New GRF

[F.H.Kervel]

Do I still need to have a direction under the direction NewGRF, if a have the latest edition of OpenTTD,I have problems with industries Who d'nt accept cargo's or in the name of the Industry is mentioned <incorrect> but then in dutch ongeldig industrie
Is there somebody who can help me out

[Eddi]

you may not change NewGRFs during a game. always start a new game.

[kamnet]

Well, technically, you CAN change NewGRFs during a game. But, it's not recommended because bad things can (and usually do) happen. The least of which is graphical glitches, and the worst being it crashes your game entirely and you have to start all over from your last save point where things worked fine.

[Alberth]

Well, technically, you CAN change NewGRFs during a game.

Technically you are correct, but it should only be attempted if you know what you are doing.

The OP obviously does not have much clue what happens. He tried it, ignored the text of the red error message window, and then asked here why his game crashed. Giving him contradicting messages is not very helpful.
We like to spread as simple rule to users that changing NewGRFs in a game should never be done. It is a simple rule, always works, and never gives problems like the disaster above.

Of course, people knowledgeable enough, or people that are willing to risk save games, limbs, sanity, or life, are free to do so on their own risk.

[Nommy]

I think the problem with people changing grfs in running games comes from the warning being vague and not really telling you what the concequences are.

It says

You are about to make changes to a running game. This can crash openttd. Are you absolutely sure about this?
Yes..No

To me that implies that all that may happen is that it may crash, so when it doesn't crash you infer things are ok. It doesn't say it may break savegame compatibility or that less obvious things are likely to be broken which you might not even notice right away.

The OP didn't complain about a crash. There was something wrong with cargo acceptance or something, which sounds nothing like the crashing it warns about.

I think, if you want people to stop ignoring it, the warning should say something like

Changing newgrfs in a running game will often result in unpredictable behavior, such as breaking save game compatibility, crashing, subtle problems you might not notice right away - basically it's likely to screw up your game and you'll have to go back to an old save. If you are not sure what you are doing you should not do this. Continue anyway?

Or at least something that hints at some of the likely consequences other than a possible crash. I don't know what they all are, and only realise there are other consequences from hearing about them on the forum.

[Voyager One]

people that are willing to risk save games... ...sanity

Tell me about it - year 2045, after building the whole empire I decided to get the newest nigthly of a NewGRF. It didn't work properly and I have decided to reload the game with the older version - only to find that I've accidentaly saved it with the non-working version and there was no going back!

Sanity, you said it!

[belugas]

Changing newgrfs in a running game will often result in unpredictable behavior, such as breaking save game compatibility, crashing, subtle problems you might not notice right away - basically it's likely to screw up your game and you'll have to go back to an old save. If you are not sure what you are doing you should not do this. Continue anyway?

Or at least something that hints at some of the likely consequences other than a possible crash.

The sign is in red, it is quite evident that it's important.
A red light is red, there's no warning, no text. and yet, we all know we must stop. No matter the reasons.
The text you propose will never be long enough to actually state all that could go wrong, and people willalways find stuff to complain about "I've not been told that" and blabla blablabla...
I understand the fat that only the crashing is mentioned, but that's because it's the most probable issue you'll face.
So at one point, you have to draw a line, for God Sake!

[Voyager One]

Exactly the point we all said for a million times before: do it at your own risk and then don't complain about it!

There's nothing ambiguous about it.

[Samu]

There is something that just came to mind, to include NewGRF modules in savegames.

If I'm allowed to give you an example from another game, the World Editor from Warcraft 3 is actually a compressed file containing several files in it, each file takes an important aspect regarding how the map will work, like for example, an AI file, a trigger file, a script, a graphical file for new units or tiles, an object file, a map terrain, embedded sound files, etc... and a savegame is even more!

Have you considered this? This way, all savegames would become self-dependent!

But I know about the file size issue, that may be the biggest drawback.

[Eddi]

i'm fairly certain that this has been considered, and rejected, previously

[Zuu]

The approach taken for BaNaNaS is a bit like this. In the savegame the GRF id:s are stored, using those even old version of NewGRFs can be downloaded from online content in order to satisfy the requirement of the savegame. See the attachment for an example where I have a savegame with a missing NewGRF that can be found fairly automatically on bananas.

[Samu]

The approach taken for BaNaNaS is a bit like this. In the savegame the GRF id:s are stored, using those even old version of NewGRFs can be downloaded from online content in order to satisfy the requirement of the savegame. See the attachment for an example where I have a savegame with a missing NewGRF that can be found fairly automatically on bananas.

My Load Game doesn't have this...
OpenTTD 1.0.4

[Yexo]

That's because it got recently introduced. It'll be part of 1.1

[Zuu]

If you want to have the last developments (and bugs) you can try out the nightlies. On www.openttd.org, below the link to stable download there is a link to last nightly. When you get bored of downloading new nightlies every now and then, you can get an OpenTTD Updater that does the manual work for you. (or write your own, a basic updater is fairly simple to write - especially on if you have a basic unix toolset at your hand)

[OSkar000]

How is this implemented in the scenario editor?

It seems like all NewGRF's gets locked when you start the scenario editor and cant be changed when you start playing the scenario. Bug or feature? I can understand if buildings and industrial GFS's gets locked, but what about trains, planes and trucks?

[planetmaker]

Disallowing the change of newgrfs after starting the game is by design. NewGRFs are an integral part of the map. That holds also for vehicles.

[OSkar000]

Disallowing the change of newgrfs after starting the game is by design. NewGRFs are an integral part of the map. That holds also for vehicles.

So if I want to play a scenario with two different train-sets.. I have to redo the entire scenario from the beginning?

I think some kind of manual override is needed, otherwise it will kill a lot of the fun with making new scenarios.

[Voyager One]

So if I want to play a scenario with two different train-sets.. I have to redo the entire scenario from the beginning?

You can, if you select them both when creating the scenarion. Any other tampering DURING the game is risky.

[OSkar000]

So if I want to play a scenario with two different train-sets.. I have to redo the entire scenario from the beginning?

You can, if you select them both when creating the scenarion. Any other tampering DURING the game is risky.

I understand the risks, I have played OpenTTD since 0.3 or 0.4 and experiensed both successful and unsuccessful grf-changes in games and scenarios.

What I want to be able to do is to create a scenario without deciding what GRFs its going to be played with and not have to create a new scenario every time a new interesting trainset, planeset, bus, truck is released. I can understand that GRFs that are included in the scenario (buildings, industries, trees etc.) is locked and shouldn't be changed. But content that won't be in the game until you start playing should be changable (at your own risk) until you load the scenario to start playing on it.

[planetmaker]

Disallowing the change of newgrfs after starting the game is by design. NewGRFs are an integral part of the map. That holds also for vehicles.

I think some kind of manual override is needed, otherwise it will kill a lot of the fun with making new scenarios.

It usually kills my fun when every day there's a new bug report of <whatever> going wrong and then only to find out that the person changed newgrf after map creation.

use set scenario_developer 1 in the console and your control over newgrfs is back. Then all warranty is void though (as if there's been some in the first place ). If you can avoid to change NewGRFs, then do it by all means. Even changing vehicle grfs in the scenario editor does compromise the game and has the potential to introduce quite a bit of unwanted behaviour.