NewGRF: Temperate Oil Wells don't only_decrease

[SirkoZ]

Sorry to spoil the party, but I don´t see much sense in littering the world with lots and lots of tiny .grfs which make behaviour of "large" sets unpredictable. People will for sure collect every .grf encountered on the net and then complain about problems.

Be assured that this is a real problem. I.e., after succeeding in coding your first .grf why don´t you leave it for personal usage?

regards
Michael

I don't think my _only_ increases-for-Oil-Wells-in-Temperate-allowed grf will cause any problems as with the help of the people here on the Forum it's been made to have only 1 function. All other default, expected behaviour is retained. If of course one wishes to make a large industry set of different nature, one has to check what has been done already and then adapt to it although there will be less and less adapting required as the Game is being developed. Wouldn't you agree?

S/Z

[michael blunck]

If of course one wishes to make a large industry set of different nature, one has to check what has been done already [...]

There are already large industry sets, e.g. George´s ECS vectors, just to name one of the most widespread. Did you test yours with it before release? Did you write a "donotreadme" file, bundled with your .grf, in which you explain what your .grf does, including mentioning of any side effects?

Michael

[SirkoZ]

There are already large industry sets, e.g. George´s ECS vectors, just to name one of the most widespread. Did you test yours with it before release? Did you write a "donotreadme" file, bundled with your .grf, in which you explain what your .grf does, including mentioning of any side effects?

Michael

You're right. I have added a note on/in the download page/post.

[athanasios]

Let's hope it will be put into good use in multi player games.

[SirkoZ]

I sure hope so, athanasios. I would even go so far as to suggest it be included in the release version of OpenTTD like the Generic Trams .grf.

[mart3p]

>SirkoZ: To address the concerns of conflicts with other industry grfs, maybe you should make your grf disable itself, if George's ECS or PikkaBird's PBI are detected. It would only mean adding a couple more action 7s...

[michael blunck]

To address the concerns of conflicts with other industry grfs, maybe you should make your grf disable itself, if George's ECS or PikkaBird's PBI are detected. [...]

Yes, because IMO the original behaviour of oil wells closing early is a feature, like so many others in TTD are. You could as well write a .grf to remove all limitations on trains or trucks, etc. That would be something similar.

Things like this should be used with care. And IMO, it would be better to have it as a "patch feature" ("oil wells don´t close") rather than as a .grf which everybody would include but nobody would understand.

regards
Michael

[Hyronymus]

Surely a patch option would be better but am I missing something or isn't it a patch option? It's been requested many times before (even by me) to make oil wells not close down in temperate climate. Now someone releases a grf that does this cunningly and all we do is comment. Come on people, a bit less pessimistic please!

[Purno]

As long as it isn't a patch option, a GRF seems the only solution, isn't it?

[Hyronymus]

As long as it isn't a patch option, a GRF seems the only solution, isn't it?

My point exactly. All the safety measures to avoid collissions with other sets are surely nice but the use of grf's is always at a user's own risk.

[michael blunck]

Surely a patch option would be better but am I missing something or isn't it a patch option? It's been requested many times before (even by me) to make oil wells not close down in temperate climate. [...]

Yes, I thought it was included in TTDPatch´s miscmods settings but obviously it isn´t.

regards
Michael

[Hyronymus]

What's mentioned there was that they don't close down I thought.

[SirkoZ]

Thank you, Hyronymus, for your kind words.

There certainly is not a patch option of any kind for what this .grf does in either TTDPatch, or OpenTTD.
So here we are.

Of course I just might include those action 7's for Pikka's and George's industry_set GRFID's and update the whole grf. Then there's the Note right above the files...

[DaleStan]

As long as it isn't a patch option, a GRF seems the only solution, isn't it?

Actually, it's the converse: As long as it's possible in GRF, it's not going to turn into a patch option.

At least, this is my opinion, and I believe it is Patchman's too. I don't have a citation for the latter, though; just a somewhat vague memory.

[SirkoZ]

As long as it isn't a patch option, a GRF seems the only solution, isn't it?

Actually, it's the converse: As long as it's possible in GRF, it's not going to turn into a patch option.

At least, this is my opinion, and I believe it is Patchman's too. I don't have a citation for the latter, though; just a somewhat vague memory.

OpenTTD developers think so too.

[Purno]

As long as it isn't a patch option, a GRF seems the only solution, isn't it?

Actually, it's the converse: As long as it's possible in GRF, it's not going to turn into a patch option.

At least, this is my opinion, and I believe it is Patchman's too. I don't have a citation for the latter, though; just a somewhat vague memory.

Fine to me too . But that means MB's opinion/comment is the opposite of what you just said, isn't it?

[michael blunck]

Certain things would be more obvious when realised as a patch option than by including it in a (rather obscure) .grf. People in general have an unpleasant habit to collect every .grf available, yet don´t know what it´s good (or bad) for. I´ve seen people complaining about misbehaviour of their games having newgrf.cfg files with a hundred (or more) entries. And BTW, it´s not the "large" .grfs (train, town and industry sets) which are problematic but the vast amount of tiny .grfs.

In principal, yes, everything to be realised by a .grf should be done in this way, rather than introducing new patch features. OTOH, there are already quite similar patch features like this one, it´s something fundamental, having large impact on game behaviour, may interfere with other .grf sets and would be easy to introduce as a patch feature.

Things have changed a bit since Josef was around.

regards
Michael

[mart3p]

>SirkoZ: If you are planning an update to your grf, could I suggest making the grf name more descriptive? At the moment it is named " Only_decrease neutraliser". I think the name should at least mention oil wells. How about "Oil well production increase modifier"?

[michael blunck]

How about "Oil well production increase modifier"?

If it prevents oil wells in temperate being closed down, it should be named appropriately, n´est-ce pas?

OTOH, if it really increases oil well production (and does nothing else), that name would be fine.



regards
Michael

[Lakie]

Collecting every Grf available is likely to cause issues but I see no reason why a small grf like this has caused you to become so 'aggressive' towards the author.
As long as his Grf is loaded before large industry sets, I see no harm in it and it could be quite nice for people to use.

As DaleStan says I don't see much point making a feature which a Grf can already do, if I remember correctly Paper In Temperate was also split off into newGrf form when newIndustries appeared because it was felt that the patch for it was now redundant and rightfully so.

~ Lakie