Timberwolf's UK Road Vehicles

[Timberwolf]

Earlier this year I played a long game with a bunch of UK .grf files, including Bob's Random British Vehicles - which is a great set, but I found myself bemoaning the long period between the introduction of the Mammoth Major 8 Mk V in the late 1950s and the Leyland DAF 95XF some time around 1990.

This naturally set me to thinking about a small vehicle set to fill in that perceived gap and sprinkle a few worthy upgrade options around the 1960s and 1970s - and why let a lack of artistic talent get in the way of having a go?

So, I hereby present an early alpha version of Timberwolf's UK Road Vehicles - nine trucks from the history of our haulage industry:



Fancy a closer look?



All of the trucks support 2x zoom, for those of us playing on high resolution screens or small laptops. There are vaguely sensible refits for the default cargoes...



... and a variety of power options!



Plans for the immediate future:

• Extend refit graphics to support FIRS cargo types
• Add more trucks (on the immediate list are Volvo F86, Guy Big J, Scania 3 and 4 series, and some sort of horse-drawn wagon for the early years)
• Gameplay balancing and better vehicle statistics
• Fix the inevitable bugs I've failed to spot
• Maybe, just maybe get together a version that's worth putting on BaNaNaS and the graphics releases forum

As a small set which currently includes no buses, I recommend using Bob's British Buses and of course Bob's Random British Vehicles to round out the numbers. (There's a parameter to disable my version of the Thornycroft J if you'd like to use this set and Bob's at the same time).

The vehicle statistics are currently a blend between reality, gameplay balance, and trying to make each new truck an upgrade in some way. So cargo capacities and speeds may not perfectly match the real world, although sometimes this is purely due to a lack of decent references. If anyone happens to have links to reviews, brochures or other material giving speed, power and weight I'd love to see them - this information is really hard to find for some of the vehicles!

(There is one concession to reality, which is the ability to make all vehicles built after 1991 have a 56mph speed limiter fitted. You can turn this on or off by parameter. Also note that just like the real world, some of the older trucks won't be able to get anywhere near their top speed once you've got a heavy load of coal or iron ore on board!)

Suggestions for trucks are also welcome - preferably ones that were common in the UK (or interesting/notable things built by a UK manufacturer) that aren't already covered by another vehicle set, where there's a reasonable amount of reference material available. I don't want to make any promises as this set is only a little thing I've been messing with on and off in my spare time for the last few months, but if I see something that piques my interest I might have a crack at drawing it.

Have fun!

[kamnet]

Since Bob hasn't released any updates for a long time, and may never do so again, I'd say feel free to include those vehicles in this set, and save a NewGRF slot or two.

[andythenorth]

Will it be GPL licensed? (I might want to adapt some of the sprites for Road Hog).

[Timberwolf]

Hi Andy,

It is indeed GPLv2 licensed! You can find the source here: https://github.com/mattkimber/timberwolfs_road_vehicles

The graphics are in the /png folder (https://github.com/mattkimber/timberwol ... master/png) for normal scale and /2x (https://github.com/mattkimber/timberwol ... /master/2x) for the double-scale stuff. Ignore the rest, it's a horrible abuse of the C preprocessor allied to a terrible works-on-my-machine-only build system that eventually spits out a .grf file

Feel free to use whatever you need for Road Hog.

[Timberwolf]

A minor bump - vehicles are now refittable to the FIRS cargoes, with a couple of new graphics where appropriate:





Updated version in the first post.

[Timberwolf]

And another... this update adds the Foden Alpha as a late-game rigid, introduced in 1997:

[colossal404]

They looks good, superb drawings!

The last one looks strange to my eyes, are 4 axle rigids still common in the UK? I know that there were those famous "octopus" trucks, but nowadays?

[The Growl]

Looks smashing. Whenever I make I new game, I'll deffo be using this alongside road hog.

[+] Spoiler

In the rare occasion I use trucks!

[Timberwolf]

Thanks for the compliments! About the 8-wheeled trucks... they're not universally used, but you still see them quite often used for aggregates and building materials, and occasionally for cement mixers and tankers.

I admit, I don't find myself using trucks in a game of OpenTTD very often!

[Timberwolf]

Some two years later...

I've resurrected this set, expanded it so there are vehicles all the way from 1800 to the present day, and added that must-have new feature of the age, 32bpp graphics. The list of vehicles isn't huge, but there's enough to ensure you've got at least one articulated lorry, rigid lorry, double-decker bus and (after the 1950s) a long-distance coach available for most of the game.

The current roster below:



It's available now on BaNaNaS - have fun!

[acs121]

Hey...do you plan for a parameter to have either 8bpp or 32bpp ?

[Andrew350]

There's no need for a parameter, you can force OpenTTD itself to use an 8bpp blitter if you really want to, since all 32bpp sprites must also have an 8bpp fallback sprite (the quality of which isn't always guaranteed).

No idea why you'd want to though.

[Dave]

Some of these are gorgeous.

[acs121]

There's no need for a parameter, you can force OpenTTD itself to use an 8bpp blitter if you really want to, since all 32bpp sprites must also have an 8bpp fallback sprite (the quality of which isn't always guaranteed).

No idea why you'd want to though.

How do i force 8bpp ?

[sevenfm]

Very nice set. I have a few suggestions/comments, if you don't mind:
1. Horses look like ponies, especially when used together with other sets where horses usually twice as large.
2. Any chance for option to use realistic vehicle load, to use with realistic sets?
3. It would be great to have some more early steam vehicles, like early steam buses from 19 century (Bob's buses set has Leyland from 1830 if I remember correctly).

Thank you!

[Timberwolf]

Thanks for all the feedback!

I'm definitely looking to add a few more vehicles over time - some early vehicles such as the Leyland van and Hancock Enterprise so you don't have 100 years with only horse-drawn vehicles, but also some more options for the later game including vans, minibuses and minicabs for low demand routes, and to round out the bus roster with some earlier coaches and a few more single deckers.

The horses are a difficult one - even at 2x you have to make a tough trade-off between detail on smaller objects, and consistent scale. I already have a few problems with that in the set: most of the early vehicles are bigger than they should be, and I'm still half-thinking that they should all be reduced in size and tidied up so an X-Type isn't nearly the size of an Olympian. But in general I've erred on the side of scale rather than detail.

To illustrate, here's a screenshot of some eGVRTS vehicles and mine:



You can see the problem in the middle of that picture - eGVRTS's horses are nearly the size of a Routemaster, or indeed its own double-decker buses! Even mine, tiny as they are, are still too large compared to the bus. There's nothing wrong in that: the eGVRTS authors faced the same trade-off and chose to go further for detail at the expense of scale. I went more toward the opposite direction, which is fine until you use both those sets together and end up with your wagons hauled by a mix of ponies and mutant horses.

Realistic capacities should be easy enough to implement. The buses already use their correct seating capacities (or as good enough guess as I could make with the information available), so it's just the freight vehicles that need a parameter. Although I'm thinking of splitting that into two different parameters:

• Realistic modern vehicle capacity
• Realistic early vehicle capacity

The first one is a simple case of making sure the modern vehicles are capped at 44 ton gross. OpenTTD is fine with this gameplay-wise; it's about the capacity of the original road vehicles after all. They're a bit less profitable and a bit less competitive against rail, but if you've been playing since the 1994 demo disk you'll be used to that!

The second one brings some problems unless you have a custom industry GRF or some kind of game script, because the game mechanics aren't set up for a vehicle only carrying 1-2t of payload. You end up with realistic loads but a very unrealistic loading bay to handle hundreds of vehicles, or a very unhappy industry and not enough cargo income to survive. I can put it in there because it's easy for custom content to change those things and give you a "realistic" experience of slowly transporting small amounts of good by road until the invention of the steam railway, but IMO it's still worth a separate switch as it has a much bigger gameplay impact than making the later vehicles less over-generous does.

[sevenfm]

The height of your horses looks ok for me, but they look too short, maybe stretch them a bit horizontally if it's not too much work? (or they are too close to a cart so it makes that effect?)
I will be happy to see some more early steam vehicles, as I really miss them in my 19 century games - EGRVTS is great but far from being realistic and Bob's early vehicles don't work well for me in terms of balance.
As for two options for realistic capacities - I think it should be ok, though I personally don't see small early capacity as a big problem, as early in the game main transport is Sailing Ships and horses are used only on short routes (and there is possibility to use Early Rail set with horse trains). Also in Polroad set that I use there are heavy horse carts that can carry much more but at slow speed, maybe you could use similar approach if you are interested in adding more horse vehicles.

[acs121]

snip

A bit of a question. How do i force the normal zoom sprites ? I'm using trg1r and it looks real damn ugly with original roads and extrazoom vehicles...

[Andrew350]

How do i force 8bpp ?

In your openttd.cfg file find the line that says "blitter =" and add either one of the 8bpp blitters described here to that line: https://wiki.openttd.org/Blitter

Just don't be surprised if some 32bpp sets look really bad this way...

As for your second question:

How do i force the normal zoom sprites ?

Change your game settings so you can only zoom in to 1x zoom.

[Timberwolf]

Version 19 is now available on BaNaNaS.

Features:

• New, longer horses! 100% of people in our customer survey said, "yes, those do look like they might be longer".
• Parameter for more realistic speeds and capacities of pre-1920 vehicles.
• Parameter for more realistic capacities of post-1920 vehicles.
• Added the Hancock Enterprise steam bus, introduced in 1833.