Maglev -> Roads!!

[BobXP]

Hello.

Me and probably all TT players have at some stage noticed the very large differences of trucks and trains - and as trains are rather superior to trucks, I tend not to use them.

So, my next major sprite-tweaking project is converting maglev track to roads. This would mean that you wouldn't be able to use the roads until 2030-ish, but you can always use cht: year for that

What I plan to do is use the road vehicles' sprites for the maglev wagons, and cars for the engines (Anyone wanna draw these for me? ) so that trains would look like a line of cars, lorries and buses, and use slightly-modified road sprites for the track. Oh, and this means drive-thru bus and truck stops too

Any comments?

[Prof. Frink]

Ermm...
How many free train slots do you think there are?

[BobXP]

Ermm...
How many times have you read my post?

The roads are going to REPLACE the maglevs.

Electrified railways on: Railway -> Electrified railway -> Monorail
Electrified railways off: Railway -> Monorail -> Roads

[GoneWacko]

errm

Sounds nice but rows of trucks

Trucker Caravans aren't too common (at least, not for as far as I know...)

[BobXP]

Well, they're only as close as a row of proper trucks in TTD would be!

[GoneWacko]

I am wondering though...

If you plan to replace roads...

That would happen in towns?

And it would also end up making it impossible to use the roads in towns to move your trucks on .

Something of which you have thought, I presume?

[BobXP]

The original roads still exist, and they'll be used in towns, and by the AI if they want to use road transport. You can connect lorry and bus stations to the original roads but not to the new ones, and "train" stations only connect to the new roads. If you build a level crossing of old road/new road, it will appear as a road junction and to distinguish between a crossing and a road junction you must use the Query tool.

Here's a screenshot of how far I am...

[troopper5]

This is getting quite strange & interesting. Lets see how this goes...

[GoneWacko]

So it would definately make the roads in towns useless, apart from them being eye candy?


That's both bad and ok, I guess...

And another Question:
Will you do a set for non-trafficset users? If not, I hereby volunteer to do a conversion.

AND another question:
This would end up making road construction tools obsolete, wouldn't it?
Maybe that could then be available for other things

[BobXP]

So it would definately make the roads in towns useless, apart from them being eye candy?

Yep - but you could still use bus stations on the road. Or, you could make a engine-and-1-passenger-carraige train that would look like a car followed by a bus, and send it down a road-track through the middle of the town.

Will you do a set for non-trafficset users? If not, I hereby volunteer to do a conversion.

If someone gives me the original TRG1R.GRF for Windows version, unmodified, then yes. I've done so many minor graphics tweaks (like fixing the odd transparent pixel here and there) that I must have a backup somewhere, but I seem to have so many copies of the GRF and PCX files (and on three different computers ) that it would take years to find the original.

This would end up making road construction tools obsolete, wouldn't it?
Maybe that could then be available for other things

Yes. I don't really know what to do with the old roads, but unless the AI can be told to use what were maglevs instead of the old roads, and use whatever the old roads were changed into for whatever convienient (which it can't unless the patchteam makes a breakthrough), it will have to be something similar to roads.

So if you have any suggestions for what to do with the old roads, just post!

[BobXP]

Hmm, I seem to have a problem - train wagons are symmetrical, and road vehicles aren't. Damn! Now I'm completely stuck.

[troopper5]

I've never tried to study that damn complicated code of TTD, so I can't help with it.


But anyway, spiritual help is always needed
So, could it be possible to raise these "highways" so they would really look like them?

And also... Transport methods could be: Road -> Electrified -> Highways
This is just a theory but i think it might be possible:
When you use "unifiedmaglev 2", it converts all monorails to maglev right? So if you change appereance of monorail railroad, electrified would remain.

[top_cat19]

Oh, well try and create smaller vehicles to make 2 instead of one and that might hit the price up a bit.

[BobXP]

what, so half the vehicles would be driving in reverse? no thanks!

troopper: it's got something to do with the .NFO file, not sure what tho.

[Raichase]

What you could do (and it would be more productive than just making different roads) is make trams using your idea - a road that was used by trams instead of road vehicles. Sure, road vehicles can't use the tram's roads... who really cares. It is a tram in the game...

Just something to consider instead of making a new type of road that most people won't use (I admit, it may look good, but I would prefer to have electric tracks and monorail thanks).

[troopper5]

Raichase, you are right in that point. But what i thought that he could raise these highways so other road vehicles couldn't get to there.

[BobXP]

If I knew how to edit .NFO files, you could do that. *And* you could have the old road vehicles going under the highways.

But that's something I can't do right now. Gah, can someone make an NFO editor...

[nilsi]

Well, making new waggons with 8 different directions instead of four
is not that hard at all. I do not yet have knowledge about waggon
override but defining just newgraphics that are not symetrical(?)
should be fairly easy if you know the sprite ID.

[top_cat19]

Im developing the pics for bobXP at the moment, they should be ready sometime over the weekend

[George]

the number of directions can be specified with action 1