Hi all,
after a long wait to due my absence in Peru, here's the latest alpha 56:
http://www.ttdpatch.net/src/
Those who have been following the "unofficial" builds by Csaba know what this one contains already.
For the others, one extremely fascinating new feature by Csaba (with some original work by Mek) is that of allowing new cargo types. It enables grf files to define new cargo types, and together with the feature allowing new industries, this can change the way you play TTD.
Not to be outdone, Michael Blunck has come out with such a grf file, adding the types of "beer" and "fish", as well as corresponding industries, and bringing the "food" cargo with its industries into the temperate climate. You can download it from the TTDPatch New Graphics page. Please DO read the readme file that comes with it before trying to use it. In particular, you need to Ctrl-build buoys near the fishing grounds to get a station there.
PLEASE NOTE: Using the newcargo switch requires the patch to do all kinds of tricks with the savegame data internally. This is well and good as long as you keep the switch active, but if you want to turn it off, your best bet is to go back to a savegame before the switch was turned on. It's possible to turn it off on savegames that have used it, as long as you make sure no vehicle carries any non-standard cargo types, and all corresponding industries are removed from the map. Otherwise you'll get some very strange side effects.
Also, all savegames that are saved while "newcargos" is on become incompatible with any earlier versions of the patch and cannot be loaded correctly there.
Another thing that this switch changes is that it obsoletes the old "moreindustriesperclimate". If you turn that on, it'll be deactivated when newcargos is active. Instead of that switch, you can download paper.grf from the TTDPatch New Graphics page, which now does the same thing as a grf file instead of a switch.
Still, even with all the caveats I think this is a really exciting new feature that will enhance gameplay by quite a bit.
Ah yes, one more thing that Csaba has managed to get working correctly is his "enhancemultiplayer" switch, that allows more than two players in LAN multiplayer games. Internet games need not apply unless the ping is under at most 5 ms. He also fixed three bugs that could cause desynchs if the ttdpttxt.dat files were not identical among both players.
And that's all (as much as there is of it), so enjoy your new alpha!
Josef
All changes in 2.0.1 alpha 56 (August 7, 2005):
- fixed bug that allowed dock construction in the middle of the sea
- fixed problem with ttdload.ovl occasionally not getting rebuilt and causing crashes at startup
- integrated all of Csaba's changes up to 2.0.1 alpha 55 vcs 5:
- new switch: newcargos
- devel: Restructured load/unload code to a single proc instead of a myriad of small patches
- industry colors must always be specified from the DOS palette from now on. The Windows version translates colors automatically.
- added variable 1A, which is always FFFFFFFF, to help specifying constants for action 2 calculations
- added multiply, and, or and xor to the available operations for action 2
- added warning if a loaded scenario doesn't contain any towns.
- made gradualloading and fulloadany compatible again
- fixed feederservice bug that caused negative profit for vehicles
- bugfix: industry tile prop. 10 didn't work
- bugfix: new industry tiles didn't work correctly for water industries
- bugfix: the game no longer crashes when an AI player tries transporting a new cargo type. It still needs to be "taught" what vehicles to use for the new cargos, though.
- special industry tile type FF now works on land as well (it used to always check for water)
- it's now possible for houses to accept any cargo by setting new house property 1E or using callback 2A. (Wiki will be updated soon)
- fixed station trigger 2 (it was broken with newcargos on)
- ctrl-built buoys now should work correctly
- fixed newcargos breaking fifoloading
- station action 3 wasn't working correctly with newcargos
- "Cht: ReloadIndustries" to reload all industry data to existing industries.
- fixed a possible crash with DCxx textIDs
- support for house/industry tiles consisting more sprites.
- support for parametrized variables (6x) that accept a byte parameter.
- fixed random station trigger 1 (it was broken for DOS since a55vcs and it seems Windows versions were broken before a55vcs as well)
- two new parametrized house variables 60 and 61 to count houses other than the current
- fixed bug with newcargos messing up waiting cargo amount reported to GRFs
- new parametrized variables (60..64) to get data about a cargo type waiting without directly reading the station struct
- fixed bug with multi-sprite tiles not working correctly with the larger spritelimit enabled
- added variable 48 for stations: bit mask of accepted cargos
- fixed incorrect re-applying industry data after loading a game
- two new callbacks, 2B and 2C to decide industry tile acceptance
- industry properties 0C..0E were broken
- fixed crash while TTD tries to build an oil rig
- new callback 2D to select vehicle recoloring independently from the owner
- with newcargos on, there can be up to 65535 units waiting from each cargo type from now on, although the display will be incorrect if more than 32767 units are waiting. (The old limit was 4095 units)
- the industry funding window now displays the map colors of industries. Until someone comes up with a good way to fix the map legend, this list can be used to identify industries on the map.
- fixed crash with Cht: ResetStation if newcargos was on.
- fixed panning for resolutions above 640x480
- enhancemultiplayer switch
- fix patch actions that used vehicle pointers (shareorders, resetorders, saverestorevehdata)
