Unpaved roads

[gabrieldiego]

Hello all,

It wouldn't be great if the roads could be built different pavements, like unpaved/cobblestone/asphalt, with each associated a speed limit and cost, much like bridges work today? A motorway type would be a plus. Apparently there is some work done (http://www.tt-forums.net/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=56411), but I couldn't find any graphic or code to start off. I also didn't find any NewGRF that implement this. I'm good at programming but I can't create any graphics.

Gabriel

[Baldy's Boss]

Hmmm.what would be the design year for the Autobahn?
Should different degrees of road have different maintenance costs?

[gabrieldiego]

Hmmm.what would be the design year for the Autobahn?

I would suggest 1950.

Should different degrees of road have different maintenance costs?

Yes, that would be interesting too. Unpaved roads could have a smaller maintenance cost than cobblestone roads, and a cobblestone roads should have a smaller maintenance than asphalt roads.

To keep stuff simple at first we could implement just paved/unpaved roads. I just need someone to develop me graphics. And also I would like to have a go-ahead from the dev team of openttd that this idea has any chance to go to trunk. Maybe this is possible to be done in NewGRF, but I'm not sure.

[Baldy's Boss]

Hmmm.what would be the design year for the Autobahn?

I would suggest 1950.

Should different degrees of road have different maintenance costs?

Yes, that would be interesting too. Unpaved roads could have a smaller maintenance cost than cobblestone roads, and a cobblestone roads should have a smaller maintenance than asphalt roads.

To keep stuff simple at first we could implement just paved/unpaved roads. I just need someone to develop me graphics. And also I would like to have a go-ahead from the dev team of openttd that this idea has any chance to go to trunk. Maybe this is possible to be done in NewGRF, but I'm not sure if this would be possible.

Scaling is an issue.Should multilane divided highways be multiple squares wide or be drawn to a different scale?...they could hold more traffic.

[gabrieldiego]

Hmmm.what would be the design year for the Autobahn?

I would suggest 1950.

Should different degrees of road have different maintenance costs?

Yes, that would be interesting too. Unpaved roads could have a smaller maintenance cost than cobblestone roads, and a cobblestone roads should have a smaller maintenance than asphalt roads.

To keep stuff simple at first we could implement just paved/unpaved roads. I just need someone to develop me graphics. And also I would like to have a go-ahead from the dev team of openttd that this idea has any chance to go to trunk. Maybe this is possible to be done in NewGRF, but I'm not sure if this would be possible.

Scaling is an issue.Should multilane divided highways be multiple squares wide or be drawn to a different scale?...they could hold more traffic.

I think that a motorway could be implemented just by laying two asphalt roads side by side and then selecting one way for each road. Actually they don't need even to be side by side, like it would be in a mountain pass or in a bridge with difficult headings. So the idea here is that simply switching a road to one way, the speed limit would increase from, say 90 kmh to 130 kmh. Maybe the speed would have to decrease also near at-level intersections or built-up areas.

[gabrieldiego]

I found some graphics for the dirt roads here: http://www.tt-forums.net/viewtopic.php? ... 73#p922367. I will try to figure out how to make a patch for that.

[kamnet]

It wouldn't be great if the roads could be built different pavements, like unpaved/cobblestone/asphalt, with each associated a speed limit and cost, much like bridges work today? A motorway type would be a plus. Apparently there is some work done (http://www.tt-forums.net/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=56411), but I couldn't find any graphic or code to start off. I also didn't find any NewGRF that implement this. I'm good at programming but I can't create any graphics.

The RoadTypes specification is probably one of the most anticipated enhancements to OpenTTD that has yet to be implemented by the developers. There are some significant issues that are preventing its implementation. You should look around the forums as well as search through the IRC chat room archives to see what has been discussed in the past. If you're as good at programming as you say you are, then maybe you can boldly go where no dev has yet to go. I wish you much luck!

I found some graphics for the dirt roads here: http://www.tt-forums.net/viewtopic.php? ... 73#p922367. I will try to figure out how to make a patch for that.

No need. OzTrans already created a NewGRF, Canadian (International) Roads (formerly North American Roads) which offers dirt roads, either as a permanent road set or one that eventually upgrades to bitumen/asphalt roads in the 1940s.

[Pascal Lambert]

I think that a motorway could be implemented just by laying two asphalt roads side by side and then selecting one way for each road. Actually they don't need even to be side by side, like it would be in a mountain pass or in a bridge with difficult headings. So the idea here is that simply switching a road to one way, the speed limit would increase from, say 90 kmh to 130 kmh. Maybe the speed would have to decrease also near at-level intersections or built-up areas.

I would prefer we keep separate speed and one-way.
First, I think this will be simpler to program (roadtype -> speed limit).
Then, I think this can be better for gameplay because you can choose to go one-way just because off traffic density or you want empty lorries can pass loaded ones when climbing a mountain.
In France we have 2 lanes roads with various speed limits regarding where you are (or who paided for the roads) : 130 km/h in the countrside, 110, 90 or even 70 near towns. Paris belt is 3 or 4 lanes and now limited to 70. Inside town, you can have one-way streets with 50 km/h limit.

If we have roadtypes with max speed related to building cost this sounds logical and makes a good reason not to build the fastest roads everywhere. Maybe buiding cost can depend on where you build too : a very high speed road in town should cost a fortune (because of noise protection).

Exemples :
Track / dust : 10 km/h max but does not cost much more than cleaning the tile. Maybe special offroad vehicles (it was discussed in this forum) can override the limit ?
Paved or gravel road will cost a bit more and allow 30 km/h.
Asphalted road (with pavements because inside town area) will allow 50 km/h.
Asphalted road (without pavements because out of town) will allow 90 km/h.
Highways will cost much more but allow 130 km/h (even if both ways).
Superhighways will allow you to use your Ferrari / Porsche / Aston taxi with a building cost compatible with such vehicles (maybe unlimited like some portions of german highways).

Note that we can discuss about higher speed limits being restricted to one-way, but in fact this is just a matter of laws (and law inforcement). Technicaly, you can drive much more than 150 km/h on a both way road if it there is no curves or holes and there is noone on the same line.

Regarding crossings, we can imagine they are the same as other tiles (allowing to cross at 130 km/h), but maybe it is simple just to say crossing tiles do not exist behond 90 km/h.
Better, we could have a design like this :
- Up to 50 km/h we change nothing ;
- at 90, it will no be possible to have in-line stations.
- if more than 90 and up to 130, no rail level crossing can exist and road can only be connected on slow-line side (will run like highway access) turn on left is forbiden.
- unlimited speed = no crossing, no connexion, nothing that can prevent you to go fast.

Such restriction will prevent superhighways to invade the world.

This may also solve the issue I read regarding roadtypes incompatibles with trams because too many combination : we may restrict tram to 50 km/h roads.

I believe we can build something with a good gameplay and quite realistic with such bases.

Pascal

[gabrieldiego]

I'm poking the code now, and I was thinking that may be is better to implement this as a NewGRF. OpenTTD apparently code does not support implementing speed limits on roads neither multiple road surfaces using NewGRF. So I would implement the support to this. What do you think?

I was also looking on how to add the sprites for the unpaved roads. Just by looking at the code I could not figure out how the sprites are drawn. I could not even find where the sprites for the roads are stored, except for the file trunk/media/extra_grf/fix_graphics.png, but it looks that this file does not contain all the sprites. Someone could give me a explanation?

[gabrieldiego]

I found also that this subject was discussed on this topic back in 2008. They gave some additional ideas. One was that, instead of unpaved roads, this could be implemented as trails, so that there would be specific road vehicles that would run on trails that could also run on the paved roads, much like is already done with diesel/electrified locomotives in railtypes. So I got with two options to implement this:

1. Road Surfaces (My original idea):
The road surfaces are a subtype of the road type:

1. Road construction
   1. Dirt surface
   2. Coblestone surface
   3. Asphalt surface
2. Streetcar construction

2. Road Types (proposed in the above cited post):
Instead of creating a surface, trails as a different road type, so that vehicles running on trails would run on roads but not the inverse.

1. Trail construction
2. Road construction
3. Motorway/freeway construction
4. Streetcar construction

[Valle]

I think that a motorway could be implemented just by laying two asphalt roads side by side and then selecting one way for each road. Actually they don't need even to be side by side, like it would be in a mountain pass or in a bridge with difficult headings. So the idea here is that simply switching a road to one way, the speed limit would increase from, say 90 kmh to 130 kmh. Maybe the speed would have to decrease also near at-level intersections or built-up areas.

I would prefer we keep separate speed and one-way.
First, I think this will be simpler to program (roadtype -> speed limit).
Then, I think this can be better for gameplay because you can choose to go one-way just because off traffic density or you want empty lorries can pass loaded ones when climbing a mountain.
In France we have 2 lanes roads with various speed limits regarding where you are (or who paided for the roads) : 130 km/h in the countrside, 110, 90 or even 70 near towns. Paris belt is 3 or 4 lanes and now limited to 70. Inside town, you can have one-way streets with 50 km/h limit.

If we have roadtypes with max speed related to building cost this sounds logical and makes a good reason not to build the fastest roads everywhere. Maybe buiding cost can depend on where you build too : a very high speed road in town should cost a fortune (because of noise protection).

Exemples :
Track / dust : 10 km/h max but does not cost much more than cleaning the tile. Maybe special offroad vehicles (it was discussed in this forum) can override the limit ?
Paved or gravel road will cost a bit more and allow 30 km/h.
Asphalted road (with pavements because inside town area) will allow 50 km/h.
Asphalted road (without pavements because out of town) will allow 90 km/h.
Highways will cost much more but allow 130 km/h (even if both ways).
Superhighways will allow you to use your Ferrari / Porsche / Aston taxi with a building cost compatible with such vehicles (maybe unlimited like some portions of german highways).

Note that we can discuss about higher speed limits being restricted to one-way, but in fact this is just a matter of laws (and law inforcement). Technicaly, you can drive much more than 150 km/h on a both way road if it there is no curves or holes and there is noone on the same line.

Regarding crossings, we can imagine they are the same as other tiles (allowing to cross at 130 km/h), but maybe it is simple just to say crossing tiles do not exist behond 90 km/h.
Better, we could have a design like this :
- Up to 50 km/h we change nothing ;
- at 90, it will no be possible to have in-line stations.
- if more than 90 and up to 130, no rail level crossing can exist and road can only be connected on slow-line side (will run like highway access) turn on left is forbiden.
- unlimited speed = no crossing, no connexion, nothing that can prevent you to go fast.

Such restriction will prevent superhighways to invade the world.

This may also solve the issue I read regarding roadtypes incompatibles with trams because too many combination : we may restrict tram to 50 km/h roads.

I believe we can build something with a good gameplay and quite realistic with such bases.

Pascal

I like these ideas - also because they would reduce the strain of creating realistic-appearing urban bus schedules with speed limits between every stop. I'd like to add the suggestion of the speed limits being variable according to parameters as there are different speed limits in different countries (for example 100 km/h for country roads in Germany).

That said, the complexity could be increased even further by imposing dedicated speed limits for all vehicles over 4 tons, like 60 km/h for country roads and 80 km/h for highways.

[skippern]

I like the idea, unpaved roads would be cheaper and have much lower (or no) maintenance cost. Maybe even have infrastructure not belonging to anybody (a road from a bankrupt company) detoriate until it becomes an unpaved road (which would not need maintenance). Combining this with a lower maxspeed (maybe 40km/h) than exploiting infrastructure to bankrupt companies might impact service quality

I would like to know how this might impact on the NoAI and NoGo APIs as I am in the starting face of a roadbuilding game script

[Wahazar]

Dirt road was planned 20 years ago

I have following simple proposition of road types:
0. unpaved road (20 mph limit), cheap construction, no maintenance costs
1. cobblestone road (40 mph limit), expensive construction, low maintenance costs
2. bituminous paved road (80 mph limit), medium construction costs, medium maintenance costs, available from 1950
3. concrete paved highway (no speed limits), expensive construction and maintenance costs, available from 1940.

Before 1950, cobblestone road is always constructed by town authority.
After 1950, cobblestone road can replaced by bitumic one by funding local road reconstruction.

Roads can be connected only head - by head (it would save map memory slots and decrease number of sprites).

Beside this, we also need four types of tram track overlay:
0. no track, no wire
1. track, no wire (steam/horse trams etc)
2. no track, wire (trolleybuses)
3. track with wire.

Is it possible to found 2 bytes for above road types?

[Eddi]

that is possible, but it won't be done.

because if you're spending all this effort on adding new types of roads, you better make sure it's flexible. or when the next guy comes along and wants to differentiate tram tracks (slow, can go on roads) and lightrail tracks (fast, cannot go on roads), you're ripping everything open again.

[Roslav]

Why not make it to be extensible via NewGRF like rail and let default be as is now?

[Wahazar]

Why not make it to be extensible via NewGRF like rail and let default be as is now?

Probably it was Eddi's suggestion.

[kamnet]

Why not make it to be extensible via NewGRF like rail and let default be as is now?

It will be, just as soon as somebody finishes the RoadTypes spec to make this all happen.

[Rollerghost]

Another question regarding roads. Why not diagonal roads? We do have diagonal rails.

[Eddi]

because they don't fit on the tile properly.

[Pascal Lambert]

Why not make it to be extensible via NewGRF like rail and let default be as is now?

Does anybody have an idea about how to do this ?
Maybe I can start a new project for this... but I am not a dev, neither I am an artist, neither I know OpenTTD coding.
Who may join a team to start the work on roads ?

Pascal