NewGRF: DeBalancing

Xkeeper · Post by **Xkeeper** » 27 Mar 2007 21:23

Oh no!

Made because I'm sick of people trying to make OpenTTD rediculously complex. It's fun because it's "simply complex" in that you can start instantly and make profit, but to really do well you have to know advanced networking.

And because I think your ideas suck. (Lowering production with high transportation? Making the game even slower? guhghghh)

Then again, as long as all of this rebalancing crap can be turned off easily, I don't mind as much.

Raven · Post by **Raven** » 27 Mar 2007 21:27

so what does ohno!.grf do?

You've got a point there, is there a limit to the amount of stuff can be added to a game?

The overkill line is not placed in the same place for all of us, I'm afraid.

Care to extend your thinking?

Regards

Xkeeper · Post by **Xkeeper** » 27 Mar 2007 21:34

Set your game to 1950, turn off autoreplace, and build maglevs. The engine you use is immediately obvious. (I forgot the exact year I set it to and the life bugs out (it's supposed to be 255yr) and gets set to 0)

My main problem just stems with people trying to make an inherantly fun, simple game that anyone can pick up and learn into an overly complex, mind boggling mess of formulas, confusing and downright idiotic reactions (Oh no! They're transporting things! HALT THE PRODUCTION) and other dumb stuff.

Honestly, I forgot most of the dumb suggetsions in that thread ("improved realistic acceleration, now requiring at least two engines!") and other things that would make the game's start point much more difficult to live through in that one mistake would probably cost you a good five years to wait for your company to bankrupt and start over. Huzzah for high veh. running costs + two engines!

Then again, all I really see out of people is ARGH THIS GAME IS TOO EASY AND BORING GRRRR, but they're usually the kind of people who do nothing but fund coal mines all over their station and transport it across the map. You know who you are.

I dunno. I guess I'm just sick of people trying to overcomplicate the game because they can't figure out new ways to challenge themselves.

(Note: fixing the "company performance raiting", though, is a-ok with me: minimum profit is crap)

phil88 · Post by **phil88** » 27 Mar 2007 21:46

I'm sorry if it's just my tiredness stopping me from understanding (it's been a long day), but, does anybody else understand what Xkeeper is on about?

Brianetta · Post by **Brianetta** » 27 Mar 2007 21:50

Not me. Mind you, he hasn't even said what his grf does, yet.

Raven · Post by **Raven** » 27 Mar 2007 22:13

I think it let's you build maglevs from 1950?

For extra simplicty perhaps you should try SimCity2000 rail system

I think there's a balance. Most of the changes let you choose.

I've been playing some OTTD lately, but rarely found anything else than the standard railsets, buildings and stations. Are new trainsets overkill? Don't think so. Newbuildings perhaps? Nope. Pathbased signals, presignals, etc? Don't use them.

Oh, industries stopping production, etc are of course optional. So is everything, in fact!

I love complicated things, more fun to me. But if you're starting, you're screwed, since you don't know how does half the stuff work (that happens to us in Simutrans quite a lot for certain things), but overall, I don't think neither game is closing the point where you need a degree to play.

Regards

DaleStan · Post by **DaleStan** » 27 Mar 2007 22:16

What's more interesting than what it does is that it is not valid in at least three different ways.

Invisble · Post by **Invisble** » 27 Mar 2007 22:27

OK If I am reading this right, the grf takes the game to it's simplest possible format (just creating a game with it now).

He has created a maglev available in 1950, cost = 0, running cost = 0, power = 65,535 hp with a life of 255 years (designed in 1926), max speed = 65,918 kph ( see screen shot).

I believe he has done this as a protest about the complexity that has started to be introduced into the game, such things as weight multipliers, duel headed engines etc etc etc. it seems that xkeeper dislikes the added features feeling that it takes away from the simple enjoyment of the original game which anyone could pick up and play without having to think about it.

After sending a train across the map, it turns out that the top speed is *only* 5,029 kph

Raven · Post by **Raven** » 27 Mar 2007 23:00

Back in the days, you'd have made millions selling that steamer to the UP

Sleepie · Post by **Sleepie** » 27 Mar 2007 23:38

What I don't understand is how the game will be fun with such a grf? If you don't like complex network, just build simple things and most of the new features are optional, imho. So where's the problem?

Xkeeper · Post by **Xkeeper** » 28 Mar 2007 00:20

DaleStan wrote:What's more interesting than what it does is that it is not valid in at least three different ways.

I wouldn't mind knowing how, since the overcomplicated and officially annoying NFO format (to which I would like to believe I followed the specifications for from what little non-pointless help I managed to get in #openttd)

Oh, and it works (albeit somewhat buggily, although that isn't my problem) in OpenTTD.

Invisble wrote:OK If I am reading this right, the grf takes the game to it's simplest possible format (just creating a game with it now).

He has created a maglev available in 1950, cost = 0, running cost = 0, power = 65,535 hp with a life of 255 years (designed in 1926), max speed = 65,918 kph ( see screen shot).

I believe he has done this as a protest about the complexity that has started to be introduced into the game, such things as weight multipliers, duel headed engines etc etc etc. it seems that xkeeper dislikes the added features feeling that it takes away from the simple enjoyment of the original game which anyone could pick up and play without having to think about it.

After sending a train across the map, it turns out that the top speed is *only* 5,029 kph

Its top speed tends to vary for some unknown reason. With realistic acceleration off from the start of the game (i.e., never on) it will constantly accelerate without stopping up to about 45000km/h, at which point it loops over.

With realistic acceleration on, it will instantly hit 5xxx km/h (commonly 5000-5095).

Oddly, if you turn it back off, the train will revert back to slower acceleration but will never go above the "realistic" top speed again. Yeah, it makes no sense.

Believe me, I wouldn't really use this outside of the silly games I host while that stupid treehugging nut is asleep, but your efforts to over complicate the game are becoming a bit annoying. A lot of people I've gotten into the game probably wouldn't be as interested if, as soon as you started, you either had to make a perfect plan and execute it flawlessly using advanced techniques or lose within the first year. Hell, even supporting newbies would become a lot more expensive and put a huge damper on your personal funds, since you'd have to help them understand how the game works and provide them with enough money to experiment without having them go bankrupt.

---

Also, "sleepie": I like complex networks (and have been experimenting with them a little more as of late). Complex networks is what the game is about.

Complex playing mechanics that serve to do nothing but confuse newcomers to give oldbies "challenge" is what I have problems with.

(That's actually part of the fun; with the original gameplay, you can usually experiment enough to figure out how to at least make a simple rail early on that handles one train and brings in profit, which you can use to fuel more experimentation and growth.... and it's rather satisfying when you can connect several industries to a network that produces over 10,000 goods for you and then transport them all back to another city, and admiring your handiwork at creating a network supporting about 70 trains going in various directions and junctions.

Again, requiring advanced knowledge to even make a train hit max speed is a little, uh, well, stupid.)

Psistorm · Post by **Psistorm** » 28 Mar 2007 02:09

I really seem to fail to spot the problem. these changes made by the gamebalance branch are optional, depending on what difficulty you play on. so if you dont like these features, just play whitout them.
I for one approve of the work thats being done, as it not only makes the game a little more challenging, but also brings some sense to the system. for example it will stop a town of 400 from squeezing 600 passengers in the single bus stop it has - it makes it more real, and in the end, more fun.

so you really /can/ adapt the gameplay to your desires. simple if you rather build big networks, and hard if you want a challenging game, where you cant just push 10000 crates of goods into a small village

DaleStan · Post by **DaleStan** » 28 Mar 2007 03:24

Xkeeper wrote:
DaleStan wrote:What's more interesting than what it does is that it is not valid in at least three different ways.
I wouldn't mind knowing how, since the overcomplicated and officially annoying NFO format

Objection: It's exactly as complicated as required to do everything it does. There are no superfluous requirements, restrictions, &c. (Except possibly the addition of a "00" in various places, but that's hardly complicated, and quite necessary for purposes of interpretation speed.)

If you look hard enough at my .sig, you might find a link that might point you to a program (Hint: The language is called "NFO". Those three letters appear only twice in my .sig) that might be capable of fixing one of the problems. It also might complain about the other two problems.
If you read the documentation, and cast the appropriate incantations, it might actually be able to fix two of the problems. If, however, you cast those incantations, it will find the wrong solution to the third problem. The NFO will be valid, yes, but will probably not have the meaning you intended.

Xkeeper wrote:from what little non-pointless help I managed to get in #openttd

For future reference: Don't ask THERE! (Can I make that <blink> too, please?)
There are only a couple people in there who really know NFO. Ask in the TTDPatch graphics section or in #tycoon, where just about all the NFO coders hang out. (Actually, I'm surprised you weren't sent there.) If you think you've found a TTDPatch bug, then post in the TTDPatch Problems section, but those basically only exist if you're working on the cutting edge of NFO. For all practical purposes, that doesn't currently exist. If you think you've found an OpenTTD bug, cry. It might get fixed someday.

Aegir · Post by **Aegir** » 28 Mar 2007 04:03

Well, the fact that he made the .grf indicates that me telling him on IRC roughly where to look in the wiki helped.

Don't agree with your reasons - I prefer mind bogglingly complex games, but kudos Xkeeper for having an idea and putting it into motion.

Xkeeper · Post by **Xkeeper** » 28 Mar 2007 06:01

Or you could get off your high horse and just say what they are, saving me the trouble of wasting precious space on yet another program that will be used all of once.

That'd be fine too.

DaleStan · Post by **DaleStan** » 28 Mar 2007 06:25

Oh, so a 160 KB archive is a hardship for you? That's too bad. Here, let me send you one of my spare 720 KB floppies. The archive and the executable will fit on that, with plenty of space to spare. Even if you UPX-decompress the executable, AND extract all the documentation, in both languages.

DeletedUser21 · Post by **DeletedUser21** » 28 Mar 2007 06:27

If you dislike .nfo, then how about a new 'better' coding system? Dalestan probably will say that it can't be done because it's good enough. But we don't know for sure if we don't try.

oh and Xkeeper, on this forum we need more .nfo coders you seem to have a good grasp on how to code .nfo. Care for coding some other stuff?

*Mr. X runs before Xkeeper hit's him.

CmdKewin · Post by **CmdKewin** » 28 Mar 2007 10:36

Oh well

Let me tell you one story...

A long long time ago, in a galaxy far far away....

Two friends found a copy of dos TTO. Being long time fans of any kind of transport/financial/management simulation they decided to spend their hard earned money (I was 15 at the time, in 95) and to get what seemed a fun game to play. It wasn't easy, Simcity 2000 had just came out and buying two games in the same year was a big undertaking. Add to that the fact that they wanted something AT least as good as Maxis latest creation (SC2k is my favourite game of all times not for nothing). Anyway, the got it and rushed back home to play it. What a blast it was. They weren't disappointed. Fun, looked nice and had a learning curve of about 3 minutes (not more). The next few years or so where spent almost exclusively between four games: SC2k, as we said, TTO, Civlization (I and II) Ascendancy (you NEED to know this one. If you don't, shame on you). Then, as they grew up, "Dedicated Play Time" (TM) diminished proportionally. But there was light at the end of the tunnel.
One of the two went, for about a month, to the US, to complete it's Civilian Pilot training. There he saw, catching dust in a shop, something we had on ly heard in stories and legends... Transport Tycoon Deluxe. You can imagine what happened next. There was much rejoicing.
When internet came to their homes, TTDpatch was discovered. Oh my... One of the two friends was so happy of all the THINGS it brought to the game that he couldn't wait and HAD to show it to his friend. After a pretty lenghty session, he was disappointed of his friend reaction. "Some good points, but I lost directions pretty quickly and it's no fun anymore". So, our story comes to an end. One of them (which is writing) still plays quite a lot, the other is lost.

So, the "morale" (if we want to find one) of the story is, "Not everyone likes overcomplicated things". Not because he is lazy, or "not able to grasp them" but simply because "gaming is for relaxing, not for overburning your mind". Now, we all know that OpenTTD has the same gameplay base (with differences in what is coded and what not) as TTDpatch, so no problem in there. Thing is that, some people in this board have the tendency to "diminish" everything which is not up to THEIR standards. Code-wise, graphic-wise, NFO-wise, play-wise (the worst kind, IHMO), you name it. That's not a good attitude. If someone wants to do a GRF (or patch) which simplifies things because he thinks that there's something wrong, let him do so. And, go figure, he doesn't even need to give explanations to anybody. He can if he wants, but nobody should ever ever force him: this is something I've seen way to many times over here. You know who you are people

p.s.: NFO is not complicated, it's "complex" (two very different things). And it's like that because it needs to be. That doesn't mean that everytime someone asks/proposes something else, you should diminish it as "waste of time". That's my 2 cents.

Ailure · Post by **Ailure** » 28 Mar 2007 12:17

Xkeeper wrote:Believe me, I wouldn't really use this outside of the silly games I host while that stupid treehugging nut is asleep...

Hey, I need that sleep, thank you very much.

From my experience, newbies usually don't have that much problems with 'realism' if you guide them in the beginning.

The GRF does remind me about my plans for making a fourth railtype, maglev tubes... which I'm not even sure if it's even possible. Will obviously be quite futuristic.

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NewGRF: DeBalancing

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