Transport Tycoon Forums

A possible idea on how to completely renovate signal behavior without breaking old saved games is to make the old behavior a patch setting, which can only be enabled/disabled for newly started games and once a game is running it can't change state.

And here's what would imho be a good set of signals:

• Normal signals (one way): keep, but change to pbs.
• Normal signals (two way): keep, but once a train reserves a path to it, all relevant two way signals behind it become red for the opposite direction and change to pbs.
• pre-signals (all): dispose of them.
• pbs one way signals: keep, behavior should not change.
• single direction priority signal: if this is inside a a signal block, it is recursively checked if a reservation is made to one of the priority signals in the chain.
• direction marker signal (one way): this signal marks a piece of track as only traversable in one direction and is not considered a safe waiting location.
• shunt yard signal (one way): this signal tells trains that the area behind it is considered a safe waiting location. The intention of this is to allow fast trains to pass slow trains on long stretches of track.

For the final option trains may need an option to communicate with each other. An extension on top of this could be communication with signals, allowing for more flexible programmable signals (filtering on cargo type, vehicle speed, destination, etc.).

If all this gets implemented, I'd be very happy. For those who wish to point me at waypoints: I have already considered those, but they are a non-solution for me as the problems I encountered cannot be solved by using waypoints.

I've said in another topic and I'll say it again: Transport Tycoon was never in the slightest realistic on a technical level, and any attempt to introduce realism for the sake of realism is fighting a losing battle. Don't make me list off the ways TT is inherently unrealistic in all kinds of ways that changing would pretty much require making a completely different game.

Now, if you want the illusion of realism, that's another story.

What Expresso suggested is not about realism, it is about improving functionality. I would very much like if this was implemented as well, especially the direction marker signal wold be useful in many places.

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I was more responding to the previous page comments, I should have made that clear. 'Realistic' elements that actually improve the gameplay, I'm all for.

There's an awful lot that can be done with this game... I'm wondering if I should make a thread, 'GRF Ideas You'd Make If You Had the Skill (but don't)'. I'm sure everyone has something for it.

Such thread wouldn't hurt and could be interesting. Surely it will have no effect whatsoever on NewGRF authors, but that doesn't matter as it's still nice to see what people actually want.

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FooBar's Tram Tracks | TransRapid Track Set | Metro Track Set | OpenGFX base graphics set | FIRS Industry Replacement Set
Dutch Tram Set | Dutch Trainset 2 | Dutch Road Furniture

On the topic of newgrf I also have some wants:
- station tiles which are not considered station tiles by the pathfinder (for overpasses over non-platform tiles).
- Station tiles which make the station accept certain cargoes.
- there are some other things I'd like, but those are (as it appears to me) incredibly hard to implement).

What would make them functionally different to a house or industry and what would be gained?

Stations accepting cargon on their own sounds like a fundamentally flawed concept, as next would be a station tile which also generates cargo, so that I can build a whole network of stations which supply themselves. Build an industry or found houses so that your station accepts what you want it to accept - I see no single use which cannot be solved by that.

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I had this idea a few months back... Instead of funding (for example) a steel mill and building the station next to/around it you build a station that IS a Steel Mill.
I mean, with ISR you get these lovely station tiles for steel mills that looks better than the actual steel mill does. Plus it makes sense to go INTO the steel mill to pick up cargo rather than someplace around it.
That and i am running ChiPP which has CargoDist and FIRS which forces me to come up with fugly solutions like the following:



Why? Because industries that are fed with more than one type of input resource at the same time outputs more. Being able to make a certain platform into THE steel mill would enable me to build it completely different.
And no other tiles but the steel mill platforms would accept or produce cargo in such a case.

But yah, that would be a lot of work too... For what little gains?

That's basically just a matter of the industry layout. Checkout certain layouts in FIRS or the ECS vectors. There you can build your stations right through them.

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#openttdcoop: blog | wiki | public server | DevZone
DevZone - home of the free NewGRFs: OpenSFX | OpenMSX | OpenGFX | Swedish Rails | OpenGFX+ Trains|RV|Industries|Airports|Landscape | NML

I think changing the timescale would be useful given the large maps -- All these interesting vehicles get released, but I can't use them because I'm still building my first 1000-tile long transcontinental railway line. And building BIG stuff like that is reason for having the huge maps, surely?


Another thing that might be useful is to change some of the interface in the vehicle yards -- if you have lots of GRFs loaded, you can have quite a lot of vehicles in there. There's a filter to pick out only vehicles for certain goods, but it's a little fiddly. A tree browser might work better; locomotives filed by fuel type (steam, diesel, electric), waggons and RVs by goods type. There may already be enough information to do this without needing to create more metadata.


It would be useful to simply be able to order vehicles with a refit in place -- so the same lorry/wagon gets filed under all the goods it can carry. And if you buy it as a "farm supplies", it just has the refit automatically applied. That would prevent those embarrassing moments where you dispatch a train... sometime later wonder where it's gone.. and then find it sat in the station which ships petrol out only it's waiting for OIL. You could still have the existing "refit" functionality for the rest of the time. Again -- the wagons know what things can be refitted to, so it's just UI rather than data structure modification.


On large screens, it would be really useful to be able to make the industry names at the bottom of the map larger. I can barely read them...


Things which I really like; the links to the goods flowchart in the industries. That's brilliant. Only really started using that recently with the bigger resource sets. Cloning trains is fantastic as well.

Here you go: http://wiki.openttd.org/FAQ_troubleshoo ... ll_to_read

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FooBar's Tram Tracks | TransRapid Track Set | Metro Track Set | OpenGFX base graphics set | FIRS Industry Replacement Set
Dutch Tram Set | Dutch Trainset 2 | Dutch Road Furniture

It's not official, but there is a patch for that. Check out the daylength patch (or use Chillcore's patchpack, which includes it).

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Solely from a UI perspective, you could change the scale of the entire game to be consistent but it probably wouldn't work well without a fluid zoom like Supreme Commander, at least if you still wanted to have maps on the sorts of subjective scales some players are used to now (i.e. all of $country/continent). Objectively the map would become immensely larger.

Personally I'd quite like the extra-heightlevels stuff to be made trunk by v2.0.

And if the devs get really bored they can maybe look into multi-threading the AI.

edit: with became without and now it actually makes a bit more sense.

Man, that makes me really want a modern Transport Tycoon style game on a major budget even more. Don't get me wrong, the OTTD crew have worked miracles with this game, but looking at what modern AAA games can offer (despite all the ridiculousness that comes with them) really makes you wish they'd branch out more. Mind you, the higher the budget, the harder the awesome stuff about this game like modding becomes, so I suppose it's a tradeoff.

I suppose I'm thinking more of a true modern sequel, where OTTD is more of a... hard to say... opening up of the original game? The stuff at the core is the same, just the nuts and bolts are bared for everyone to see, use and change.

REDBOOK7 WISHLIST

LARGE SHOPPING MALL

Somthing like SAC"S eyecandy , but one which would accept just about anything . New products like , milk , meat , fruit , vegitables would be great .

MOTORWAY SIGNS

Blue green and white road signs inserted as new objects to enhance the look of a road network .

LARGE BUS DEPOT

HARDWARE STORE

Which will accept , steel , sand , glass , water , fuel oil , and rid the chance of city expansion wiping away existing buildings .

WAREHOUSE

A warehouse which will store just about anything . This would be great for storing fruit , or anything in fact . Handy if your upgrading a part of your town or city and while doing so , can divert trucks to operate from the warehouse for the duration of the works .

REFUSE COLLECTION

As part of ESC VECTORS ( part of city life )

All of those are GRF things, and many are already available.

1. Milk, meat, fruit, vegetables are classed as "food" which can be delivered to towns in ECS and FIRS.
2. Motorway signs - there are some GRFs being worked on and available.
3. Large Bus Depot - There is really no point in this, but a standard bus depot could be visually expanded using station tiles or NewObjects
4. Hardware Store - alredy in ECS as "Construction Industry"
5. You can use an ordinary station to store and transfer stuff, and visually expand it with ISR warehouses.
6. Waste may be re-introduced into FIRS at some point. Please post in the ECS thread if you have suggestions for ECS.

There is a big difference between NewGRFs and actual game code changes:
- NewGRFs are much easier to make, distribute and implement
- NewGRFs are completely optional, unlike patches built into the game
- Game patches can do much more awesome stuff, such as signals in tunnels and heightlevels and bigger maps...

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A 'waste' system would be pretty funny and useful. They pay you to deliver the stuff, and they pay you again to take it away!

The GRFs should supply garbage truck vehicles to match.

As well as food, FIRS has a fruit cargo which can be delivered to food markets in town.
Waste won't show up in FIRS, it was tried and is really boring. There is a recyclables cargo which goes from town to recycling plant.
(these apply to FIRS 0.7, which will be released in the next month or so)

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Want to help OTTD development? Here's the official list of bitesize patches needed: http://wiki.openttd.org/Todo_list

FIRS Industry Replacement Set (Released)
HEQS Heavy Equipment Set (trucks, industrial trams and more) (Finished)
FISH is Ships (Released)
CHIPS Has Improved Players' Stations (Finished)

Locomotion was a big failure. If a decent follow up to transpotr tycoon would be made, having an AAA budget, I'd expect the following:

• Full 3D opengl graphics, using decent models
• 3D positional sound
• A modern user interface (post 2005).
• A decent selection of signals
• Good mod support (the quality and quantity of openttd and ttdpatch, without XML, which is troublesome to read both for machines and humans)
• Station facilities.
• Buses, trams, freight trucks and ships which are actually useful.
• Roadstops and harbors which consist of multiple modable modules.
• A map array which actually has multiple, easy to edit layers.

BUt...

• The map should still support square tiles.
• It should still be possibly for a map to be very large.
• Lots of vehicles should be an option.
• Construction should go in aboout the same way as openttd.

That being said, a commercial project is unable to achieve that as most money will probably be poured in graphics and sound and the rest of the game will be neglected, as that is what sells games these days.

Transport empire looked like a good idea, but it appears to be dead now

Thanks for reply ,

I have seen a thread on motorway signs but have never seen any grf but then there are so manny threads .

Construction industry does not seem to be available in the Vectors II collection and i can not set the ( dont close ) perameters .

As regards to storing stuff , I mean somewhere where the stock ( never ) diminishes over time and remains there until you decide to use or sell it.

What is ISR Warehouses ??

As regards to posting here re ESC vectors , this was a wish list and i had to put
( all ) my wishes into the one place .

Thanks...