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OpenTTD has for a long time (since 0.5.0 many moons ago) provided the ability to load NewGRFs statically. This means that these NewGRFs are not saved in the savegame and are loaded in all games, including network games. For obvious (desync-)reasons, NewGRFs loaded this way may only contain graphical modifications. Altering the game state in any way, e.g. by adding new vehicles is not permitted.

While the GUI for working with NewGRFs has improved a lot in recent versions of OpenTTD, static grfs can still only be configured by editing a .cfg file, setting filename and parameters manually. This is not really user-friendly and I guess that many didn't even know that the feature exists. This patch aims to change that, by allowing static NewGRFs to be configured from the standard NewGRF settings window. In principle, it should be possible to even change NewGRFs during a running (network) game, but this requires further work beyond the scope of this patch.

This patch adds two buttons 'normal' and 'static' to the NewGRF window, with tooltips explaining their meaning. The static grf list is automatically filtered, so only grfs that are 'safe' to add appear in the list. This safety scan takes place during the file scan at startup.

Please test this patch and report any bugs / suggestions you have. I'll try to provide a windows binary asap, but of course you're free to compile your own



Attached below is the patch file. The patch was developed as a mercurial queue of 7 smaller patches, these are contained in the zip file. These patches do the following in order, this should provide a good overview of how the patch works internally.

Codechange: Unify GLS_FILESCAN and GLS_SAFETYSCAN. This causes all NewGRFs to be scanned for safety during the filescan, not just static ones.
Add: GRFConfig::ResetStatus(), and use that to reset grfconfigs prior to loading.
Codechange: Move the calls to GFFConfig::ResetStatus() to a separate function.
Change: Disable duplicate (static) grfs during grf loading instead of removing them when starting / loading a game.
Codechange: Move the 'Apply Changes' part in the NewGRF settings window to a separate function.
Codechange: Prepare the NewGRF settings window for handling two lists of active GRFs.
Feature: Configure static NewGRFs via the NewGRF settings window.

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Create your own NewGRF? Check out this tutorial!

- Reserved for future use -

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Create your own NewGRF? Check out this tutorial!

Very neat idea. I look forward to trying it out once you put up the windows binaries.

Are town name NewGRFs considered "static"? I don't think they are used after map creation.

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no, town name grfs are not static, they are constantly used, each time the name must be displayed (since the actual name is not stored, only the random value that created the name. it must therefore deterministically recreate the same name)

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You might not exactly be interested in Ferion, but if you are, have fun

Nice, great feature!

What I'd add is a clear message (warning if you will) that one is currently changing static newgrfs. This could be placed above the detailed newgrf information section.
I.e. something like: "Note: you are now configuring static NewGRFs. These will apply to all savegames. Only NewGRFs containing graphical modifications are permitted."

Or something along those lines. That should address the two main questions users may have. Plus it makes very clear what list one is configuring, to avoid situations where you had the wrong one activated and configured the wrong list as a result of that.

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How about making it a separate menu item instead?

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What about the town name grfs that aren't used on the map? (you can have multiple town name grf's active, but only one can be actually used in generating names, right?)

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Alberta Town Names - 1500+ real names from 'Acme' to 'Zama City'
MinchinWeb's Random Town Name Generator - providing 2 million plus names...
WmDOT v10 - An AI that doubles as your highway department

that would be quite a lot of code for some marginal corner case, which i hereby question the benefit of. plus it would be very confusing about "why can i add town GRF X as static, but town GRF Y not?"

and "inactive" town grfs still influence the order and amount of entries in the town name dropdown, which is used to determine which town set is actually queried for the name.

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You might not exactly be interested in Ferion, but if you are, have fun

Bump

Patch updated to r24348, see first post.

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Create your own NewGRF? Check out this tutorial!