Feasibility of additional road types?

[Mchl]

Testing
old way: WITH!!!!!
New way: with

Now Better?

Suits me

[kamnet]

Brushing the dust off of this topic. A little over four years ago this topic was put to rest on the premise that eventually somebody would get around to re-writing OpenTTD to support more than three road types. It's been talked about off-and-on and bickered over in the forums and IRC, and as we come into 2013 there has been no actual advancement on this.

So, how about until we get to the point that somebody does decide to make a bold move to re-write the thing, we just go ahead and enable the third road type, leave the HIGHWAY label or make it more generic, an only have it enabled via NewGRF? If you want a highway, or a trail, or NA Dirt Roads, or Industrial-style roads, then have at it an enjoy. If the slot is there and hasn't been used for the last four years, I don't see any reason why to put that off any longer.

[Supercheese]

I think this mysterious "available space" has since been used by something else.

[Eddi]

So, how about until we get to the point that somebody does decide to make a bold move to re-write the thing, we just go ahead and enable the third road type

there is nothing to enable, because all this "third roadtype" ever consisted of was an enum value and reserved space on the map. no code whatsoever was written to support it.

so the effort to get this "third roadtype" into the game is about the same as the effort to get "actual roadtypes" into the game, plus if you do implement the first, you can never ever in the future implement the second.

[kamnet]

So, how about until we get to the point that somebody does decide to make a bold move to re-write the thing, we just go ahead and enable the third road type

there is nothing to enable, because all this "third roadtype" ever consisted of was an enum value and reserved space on the map. no code whatsoever was written to support it.

Ah, my misunderstanding, then. Drats.

so the effort to get this "third roadtype" into the game is about the same as the effort to get "actual roadtypes" into the game, plus if you do implement the first, you can never ever in the future implement the second.

"never ever"? That seems rather fatalistic, if you ask me.

[frosch]

You are confusing two separate topics.
1) More roadtypes to choose when building (like there is for railroad).
2) More than 2 roadtypes coexisting on the same tile (like for road/tram).

The mysterious "third" roadtype Eddi refers to aims for (2).

Anyway, my latest understanding on this topic is that (2) was considered non-sense (more than one "road" and one "tram" track type per tile makes no sense; a road is not both normal road and highway). Wrt. (1) afaik there is enough space in the map to support 16 road and 16 tram types.

The current status of the project is afaik, that someone has to figure out a detail specification for road/tram-NewGRFs and how road/tram-NewGRF and road/tram-vehicle GRFs should interact with each other.

[PikkaBird]

The current status of the project is afaik, that someone has to figure out a detail specification for road/tram-NewGRFs and how road/tram-NewGRF and road/tram-vehicle GRFs should interact with each other.

Was dispensing with a separate "tram layer" altogether considered inappropriate? Otherwise, it seems pretty straightforward; road/tram-NewGRF and road/tram-vehicle GRFs should interact with each other in exactly the same way rail and rail vehicle grfs do.

[frosch]

Ah, so my "AFAIK" status of the project was not up-to-date .)

I've added that page to my useful concept links list, although roadtypes is not exactly on my personal TODO list.

[oftcrash]

How much variation is typically allowed in base functionality? For consistency, could the road type be made to act the same as the railtype? This would require 3 default roadtypes: road, tram, road+tram. The pain point being forced to switch every time you moved the tram off the road during construction.

Sorry if this has been hashed to death already.

[Eddi]

"combine road and tram into one layer" has too serious limitations, imho.

• you run out of roadtypes very quickly, due to combinatorial explosion (*)
• you have weird effects on crossings, where you have crossings on tram rails just because there is a road crossing underneath, while the tram is actually straight, or you need an elrail-style hack on omitting the tracks/wires for trams
• drag&drop doesn't work, you have to switch types constantly (between tram-with-road and tram-without-road, or between road-with-tram and road-without-tram, depending on whether you want to build tram or road)
• you cannot recombine tram rail sets with road sets (like there are currently at least three different tram gauge grfs around, and a lot more roadsets) not even counting things like the "overhead monorail" or other weird stuff
• more things i just thought of but forgot immediately

(*)
a proposal for a road set that i gave previously: (speed limits are only rough guidelines)

• dirt road (town, 7km/h) (a)
• dirt road (land, 15km/h) (b)
• cobblestone road (town, 30km/h) (a)
• cobblestone road (land, 70km/h) (b)
• asphalt road (town, 50km/h, 80 if one-way) (a)
• asphalt road (land, 100km/h, 130 if one-way) (b)

(a) towns can grow along this road type, and build the "best" one of these to grow
(b) towns can not grow along this road type, but they may replace it with one that it can grow along

now this is only 6 types, but now you need to fiddle in the trams for at least the (a) types, this is 4 additional types. then a potential "road with trolley bus catenary" is another 3 types, and you're already at 13, then add andy's heavyweight trails, "subways", ... people come up with new ideas all the time

[Chris]

... people come up with new ideas all the time

Damn them *shakes fist*

[PikkaBird]

"combine road and tram into one layer" has too serious limitations, imho.

• you run out of roadtypes very quickly, due to combinatorial explosion (*)
• you have weird effects on crossings, where you have crossings on tram rails just because there is a road crossing underneath, while the tram is actually straight, or you need an elrail-style hack on omitting the tracks/wires for trams
• drag&drop doesn't work, you have to switch types constantly (between tram-with-road and tram-without-road, or between road-with-tram and road-without-tram, depending on whether you want to build tram or road)
• you cannot recombine tram rail sets with road sets (like there are currently at least three different tram gauge grfs around, and a lot more roadsets) not even counting things like the "overhead monorail" or other weird stuff

• Only if you want to. Personally, I would, for example, combine tram tracks with paved roads only. If this is an issue, why don't we have rail gauge/weight/speedlimit and electrification as separate building layers in railtypes?
• http://users.tt-forums.net/pikka/wiki/i ... Definition. Doing it this way also lets you make "nice" junctions between different road types.
• If you want to build different things, you have to switch tools. How is this different from any other construction? "Constantly" means once or twice per route? How tedious!
• I remember this being an issue for all the "narrow gauge" and other esoteric sets which replaced monorail before railtypes. Oh wait, no I don't. Any existing road/tramtracks - and I speak as the author of a number of them, including the default tram tracks - will be quickly updated to the new spec, or forgotten.

Edit: If I were making a roadset (which I will be, very soon after we get a patch!), I would use the following roadtypes;

1. Unsealed Road (gravel/dirt/snow, depending on climate, town zone, etc)
2. Paved Road ("cobblestone")
3. Paved Road with Tramway
4. Paved Road with Electric Tramway
5. Asphalt Road
6. Asphalt Road with Electric Tramway
7. Asphalt Road with Trolley Wires
8. Asphalt Carriageway
9. Concrete Carriageway

That's a pretty broad coverage, including pre-modern and modern types, rails with and without wires and wires with and without rails, and two one-way-only "highway" types. BTW I think lower speed limits in towns would be better done with a callback, based on the town zone, than with different roadtypes.

I certainly don't think many people would argue that such a "restrictive" set (which still has 7 ids available!) wouldn't be much better than what we have now, or better than paralysis over a spec.

[Eddi]

BTW I think lower speed limits in towns would be better done with a callback, based on the town zone, than with different roadtypes.

it might solve YOUR problem, but
a) callbacks for things like roadtypes is not going to happen (see discussion on performance impact of railtypes)
b) it doesn't solve the common problem of towns growing along inter-city roads (especially with "towns may build roads" disabled)

[FLHerne]

@Pikka: The trouble with that method be that it prevents (say) use of the overhead monorails in conjunction with [roadset], unless someone produced a grf to implement a '[roadset] with overhead monorail' roadtype?
Of course, this would be an issue for using any non-'standard' non-road things (I presume every roadset would include 'road+tramtracks'), whether trolleybuses, overhead things, or something that hasn't been invented yet.

Or did I somehow misunderstand your idea?

[PikkaBird]

BTW I think lower speed limits in towns would be better done with a callback, based on the town zone, than with different roadtypes.

it might solve YOUR problem, but
a) callbacks for things like roadtypes is not going to happen (see discussion on performance impact of railtypes)
b) it doesn't solve the common problem of towns growing along inter-city roads (especially with "towns may build roads" disabled)

Okay, well in that case, different speed limits based on townzones as an action 0 property. There would be nothing stopping you doing it your way with different roadtypes, of course, but having speed limits dynamically change through towns seems much more natural to me (and requires less knowledge or action on the part of the player).

@Pikka: The trouble with that method be that it prevents (say) use of the overhead monorails in conjunction with [roadset], unless someone produced a grf to implement a '[roadset] with overhead monorail' roadtype?

Well, like I said, given the choice between a solid spec that works and is consistent with railtypes, and the failure to come up with a spec that allows for every hacky idea invented so far, I know what I'd pick.

Personally, I think that the rather flaky implementation of trams in TTDPatch, and its subsequent importation to OpenTTD, was one of the worst things we ever did for this game. If we'd never had trams implemented the way they are, we'd have roadtypes by now.

[YNM]

Seeing all the madness, maybe its definitely better to list all road-like networks that clearly needs different support and infrastructure.
My own idea :

1. Road
2. Tram (electrified and unelectrified)
3. Trolleybus
4. Monorail / subway (graphical change)

The number of combined version :
1. Road + trolleybus
2 Road + unelectrified tram
3. Road + electrified tram (support trolleybusses)
4. Road + monorail/subway
5 - 7. Another 3 here for aforementioned road and trolleybus/unelectrified tram/electrified tram + monorail/subway
8.Electrified tram + monorail/subway
9. Unelectrified tram + monorail/subway

I think thats all I can list. (total 14) The last 2 in combined can be removed through.
Highways and dirt roads are nonsense actually, maybe its better that dirt roads only appear in very early times and highways embedded into one-way road.

[kamnet]

Dirt roads are not nonsense. They still exist in many part of the world today, and many roads were not upgraded to paved roads until the middle of the 20th century. Paved roads are also not practical in many industrial mining, logging and farming operations.

[YNM]

Well, assuming there will be 16 roadtypes (again), theres still space

[Eddi]

it's not (just) about space, it's about the possibility of combining different GRFs...

[YNM]

it's not (just) about space, it's about the possibility of combining different GRFs...

I thought I have listed all possibilities...