More height levels (in trunk since r27010)

[romazoon]

MHL is load of fun, thanks again, here is a picture of the challenge ahead of you (read lots of curves, and lot less profit than usual)

Marnham Transport, 21 Jan 1952.png

(337.15 KiB) Downloaded 5 times

Here is the scenario i created to make use of MHL, by using the "double pass" heightmap, that i found on the forum.

DoublePass by Romazoon Civil AI-MHL-FIRS-japanstuff.scn

(120.78 KiB) Downloaded 105 times

<-- R27011 or upper, 512x512, 60 max height, japaneses landscape.

the max height was set to 60, the pass (from the name of the heightmap) are located around 30/35 height, wich is already a challenge if u se an appropriate settings (weight multiplier or/and the steepness of slope, i advice 5% for steepness, and no weight multiplier, but set this as you see fit)

and here is my latest savegame (using R27011), wich might interest some (of the new) players that wants to see how to tackle huge mountains with "hard" settings.

Marnham Transport, 16 Jan 1952.sav

(421.57 KiB) Downloaded 77 times

[romazoon]

Marnham Transport, 10 Fév 1952.png (30.18 KiB) Viewed 3608 times

and sorry for double post, but here is a screen of the map.

[Lord_Pizza]

I don't know if anyone can answer this question or not but will maps generated using the nightly be compatible with future releases or would it be a good idea to wait for the next stable release with more height levels before sinking several hours into making a huge scenario?

[Alberth]

MHL is load of fun, thanks again, here is a picture of the challenge ahead of you (read lots of curves, and lot less profit than usual)

Huh??
I did such stuff back in 2009 already:

zigzag_up.png

(1.07 MiB) Downloaded 4 times

I don't know if anyone can answer this question or not but will maps generated using the nightly be compatible with future releases or would it be a good idea to wait for the next stable release with more height levels before sinking several hours into making a huge scenario?

Yes, not necessary.
http://wiki.openttd.org/FAQ_OpenTTD_versions explains the process globally.

In short, trunk is always backward compatible with itself (ie you can load old files into newer trunk versions). At a beautiful day in spring, we make a new label "stable", and wrap it around a copy of whatever trunk-version we have at that point.
At that day, "stable" and "trunk" is the same thing (except for the label), and stable is thus compatible with all trunk-versions that exist before that day.

Trunk then continues on its way with new features and changes, while stable doesn't change in functionality. Found bugs get fixed in trunk, and then copied back (back-porting) to the last stable.

[Eddi]

MHL is load of fun, thanks again, here is a picture of the challenge ahead of you (read lots of curves, and lot less profit than usual)

Huh??
I did such stuff back in 2009 already:

i raise you a 2007.
http://media.openttd.org/images/screens ... nswald.png

[Pyoro]

And yours actually looks like something a human would build, not like the AI craziness seen in screenshot #1 ...

[Alberth]

It looks very pretty Eddi!

I don't actually know when I made that track, but the save game I pulled it from was dated in 2009. That could be the real creation date, but it could also be the date of the last time I copied the file between different computers.

[kamnet]

Action and sounds speak louder than pictures, my friends!


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbzYpl2ZK-w



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KERL12fZw4s

[romazoon]

Huh??
I did such stuff back in 2009 already:

well i never said it was never done before....just wanted to show a pics of track climbing, and unless in 2009 you were using MHL patch, i believe you trains are not going from level 1 to level 30 (my screen can t show all, but the minimap gives a glance of it.)

[Alberth]

Right, if we established you could do all this already in 2007, you got me totally confused about why a longer hill is so great, now.

To me, it seems that if you know how to climb a small hill, you can also climb a long hill no matter how big, by just repeating the same pattern of tracks at the next level and the next and the next and ..., until you reach the top.

The only difference is that you show you are good at copying tracks.
Is that what it's about?

I hope not.

Edit: Yep, as you can read I am apparently failing to understand some fundamental thing here. The problem is I have no clue what that thing is, and I'd like to know.

[romazoon]

well i failed first to understand exactly what you meant by

"

Huh??
I did such stuff back in 2009 already:

it didn t felt like my post was welcome, while i ve spent some time making a scenario and posting it so people can try mhl if they haven't before, and give a hint with it on how they "may" tackle the mountain range.

and why a longer hill is better, i don t know, maybe cause on the way to the top, trains are going to meet three or four town stations, some branch might appears on the long way uphill....and last but not least, i ve don t see often trains "on top" of high mountains, so with MHL, at least after climbing a pass, there is still higher mountains around. (ofc it was all possible with 16 heights, but everything was smaller)

but don t get me wrong, i ve never implied that mhl is way better, i ve just said it s load of fun (i like climbing 30 tiles over 200/300 tiles long, in a mountain range, with a "realistic looking pass")

edit : and what do you mean by copying tracks ?! if the fact that i keep things double tracks is a poor attitude...well it s my problem, isnt it ?
edit 2 : the profit graph show also that MHL affects a lot the overall profitability...again i guess longer distance (cause all the additional curves necessary to climb 30 tiles) make it a tad more challenging

[Alberth]

Hi romazoon,

well i failed first to understand exactly what you meant by

"

Huh??
I did such stuff back in 2009 already:

it didn t felt like my post was welcome, while i ve spent some time making a scenario and posting it so people can try mhl if they haven't before, and give a hint with it on how they "may" tackle the mountain range.

This would be my fault. I was (am) terribly failing to understand what is exactly so great about MHL, as I can't see anything new with it. You claimed you can now build a zig-zag up, but I have been doing that for 5 or more years already, so what is happening here, I don't understand, please explain?

That's what I said above in the quote, except in my usual very brief and direct techie style of writing.

While it may look angry or unwelcome to you, it's not intended as such. In technical matters, you often have a lot of details, so you learn to be brief. I do that every day, also in my other communications. Secondly, techie style normally doesn't imply what is not said. If I ask a question, it's a request for information, free of emotion. When I express an opinion, I do so explicitly ("I think .." or "I believe .."). I do this to make a clear distinction between facts and non-facts (although they may turn into facts once proven to be true). Technical matters are usually highly complicated, so this distinction is crucial in getting to the bottom of a problem.

So I understand you got confused about my brief style of writing, but it was not intended as angry or unwelcome to your message. I only asked clarification about why you believe being able to make zig-zag track up the mountain is new.

and why a longer hill is better, i don t know, maybe cause on the way to the top, trains are going to meet three or four town stations, some branch might appears on the long way uphill....and last but not least, i ve don t see often trains "on top" of high mountains, so with MHL, at least after climbing a pass, there is still higher mountains around. (ofc it was all possible with 16 heights, but everything was smaller)

Well, there has to be something that's different, since you have a different opinion on the big and the small case. If they were fully equal to you, you'd have the same opinion on both cases.
It'd be interesting for me to know that, but maybe you don't even know why? (which would be weird for me, but then again, it's not the first time people do weird things or have weird beliefs (to me)).

but don t get me wrong, i ve never implied that mhl is way better, i ve just said it s load of fun (i like climbing 30 tiles over 200/300 tiles long, in a mountain range, with a "realistic looking pass")

I agree it looks very nice. I would not do zig-zag on the down track, as it serves no purpose for me, but I must agree it looks a lot better
EDIT: Right this sentence makes no sense here sorry about that. It was intended as comment on your style of zigzag pattern.

edit : and what do you mean by copying tracks ?! if the fact that i keep things double tracks is a poor attitude...well it s my problem, isnt it ?

No no, it not the form at all, it's the repetition itself.

I see 2 steps in making tracks to climb a hill. The first step is to discover how to climb 1 level, where one level can eg be 2 tile heights. This takes some experimenting on what looks nice, how to keep enough speed, where to put the signals, etc. The form of how going up a level can be anything. You like to keep two tracks together, I only do the upward track in zigzag, and downward straight down, another person may do yet something else. I think this step is one everybody makes.

Once you know the trick to climbing a hill (ie the first step is done), the second step is just copy the pattern learned in the first step one level up. Repeat as often as needed. I think everybody does this too.

In this step-thinking, the only difference between a small hill and a big hill is the number of copies you make of the pattern (everything else is the same). By logic deduction, since you see both hill types as different, and there is only one difference (the number of copies made in step two), the number of copies is the difference. However, that would imply you like to show that you can copy the same pattern of tracks a number of times, which does not seems to be a very worthy difference to me

Thus something is likely to be wrong here. My splitting in two steps doesn't work in the way I think (but I cannot see how that can be done differently), I am missing some component in at least one of the steps (quite feasible, but no idea what), my logic reasoning is flawed (unlikely, as it is extremely trivial), or my judgement of worthy criteria for you is wrong (which I very much hope it is not the case).

Since this gives no new insights, my analysis result is that I don't understand the fascination of MHL hills, and I am back at square 1

edit 2 : the profit graph show also that MHL affects a lot the overall profitability...again i guess longer distance (cause all the additional curves necessary to climb 30 tiles) make it a tad more challenging

Length of the track more than others probably. In your zig zag pattern there are no sharp corners.

You can get the same kinds of effects if you set the freight multiplier to 5 to 10 or so. Loaded freight trains are then really slower, and you get the weird situation that you have to double or triple tracks in one direction, while the other direction can still manage the load with one track.
With the big engines at the end of the game, it is not really noticable any more, since they are just way overpowered (default set, at least).

[Pyoro]

You sure you're not just trolling...?

btw, I think there's a small oversight in r27015; you can't manually type in snowline beyond 99. It's locked to two digits, but you can still use the arrows to go beyond that.

[andythenorth]

You sure you're not just trolling...?

Why is it trolling for someone (dev or otherwise) to ask how a feature benefits the game?

[Pyoro]

It's 2014, we're on the Internet, and more specifically on TTf. Why wouldn't one be skeptical towards the serious of the question ... ?

That aside, I didn't say he was trolling, I was just asking. Now excuse me, there's this map I need to play right about now ...

dealwithit.png (28.02 KiB) Viewed 3358 times

[Alberth]

You sure you're not just trolling...?

I am quite sure I am not, for what it's worth.

Recently we got a map increase from hideously useless 2048 to insanely useless 4096.

After 7 years being here I still have to find the first map of 2048x2048 (ie 1/4 of todays max map size), where someone manages to actually use that space instead of all empty and a small network in some tiny corner that would have easily fitted in 512x512.
The closest ones I have seen are the openttdcoop ones that manage to fill 1024x1024 in MP.

Yet after introducing 4096 as new max size, you see people jumping of joy, and actually using it. With 16 companies, each company can fill 1024x1024 without ever running into a neighbour (ie you need the cooperative power of openttdcoop to fill the space of one company!!, you need 16 coop groups for the entire map!!!). For MP, both cooperative and competitive, how is that useful???

What's worse, even in SP it is used. Why on earth does someone do that??


And now MHL. I see the same happening, people claiming it is great and such, while to me, huh? We already had hills, right?


While I am happy that everybody loves the new features, it also gives me a problem, as I am apparently unable to judge what a good feature is. Unfortunately, when asking for clarification of why these things are so great, I don't get a clear answer. My own analysis also failed (I really cannot judge a good feature). So there I am.

btw, I think there's a small oversight in r27015; you can't manually type in snowline beyond 99. It's locked to two digits, but you can still use the arrows to go beyond that.

That looks like a bug to me, please report it.

[kamnet]

What's so good about increased map sizes or height levels? It allows me more freedom to decide what kind of game I want to play, and how I want to play it. Anything that gives me more choice is a huge gain, in my opinion. Whether I use it all or don't use it all, whether I use it "right" or waste it.

My preferences are that I like large maps (2048 or 4896), I like lots of height levels so that I can create wide, interesting and complex landscapes. I typically watch scenery more than I try to fill every square on a map.

[Eddi]

And now MHL. I see the same happening, people claiming it is great and such, while to me, huh? We already had hills, right?

well, here's probably where opinions differ.

Especially on larger maps with variety distribution on, the presence of a bump in the middle is hardly any obstacle at all. in particular, when nothing of value happens to be on top of the hill, you can almost trivially build around it.

but the larger the hills get, the more likely it is that you actually need somethnig that's on top of (or halfway up) the hill.

so while we did have hills, both the opportunity and the necessity for using them are now increased.

[Pyoro]

I've never played a map beyond 2k, and, as is obvious from the other thread, I didn't even notice extra-large maps are in now. I feel however that 1024² maps get rather "regularly" filled, there's plenty of screenshots in the screenshot forum that are from such games, and I'm talking about ones with a high level of detailing and not just quickly connect everything and be done with it. Stands to reason that somebody would also achieve this for bigger maps, even if it's for no other reason than the fact that it's possible.
(And then of course there's those "planes" guys, which I personally don't really understand, but apparently use OpenTTD mainly to recreate some sort of plane networks. Which is the last thing I'd do, but I'd guess they'd be happy about huge maps )

Also, space in OpenTTD is pretty deceptive.
http://www.tt-forums.net/download/file.php?id=171261
Lots of space!
http://www.tt-forums.net/download/file.php?id=171264
...or maybe not (and I've restricted city growth).
If you want to go for that kind of "inter city" style that's not all cramped between towns you'll need lots of free tiles in the beginning. If you on top want more than just a few towns, you'll need big maps. Just a bit of a shame that the jumps in size are so huge, 768 or 1280 or so would be neat sizes as well


As for height levels, again, I doubt I'll ever need 200 in the same way I don't wouldn't need even bigger maps. But 15 is not much, that's the kind of restriction you'll notice, especially on bigger maps. If I want to create scenario that slowly slopes from one side to the other, but also in a mountainous way, then I'll simply run out of usable height levels with the previous restriction before I get anywhere. Groundlevel will already be at 13 or so easily, so how do I build a mountain on top of that? ^^
And I can say this with perfect accuracy, 'cause I've tried it It's disappointing to not be able to build whatever you envision, and it's good if it's possible. Obviously.

[romazoon]

This would be my fault.

fine, thanks for clarification on the "huh!?"

You claimed you can now build a zig-zag up, but I have been doing that for 5 or more years already, so what is happening here, I don't understand, please explain?

well, i don t really claim that mhl allow building zig zag up, as this will for ever matter how players like to play, and the "physics" setting chosen.

Let's say that what i would claim is : the more the better.(more height in this case)

Well, there has to be something that's different, since you have a different opinion on the big and the small case. If they were fully equal to you, you'd have the same opinion on both cases.
It'd be interesting for me to know that, but maybe you don't even know why? (which would be weird for me, but then again, it's not the first time people do weird things or have weird beliefs (to me)).

sure the strategy to climb to 16 tiles or to 30, or even to 250 height "can" be the same (zig zag up, straight up, double track or not double track), so i agree small case or big case are similar.
but now what if we take in account the size of the map ? i guess 16 tiles height is allready plenty enough on the smallest map, it will make steep hills and stuff... but if i take a 512x512 map or bigger...16 tiles might be a little short in some case.
I ll take as exemple : South American Corsica, a scenario i ve made some time ago with an heightmap. i thought it would make a fun scenario with a rather hard to cross mountain chain midland, but with only 16 tiles of height and given the size i ve chosen for the map (1024x1024, because i made it for multiplayer...and cause the initial project was to recreate every towns of corsica) it never became hard to reach the passes that were at a height of 8 or 9, because the way to go up was simply too long (meaning too many tiles, even going straight, until next slope).
So i hear you allready telling me that i should have chosen a smaller map....but i like large cities, with sometime rather big stations, i also like some distance between towns. Also ofc, yes, it make things easier. again that s a personal liking, just like making things look nice (to my eyes)

I agree it looks very nice.

I think that "to look nice" as a feature, is very demanded, and it s one of the key why MHL is a good feature (imho)....especially in games were it s so easy to make money that it become more a HO scale network (and i m not gonna teach you that the freaks into reduced scale train network are spending a lot of effort to make things to "look nice")...

However, that would imply you like to show that you can copy the same pattern of tracks a number of times, which does not seems to be a very worthy difference to me

you are trolling right ? no just kidding, but honestly that's the kind of "thinking"you should keep for yourself for two reason.
first, i didn't posted my screenie and claimed "look people, that s what MHL bring to your door, a new way to climb hills",
second, it's quite insulting.

so no, i posted that screen only to gives to the (relatively new) players some image and one of the possible way to go up the hill.
cause, initially, i wanted to give a tip. As i saw recent thread on the forum of people asking how to play inside mountainous area.

No no, it not the form at all, it's the repetition itself.

Once you know the trick to climbing a hill (ie the first step is done), the second step is just copy the pattern learned in the first step one level up. Repeat as often as needed. I think everybody does this too.

i actually used the terrain how it was and allowed me very very few terraforming. so the repetition here was simply a coincidence, even though it s tru the technic stay is repetitive ( make a flat part about the size of train and go up 1 tile, and repeat).

I don't understand the fascination of MHL hills

I m not sure i will manage to bring you an answer to this. i think difficulty (of finding the right way to go throught, now higher, mountains) and being nice is allready enough to explain it to myself.

Length of the track more than others probably. In your zig zag pattern there are no sharp corners.

well more curve to go up was in my mind the same as more lenght of tracks, but here what i meant is : more time to go from A to B because more curves due to more heights = less profit.

I know you can t really assume i know the basics of how revenue works in OTTD, and that my english might not be perfect sometimes... so i m not offended.

and on the subject of slow trains...i m a cheater, i don t like my heavy freight trains to go under 70km/h uphill...so i usually adjust the "physics setting" according to this... but on the other hand i managing to mix freight and passenger...and to keep my passenger trains on time with mostly double track...

There is just so many ways to play OTTD.

And stop thinking that the possibility to fill up the map totally is a good criterium... some people like it, that s for sure, but some hate that, and want to play with some room...and places on the map that are really hard or impossible to reach (and will remain empty for ever).
So thanks the develloper that pushed the size to 4096, not that i use it, but simply so that the one that like this style of game can finally enjoy the ride on a stable environment (you know all patchpack are bugged at some point)

P.S : i just see now three new message in the thread, so i may be redundant

edit : some typo