always carrying a full load of mana and hardly ever waits for cargo.
• small dragon. Works like a small plane. goes 200 km/h and carries 30 passengers and 5 mail.
• huge dragon. Works like a large plane. Goes 250 km/h and carries 100 passengers and 20 mail.

ships:

• steam ship. goes 30 km/h and can carry 200 units of any cargo but mana or force
• big sailing ship. goes 25 km/h and can carry 250 units of any cargo but mana or force
• small catamaran type sailing boat. goes 50 km/h and can carry 25 mana or 50 passengers. Costs maintenance

Train, road and plane depots look like entrances to caves leading below the ice. For example if a trains appears from depot it should look like it's coming from underground. Train stations come in one covered and one open variant, but everything is covered in snow so you can't see a lot anyway. Ship depots look like a whirlpool, with no building or roof whatsoever. Ships just appear from whirlpools. Transmitters and light houses are rendered as windmills for power production.

It might be funny to draw some people doing stuff like loading/unloading vehicles, running around with a welding torch in the scrap yard ... I don't know how difficult that is, though and how that fits in with the "less details" idea. I guess all the animals are pushing things pretty far already.

[Eddi]

• mail (in fact, we don't strictly need mail, but I guess there's a lot of places in the code which expect mail to exist)

i don't think that is true. only TE_MAIL should be used in the code, not the mail cargo itself.

• maybe we need some dummy building for the other zones in wasteland. I don't know what happens if the game doesn't find a house to build.

judging by the TaI houses set, the town will probably just build endless roads, no houses.

[fonso]

I've decided to first replace some sprites in order to see how it will look like ... brrrr, cold.