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Re: Wasteland [WIP] - 0.5.0 Released Sept 24, 2020!

Posted: 10 Oct 2020 18:38
by Andrew350
Fuerfrost wrote: 10 Oct 2020 16:14 Actually... Why not do it by date? First X years are destroyed industries, next X years are premodern industries like industrial revolution Era, then it leads into modern or future or atomitech stuff?
Same reason I don't change other things by date I guess - there's no way of knowing how much progress there should be by a given date. If I say advanced industries should start appearing after 50 years, but you've only just started "rebuilding" the world at that point, it doesn't make sense for advanced industry to start appearing yet. It's the same reason nature never grows back and towns never renew on their own; everybody's pace is different and scaling those things to align with both short and long games is nearly impossible. It would almost require it's own sort of "daylength" setting to scale progression to your playstyle.

It's certainly possible, but would need a complete redesign of the economy (and everything else) to make it work, and I've been trying to avoid doing exactly that :mrgreen:

Ideally there would be some sort of correlation between what you've accomplished in the game and what opportunities start appearing, sort of like a tech tree, but there's really no good way to do that in NewGRF.

Re: Wasteland [WIP] - 0.5.0 Released Sept 24, 2020!

Posted: 10 Oct 2020 21:18
by Simozzz
Well, I think there is actually a way to simulate rebuilding of industries.

Each tile have acceptable cargoes that can be changed. Look at ECS powerplants or factories.

If it possible to have only construction materials accepted before n amount of it supplied - than it is what needed. And there could be simple low-producing logging or scavenging camps or something similar to have limited supply of construction materials at the beggining.
As downside I see - there will be construction materials as accepted cargo in each type of industry window then.

Also, when I tried to rebuild megapolis type city - it removed all destoyed houses and didn't build enough new ones to keep it supplied. Now it is a ghost town litterraly.

Re: Wasteland [WIP] - 0.5.0 Released Sept 24, 2020!

Posted: 24 Dec 2020 00:35
by Andrew350
Some time ago (years?) I posted a pic of some maglev track sprites I was working on. It wasn't until I coded them into the game that I realized a problem: due to the way junctions are composited together by pasting the same set of basic sprites on top of each other, the result was a broken mess. Other than making a new design for the tracks (which I didn't want to do) there was really nothing I could do about that, so I put it on the back burner and forgot about it for a while.

Recently I've been mulling around some ideas in my head about redesigning the train roster and railtypes to go with it, and since maglev will be the 'final' railtype I decided to revisit these sprites. Luckily, as of OpenTTD 1.10 we (NewGRF authors) now have the ability to draw custom sprites for each individual junction combination. I'm not sure if any railtype sets take advantage of this ability yet, but it could allow for some nice improvements to sets doing similar odd track arrangements like 3rd rails, etc.

I for one am loving this feature, even if I only use it in this one situation, the improvement is worth it :D

maglev_junction_comparison.png
maglev_junction_comparison.png (55.19 KiB) Viewed 2236 times
It does take a bit of extra work to get all 63 sprites in place, but really once a few basic combinations have been ironed out the rest is just copy & paste. As a bonus the resulting spritesheet looks like an alphabet of rune markings:
maglev_precombined.png
maglev_precombined.png (11.49 KiB) Viewed 835 times
And since I'm attaching the spritesheet I may as well post the template to go with it, in case someone may wish to use it:

Code: Select all

template template_railtypes_precombined_1 (x, y) {
	[ x,           y,       64,    31,     -31,        0]
	[ x+69,        y,       64,    31,     -31,        0]
	[ x+138,       y,       64,    31,     -31,        0]
	[ x+207,       y,       64,    31,     -31,        0]
	[ x+276,       y,       64,    31,     -31,        0]
	[ x+345,       y,       64,    31,     -31,        0]
	[ x+414,       y,       64,    31,     -31,        0]
	[ x+483,       y,       64,    31,     -31,        0]
	[ x+552,       y,       64,    31,     -31,        0]
	[ x+621,       y,       64,    31,     -31,        0]
	[ x+690,       y,       64,    31,     -31,        0]
	[ x+759,       y,       64,    31,     -31,        0]
	[ x+828,       y,       64,    31,     -31,        0]
	[ x+897,       y,       64,    31,     -31,        0]
	[ x+966,       y,       64,    31,     -31,        0]
	[ x+1035,      y,       64,    31,     -31,        0]
}
template template_railtypes_precombined_2 (x, y) {
	[ x,           y,       64,    31,     -31,        0]
	[ x+69,        y,       64,    31,     -31,        0]
	[ x+138,       y,       64,    31,     -31,        0]
	[ x+207,       y,       64,    31,     -31,        0]
	[ x+276,       y,       64,    31,     -31,        0]
	[ x+345,       y,       64,    31,     -31,        0]
	[ x+414,       y,       64,    31,     -31,        0]
	[ x+483,       y,       64,    31,     -31,        0]
	[ x+552,       y,       64,    31,     -31,        0]
	[ x+621,       y,       64,    31,     -31,        0]
	[ x+690,       y,       64,    31,     -31,        0]
	[ x+759,       y,       64,    31,     -31,        0]
	[ x+828,       y,       64,    31,     -31,        0]
	[ x+897,       y,       64,    31,     -31,        0]
	[ x+966,       y,       64,    31,     -31,        0]
}
template template_railtypes_precombined (x, y) {
	template_railtypes_precombined_1 (x, y)
	template_railtypes_precombined_1 (x, y+36)
	template_railtypes_precombined_1 (x, y+72)
	template_railtypes_precombined_2 (x, y+108)
}

Re: Wasteland [WIP] - 0.5.0 Released Sept 24, 2020!

Posted: 24 Dec 2020 01:34
by Quast65
Andrew350 wrote: 24 Dec 2020 00:35 I'm not sure if any railtype sets take advantage of this ability yet
Extremely interesting!
I am fiddeling a bit with railtypes and this is something that I may need to get the idea that I have to work. :D
Thnx for putting this feature in the spotlight!

Re: Wasteland [WIP] - 0.5.0 Released Sept 24, 2020!

Posted: 24 Dec 2020 03:57
by Fuerfrost
I've really got to figure it how to make newgrfs... :roll:

Re: Wasteland [WIP] - 0.5.0 Released Sept 24, 2020!

Posted: 24 Dec 2020 19:37
by Andrew350
Mwahaha! :twisted:

Who cares about practicality when you've got jet trains! :twisted:

santa's_sleigh.png
santa's_sleigh.png (36.75 KiB) Viewed 2126 times
Also Merry Christmas everyone :)

Re: Wasteland [WIP] - 0.5.0 Released Sept 24, 2020!

Posted: 24 Dec 2020 19:45
by kamnet
Seems to me like that engine should be double in length. Like, built out of a discarded small jet body. :)

Re: Wasteland [WIP] - 0.5.0 Released Sept 24, 2020!

Posted: 24 Dec 2020 20:21
by andythenorth
Andrew350 wrote: 24 Dec 2020 19:37 Who cares about practicality when you've got jet trains! :twisted:
Nice :D

Re: Wasteland [WIP] - 0.5.0 Released Sept 24, 2020!

Posted: 06 Jan 2021 09:20
by Andrew350
I had a rare itch to do some drawing tonight, so while watching TV I decided to do some multitasking, and I made some improvements to one of those terrible 5-minute placeholder house graphics that have been sitting around forever just waiting for some attention. Lately I've been trying to focus more on emulating the original base set because of it's superior pixel art, while not overpowering the muted tones of OpenGFX, so I tried to incorporate that into this improved iteration:
builing_1_new.png
builing_1_new.png (8.29 KiB) Viewed 1954 times
I can only hope to get somewhat close to the original art style, but at the very least it is a huge improvement over the original placeholder sprite :)

Re: Wasteland [WIP] - 0.5.0 Released Sept 24, 2020!

Posted: 08 Jan 2021 03:04
by 2TallTyler
A big improvement! I too like the Foster graphics, and this emulates it well. The rooftop garden dome is a nice design feature. :)

Re: Wasteland [WIP] - 0.5.0 Released Sept 24, 2020!

Posted: 10 Jan 2021 08:53
by Andrew350
Lately I've been playing quite a bit of OpenTTD, most of it with Wasteland. I've actually managed to make a game last for almost 300 years, which is by a wide margin the longest I've ever managed to stay interested in one game :P But all the while I've been collecting ideas and thoughts on things I'd like to change, and have been starting to implement some of them over the past few weeks.

A big part of my recent work on Wasteland has been thinking of ways to improve/extend the core gameplay. Since 1.9, OpenTTD increased the amount of cargo slots for industries and houses, which opens up some possibilities which were either impossible or too complicated before. I still don't want too much complexity for the core gameplay just to be clear, but a little more of a challenge couldn't hurt ;)

Below I've outlined some thoughts on some of the improvements I've been considering. Keep in mind, with the exception of the wastelanders mechanic, this is just brainstorming and prototypes, I haven't committed to anything yet :)

Wastelander Production Boost

One of the odd things in the current gameplay is the fact that Wastelanders seemingly take a one-way trip to work in the mines; never to return. It's a little morbid, honestly :lol: But due to the old 3-in, 2-out cargo slot limitation for houses, I was unable to add acceptance of another cargo since they were all being used for town growth cargos. That is no longer the case :)

wastelanders_industry.png
wastelanders_industry.png (36.41 KiB) Viewed 1832 times
I have added a new cargo called Tired Wastelanders which are "produced" by the mine industries when you deliver wastelanders for the production boost. It is a 1:1 ratio, so as long as you keep exceptional service, you get all your workers back for some profit on the return trip. There is a slight caveat though; anything less than 100% station ratings will still mean some workers end up getting left behind, so it seems your quality of service will actually determine how many survive the work day. But hey, mining is a dangerous occupation ;)

In addition to making it a two-way profit stream, I've also added the ability to quadruple production by delivering a high number of Wastelanders (amount TBD), making the boost mechanic even more of an attractive option. Previously I would usually ignore it, but now there is a much greater reward for taking the time to set up company towns for supplying workers to your mines :)

Ideas For Town Growth Changes

I have found two things which annoy me about the current process for growing towns:
  • Towns stop accepting town growth cargos after getting to the last stage. This leads to an endless shuffle of vehicles when growing multiple towns at once, and often it just feels like busy work rather than an added challenge to overcome.
  • The transition to self-sustained houses happens without direct action from the player; it just sort of "happens" at a predetermined point, and a little too quickly. This compounds the issue above, because you might be paying attention elsewhere and not realize this transition has occurred, causing you're network to suddenly stop being useful on the last leg without notice.
On my first point, I have noticed that often there is enough challenge in just getting the production and distribution of town growth cargos in the right areas, so the added "challenge" of having to constantly adjust my network to remain useful is a little overkill. I feel like allowing towns to continue accepting cargos like food and water indefinitely will still provide a challenge, since delivering your often-limited resources to a town which doesn't need it should be enough motivation to shift things around, without it being forced upon you.

Solving the second point basically boils down to adding some additional complexity to somehow give that control to the player, and I have some ideas:
  • Extend on the current idea of simply delivering more cargos to initiate the final houses to appear. This could involve increasing the complexity of the building materials chain to include some advanced materials production for the final stage, or adding something entirely different.
  • Electricity (see below)
  • Some mix of the two
Extending the current industry chains would be the "easy" option, since it would just follow the same formula of the other stages of town growth. Set up industry chains and deliver the end product to towns. I haven't yet thought of any solid plan for what these cargo chains may look like, but an extension to the building materials chain seems like the most obvious choice.

I've even toyed with the idea of splitting Building Materials into separate cargos, and depending on which of those cargos you deliver (e.g. Steel, Concrete, Glass, etc.) it would change the resulting look of the town's final stage. This would be quite an undertaking graphically, however, so I'm probably not going to do that for now, but it's a fun idea :)

Electricity

Next to food, water, and good building materials, nothing else seems more appropriate as a requirement for building an advanced city than electricity. This is slightly problematic, though, since there generally isn't anything interesting about transporting electricity. Setting up cargo chains to produce electricity can be interesting however. There are a couple of options:
  • Go the BSPI route and simply check if a power station within the town's authority area is generating power.
  • Require the generated electricity to be transported to the town.
  • A combination.
My overall preferred option looks something like option 3. Power plants still spawn sparsely around the map, but power must be initially transported to towns in order for the "renewed" stage of buildings to appear (in addition to food, water, and building materials of course). Once you are ready to cut off service to a town, you can build a funding-only municipal power station in or near that town which will then allow self-sustained buildings to appear and the town can then grow without any town growth cargos.

In this scenario, the player must build a (very expensive) fusion generator in each town at the final stage in order to initiate the construction of self-sustained buildings. I like it because it requires a direct action to achieve the final stage, and provides a challenge in the form of earning enough money to build the industry (makes a good money sink ;)). The downside is that it is more complex, both for the player and implementation-wise, to make both of these work together. It also may not be clear that you need to fund an industry to achieve the final goal, but Wasteland is already difficult if you don't read the instructions, so I think that's a minimal concern.

Also of note is that as of this writing, NML can't access town variables, which makes this currently impossible. I'm also not 100% sure if communicating information between industries and houses through town registers is even possible; I doubt it has been tried before. It seems like it should be possible, but I won't know until NML gains this functionality so I can try it (I can't be bothered to write the NFO to test it now :P). There is a patch to add this functionality awaiting completion, so perhaps it's not too far away :)

Transporting Power

The challenge with doing electricity like in option 2 is the transportation aspect. It has been done before, but not very successfully. The trouble is that wires on tall poles don't work as a transport medium, because vehicles can't be offset far enough (along with clipping and other issues), and short poles just look goofy. Also transporting electricity is boring :P

I decided to try tackling this issue with an unconventional approach: making the power delivery system a conduit instead of wires. Before anyone cries out, yes it is unrealistic looking and ridiculous, I am aware of that :P However, a 'conventional' approach to power transmission (i.e. tall poles) really isn't possible, and with this setup it is intended to be buried with tunnels instead of running exposed on the surface (although nothing stops you from doing that):

power_conduit.png
power_conduit.png (244.12 KiB) Viewed 1832 times
I've coded this as a tramtype so that vehicles can travel both ways, and it allowed me to put a "fence" around it to keep curious people and critters from wandering into a death trap (see, I care about realism a little :P) There are obvious flaws, most notably the road stops leave much to be desired, but someday that should be possible to fix. I know someone will complain the conduit is too big, but I tried smaller sizes and it either looked pitiful and uninteresting, and/or the vehicles looked awkward travelling along it/them. Plus putting mains power at ground level with deadly creatures and rogue factions running around probably deserves some protection, so adding a bit of girth feels like the right choice :P

As with the previous ideas of electricity transport, the "vehicles" are just sparks which run along the conduit. To emphasize the fact that transporting the electricity is not the main point, there won't be any "roster" to speak of, just a simple vehicle to achieve the goal of moving power from A to B. I feel like it should be as simple as possible to avoid power transport becoming too tedious. It's setting up the production which should be the challenge, not necessarily the distribution.

The question is: Is this desirable or interesting, or will it just be annoying? Transporting electricity is boring, but so is just having it magically work without any infrastructure, so is there any value to having it at all? It's something I'll have to experiment with, and see if it fits or not. It's just one proposal to fix the town growth issue :)

Final Thoughts

Soooo, yeah, that's my general plan right now. I haven't started coding the industries or the additional town growth stuff yet (just the wastelanders bit), I'm still ironing out the details before I dive into that mess. I just wanted to share a basic roadmap for where I'm heading with the set, and of course hear opinions. I'm also still working on rebalancing the vehicle rosters, currently the new train roster seems to be providing a nice challenge in testing, at least the AI fails where I want it to and succeeds where it should. My personal testing on hard settings shows it to be a challenge in the beginning, but it will take some time to know if the later vehicles are ok; lots more playing needed to get the full experience :)

Anyway, if you have any thoughts let me know!

Re: Wasteland [WIP] - 0.5.0 Released Sept 24, 2020!

Posted: 10 Jan 2021 11:48
by kamnet
A thought on electricity - make it both mandatory and expensive to build infrastructure, and expensive-ish to transport, with local power building (if you can do it) being a the most cost-efficient option. At the same time, give a reward to the players who can build the infrastructure by also allowing conduit to transport water at a significantly cheaper price than vehicles.

Where do your tired Wastelanders go?

Re: Wasteland [WIP] - 0.5.0 Released Sept 24, 2020!

Posted: 10 Jan 2021 12:07
by Quast65
kamnet wrote: 10 Jan 2021 11:48 electricity
+
kamnet wrote: 10 Jan 2021 11:48 water
Image
:]

Re: Wasteland [WIP] - 0.5.0 Released Sept 24, 2020!

Posted: 10 Jan 2021 13:58
by Fuerfrost
I have always wanted the full FIRS extreme experience within wasteland, but my hopes of that ever coming to any kind of satisfying fruition have always been kept buried safely under the cheap pizzas in my deep freezer, perhaps one day to be utilized, but more likely just getting thrown out after a sad decade of forgotten existence.

With a post like this, it just might be time to bring it out to the fridge to thaw out.

+1 on electricity. However, I'd like to see a variety of electricity supply options. Scavenged solar and wind would be excellent interim solutions for small towns still growing, hydro electric dams would make good existing regional power providers, but not able to be built or something, while your fusion option would be the only one capable of providing enough power to the electricity hungry, late game, mega cities of the grim future.

Also, I want to see a much longer scrap phase. I feel like my cities tend to grow through that in like a year, developing way faster than they should.

Re: Wasteland [WIP] - 0.5.0 Released Sept 24, 2020!

Posted: 10 Jan 2021 19:01
by piratescooby
kamnet wrote: 10 Jan 2021 11:48 A thought on electricity - make it both mandatory and expensive to build infrastructure, and expensive-ish to transport, with local power building (if you can do it) being a the most cost-efficient option. At the same time, give a reward to the players who can build the infrastructure by also allowing conduit to transport water at a significantly cheaper price than vehicles.

Where do your tired Wastelanders go?
Tired Wastelanders can go to the pub ......

Re: Wasteland [WIP] - 0.5.0 Released Sept 24, 2020!

Posted: 10 Jan 2021 23:31
by Andrew350
kamnet wrote: 10 Jan 2021 11:48 A thought on electricity - make it both mandatory and expensive to build infrastructure, and expensive-ish to transport, with local power building (if you can do it) being a the most cost-efficient option
My thought was to make conduit very expensive to build, but wasn't so sure about operating costs. In fact I almost wonder if electricity should have any running costs at all and only make a minimal profit. Think of it more like a community service. I'm not sure though.

Municipal power plants built for the last stage would be stupidly expensive to build, like many tens or even hundreds of millions, but require nothing and therefore incur no costs at all other than the one-time lump sum.

As for water flowing through electrical conduit....not so sure about that :P (I know it looks like pipeline, but it's not) Besides, water is already very profitable with other transport options, adding another low cost option doesn't feel necessary, but I guess that depends how the rest of the vehicles balance out :)
piratescooby wrote: 10 Jan 2021 19:01
kamnet wrote: 10 Jan 2021 11:48Where do your tired Wastelanders go?
Tired Wastelanders can go to the pub ......
In a manner of speaking, sure. Tired Wastelanders get transported back to towns with destroyed or shack buildings, where I'm sure many do find their way to the local pub :mrgreen:
Fuerfrost wrote: 10 Jan 2021 13:58 +1 on electricity. However, I'd like to see a variety of electricity supply options.
Ah yes I forgot to add a note about that. I too would like to see different options, however that only really makes sense if there are differences in what they do. Unfortunately, with the transporting method there is no way for houses to check for an amount of cargo being delivered, only if cargo is being delivered. This makes features like better power plants producing more power basically useless for town growth. Doing it the BSPI way it may be possible to check for an amount produced, but that would still be so different from the other steps of town growth which don't require specific amounts of cargo that I'm not sure it would be sensible. Hard to say for sure without trying I guess.

Regardless, my thought was on having at least two power options: an oil fired plant like what's there now to continue giving oil rigs a purpose and serve as an "easy" option, and a more complicated nuclear power chain for maps without water, or just for the extra challenge/profits. Any more than that and it starts to get difficult to justify multiple options leading to the same result, so unless there's a good way to differentiate them I'd rather not go crazy with things like wind/solar/hydo/etc :).
Fuerfrost wrote: 10 Jan 2021 13:58 Also, I want to see a much longer scrap phase. I feel like my cities tend to grow through that in like a year, developing way faster than they should
I fully agree, I think everything goes a little too fast. Part of the issue would be solved simply by making the cargo requirements more difficult, such as adding electricity, but I was also thinking of including a population requirement on the final stages as well. That way you would need to grow a city to say, 10,000 or so, before towns can become self-sustained for example. I'm not sure about that yet though, I'll probably have to wait and see what the other town growth changes do first :)

Re: Wasteland [WIP] - 0.5.0 Released Sept 24, 2020!

Posted: 14 Jan 2021 19:37
by Andrew350
Another attempt at drawing trains, this time I tried my hand at a pointy maglev:

maglev_gen_1.png
maglev_gen_1.png (17.59 KiB) Viewed 1598 times

Re: Wasteland [WIP] - 0.5.0 Released Sept 24, 2020!

Posted: 15 Jan 2021 10:51
by perverted monkey
Hmm, left engine is perfect :D , but right seems to mismatch.

Re: Wasteland [WIP] - 0.5.0 Released Sept 24, 2020!

Posted: 15 Jan 2021 19:09
by Andrew350
Yeah, after looking at it with fresh eyes this morning, it does look pretty terrible :D It's a real b****** of a shape to get right though, I spent about 30 mins trying to fix it and this is what I came up with:

maglev_gen_1_revised.png
maglev_gen_1_revised.png (18.46 KiB) Viewed 1480 times
It still seems a little lopsided somehow, but eh. I'm having horrible flashbacks of drawing ships, all the awkward angles and weird perspective :lol:

Anyway, I tried something a little easier to take my mind off it and made this cute little generic train in full CC:

maglev_gen_2.png
maglev_gen_2.png (12.07 KiB) Viewed 1480 times

Re: Wasteland [WIP] - 0.5.0 Released Sept 24, 2020!

Posted: 16 Jan 2021 13:29
by perverted monkey
It still seems a little lopsided somehow, but eh. I'm having horrible flashbacks of drawing ships, all the awkward angles and weird perspective
Never mind. You cannot have better detail at this scale. Before it looked as if it was a different engine. It's OK now.