Invisible Leading Engine/Power Booster GRF

[Emperor Jake]

(The best way to get around the metros would be via a railtype that is compatible with metro and regular tracks )

(Don't give them ideas! )

Except that it exists for ages

I don't think that is compatible with metro (yet). By the way, the Universal railtype is just as much a cheat as this GRF

[coalroads artist]

This is a great bit of work in my opinion. More flexibility for little preferences we all have. Well done!

Now I can add some of the cube box cars from the U.S set to locos in NARS without having to worry about them being recognised as passenger cars Also useful for a few other fun ideas such as Creating a high speed ETD for viewing pleasure, haha.

[V453000 :)]

Unfortunately there is one thing in OpenTTD to remember - the depot counters are ... weird.

Many times before I have noticed that some combinations of short wagons and trains make depot say for example 2.0, but the train does not behave that way (slows in 2 long curves and fits in 2 tile station, or does not fit in the station).

As in the example picture below, the depot counter shows 5.0 but train does not fit into 5 tile long station - weirdly enough, the train loads/unloads with full speed. The train contains 3 invisible engines. I use that many engines because I want 4 engines in total in the end of the game... therefore this issue applies mainly to using such multiple invisible engines, but I suppose with some "other" usages you could get the same results.

Solutions are various:
* either making the stations and all places where trains are intended to stop at least half a tile longer (full tile for stations)
* removing one wagon; when you upgrade to longer wagons in the future, you should not be missing any in the end
* no solution - time will solve it; luckily the train still autoreplaces to length 5, so if you turn wagon removal on, it works just fine and in the end it is likely to get all engines/wagons 0.5 tile long which do not have any such issue with depot counters

I just wanted to point out an issue I have encountered. I guess from the point of this newGRF it is unfixable, so eventual changes are on OpenTTD side.
Just dont be suprised when you get similar issues ... after all they can be solved and I personally have to say I prefer using one less wagon over manually adding an engine to hundreds of trains.

[Ovenbaked]

I have found my favorite use.
Push trains! for smaller lines I sometimes stick a locomotive at the end and the invisible lead at the head, so it looks like the trains being pushed.
It adds a nice variety.

[Katve]

There is one problem with vehicle groups. If you drag Invisible Leading Engine hauled train you will not see where cursor is and grouping is difficult. Can this be solved in next version? (Something like a little square in vehicle listing.)

[Eddi]

It is currently not possible to draw a little square in the vehicle list, without also drawing a square in the map.

solving this is outside the scope of this grf, and must be implemented in OpenTTD first. see here: http://www.tt-forums.net/viewtopic.php?p=972088#p972088

[oberhümer]

I've improved upon this GRF a bit, the unpowered "engine" can now be used to flexibly limit a train's speed (in increments of 20 km/h, about 12.5 mph) by refitting. The idea was to allow auto-refitting at a station, but that appears not to work for zero-capacity vehicles, and a capacity of 1 will make the train load forever; I've already filed a bug report about it.
Here it is anyhow (by the way, it was missing the license).

[oberhümer]

New version that will correctly auto-refit, to any cargo, at a station. Changing speed by auto-refit shouldn't affect anything else, since the used subtypes are (hopefully) unique. If you want to refit cargo and speed at the same time, just make two stops: at the beginning and at the end of the platform.
As illustrated by the screenshot, it amounts to "track types light" with more available speeds.

[Emperor Jake]

Awesome addition! Thanks I'm sure many people will find it useful.

[oberhümer]

Some more ideas, actually:
- "Non-free" version of the power booster, auto-refittable to different power values (in combination with #2?)
- Fairly realistic banking engine that would only have power, running cost etc. and show graphics when refitted to do so, as in auto-refitting in a "coupling station" at the bottom of a hill; eventual addition of a buffer car (between engine and train) that would do the same - or make an articulated vehicle
- originally from the Canadian train set: A "switcher" that is free and invisible when stopped by the player (seems like a small patch is necessary for this, there's only - indirectly - "no current motion" and "hasn't moved for X ticks/days" available).

[Eddi]

actually, you have var B2 ("vehicle status"), bit 1 == VS_STOPPED.

[oberhümer]

Not on the specs wiki, that is... at least for NFO. It also isn't clarified if that bit is only set when the player stops it.

[planetmaker]

Not on the specs wiki, that is... at least for NFO. It also isn't clarified if that bit is only set when the player stops it.

Technically it's mentioned there: http://newgrf-specs.tt-wiki.net/wiki/Va ... 2/Vehicles links to http://marcin.ttdpatch.net/sv1codec/TTD ... hicleArray which explains it (it's at offset 0xB2 - 0x80 = 0x32). And you can use 'current_speed' (offset 0x34 = var 0xB4) to check for the vehicle moving.

[michael blunck]

actually, you have var B2 ("vehicle status"), bit 1 == VS_STOPPED.

Not on the specs wiki, that is... at least for NFO. It also isn't clarified if that bit is only set when the player stops it.

Of course it is.

regards
Michael

[oberhümer]

Ah, but that's not a wiki

[Eddi]

Ah, but that's not a wiki

that's obviously the fault of a certain person who insisted to fork the specs instead of going along with the mainstream...

[michael blunck]

Ah, but that's not a wiki

that's obviously the fault of a certain person who insisted to fork the specs instead of going along with the mainstream...

Indeed. The same person running this forum.

Needless to point out (again) that not delivering the DB is a violation of the claimed GPL. But who cares.


OTOH, it´s always useful to have a second source.

regards
Michael

[oberhümer]

Back to the meat. It seems my addition has become obsolete almost as soon as I coded it: Timetabled maximum vehicle speed
(I wonder if there was some inspiration going on here...)

[Michi_cc]

(I wonder if there was some inspiration going on here...)

If you call a though of "Oh... my... god" inspiration

-- Michael Lutz

[oberhümer]

Well, I'd say the ends thoroughly justified the means Nice bit of coding.