Tips for making a North American Road Vehicle Set in NML

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NekoMaster
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Tips for making a North American Road Vehicle Set in NML

Post by NekoMaster »

Since I've started playing OpenTTD and hanging around the forums, I've yet to see a proper North American road vehicle set come together mean while we already have a couple of other sets that focus more on European road vehicles, and GRVTS and eGRVTS look and feel more European styled and sort of don't fit in a North american set up.

Now I know I've tried and failed at making a North American Road Vehicle Set in the past, but while I have the free time and the motivation I would like to try and learn how to make a road vehicle set in NML.



Though heres a few issues I have with doing anything

- I loose motivation easily when things get difficult or too much for me to handle.
- I'm still new with NML and at best I can only reuse code that I can understand how to use
- I hate doing sprite work these days, its tedious and takes me a long time to do, especially because I try to make things look better then I probably have the ability to do.

For now to get past a bit of the graphic's hurdle I was maybe thinking of borrowing sprites from other sets that include North American build vehicles, or anything used enmasse in North America (for example, I see a good amount of Mercedes Cargosprinters and Hino Trucks around, even though they're not "American" designs)

I can probably figure out how to do simple single unit stuff, but so far I have yet to tackle articulation which still has me scratching my head (I'm not very good with learning programming, I dunno what it is but a lot of stuff flys right over me no matter how long I stare at wiki's and manuals)

I don't want to come off as demanding or rude, but so far the best way I've learned to code anything is if someone can provide a simple 2-3 vehicle sample thats ready to go as I don't do so well having to comb through the code of more complex vehicle sets. I could probably try looking through the code for HEQ's or RoadHog if the source is available but theres already so much with both sets that I dunno how I would understand anything with so much to look through to figure out how things work.



Anyways, does anyone have any tips for me to help make this happen? I don't really expect anyone to do all the work for me as I know everyone is busy with their own projects and their own lives as well. Though it would be nice if I can get some advice and help making a road vehicle set.

Some things I was thinking about
- How best to decide on which vehicles to include? Since the 1930's American companies have started releasing more and more versions of a brand of vehicle, and after the 80's things start looking rather similar when it comes to trucks, something from 2000 may look only a little more blocky then a 2010 truck.

- How should I organize buses? I was thinking of maybe using the 2cc Bus setup of having Intercity, Suburban and Urban stuff (Though I would call it Intercity, Regional, and Local), though in North America most companies use one type of bus for local and regional stuff and another for long distance stuff. For example, Durham Region Transit where I live uses New Flyer buses for Local/in Town routes as well as regional routes that cover 2-3 cities and even the Pulse route goes from Oshawa to Scarborough using the same new flyer buses (Just with comfier seats). Mean while GO Transit uses their own Coach style buses and double deckers for longer trips.

- How shall I organize the trucks as well? I want variety to make things interesting both visually and gameplay wise but I don't want to make things too difficult. A LOT of trucks don't always have all the options for every cargo, some trucks may only have box and flat bed versions, while some are designed soley for tanker or dumper use. Then you have some that are available with everything, Box, Refridgeration, Tanker, Flatbed, Dumper, etc.
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Re: Tips for making a North American Road Vehicle Set in NML

Post by andythenorth »

Fork Road Hog :twisted: , then
1. convert the cabs to mostly be conventional (bonnet) trucks
2. more B trains

Done?

(That way you get all the automatic cargo sprite generation and recolouring and so on).

FWIW, I tried a lot of set designs for BANDIT and Road Hog. Things to avoid:
- Getting caught up in realistic capacity. Gameplay needs trucks with 25t-60t.
- Single unit (not articulated) trucks that get replaced by articulated trucks in later generation. Makes auto-replace fail because articulated trucks can't use drive-in stops.

A strong choice is also splitting the trucks down by type of body, e.g. flat, box, dump, tanker, fridge etc.

Stuff I tried that didn't work:
- Having similar trucks from two or three manufacturers, with 'strong', 'fast', 'reliable' as differences. Blah blah blah.
- Dunno, I forget the rest ;)

The trams in Road Hog are more US than Europe, or are totally invented.

You'd need python 3 and GCC (for make) to build Road Hog.
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Re: Tips for making a North American Road Vehicle Set in NML

Post by NekoMaster »

I suppose I could work with RoadHog to make a semi-Generic North American Road Vehicle set, though I still would prefer to make something based on real life.

I imagine that the stuff in RoadHog for the British roster is loosely based on real vehicles but with specs and capacities changed up for better gameplay.

Though using roadhog and going the semi-generic route to better suit gameplay means I'll have to draw up brand new stuff which I was trying to avoid for now as I just don't have the patience to draw 8 sprites for each vehicle and do it multiple times for a nice big roster of vehicles. Perhaps I could get away with making some "crappy" sprites for now as place holders until either I get the motivation to make better sprites or someone comes along to do that for me.

As I learn to code I would really like it if I could at least get something off the ground enough that perhaps people will start helping out with the graphics so that I can keep coding and testing while all people have to do is provide the graphics.



One issue I have with coming up with a generic vehicle set of any type is comming up with decent names for vehicles and companies. Though as for designs I could loosely base that on stuff from American and stuff used in america.

Also I dunno how much B-trains are used across the majority of North America, though it would seem they're more often used in the western parts of North america where you can get double's and even triples.

Another thing too, I dunno how common Rigid trucks with trailers are in North america, most trucks since the 1960's for long hauls are Tractor-Trailer combinations aka 18 wheelers, or at least as far as I can tell. Where I live in Canada, most of the freight traffic I see on highways are Rigid trucks (like 5-ton trucks), Single unit tractor-trailers, and the occasional Double with a short pup trailer, though I usually only see that with dump trucks, hopper trucks, and tanker trucks. I've never seen a box truck with a trailer in Ontario.

EDIT : When trying to compile RoadHog -r1179 I run into issues immediately

Code: Select all

D:\USERS\MATTHEW\Dropbox\~ OpenTTD Projects ~\[GRF] ROADHOG>bash
nekomaster@PC1-MATT:/mnt/d/USERS/MATTHEW/Dropbox/~ OpenTTD Projects ~/[GRF] ROADHOG$ make
[GENERATE]
[BUILD] build_road_hog.py
[RENDER NML] render_nml.py
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "src/build_road_hog.py", line 17, in <module>
    import render_nml
  File "/mnt/d/USERS/MATTHEW/Dropbox/~ OpenTTD Projects ~/[GRF] ROADHOG/src/render_nml.py", line 12, in <module>
    import road_hog
  File "/mnt/d/USERS/MATTHEW/Dropbox/~ OpenTTD Projects ~/[GRF] ROADHOG/src/road_hog.py", line 25, in <module>
    from rosters import brit
  File "/mnt/d/USERS/MATTHEW/Dropbox/~ OpenTTD Projects ~/[GRF] ROADHOG/src/rosters/brit.py", line 3, in <module>
    from vehicles import (acton,
  File "/mnt/d/USERS/MATTHEW/Dropbox/~ OpenTTD Projects ~/[GRF] ROADHOG/src/vehicles/acton.py", line 2, in <module>
    from road_vehicle import PaxExpressHauler
  File "/mnt/d/USERS/MATTHEW/Dropbox/~ OpenTTD Projects ~/[GRF] ROADHOG/src/road_vehicle.py", line 13, in <module>
    from chameleon import PageTemplateLoader # chameleon used in most template cases
ImportError: No module named 'chameleon'
make: *** [road-hog-nml] Error 1
nekomaster@PC1-MATT:/mnt/d/USERS/MATTHEW/Dropbox/~ OpenTTD Projects ~/[GRF] ROADHOG$
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# NARS ADD-ON SET 2CC | 2cc Rapid Transit For Me! (2ccRTFM) | 2cc Wagons In NML (2ccWIN)
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andythenorth
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Re: Tips for making a North American Road Vehicle Set in NML

Post by andythenorth »

NekoMaster wrote: EDIT : When trying to compile RoadHog -r1179 I run into issues immediately
Missing python packages. Dunno how it works on windows, but usually this works (in shell / command prompt).

Code: Select all

pip install chameleon
If there's no pip,

Code: Select all

easy_install pip
might work. You'll need a few other things too, ask in irc if, might be more help there.
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ISA
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Re: Tips for making a North American Road Vehicle Set in NML

Post by ISA »

I have been up with some things. But real life ise a big issue. If You want to try to learn and do the codeing give it a go!
I also need to finish some adjustments pointed out by George

http://dev.openttdcoop.org/projects/nart/repository
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