Changing patch version...

[SAC]

Before continuing with my work I need some answers, (which I'm sure are available in here somewhere - although I couldn't find them), as far as my current game-play map concerns;

If I want to move from the current stable version of the patch, (TTDPatch 2.5, Beta 9), to the "unstable" one, (TTDPatch 2.6, Alpha 0 - including nightly, for instance r1966), am I at the same time required to start a completely new map, or can I safely continue using the map I've been playing on for a couple of years now?

Are there any .grf's out there that actually requires me to start a new map, or can I safely continue using my current map regardless of .grf's I want to add?

[kvtb]

I've done the same (upgrade to alpha version) and I can still open savegames that were made years ago.

[Lakie]

You should be able to load older maps into new versions of TTDpatch, however with grf's especially station grfs be wary of them changing ids (and thus requiring you to rebuild all the stations using them for example, same applies to trains etc).

Hope that helps,
~ Lakie

[SAC]

I've done the same (upgrade to alpha version) and I can still open savegames that were made years ago.

You should be able to load older maps into new versions of TTDpatch, however with grf's especially station grfs be wary of them changing ids (and thus requiring you to rebuild all the stations using them for example, same applies to trains etc).

Hope that helps,
~ Lakie

Yes, thanks! It helps a lot. I was mostly concerned about changing patch versions, but as far as station.grf's and the sorts concerns, it's not that big of a secret that I'm constantly changing my entire game layout, so it doesn't matter! As long as I can use them without the need to create a new map I'm fine - especially as I've managed to complicate a lot of my infrastructure ever since...



And speaking of .grf's, both MB's NewStations and the ISR are quite extensive in terms of graphics - especially since the latter use a lot of animations. Am I right in my assumption that the more animations included in station.grf's, the less additional station.grf's can be used alongside? The reason for asking is that I encountered a problem that at first sight seemed to be related to my "test station tiles", but soon enough I discovered that the errors provided, (pointing towards my own test.grf's), disappeared once disabling other station.grf's included in my newgrfw.cfg

[Lakie]

Animations use more sprites (one for each frame of the animation) and unfortunately there is a relatively low sprite limit on the total number of station sprites. Thus having station sets like ISR and newStations with quite a lot of animations, limits the grfs you can you along side each other, I'm unsure as to whether this is a limit which can be raised as unfortunately, I do not know a great deal about sprite management.

[Edit] You could try coding things which look like a house as a newgrf house, and so on for the rest of your sprites to try and spread them over a range of 'sprite pools' to reduce the chance of conflicting?

~ Lakie

[SAC]

Thanks Lakie! That's what I figured! I'll try to find a proper solution!

[mart3p]

Animations use more sprites (one for each frame of the animation) and unfortunately there is a relatively low sprite limit on the total number of station sprites.

Lakie is correct that the station animations in ISR use a number of extra sprites. However, I am currently working on some new animations that do not use extra sprites, such as the forklift animation shown here. With these, the animation is done using sprite layouts and moving the bounding boxes.

Also for ISR v0.8.0, I am planning on adding some parameters, these will disable some animations and replace them with a non-animated version. This will give TTDPatch players the option to considerably reduce the sprite usage of ISR, if they want to play with more station sets than is possible currently.