NUTS!!! Let's go NUTS!!!

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Re: NUTS!!! Let's go NUTS!!!

Post by Sylf »

khamseen wrote:
Alberth wrote:In the refit window, you can select a single wagon, and then select a refit. There are probably also ways to refit a range of wagons, but I never bothered to find out. It should be on the wiki with the refit description though.
Wow, you just rocked my world! I've been playing since the original TTD and in all these years I have never realised you can click on each of the cars individually in the refit window! Mind=Blown.
It was a new feature for OpenTTD 1.1.0.
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Re: NUTS!!! Let's go NUTS!!!

Post by Alberth »

khamseen wrote:
Alberth wrote:In the refit window, you can select a single wagon, and then select a refit. There are probably also ways to refit a range of wagons, but I never bothered to find out. It should be on the wiki with the refit description though.
Wow, you just rocked my world! I've been playing since the original TTD and in all these years I have never realised you can click on each of the cars individually in the refit window! Mind=Blown.
In that case, I'd recommend reading the wiki somewhat. Take a few spare brains along, as I think you will need some :)
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Re: NUTS!!! Let's go NUTS!!!

Post by khamseen »

Sylf wrote:
khamseen wrote:
Alberth wrote:In the refit window, you can select a single wagon, and then select a refit. There are probably also ways to refit a range of wagons, but I never bothered to find out. It should be on the wiki with the refit description though.
Wow, you just rocked my world! I've been playing since the original TTD and in all these years I have never realised you can click on each of the cars individually in the refit window! Mind=Blown.
It was a new feature for OpenTTD 1.1.0.
I was going to say that makes me feel better. But then I realised that update was from the end of 2010 so it's still 6 years I've been making life harder than it needed to be haha.
Alberth wrote:
khamseen wrote:
Alberth wrote:In the refit window, you can select a single wagon, and then select a refit. There are probably also ways to refit a range of wagons, but I never bothered to find out. It should be on the wiki with the refit description though.
Wow, you just rocked my world! I've been playing since the original TTD and in all these years I have never realised you can click on each of the cars individually in the refit window! Mind=Blown.
In that case, I'd recommend reading the wiki somewhat. Take a few spare brains along, as I think you will need some :)
Yeah most of the time when I play games as much as this one, I live on the wiki, but I've never actually sat and read through a lot of the OpenTTD wiki. Will check it out.
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Re: NUTS!!! Let's go NUTS!!!

Post by DeletedUser10 »

I installed NUTS and there were cluster of bugs around parameter.
I enabled 32bpp, but the train still appears in 8bpp.
There is a parameter to change the signal of wet rail but it still doesn't work.

Also, by the way is it compatible with other train sets?
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Re: NUTS!!! Let's go NUTS!!!

Post by Sylf »

I think the latest version only has 32bpp graphics for slugs.
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Re: NUTS!!! Let's go NUTS!!!

Post by V453000 :) »

32bpp has been removed except slugs, because I will not finish it, definitely not in the primitive style I used, and the trains look uncomparably worse, and inconsistent to top it all off.

If you would still like to access the 32bpp for maglev and chameleon trains, you can still download NUTS 0.7.8 which is under a different GRFID than 0.7.9.

Parameters seem to work, just note that the WETRail signal parameter doesn't change the signals on WETRail, but instead copies the WETRail blocky signals to the other track types.

It should be reasonably compatible with other train sets. It won't work with train sets which define too many railtypes if the total amount of railtypes would exceed 15. And NUTS engines can only haul NUTS wagons. NUTS wagons can be used with other train sets though. This is to prevent breaking the balance of the engines. I honestly don't see why would you use another train set with NUTS because NUTS has so many choices for basically everything you could imagine and more, but it should kind of work. :)
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Re: NUTS!!! Let's go NUTS!!!

Post by DeletedUser10 »

You are true. NUTS is an outstanding set. But sometimes they are too expensive.
So sometimes I use some puny, slow and cheap train to earn first.
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Re: NUTS!!! Let's go NUTS!!!

Post by V453000 :) »

Today I have updated NUTS to version 0.8.0. (that means I made 80 separate version of this NewGRF so far :0 )

Most importantly I removed the "smart" parameter detection if BRIX is on which prevented BRIX from being used as a static NewGRF alongside with NUTS in multiplayer (you had to put both NUTS and BRIX in the save on the server).

I added more proper support for tired YETIs (from YETI Extended Towns and Industries), and all passenger trains can also carry tired or non-tired YETI.

Also NUTS signals are now gone and replaced by BRIX signals as they are IMO superior in every way. The parameters controlling signals are now more interesting, too.

There are a few other fixes, and some of them I don't even remember as I did them a LONG time ago.

Let me know if I broke something that I'm not aware of.
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Re: NUTS!!! Let's go NUTS!!!

Post by nirasa »

En: It's very good that you're continuing. Thanks
Cz: Je moc dobře, že pokračuješ. díky
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Re: NUTS!!! Let's go NUTS!!!

Post by V453000 :) »

Thank you for your kind words,

I have just released NUTS 0.8.1.

I believe one of the generally big problems of NUTS is its unintuitiveness and hacks that are used to achieve the gameplay balance it has. To a person who is new to NUTS (even if experienced with OpenTTD), a lot of things do not seem obvious.

The fact that wagons and engines can't be attached to anything, (mainly passenger) wagons change capacities and loading speeds, are difficult problems to fix at this point. I would even say impossible without sacrificing some important parts of the set.

However, even the most experienced NUTS players usually don't know which engine is efficient for which playstyle.
All engines are usable in any shape or form, but they are usually designed to be used in some specific manner and they excel there.
Today I have added more information to the purchase menu which is trying to point the player in the right direction if they need help.

Another thing missing in the purchase menu was the minimum curve lengths required to let the train run at full speed. This is difficult to explain as the player needs to be aware of the convention according to which the curve lengths are defined, but it's better than nothing and people who play with NUTS are fairly likely to know them anyway I believe. https://wiki.openttdcoop.org/Max_Curve_Speed
purchasemenu-info.png
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As I added the support for YETI for passenger trains, it occured to me that it's not that convenient to build mixed networks with freight and express trains, because there are almost no such pairs which would match in max speed. I went over many trains and changed their max speeds so that now there are many combinations of trains for mixed freight + express networks.

Madness never ends...
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Re: NUTS!!! Let's go NUTS!!!

Post by V453000 :) »

Here's an example of some of the possible late-game train combinations. There are many more combinations of the earlier engines, but the idea is the same.
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Re: NUTS!!! Let's go NUTS!!!

Post by nirasa »

En: Thank you for your excellent work.
Cz: Díky za tvou vynikající práci.
:D
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Re: NUTS!!! Let's go NUTS!!!

Post by V453000 :) »

Thanks :)

I have a topic for discussion:

As I mentioned above, one of the bad parts about NUTS is that it has many rules which wagons can attach to which engines. I can't fix this issue properly by removing it so it has to be somehow explained to the player.

The big question is: what is the most obvious way to do this?

Currently it is handled by purchase menu information and by error messages when the wrong connecting happens.

In the purchase menu it is a fairly long sentence of text right now, and it's only really useful for when setting up autoreplace as you can't try it directly there - in a depot you can however.

Solutions I can think about:
A. Leave it as is.
B. Leave it as is but change "Can only haul MAGLEV INTERCITY engines or MAGLEV EXPRESS wagons." to something like "Connects to: MAGLEV INTERCITY engines, MAGLEV EXPRESS wagons"
C. Remove the text from the purchase menu and only keep it in the error message.
D. Remove the text from the purchase menu and only keep it in the error message. Add background to train purchase menu icons & depot sprites with colours to indicate the connecting rules - this has a problem when an express wagon can connect to both freight or express engines, but express engines can't connect freight wagons.

Also, I generally call classes "CARGO" and "EXPRESS" ... it might be more clear to call them "FREIGHT" and "EXPRESS"? Express is passengers, mail, valuables so I find Express fitting.

Edit:

E. Remove the text from the purchase menu and disallow using multiple engines per train. Add background to compatible wagon. Add background to compatible wagons/engines. (with some solution for freight wagons not connectable to express engines)
F. Remove the text from the purchase menu and only allow engines to duplicate the same engine, not mix with a different one. Add background to compatible wagons/engines (RAIL, MONO, MGLV, CHAMELEON, WETRAIL) and solve the rest of the cases (like freight wagon can't go to intercity engine) by error messages. The background could also be brighter/darker/different for express/freight.
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Re: NUTS!!! Let's go NUTS!!!

Post by V453000 :) »

And as one of the improvements to purchase menu information, loading speeds are now written in the values of cargo/stage when (un)loading. I will replace this to Loading stages: x as that is much less abstract. There is no benefit to knowing the raw value, the player only cares about the number of steps it takes for the train to load, and even if that is too abstract for them, it's just a number where lower is better, without the need to regard or calculate with any other number.
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Re: NUTS!!! Let's go NUTS!!!

Post by nirasa »

I'd be for option B.
I like this idea: Add background to compatible wagons/engines (RAIL, MONO, MGLV, CHAMELEON, WETRAIL) and solve the rest of the cases (like freight wagon can't go to intercity engine) by error messages. The background could also be brighter/darker/different for express/freight.
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Re: NUTS!!! Let's go NUTS!!!

Post by eekee »

V453000 :) wrote:Also NUTS signals are now gone and replaced by BRIX signals as they are IMO superior in every way. The parameters controlling signals are now more interesting, too.
Woot! :D I had been wishing I could have BRIX signals with original terrain. Now, I can! :D

I'm sad existing games don't update, tho. It's clearly using the old GRF; old options and everything.

V453000 :) wrote:I believe one of the generally big problems of NUTS is its unintuitiveness and hacks that are used to achieve the gameplay balance it has. To a person who is new to NUTS (even if experienced with OpenTTD), a lot of things do not seem obvious.

The fact that wagons and engines can't be attached to anything, (mainly passenger) wagons change capacities and loading speeds, are difficult problems to fix at this point. I would even say impossible without sacrificing some important parts of the set.
I've not found it worse than any other train GRF I've ever used, except original. (I haven't played a vast range of GRFs.) In fact, I find NUTS better because it has standard length wagons. This makes it possible to calculate train parameters ahead of time. With other sets, I just have to build a train as a test, and see how it is. TBH, it is easier to do this with NUTS too. (I'm grateful TTD lets you sell vehicles for the price you paid for them if they're new enough.)

The color-coded engine classes also help.
V453000 :) wrote:However, even the most experienced NUTS players usually don't know which engine is efficient for which playstyle.
All engines are usable in any shape or form, but they are usually designed to be used in some specific manner and they excel there.
Today I have added more information to the purchase menu which is trying to point the player in the right direction if they need help.
Yay! I think I got an okay understanding in the end, as good as my understanding of any GRF, (so much ?( lol,) but more help in this area is always welcome.
V453000 :) wrote:Another thing missing in the purchase menu was the minimum curve lengths required to let the train run at full speed. This is difficult to explain as the player needs to be aware of the convention according to which the curve lengths are defined, but it's better than nothing and people who play with NUTS are fairly likely to know them anyway I believe. https://wiki.openttdcoop.org/Max_Curve_Speed

purchasemenu-info.png
Thanks! :D Although, with a lot of faster engines, one just has to accept that almost any curve will slow the train, because that's how TTD is.
V453000 :) wrote:As I added the support for YETI for passenger trains, it occured to me that it's not that convenient to build mixed networks with freight and express trains, because there are almost no such pairs which would match in max speed. I went over many trains and changed their max speeds so that now there are many combinations of trains for mixed freight + express networks.
Thanks, this is good, but... ;) I used to be bothered by it, but very recently I found you can go to the timetable window, and without actually setting a timetable you can set a maximum speed for each section. Maybe it's new in 1.9. Anyway, it's nicer to buy a train which already fits.
V453000 :) wrote:Madness never ends...
NEVAR! :mrgreen:


I love the art of NUTS too; always have. (I don't think I said so before.) Seeing the pretty trains makes me happy! ^.^' It was interesting to read this thread and see where the lighting and color range was decided. Also to see the exact moment slugs got in! :lol:

On the other hand, the pre-attached wagons bug me a lot. This, much more than the actual restrictions, restricts what kinds of trains I put together. It's also no use in my games. I assume it's meant to facilitate auto-replace? Well, I don't use that because the GUI is cumbersome, it's much quicker to replace whole trains. With my experience and NUTS low costs, it takes very little time to reach the stage of the game where I can afford to do that; I can afford to long before I need to.
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Re: NUTS!!! Let's go NUTS!!!

Post by V453000 :) »

That's a great message, thank you for it, it made my day. I'll try to reply to all the things:
eekee wrote:
V453000 :) wrote:Also NUTS signals are now gone and replaced by BRIX signals as they are IMO superior in every way. The parameters controlling signals are now more interesting, too.
Woot! :D I had been wishing I could have BRIX signals with original terrain. Now, I can! :D
You could have always done, that. In fact I do. BRIX has parameter settings, you can disable everything except signals and you'll get that. The only problem comes when a railtype defines its own custom signals, just like NUTS does now. Anyway, both options are there now, however if you get used to BRIX signals and want to use them everywhere, consider setting BRIX as a static newGRF with only signals turned on. There's an example how to set up a static grf here, ask if you need help. :) https://dev.openttdcoop.org/projects/rawr/wiki

eekee wrote: I'm sad existing games don't update, tho. It's clearly using the old GRF; old options and everything.
I'm not entirely sure what do you mean by that... honestly I did not check backwards compatibility and how it behaves with the parameters.
eekee wrote:
V453000 :) wrote:I believe one of the generally big problems of NUTS is its unintuitiveness and hacks that are used to achieve the gameplay balance it has. To a person who is new to NUTS (even if experienced with OpenTTD), a lot of things do not seem obvious.

The fact that wagons and engines can't be attached to anything, (mainly passenger) wagons change capacities and loading speeds, are difficult problems to fix at this point. I would even say impossible without sacrificing some important parts of the set.
I've not found it worse than any other train GRF I've ever used, except original. (I haven't played a vast range of GRFs.) In fact, I find NUTS better because it has standard length wagons. This makes it possible to calculate train parameters ahead of time. With other sets, I just have to build a train as a test, and see how it is. TBH, it is easier to do this with NUTS too. (I'm grateful TTD lets you sell vehicles for the price you paid for them if they're new enough.)

The color-coded engine classes also help.
I guess that's true to some degree, but it really depends on the set. Some of them are quite simple from what remember, some of the more realism-based ones tend to get a bit crazier. Anyway, it's an annoying limitation and should be as simple as possible.

I did not do much changes, it's just a consistent rule:
An engine can attach the same engine again, or its dedicated wagons (all wagons of the railtype for freight locomotives, only express for express locomotives). The exception is Chameleon as it doesn't have its own railtype, yet it is its own class with dedicated wagons.
Originally Superstrong class could not attach express wagons. I guess I did this mainly to give them more feeling of freight only. I could keep this rule, for now I allow them to attach express wagons.
The other exception is wetrail ships, those currently can only attach wetrail wagons, but not another engine. The reason for it is that I didn't want to make another version of the wagons that look like powered, though I guess I could just make the extra engines draw as extra wagons, to allow autoreplace even if your trains have multiple engines.
eekee wrote:
V453000 :) wrote:However, even the most experienced NUTS players usually don't know which engine is efficient for which playstyle.
All engines are usable in any shape or form, but they are usually designed to be used in some specific manner and they excel there.
Today I have added more information to the purchase menu which is trying to point the player in the right direction if they need help.
Yay! I think I got an okay understanding in the end, as good as my understanding of any GRF, (so much ?( lol,) but more help in this area is always welcome.
Yes sir. The info in the purchase menu still isn't too detailed, I don't want to present it as if it is the only possible method to use the engine. It's just an efficiency hint. :)

eekee wrote:
V453000 :) wrote:Another thing missing in the purchase menu was the minimum curve lengths required to let the train run at full speed. This is difficult to explain as the player needs to be aware of the convention according to which the curve lengths are defined, but it's better than nothing and people who play with NUTS are fairly likely to know them anyway I believe. https://wiki.openttdcoop.org/Max_Curve_Speed

purchasemenu-info.png
Thanks! :D Although, with a lot of faster engines, one just has to accept that almost any curve will slow the train, because that's how TTD is.
Actually, vast majority of NUTS vehicles does have some upper limit, have a look at the purchase menu in 0.8.1 :) Basically only the top tier engines in the Fast class do require full-length curves.
eekee wrote:
V453000 :) wrote:As I added the support for YETI for passenger trains, it occured to me that it's not that convenient to build mixed networks with freight and express trains, because there are almost no such pairs which would match in max speed. I went over many trains and changed their max speeds so that now there are many combinations of trains for mixed freight + express networks.
Thanks, this is good, but... ;) I used to be bothered by it, but very recently I found you can go to the timetable window, and without actually setting a timetable you can set a maximum speed for each section. Maybe it's new in 1.9. Anyway, it's nicer to buy a train which already fits.
V453000 :) wrote:Madness never ends...
NEVAR! :mrgreen:


I love the art of NUTS too; always have. (I don't think I said so before.) Seeing the pretty trains makes me happy! ^.^' It was interesting to read this thread and see where the lighting and color range was decided. Also to see the exact moment slugs got in! :lol:
That's awesome to read :) I still think there is massive amount of room for improvement on MANY vehicles, and some things are pretty much missing completely, that's never going to be perfect. If I can get a decent pixel editor in my iPad, I might do some improvements when in in the subway.
eekee wrote: On the other hand, the pre-attached wagons bug me a lot. This, much more than the actual restrictions, restricts what kinds of trains I put together. It's also no use in my games. I assume it's meant to facilitate auto-replace? Well, I don't use that because the GUI is cumbersome, it's much quicker to replace whole trains. With my experience and NUTS low costs, it takes very little time to reach the stage of the game where I can afford to do that; I can afford to long before I need to.
I do very much see where you are coming from with this, for example adding two medium-class engines to the front of the train looks just ugly with the wagon in between. As you point out, it indeed is for lossless autoreplace - being able to experiment and autoreplace between vehicle classes to see which one works for you best is really important in my eyes.
Thinking about possible solutions:
A. keep it as it is
B. make all engines have proper 1-tile graphics so they wouldn't need the extra wagon - I feel like this removes variety a bit too much. Doing it only for the top tier engines would be acceptable but I still don't like it too much.
C. do hacky flipping magic so if you add the second medium engine to the end of the train, the locomotive would be at the end and the wagon in the middle of the train
D. do ultra-hacky magic so if you add 3 engines to a single train, all of them show in the front. This is a possible solution but quite wtf.
E. just remove the extra wagons - lossy autoreplace when you switch to a full-tile engine, I don't like this
F. draw the first unit as invisible and only draw from the second unit of the train. This is not a horrible idea, but for early steamers which are already smaller than the bounding box this would be super weird.
G. add a parameter for removing extra wagons - should be possible, but switching that parameter in a running game would probably crash it... though I guess that's fine given enough warning. I'd like to avoid this option but at the same time it's not the end of the world to add it...

The problem is "only" in medium and strong rail classes so it's not completely disastrous, but I myself don't build dual-engine medium class either anymore. With C. I would.

I'll probably attempt to do C. The rest is a bit too crazy and adding special behaviour at the end of the train for some vehicles is not too dangerous - chameleons already do this actually.

Thank you again for your post :)

BTW: I don't really think the autoreplace GUI is that much of a problem compared to manually replacing all trains on your network :D there's a reason the universal rails were added to NUTS, manually replacing between track types is just so tedious and feels like a stupid job (to me at least).
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Re: NUTS!!! Let's go NUTS!!!

Post by V453000 :) »

Update: would this make you happy? :) Of course the engine can refit to anything so it looks seamless once you do. The capacities and loading speeds are matching as well.
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Re: NUTS!!! Let's go NUTS!!!

Post by V453000 :) »

Eddi pointed out that in my last screenshot it looks like I didn't have train_width_32_px = 1 set.

I did that and I guess it looks nicer and you can tell better where do wagons end and you can count them better, not to mention that you get the vertical lines which show the full tile lengths.

It basically makes trains in the depot GUI appear exactly as on horizontal diagonals in the world.

Coming in NUTS 0.8.2, thanks Eddi :)
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