Toyland to Mars Revised

[kamnet]

I am undertaking a project to revise the Toyland to Mars Conversion set released by George in 2003. For more info on the original product, please visit http://george.zernebok.net/newgrf/t2m/newtoyland.html

This project aims to correct small errors from the original project that have remained uncorrected for the last twenty years. It will also serve as an example case of how to use YAGL (Yet Another GRF Language) to make simple modifications to old projects where there is no documented source code, the source code is uncommented NFO, or only the finished GRF file exists. YAGL can decode a GRF file into a sprite sheet and commented, human-readable language and then encode the source code and sprite sheet into a new GRF file.

At this time there are no plans to add any new features or sprites. There are other NewGRFs which add complementary aircraft, ships, road vehicles and industries.

The source code is free for anyone to use and modify and has no claim of copyright. However, due to the nature of some assets, no copyright or right of redistribution can be granted for the compiled GRF that will be linked here. No license can be assigned, including any open source licenses such a GPL. This file may NOT be uploaded to the in-game content download service or redistributed by any third party.

If, however, another party creates a new spritesheet with original graphics (even if they look similar to the originals), they may compile a GRF and assign any license they wish. This is beyond the scope of this project, however.

[kamnet]

Test release: 2023.02.11

Changelog:

Road vehicle cola trucks can now transport Cola. Previously they were coded to only transport passengers.

Made spelling corrections from "Fuzzy Drinks" to "Fizzy Drinks" and "Suger" to "Sugar".

Updated GRF container format to GRF8, added Action 14 fields to define internal version and minimum version, 8bpp DOS palette, and URL field.

FILE DOWNLOAD LINK

[UnicycleBloke]

I note that some of the string appear to be prefixed with a NULL byte (I opened the YAGL with Notepad++). For example:

Code: Select all

// Record #628
ignore // Action0C
{
    "<NUL>Dikes";
}

I'm a little surprised by this as I thought I'd converted all control codes into plain text. Could you post the GRF?

[UnicycleBloke]

Thanks for providing the GRF, kamnet. I decoded it with both grfcodec and yagl. The interesting strings are near the end. For example:

NFO version:

Code: Select all

 3066 * 44	 0C 00 "Locks (*current feature that should "
	 "work*)"

YAGL version:

Code: Select all

ignore
{
    "<NUL>Locks (*current feature that should work*)";
}

You can see in the NFO that there is a 00 after the 0C which indicates that this record is an Action C. The NewGRF specs say everything after the 0C is part of the ignored data. The data can be anything, but I treat it as a string because I understand this Action is mainly used for comments. As far as I can tell, 00 is not a valid string control code, but it is the first character in this GRF string. Notepad++ displays it as a NUL icon rather than a character. I suspect the 00 is just a mistake in the original NFO for this GRF. Nothing to see here...

[Emperor Jake]

Hi, I tested this and it seems all the cargo wagons and road vehicles have disappeared. Also the palette is wrong, there are a lot of pink pixels (but they get replaced with blinky pixels when you toggle palette, just like the original) I'm not sure if that's a side effect of converting TTO sprites to the TTD palette or if it was always like that though.

This is in JGRPP 0.50.3 and no other NewGRFs loaded.

[kamnet]

Very strange, because this was all working for me the day before I uploaded, and I can't figure out what I broke. I'll have to start all over and take it one step at a time.

I wonder if, for some reason, it broke because I corrected some of the names?