What are BAD FEATURES?

[V453000 :)]

Hello!

As you might know, there exists some thing called NUTS, which is trying to get rid of many functional restrictions other train sets have.

For example many people get often annoyed by:

- train requiring a caboose/brake van (e.g. Japanese Train Set)
- trains not evolving in some logical system, just "realistically" which means new trains are not better than the choice you already have (e.g. 2cc Train Set)
- train purchase list stupidly long due to flood of useless vehicles (e.g. 2cc Train Set)
- strange wagon lengths which result in non-integer train lengths (e.g. UKRS2)
- former engines being longer -> insufficient wagons during autoreplace to shorter vehicles (e.g. US Train Set)
- train requiring specific consist length in order to work properly (e.g. DB set XL)
- train set not working in all climates (e.g. UKRS)
- train set incompatible with new industries (some old sets)
- no choice of engines, only one viable due to superior power/speed/T.E./capacity/... (e.g. DB set XL)
- not long enough time span or too much focus on one of them (missing early/late game vehicles) (e.g. NARS)

What is your experience with train newGRFs and which features do you remember as the most annoying ones?

I am interested in your thoughts

V

[Purno]

For example many people get often annoyed by:

Where's your source? What research methods to come to this conclusion?

[V453000 :)]

People I talked to e.g. on IRC? How is that even remotely relevant, I am just asking for more ideas? Even if the source was from me myself it is just examples to show what kind of things I am looking for.

But yeah here is your anwer: Listening and discussing with hundreds of players on server through the years I have been there. Research enough?

[Purno]

People I talked to e.g. on IRC? How is that even remotely relevant, I am just asking for more ideas? Even if the source was from me myself it is just examples to show what kind of things I am looking for.

It's relevant because you're voicing critisism on many NewGRFs and claiming there's a significant group of people supporting you in that critisism.

If you're just looking for more ideas, perhaps try to word your post less negatively. None of these sets have "BAD FEATURES". All these features are intentional and fit perfectly in the mindset the devs have. Sure there may be some restrictions not everyone desires, but that's a different thing. And several sets are still in progress and working on 'fixing' things themselves. Making a seperate NUTS-set to fix things for them is just doing the same work twice.

[V453000 :)]

People I talked to e.g. on IRC? How is that even remotely relevant, I am just asking for more ideas? Even if the source was from me myself it is just examples to show what kind of things I am looking for.

It's relevant because you're voicing critisism on many NewGRFs and claiming there's a significant group of people supporting you in that critisism.

If you're just looking for more ideas, perhaps try to word your post less negatively. None of these sets have "BAD FEATURES". All these features are intentional and fit perfectly in the mindset the devs have. Sure there may be some restrictions not everyone desires, but that's a different thing. And several sets are still in progress and working on 'fixing' things themselves. Making a seperate NUTS-set to fix things for them is just doing the same work twice.

Well then, I indeed did hear complaints about those features numerous times so you could indeed say there is a numerous group of people supporting me in that "criticism".

I suppose I am not going to get any constructive suggestions from you so why do you bother writing here?

Sets which have bad features by concept are probably not going to fix them because they are work in progress.

Asking about restrictions there are is completely unbiased if you aim for the player to be restricted as little as possible.


Is it a bad thing to ask people if they have some experience, in order to make something better?

[Purno]

I suppose I am not going to get any constructive suggestions from you so why do you bother writing here?

Because IMO you're taking the wrong course of action here. Instead of making a NUTS set which is somehow gonna fix the "stupidly long list" of vehicles in the 2ccSet, you could participate in the discussion of said set because we're already discussing a way to address that. Your efforts of fixing this would be better spent within the 2ccSet project.

Sets which have bad features by concept are probably not going to fix them because they are work in progress.

Because sets have limited resources. If the 2ccSet project had a coder who could dedicate a lot of time on the project, we'd already have addressed the "stupidly long list". Therefor it hurts me to see someone is willing to fix it, but not in cooperation with the set itself.

Asking about restrictions there are is completely unbiased if you aim for the player to be restricted as little as possible.

Lets not fight about terminology. We better spend that effort fixing things.

Is it a bad thing to ask people if they have some experience, in order to make something better?

No it isn't. But any suggestions to make the 2ccSet better should be made in the discussion topic of that set. What's the point of fixing things in NUTS if it can be fixed within the set itself?

[andythenorth]

BAD FEATURES:

Regearing (waves at Pikka)

Don't ask me, I only use NARS 2 and UKRS 2. I don't know of any other train grfs that are finished. There's some new thing called Iron Horse, but it's rubbish.

[V453000 :)]

oh yeah regearing, well not including that for sure

Purno:

I simply do not think 2cc set (just like vast majority of other train sets based on real trains) can be "improved" to the point where I would be satisfied with it so I just create my own heap of trains and put it together. I dont think that is a bad thing especially as I believe my products are getting born rather quickly and updates are coming quite often. Sorry that your coder did not do what you hoped for.

[lugo]

I think some developers are just adding what they were missing from ottd/ttd. So an intention to create a set might be the wish to get trains and engines they see or know from in real life to be in the game. They than have the generosity to share what they created.
Any restrictions are part of a moddeling process.
What restrictions are there in real life and how can i implement them best with a given set of possibilities in my NewGRF.

I'm sure if you have the same motivation to get rid of the restrictions as the set developers had creating their sets,
you might get rid of them and post your version here. (if the set is GPL of course)

Regearing:
From a coding point of view, it came to my ears that it is a little hard to work with.
But i really, really like that feature and am using it a lot; well knowing there won't be another set with it in the foreseeable future. :/

And to answer your question, there are no restrictions which are annoying to me.
Hell, i even like that breakvan-nuisance!

[YNM]

As a player who almost always build something realistically (and moreover, aesthetically) I don't think those are limitations.

Also there's a goddamit fast fix : just use the invisible leading engine in the front of all your vehicle, this removes all kind of restriction (although that might means it's not as beautiful as before). Also : hey, where's the point having a wagon only in 0.5 increment while support is there for 0.1 increments ?

[andythenorth]

V - I think trains are a really BAD FEATURE. You should get rid of all trains.

[FLHerne]

- I dislike non-'realistic' sets, so obviously I don't mind that as long as progression is generally sane.
- Consist length is a part of 'realism' - I don't much like it being forced, but it's a reasonable decision.
EDIT: - Caboose/brake vans as above.

- Non-integer-length trains are perfectly alright, at least now the depot screen shows such lengths properly.
- Your complaint about locos getting shorter is weird. Why do you care? Template-replacement to add more wagons would be a nice OTTD feature.

- I don't mind sets having different vehicles/behaviour per-climate, although a parameter to override that is nice, but I dislike sets that arbitrarily disable themselves in the 'wrong' one.

Your other few suggestions I agree with.

[PikkaBird]

Okay, three things which come to mind, based on my own recent train set development:

1) Consist limitation (eg requiring a caboose, DBSet train lengths, MU building) is a bad thing. By all means include cabooses and the ability to make "realistic" consists in your set, but leave it up to the player whether they want to be "realistic" or not. The limitations in NUTS feel particularly egregious since it is by definition not a "realistic" set - players don't even have "realism" as a guide. In my opinion, all vehicles buildable in the same depot should be freely mixable.

2) Recentism / familiarity. Sets which are open to contributions tend to suffer from this particularly: everyone models the train they catch to work, so sets end up with 20 variations of current EMUs and very few vehicles for other eras or cargos. Not a problem for NUTS, for obvious reasons.

3) Keep it simple. It's easy to fall in love with your own cleverness when coding features (eg regearing ) and lose track of whether a feature is actually a good idea or not. Generally speaking, subtle features add little to TTD gameplay. Anything which needs explaining in additional vehicle text may as well be left out.

Of the other things you mention, many of them are purely due to the age of the set (no early start dates, limited IDs, climate limited, no newcargo support) or a necessary consequence of basing a set on reality.

The unrealism of NUTS, of course, rather limits its appeal, but removing or streamlining some of its more idiosyncratic features would at least make it more accessible to players. If that's what you want.

[Drury]

- train set not working in all climates (e.g. UKRS)

This is the only item from this list I'm annoyed by - the entire game is made so you have maximum freedom, and then you have one thing that you are restricted from using if you want to play a different climate. However, I believe that's due to toyland using a weird palette/other technical issues with different climates and so I can shrug it off.

I see the rest as a result of your unhealthy obsession with efficiency, but after all, we're all unhealthy in a way... Which is all fine and dandy as long as you don't expect everyone else to be like you. I take the sets for what they are, and usually they are made to be as realistic as possible - and those engineers designing those engines in real life weren't trying to make them "balanced" so that railway companies would have to make choices. No, they all did their best to get them to buy their stuff, and some did tremendously better than others. At the same time there were those less successful engines, which you now consider "useless" These train sets just emulate their efforts. That's what they were made for. You made your own trainset, it wasn't realistic, it was functional. Guess that means there's no problem anymore, no reason to compare it with the other sets as their goals were different. You can't criticize them for not being something that they were never meant to be.

[frosch]

So, basically all arbitrary restrictions a set makes on the player's choices for other game settings are bad.

To add to the list:
* Sets which do not allow playing with breakdowns.
* Sets which do not allow playing with autorefit at stations.
* Aircraft sets which do not allow playing with/without aircraft range.
* Sets which do not allow playing with/without wagon speed limits.

[michael blunck]

It's relevant because you're voicing critisism on many NewGRFs and claiming there's a significant group of people supporting you in that critisism.

Well, by a simple google search, you´d learn that NUTS is a "revolution among train sets" and makes "every train grf from before nuts look like s***". [<- automatically censored by tt-forums, not by me nor original author]

So, IMO, there´s not much reason to evaluate other sets.


But anyway, I think every train set can be blamed for shortcomings, but most of the time these would stem from deliberate design decisions, or are due to its age. W/r to DBXL in this list:

- train requiring specific consist length in order to work properly (e.g. DB set XL)

this seems to be addressing trains with fixed lengths like ICE-3. Although the mechanism to "enforce" this feature has been changed in v0.9, this particular feature is still there in v0.9, not primarily because of RL, but because of balancing reasons.

- no choice of engines, only one viable due to superior power/speed/T.E./capacity/... (e.g. DB set XL)

There IS choice of engines in DBXL, but there is indeed one particular engine (the 103) with superior power/speed. Due to historic significance (s.b.), it couldn´t be ignored. In return, use of this engine is quite limited.

The DB Set is not a "generic" set. It tries to model original vehicles of the German DRG/DB railways, but in such a way that the set remains nicely playable. I tried hard (and maintain it for v0.9) to keep it small and convenient, so many historic vehicles had to be omitted. Which already sparked endless discussions in the past, BTW.

regards
Michael

[PikkaBird]

This is the only item from this list I'm annoyed by - the entire game is made so you have maximum freedom, and then you have one thing that you are restricted from using if you want to play a different climate. However, I believe that's due to toyland using a weird palette/other technical issues with different climates and so I can shrug it off.

IIRC TTDPatch didn't save newgrf information in the savegame. The point of climate limitations was so that you could have different train sets in different climates without needing to swap out config settings.

To add to the list:
* Sets which do not allow playing with breakdowns.
* Sets which do not allow playing with autorefit at stations.
* Aircraft sets which do not allow playing with/without aircraft range.
* Sets which do not allow playing with/without wagon speed limits.

- Breakdowns and wagon speed limits are config options. Sets "forcing" a config option because of the creator's opinion on how TTD should be played is a bad idea.
- Aircraft range is not a config option. If OpenTTD devs think this feature should always be optional, they should make it so.
- In my opinion, sets should either support autorefit completely (ie, any refit you can perform in a depot you can also perform at a station) or not at all. "Realistic" partial refittability causes headaches for players.

Although the mechanism to "enforce" this feature has been changed in v0.9

The whole train set builds as a single articulated vehicle?

[andythenorth]

- In my opinion, sets should either support autorefit completely (ie, any refit you can perform in a depot you can also perform at a station) or not at all. "Realistic" partial refittability causes headaches for players.

+1

+lots

[michael blunck]

Although the mechanism to "enforce" this feature has been changed in v0.9

The whole train set builds as a single articulated vehicle?

For the ICE-3, yes o/c (I got rid of the MORE/STOP from 2005 ). But some of the other train sets got more elaborate code.

regards
Michael

[kamnet]

In my humble opinion, no player actually NEEDS anything more than what the default vehicles already offer. The game is perfect in that regard.

Train sets that offer specific restrictions as a feature isn't a bad thing, it's the desires of the authors to reflect whatever goals they're wanting to accomplish. If you don't like them, you don't have to use the set. You can go back to the default vehicles, or go make your own.

The only two "bad" features that I can think of are features that just end up being too complicated for most users to figure out, and that would be regearing and partial refits. Everything else is pretty simple to understand.