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Futuristic urban suspended monorails (to replace tramways).
Includes full graphical replacement of tramways with monorail track and 4 articulated vehicles to use them.

Credits:
Station and depot graphics adapted from the openGFX project by FooBar and athanasios respectively. All coding and other graphics by me (Zephyris).

Known Graphical Bugs:
Graphics look glitchy with wooden and tubular bridges (which is unavoidable)
Tunnels look very dodgy (unavoidable without lowering the monorail vehicles)
Some (tiny) alignment glitches with NE and NW slope track (which I can't be bothered to fix!)
Vehicles do not line up nicely in the depot window (again unavoidable without lowering the monorail vehicles)
No specialised graphics for the track in the half tiles for turning (unavoidable due to the way catenary graphics work)

Other Bugs:
Strings ("Tramway construction" etc.) will appear as tram-specific text in OpenTTD (strings cannot be reliably changed in OpenTTD)
Autorail icon and cursor not altered (on the todo list)

Instructions:
Load like any other GRF, you are advised to unload any other tram GRFs to prevent clashes. This set uses vehicle IDs 44, 45, 46 and 47 (these obey the reccomended road vehicle ID usage). Do not use with any other tramway graphics! Vehicles are available from 1980 to 2080 in the temperate, sub-Arctic and sub-tropical climates.
Usage is exactly the same as tramways and trams, simply build the track as normal. NOTE: like tramways vehicles cannot overtake or turn around without a half tile of track for turning in, there are no specialised track graphics for these half tiles, so be careful as they are not very obvious!
If the tracks are blocking you view you can make them transparent by toggling catenary transparency.

Creating your own Vehicles:
Coding is exactly the same as normal trams but with altered offsets. All vehicles use standard (original graphics) sized sprites, feel free to decode and copy the offsets if you want to create vehicles for these tracks!

*edit* 17/07/2008
Added info about making tracks transparent
Corrected statements about restrictions in OpenTTD

And this all brings me to my first question... Why do the turning tiles (half tiles) for tramway catenarys not have their own graphics? It would look better if they did, and it would help this set if there was

Tupperwal? Nope. Wuppertal!

Isn't the track and pillars too thick?

Thanks A LOT Zephyris, great job! Works fine in OpenTTD.

P.S. Is that just a coinsidence you posted it after I suggested it?

Isn't the track and pillars too thick?

Mmm, probably, I may shrink them (particularly the pillars) at some point...

P.S. Is that just a coinsidence you posted it after I suggested it?

Yup, total coincidence! Unfortunately the suggestion you put forward is nowhere near as simple as you thought, but you can enjoy these graphics till its done...

And just to show what the turning track half tiles I would like to include (but can't) and what the matching pieces would look like for the tramway catenary. Does anyone have any info on why the game doesn't support and the original tramway graphics do not use these catenary tiles?
Note: original tram track graphics by PikkaBird, these have been modified from them without permission. DO NOT use them without permission!

Zephyris wrote:Strings ("Tramway construction" etc.) will appear as tram-specific text in OpenTTD (strings cannot be changed in OpenTTD)

Technically you can change OpenTTD strings, but OpenTTD does not guarantee that strings will remain at the same ID.

Zephyris wrote:Autorail icon and cursor not altered in OpenTTD (these sprites can only be altered at the same time as all the new GUI sprites)

This is wrong. With action 5 you can replace a subset of sprites at *any* offset for OpenTTDs flags and GUI sprites. You have to set the 7th bit of the type to do that though.

With action 5 you can replace a subset of sprites at *any* offset for OpenTTDs flags and GUI sprites.

I did not know this! I shall do this!

Rubidium wrote:With action 5 you can replace a subset of sprites at *any* offset for OpenTTDs flags and GUI sprites. You have to set the 7th bit of the type to do that though.

Isn't that bit 7 (which would be the 8th bit?) -- at least that's what the wiki claims...

Zephyris wrote:I did not know this! I shall do this!

What have I said about reading the documentation when it gets updated?

Is there any chance to make this a second kind of tramways, so that you can still use the old ones & this one together? Would be even cooler
But looks great, anyway

Somehow I missed this topic altogether, until now that is

This is very awesome, Zephyris! How are you able to come up with ideas like this? Very nice indeed!

Zephyris, this is very cool.

Very very awesome work.

Zephyris wrote:

Isn't the track and pillars too thick?

Mmm, probably, I may shrink them (particularly the pillars) at some point...

Nah, they look pretty decent, considering how heavy the stuff will be, they have to be thick to support it all

But they block too much and so cause visibility issues.

But they block too much and so cause visibility issues.

In some ways this was kind of the idea! To make nice contested futuristic cities... It does make visibility harder, but transparency is your friend! I do want chunky pillars, but they may be a bit too chunky at the moment.

Zephyris, this is very cool.

Thanks!

This is very awesome, Zephyris! How are you able to come up with ideas like this? Very nice indeed!

I try to do interesting things with my GRFs, push for new ideas and potential new features and trying to stick right to the cutting edge!

Is there any chance to make this a second kind of tramways, so that you can still use the old ones & this one together?

Sadly not in the near future. There is a general aim to add new transport types (newGRF routes/newroutes) but I don't think it ever really got off the ground in TTDPatch or OpenTTD.

What have I said about reading the documentation when it gets updated?

That its easy to miss things when you are learning how to do them for the first time? But yes, I have found it in the documentation now so will be able to update it without pestering for help.

If they can be made translucent and transparent, I'm all for the current tracks (although maybe a shade thinner)

Without the ability to see through them, however, they'll get in the way too much for me

Suspended monorail tracks are made transparent with catenary graphics...

Rubidium wrote: Technically you can change OpenTTD strings, but OpenTTD does not guarantee that strings will remain at the same ID.

Fair enough, but is there a list of those IDs? Specifically, I would like to change the "Maglev Construction" group of strings (for the Japan Set). We currently use the IDs on the TTDPatch Wiki which only work in Patch. (Sorry for the OT post).