[UNIV] TransRapid Track Set Development

[FooBar]

I completely agree with your suggestions, but I'm not a patch creator. I think its best to post your suggestions in the Patch and Open suggestion forums. In fact, don't even suggest more track type support, as that has been suggested numerous times before If you like to know more about the development of this feature, just search for 'newroutes'. I do know that the development of such a feature is seemingly difficult. I don't know about the progresss.

[Rob]

Hi FooBar,
I tried your awesome looking tracks, but I get a invalid sprite error.
Any know incompatibilities with other grfs ?
I'm using TTDpatch 2.6 alpha 0r1975.

[FooBar]

Thanks for reporting that bug, Rob! The night I released the set I was too lazy to test it in Patch. I figured everything should be in order. Exept for this one silly bug due to a silly 'feature' in the Patch. Anyways. I currently have it running on r1975. The new download is available in the first post as usual. I kept the Beta 1 download in place in case someone needs is for multiplayer games or something.



Now about that error, for the ones interested. I myself don't really understand why this should cause an error. Let this be the error causing code:

Code: Select all

//skip if ttdp
-1 * 0 07 9D 04 \7= 00 00 00 00 07
-1 * 0 05 95 06 45
//ottd maglev gui
 1632 sprites/traratrk.pcx 2 559 09 20 20 0 0
 1633 sprites/traratrk.pcx 82 559 03 36 56 0 0
 1634 sprites/traratrk.pcx 162 559 01 20 20 0 0
 1635 sprites/traratrk.pcx 242 559 01 32 32 0 0
 1636 sprites/traratrk.pcx 322 559 01 20 20 0 0
 1637 sprites/traratrk.pcx 402 559 01 32 32 0 0

This should replace the OpenTTD's additional maglev gui sprites, so I decided to skip it for Patch using an action 07. Which causes an error on the action 05 at line 2, complaining that the given feature is unknown. Ofcourse it's unknown, as it only applies to Open. And that's exactly why I wanted to skip it in the first place! Changing that action 07 into a 09 solved it reasonably easily. But that still doesn't explain why patch needs to parse sprites which are totally irrelevant anyways? Well, parsing is fine, but checking them for errors is useless in my own humble opinion.


EDIT: While I'm at it, I think I found a bug:
I replaced the default maglev station with an action A. Now in Open all is in order and I can happily use that station. In Patch however, I still get the default rail station. It looks to me that Patch uses the same sprites for all track types, while there are still three different sets of sprites in trg1. The last two sets remain unused?

[Rob]

Thanks for reporting that bug, Rob! The night I released the set I was too lazy to test it in Patch.

snip snip

Glad to hear you are lazy. All good programmers are supposed to be lazy I heard.
You must be a good programmer then.

I can't help you with the error in question though. But it now works for me too in the patch.
I only saw a little graphical glitch: the Track construction icon has some sort of beam drawn over it after I enabled your set.

[FooBar]

I only saw a little graphical glitch: the Track construction icon has some sort of beam drawn over it after I enabled your set.

That's no glitch; that's a feature
That beam represents a transrapid track and shows that your game is transrapid track enabled

[Rob]

Ah ok, but that doesn't show in the OpenTTD screens on the last page though.

Another thing is that not all bridges are compatible with your set yet.
For instance eis_os and my own bridge show strange sprites.
Do I have to do something with my bridge grf to correct this, or shouldn't this happen to any bridge grf ?

[edit] btw I don't have any bridge set enabled, only my own bridge grf, eis-os's bridge and pikka's brick bridge.[/edit]

[FooBar]

In fact no bridges are compatible with the transrapid track set. That's a limitation of the currently available means of replacing bridges in the game. Deploying GRM could solve some issues, but not all. Unfortunately I can't do much more than advice you to disable other bridge grfs or waiting for the next release.

Oskar is working on better bridge replacement support in Patch, as is Belugas for Open. I'll most likely have to wait till they're finished, before I can give you a decent solution for problems with third party (or, in your case: first party) bridges.

[Rob]

Oh well it's not a real problem, I like those bridges too much so I will only build the slower bridges for your awesome tracks. I'm not able to build too many of your tracks anyway: just not enough space left in my game.

[DJ Nekkid]

i might have a suggestion regaring the signals ...

now, i heavent checked how the signals is placed, but what if the signals were embedded in the track itself?

[FooBar]

Problem is, there's only one batch of signals for rail, mono and maglev. Either solution should also be suitable for the other two track types. I was thinking about some sort of brackets to put the signals on, which then attach to the side of the track. But the danger with that is that the brackets probably look like crap on the other two track types.

Embedding in track has the disadvantage that you can't see the signal state if a train rides over it, but it could work if the signals are placed just in front of the train.

EDIT: actually, trains stop at the tile right in front of the one with the signal, so embedding in track shouldn't be too much of a problem.
I will have to create some examples and then have a vote or something. I don't fancy creating both versions for all signals, given the huge amount of them (regular, three types of presignal, pbs and don't forget the semaphores).

[Rob]

I don't think anyone would use semaphores with this kind of modern track, or at least they shouldn't .

[FooBar]

That's indeed a valid point you have there
You just reduced the number of sprites by 50%, thanks!

[Rob]

Oh well since I know how lazy you are...

[DJ Nekkid]

well, if needed you could perhaps actually use the semaphore-set of grapichs. I've not researched this, but one can have a different set of graphics for trains and trucks in different years, could this not be applied to the semaphore spriteset as well?

[FooBar]

In that case the semaphores would need to get varaction2'ed. There's some varaction2 available on newsignals, but I would have to investigate what use it could prove.

[wallyweb]

In TTDX the signal tool builds lights after 1971 I think, and that would be well before the availability of monorail or maglev.

[dbkblk]

Hey,
I can't play with that GRF because it doesn't work on my build !

Look at the screenshot.

the GRF is loaded but the colors aren't really the good ones !

[Gremnon]

You're using the DOS grf with the Windows pallete.
Or possibly the other way round, but looking at it, I suspect I'm right the first time.

[dbkblk]

Oh you're right, thank you !

EDIT: No, don't worry, the other version works perfectly !

[FooBar]

If the other version doesn't work for you either, please complain again, because there might be something wrong with my dos encoding. I'm using the same method for ages now, but never tested it.