Track Design Templates

[Stumpeh]

Hi guys, not sure if this is my first post or not I'm mainly just lurking but I can't help but post this suggestion

I would LOVE, track templates, say for example I lay out a cloverleaf , signals, tunnels, everything, then i would love a tool that I could drag over the area and it would save the information into a preset of some kind that i could subsequently place again.

It would save a lot of time

Hope someone else agrees with me

[Sionide]

this has been asked for before and not implemented. can't remember why

[Jango]

because most people agree that this would spoil the building process.

[Moriarty]

Well maybe it could be an option. Options are great. It allows the technophobes to play with their old antiquated (but still good) TTD style games (just with OTTD bug fixes), whilst also letting the more progressive players use all sorts of nice functionality.
This function would certainly save time. And with bigger-maps, do you really want to have to make 100 cloverleaf junctions one by one? There's a pointat which fun becomes tedious.

[Zooz]

It's like making a racing game that drives for you...

That's maybe a bit extreme but the user should still have stuff left to do

[Alltaken]

It's like making a racing game that drives for you...

That's maybe a bit extreme but the user should still have stuff left to do

hmmm

sorry but with BIG maps, having track templates is not a stupid idea. the user will NEVER have to little to do.

firstly making it possible to have a template editor like the scenario editor would be ok. then the User still needs to design all the junctions they use.

also on top of that, what junstion doesn't need some kind of customisation later when another track is joint to it?

no template will ever be able to fill 'all' possibilities. it just takes out some of the mundane tasks such as laying repetitive track combos of favorite junctions.

optional no, why? becuase you either use it or you don't i see no reason why it shouldn't be always enabled once coded (if its coded)

Alltaken

[Stumpeh]

Thanks for the support from the people who've given it

I think maybe it should be an option, for multiplayer games maybe, I've never played a competitive one, but racing for somethings might be unfair if someone can place templates down, but for my single playing, especially on the bigger maps, i'd like to have just a T junction and a couple of clover leaf's that I could place

[Dextro]

Just an idea, probably not as extensive as prefabs junctions but somthing like this: a way to build paralel tracks.

It gets kind of boring to make a track for one direction and then have to do it all over again

That a more user friendly way to switch the type of signals, maybe whyle keeping pressed you could see a small menu to chose from normal/entry/exit/combo signals. What do you think?

Still that prefab editor (I like to call them that ) looks like a damm good idea. (an undo buton would be nice aswell but that's awfull for realism (still could be a dificulty setting: enable/disable undo ).

[Alltaken]

dual track, WITH signals in the choosen direction. now that would be cool

Alltaken

[Dextro]

dual track, WITH signals in the choosen direction. now that would be cool

Alltaken

maybe use the road side toption (in the options menu) as default (I know here in Portugal trains go oposite from roads if I'm not mistaken but I like to keep them equal in openttd so I don't get confused ).

Still one thing that will eventualy come up is that the current gui needs to be somewhat improved. Maybe some sort of Locomotion style windows with tabs that have the options for construction? I don't think it would be that bad

(PS: for those who can't get used to Locomotion's GUI let me just provide a pointer to why: it's the headers, they change almost the entire window to the company colours and that makes it hard to read and it's the one main diference from ttd and rct. Just my 2 cents )

[Born Acorn]

It would be good if you could save your own junctions too and send them to others to load.

This would increase the speed at which networks are built. I love the idea!

[Moriarty]

It's like making a racing game that drives for you...

That's maybe a bit extreme but the user should still have stuff left to do

Well to continue the analogy a little further, imagine it was like letting the game drive for you, but in a game like GTA3+. You could have it turned on when you want to gun down some innocent pedestrians with your Uzi and don't want to handle the care. Or when firing the tank's turret.
Alternately, when you want to mow down pedestrians the old fashioned way, or engage in a good old fashioned street-race, you take the wheel yourself.




Come to think of it, i think that Roller-coaster Tycoon actually has something akin to this anyway. Allows you to save your coasters and use them again in a later game. Saves you have to re-make them.
See, if CS thought it was good enought for RCT it can't be bad. heh

[Jango]

See, if CS thought it was good enought for RCT it can't be bad. heh

You only have to look at Locomotion to see that CS is quite capable of making mistakes.

I think it's a shame that anyone would even contemplate building 100 clover-leaf junctions. Don't you ever build tracks with a bit of variety?

[haakon99]

I would LOVE, track templates, say for example I lay out a cloverleaf , signals, tunnels, everything, then i would love a tool that I could drag over the area and it would save the information into a preset of some kind that i could subsequently place again.

Just so you know it: I for one totally agree. The idea as you explain it is excellent. With bigmaps a lot of time is spendt building more or less identical layouts.

BTW: Dont't forget it must be possible to rotate these presaved templates. Then this function would surely be a winner!

Håkon

[acidd_uk]

Yup, I was thinking about this a while back and with 256x256 maps it would spoil the game I think. However, with the bigmaps, it would be really cool to have this feature - as Alltaken says, you'll still not run out of things to do...

[Stumpeh]

Glad i'm getting more support than hate mail

Just hope someone with the programing skills can come along to back this idea now

I still think a drag tool, that highlights a square area, and saves only the changes (leveling, tunnels, etc) and doesn't destroy anything it doesnt' have to would do the trick, just name it, and its saved

Me and a mate are working on a 10x10 co-op style, he builds a route , then I intergrate it into the network, its hard work and we've barely dented the possibilites of the map in about 2-3 hours play!

[Moriarty]

See, if CS thought it was good enought for RCT it can't be bad. heh

You only have to look at Locomotion to see that CS is quite capable of making mistakes.

I think it's a shame that anyone would even contemplate building 100 clover-leaf junctions. Don't you ever build tracks with a bit of variety?

I was kidding about the CS bit. Hence the winkie and the "heh" quote.


Pertaining to the 100 cloverleafs. Well i've never actually built a CL in my life. However it is an example. Different people play to achieve different things. I've pointed this out innumerable times in these forums.
One person may want a nice dynamic network with no boring cloverleafs, but another person may want everything on their network to be lovely and symetrical.
You should not limit a player's choices simply because you do not believe that the choice they will make is correct.

[Jango]

The problem is that you can't pander to everyone's individual requests. I would hate to think that you want an openttd where you have EVEN more options than those that currently exist. The more options you have, the more difficult it becomes to create a balanced game.

With any product, be it software or physical, choices have to be made. If these choices are not made, the product will suffer from slow progress because it makes the product difficult to improve on a macro scale.

In essence, this is already being shown by the current openttd program. The more micro changes and options that are added to the current trunk will delay transition to the new map code.

It's OK to suggest improvements, but at some point decisions have to be made about which ones to include and which ones to reject for a later time (or altogether). If all change requests were accepted, you'd have a dreadfully poor game.

[Born Acorn]

See, if CS thought it was good enought for RCT it can't be bad. heh

Don't you ever build tracks with a bit of variety?

never, only when the circumstances force me to.

Otherwise it defeats the point of OpenTTD, making money with the least expenditure. I build the same low budget junction everywhere.

[Jango]

i'm amazed. i find it absolutely necessary to custom build a good 50% of my junctions. But then, I've noticed that I tend to have many more trains / section of track than most people (hence i make more money....). The cost of a junction is absolutely negligable compared to the profit gained.