Vehicle GRF viewer ?

[MagicBuzz]

Hello,

Most vehicles GRF don't come with an explicit documentation that list all vehicle with extended characteristics (introduction date, purchase price, runing cost, capacity -per good type-, speed, power, etc.)

As a result it's quite hard to find good combination of sets, as some sets would start 100 years before other vehicle types sets : for several hours of gameplay, you can only do 1 type of vehicle, and when the other types are available, there is no more place to build new networks…

So, is there a tool that allow to list all vehicle in a GRF file that would allow to compare sets and choose the best combination ?
And maybe : do you think it should be possible to adjust manually some characteristics (mostly introduction date) to allow the user to adjust some sets for better combination ?

[planetmaker]

Hello,

Most vehicles GRF don't come with an explicit documentation that list all vehicle with extended characteristics (introduction date, purchase price, runing cost, capacity -per good type-, speed, power, etc.)

As a result it's quite hard to find good combination of sets, as some sets would start 100 years before other vehicle types sets : for several hours of gameplay, you can only do 1 type of vehicle, and when the other types are available, there is no more place to build new networks…

So, is there a tool that allow to list all vehicle in a GRF file that would allow to compare sets and choose the best combination ?
And maybe : do you think it should be possible to adjust manually some characteristics (mostly introduction date) to allow the user to adjust some sets for better combination ?

That tool is called 'OpenTTD':

Activate the NewGRFs you're interested in. Enable 'vehicles never expire'. Start in a very late year and look at the purchase list.

[MagicBuzz]

You're right, that's a way things could be done.

But this has 3 limitations :
- When using multiple sets (remember, we want to compare), you can't actually be sure which set the vehicules come from
- Many vehicle sets change capcity according to the refit : this is not shown in OTTD, so you must purchase each vehicle, then check each refit
- You can't change the introduction date if desired

For the last point, I think a "simple" solution should be a parameter that tell "change introduction date according game start date for all sets".
=> When enabled, the introduction date of the first of each set could be changed to the game start date, then all the other vehicles of the set could have their introduction date changed porportionnaly of the first vehicle date change.

The only problem I see is for very specific vehicle sets that introduce only few vehicles (by exemple the ICE train set that actually contains only the ICE), its start date could be 1850 when starting a game in 1850...

What about it ?

[Argus]

This hits the limits of vehicles .... It would not be possible to use more sets, they would interfere with each other

[andythenorth]

A long time ago, Frosch looked at some possible solutions to this https://wiki.openttd.org/Frosch/NewGRF_ ... _in_Utopia

[planetmaker]

You're right, that's a way things could be done.

But this has 3 limitations :
- When using multiple sets (remember, we want to compare), you can't actually be sure which set the vehicules come from
- Many vehicle sets change capcity according to the refit : this is not shown in OTTD, so you must purchase each vehicle, then check each refit
- You can't change the introduction date if desired

For the last point, I think a "simple" solution should be a parameter that tell "change introduction date according game start date for all sets".

You can check what NewGRF a vehicle comes from.

Changing capacity upon refit: Nothing can simulate that - except something which mimics OpenTTD in its entire NewGRF handling - so basically only OpenTTD itself.
The mechanics are so complicated that you can tell a vehicle to allow refit to passengers only on February 29th if it is a Friday - and only when you own 12 of another vehicle and have one competitor. How can you possibly mimic that reasonably? Or if you want to be cheap on this: where do you want to draw the border to get it right? This basically means: you cannot fully automatically document the refit capabilities of vehicles. Similar reasoning goes for other vehicle properties, including which can be attached to what when it comes to multiple units.

I really don't understand why you need to change for whatever purpose the introduction dates. No need for that at all.

In summary: Nothing beats documentation up-front, coming straight with a NewGRF. Become engaged and help documenting NewGRFs. Offer authors your help and create nice documentations for the projects you like and where you miss it. Or make one in the OpenTTD wiki. Making a simple table which can be put in the readmes or the wiki is not very hard, and easy for an author to add / implement. Often projects or authors even have a table where they have the vehicle properties stored in - just not published with documentation. Write a script to make readable documentation from that.