eekee's high-density infrastructure

[eekee]

Hindingworth Transport
A 128x128 map played for 200 years. I took this on as a challenge, as well as being small it's mountainous and fairly heavily populated both with industries and towns. I also attempt to transport everything, including all the results of 200 years of industrial growth. Between the two factors it has perhaps the highest rail density of any of my games.

Mostly I played it on my Zaurus with its 640x480 screen. On a 1080p screen it comes alive with movement, especially in the center of the map here. The screenshot doesn't do it justice in that sense, there appears to be about twice as many trains when it's unpaused, perhaps because the trains aren't hidden for long in tunnels and under bridges.

Edit #2: Got rid of the ancient test GRFs for OpenGFX, made new screenshot. Also added second screenshot showing the whole island because the big picture looks a little bit more orderly.

[eekee]

Edited above post for better pics.

2050 Transport Co.
This is my longest-running game, I think I must have started it in 2004, IRL. The in-game date is a lie, back then OTTD kept compatibility with original TTD save games, so the date could never advance beyond 2090. I guess I played for 200 or 300 game years at that time. This game has seen a lot of my personal development, to the point where I look back and wonder if I could add 2+2 when I started. It's not that I didn't know what I was doing, it's that I hadn't learned to reason and to think clearly back then. I was inventive, but once something got even a teeny bit complicated I couldn't handle it. Things are much better now, although complexity always will be an open-ended challenge.

This game is also a good deal prettier than Hindingworth. Many of the towns still have room to grow, and with the possible exception of the strip between the western cities there is a lot more room for track-work, as dramatically illustrated in the first screenshot.

[eekee]

A couple more from 2050 Transport Co.

[Katve]

You have quite huge network there . Nice screens!

[eekee]

Thanks I think since I first got OpenTTD in 2005 I've put 30% or more of all my OpenTTD play time into 2050 Transport Co. I'm always polishing it and finding new ways to do things. The first game I posted, Hindingworth Transport, was one I worked on similarly when I was playing OpenTTD on my Zaurus.

That reminds me I admire OpenTTD's programmers. I could compile OpenTTD on the 64MB Zaurus itself with no trouble at all. I also wanted to build Wesnoth, which is a much simpler game. It doesn't have anything like bridges over everything, it moves one piece at a time where OpenTTD has to update dozens of train cars and other vehicles in real time, but I couldn't build it on the Zaurus at all.

Today's screenshots show "progress". I found a screenshot of 2050 Transport Co. in 2008, and took a pic of the same area today. It's hard for me to believe it's the same game. After taking today's screenshot I found Lower Nanstock Heath needed upgrading again. It's been extended to the bridge and a 4th train added. Upper Dunway didn't need all 7 tracks so I took two off and routed the input to Lower Nanstock Heath through the space. Next up for revision are two junctions, one by Dunway Waypoint and a similarly primitive one just off-screen.

Edit: to indicate the quantities of goods being handled on this map, Upper Dunway handles 54% of 4 million litres of water and 67% of 2.3 thousand bags of diamonds every month, but by this map's standards it's something of a backwater. Well, it probably handles more water than any other station, but it's off the lines which take most of my time. Nothing short of maglevs could handle the quantity of stuff.

[eekee]

Attachment 1 is an updated screenshot of Bradnor in 2050 Transport Co. Several thoughts come to mind:

• Poor Bradnor!
• I don't even remember when Seedwich station was that small.
• Nor the lines south of Bradnor that sparse.
• It was less than two years of real time? I haven't played it that much, have I?
• Year 3000! The year should probably be nearer 4000 or even 5000 than 3000, considering how heavily I played it when it didn't advance the year beyond 2090.

I enabled CargoDist for passengers, and little Bradnor turned into THE passenger hub. I added airports, (I had no planes before,) added some routes between other cities, increased the number and size of trains on others, expanded passenger stations everywhere I felt I could, but the distribution still didn't settle down until I increased the number of tracks at Bradnor from 5 to 8. Lengthening it, adding the Shinkasen platforms from the Japanese Stations GRF, and increasing the capacity of the exit tracks was the last thing I did. It should have some spare capacity now.

Most of the extra tracks predate the CargoDist switch. I think it dates from the time I did a lot of work on getting more materials into and out of Lower Stanstow. I've no plans to enable CargoDist on that lot!

Attachments 2 & 3 show Lindean before and after abuse expansion, also for the needs of CargoDist passengers. It was a very pretty city before the expansion. I hope it gets some of that back, but it doesn't seem to want to fill those holes, of which I made more than turned out to be needed. I was going to take it to 5 tracks, but it didn't need that many.

Lindean is rare in having room for station buildings. I can only assume the facilities are underground in most of 2050 Transport Co's stations.

[V453000 :)]

Looks awesome, exactly the kind of playing I like - expand as long as you possibly can!

Ever thought about joining #openttdcoop?

www.openttdcoop.org

[eekee]

Thanks! It would be a bit awkward with my current IRC client, but I'll be along some time. I had a look at the co-op tutorial today, it explained a few things. I'll have to try priority signalling, if I can find the room.



A little update on my game, because something dramatic happened. I never clearly understood the importance of the square beneath a town's name. I was starting to wonder why the important towns weren't growing while some outliers were, when Overningleigh (a sort of semi-outlying town) collapsed! It went from 4th or 5th biggest all the way down to less than 1000 inhabitants. I moved the station back two squares, added road directly under the town name and made sure it was well linked up, and it started recovering quite fast. Lindean also didn't grow after my changes. I moved its station two squares to the right and it positively exploded.

Bradnor also doesn't have ordinary road beneath its town name, but it does have a road bridge there. It is capable of forming new buildings on empty tiles, but not as fast as I'd like. Stanstow similarly lacks road beneath its name, but is capable of gaining new buildings; it has a road bridge adjacent to the square under its name. Although it has placed new buildings, its population isn't growing, it's just fluctuating around 13,500. Ninningville has road adjacent to the square under its name and is behaving much the same as Stanstow. I have work to do to fix this!

[eekee]

After 6 months of no access to my files, I finally got to up 2050 Transport Co, and was confronted with... well, you can see the signs. I recall loading this up before, 3 or 4 times, but each time I just groaned and closed it again! You can see I've improved things a lot since the last screenshot of Upper Stanstow, with color coded PURR and better junctions, but evidently it's not enough. I am feeling fitter these days, maybe I'll get something done.

[acs121]

Well that really deserves "high-density".