Timberwolf's UK Road Vehicles

[Timberwolf]

A small update - Vehicles is the first of my sets to benefit from the "improved detail"/"influence renderer" version of GoRender. While quite subtle, 2.2.3 features improved sprite detail over previous versions, especially in the 1x zoom level.

I do have greater plans for Road Vehicles once I get Trains to a point where I feel I've suitably captured more than enough Tube units - it will likely be a rather major change from what has gone before. (Time dependent, and also at risk of Stations becoming my favoured diversion.) More as it happens.

[Timberwolf]

I've updated the set to correctly identify roadtypes for vehicles, meaning the diesel, steam and horse-drawn trams can now be used without needing electrified rails.

As I needed something for testing integration with ELRD, I've also added a Guy BTX trolleybus:



Version 2.3.0 is up on BaNaNaS now.

[Electricfox]

Wahey! Trolleybus! Fantastic stuff, been hankering for some of them.

[sevenfm]

May I ask for some more early horse vehicles please? I like how it's done in PolRoad set - you have small cart, heavy cart, horse logger, omnibus and stagecoach, and each type has it's own role, like omnibus is great for town pass transport, small cart for mail and fast goods, heavy cart for things like coal and stagecoach for intercity transport. There's also later horse cart with tires in early 20 century which has higher speed and can be used as cheap alternative to early vans.

[Timberwolf]

I have news!

Something I've been wanting to do for a while is to bring Road Vehicles up to the same standards as Trains: custom sprites for all the different FIRS Steeltown metals, variable running costs, era-appropriate sprites for the Vehicles cargo and horses that walk like a real horse rather than twitching uncontrollably across the landscape like a knotted-together pool noodle powered by elastic bands.

I realised there were two main things blocking me from that:

• Needing to upload 130MB of files every time I made a minor update.
• The tightly-woven nest of interconnected and extremely brittle parameters making every minor code update require 3-4 releases of bug fixes.

So, some big changes. Firstly, HD is gone. I never play using it, none of my other sets have 4x options, and my rendering tools have improved so much at generating lower resolutions since the Transrender days that I don't think there's much justification for it. On top of that, it's a chore to upload.

In fact, not only is HD gone but the standard 2x set is now 8bpp-only. The step away from 32bpp is one I took slowly over multiple sets, and it wasn't until I released Trains that I actually got 8bpp output from the renderer I was happy with. This is a bit of a trade-off both ways; I think it makes the sprites fit better into the OpenTTD world and some details look a bit sharper, but there's also a loss in some of the subtle shading. A comparison between old (32bpp) Foden S20 and new (8bpp) one:



Between these changes and the more filesize-efficient usage of recolourable sprite stacks instead of dedicated cargo sprites, the 2x version of the set has gone from a bloated 30MB to a svelte 4MB, despite supporting over 5 times the number of visually distinct cargo types and including a few new vehicles into the bargain.

Secondly, parameters. This was probably the most painful lesson as a newbie GRF author. Early on I didn't have confidence in my choices. Whenever someone suggested a radically different turn, rather than stick up for my vision of what the set should be I treated it as, "no problem, I'll add another parameter to customise for this use case". And of course a few months later you create a horrible mess where even the most innocuous addition of a new switch case has totally broken the "I want to play with realistic early vehicle capacities, but not reduce running costs, and I don't want steam vehicles or buses, but I also don't want the realistic capacities for post-1940s vehicles" use case. This might be OK if all these were widely used, but of the parameter nest bugs I've introduced 80% I had to discover with my own testing and then a further 10-15% weren't discovered by people using them but by new players who didn't know which of all the options they were supposed to use.

(I've discovered from a combination of testing IRL and being a bit more resistant to this with my other sets that most requests for parameters come from players who have only just downloaded the set, and that they either get used to how I intended things to work and forget they ever wanted "setting for increasing the speed of early vehicles before 1900", or quite quickly go back to eGVRTS in their next network game and never come back... and the latter happens even if they got their custom parameter, which now has to be maintained and tested against new gameplay effects)

So I've had a bonfire of parameters. Anything which I know I've broken several times (or left broken for months) and never got a single bug report about, I've assumed is Not Used and can be discarded. Ditto the ones I've never seen anybody move away from the default, seen any screenshots suggesting otherwise, or indeed ever moved away from the default myself. Ones which I know are widely used have been streamlined into their common use cases so it only requires 1-2 button clicks to get what you want rather than 7-8, and is less confusing for new players.

As these are big changes, I decided it made sense to split the versions, so if there is somebody out there genuinely using all the realism settings, toggling on and off vehicles at a granular level and using the 4x set, it's still possible to download v2 from BaNaNaS. And if they also want the new vehicles and features... there's a reason I have a GitHub repo and offer the base set with GPL licencing.

If, of course, you play with the default settings and rarely zoom in close enough to go poking at how subtly individual pixels are shaded, you'll be more interested in the new stuff rather than where the old stuff you never used went.

So for v3, we have:

• Better-looking horses with a proper walk cycle.
• Cargo-specific sprites for nearly everything, including multiple eras of vehicles and engineering/farm supplies.
• Improved vehicle alignment scheme, more consistency in turns.
• 30-40% of existing models retouched and improved.
• Variable running costs including Trains-style vehicle age penalties.
• TAR distribution with included README
• New vehicles! Including...
• The best and perhaps most rage-inducing Easter Egg yet, finally justifying the presence of its related "Easter Egg" parameter for those who can't bear to see it in their vehicle list for even the length of time it takes to hit the "hide" button.

A preview of what to expect:



Now the set is finally fun to work with once more, I'm looking to add more vehicles, filling out some of the modern era and providing a few more alternatives during the leaner stretches of play. But first I think a release of what I already have, since there are many new features and a lot of code in need of wider testing. Besides which, it's nice to kick off a new year with a new graphics set release. The new version is now on BaNaNaS - search for "Timberwolf's UK Road Vehicles 3". 3.0.2 is the current version.

[Lex-Pelham]

New Year, new update.

Big super thanks, Timberwolf.

Best of luck in 2021.

[nirasa]

Your work is excellent and I use the Vehicle set a lot. I have a version of Road Vehicles-49. It also includes cargo trams and I like it. I downloaded version of Road Vehicles-3.0.2, but the cargo trams are not there and do not even have a choice in the parameters. Is this an intention or a mistake? I tried all years, but the cargo trams didn't show up. When I tried to download version 2.3.3, the set has parameters for cargo trams, but it also does not appear in the depot in any year.
Thanks for your work

[Timberwolf]

Your work is excellent and I use the Vehicle set a lot. I have a version of Road Vehicles-49. It also includes cargo trams and I like it. I downloaded version of Road Vehicles-3.0.2, but the cargo trams are not there and do not even have a choice in the parameters. Is this an intention or a mistake? I tried all years, but the cargo trams didn't show up. When I tried to download version 2.3.3, the set has parameters for cargo trams, but it also does not appear in the depot in any year.
Thanks for your work

This is an NRT related issue - the cargo trams use non-electrified tram rail which doesn't seem to show up when you don't have a road set installed. I thought the base game would recognise RAIL and ELRD, but for some reason those don't show up. It could be something I'm doing wrong with the roadtypetable/tramtypetable so will test that to see if it can be fixed for base game.

Alternatively, you can install a road set which supplies unelectrified tram rails, and cargo/horse/steam trams should show up.

Edit: the official implementation differs slightly from early NRT branches in that it only recognises 'ROAD' and 'ELRL' as valid road and tram types respectively. Uploaded 3.0.3 so you can use all available vehicles without needing to install a road set.

[nirasa]

Your work is excellent and I use the Vehicle set a lot. I have a version of Road Vehicles-49. It also includes cargo trams and I like it. I downloaded version of Road Vehicles-3.0.2, but the cargo trams are not there and do not even have a choice in the parameters. Is this an intention or a mistake? I tried all years, but the cargo trams didn't show up. When I tried to download version 2.3.3, the set has parameters for cargo trams, but it also does not appear in the depot in any year.
Thanks for your work

This is an NRT related issue - the cargo trams use non-electrified tram rail which doesn't seem to show up when you don't have a road set installed. I thought the base game would recognise RAIL and ELRD, but for some reason those don't show up. It could be something I'm doing wrong with the roadtypetable/tramtypetable so will test that to see if it can be fixed for base game.

Alternatively, you can install a road set which supplies unelectrified tram rails, and cargo/horse/steam trams should show up.

Edit: the official implementation differs slightly from early NRT branches in that it only recognises 'ROAD' and 'ELRL' as valid road and tram types respectively. Uploaded 3.0.3 so you can use all available vehicles without needing to install a road set.

Thank you very much

[PEPSprinterPacer]

The new update breaks roads so I can't build them as the menu doesn't appear.

(Am using ur sets XD)

[Timberwolf]

The new update breaks roads so I can't build them as the menu doesn't appear.

Which version of OpenTTD and which road set (if any) are you using?

I don't see this with 1.10.3, either using the built-in road and tram rails or using Timberwolf's Roads.

[Argus]

I also don't see this problem in the JGR patchpack either

[Electricfox]

The new version is now on BaNaNaS - search for "Timberwolf's UK Road Vehicles 3". 3.0.2 is the current version.

Fantastic stuff! Love the new trolleybuses and traction engine! The only thing I use eGRVTS for at the moment, tbh, is the earlier horse vehicles, as soon as 1800 rolls around I just switch over to yours.

[Railwaymodeler]

I really like this set, especially the brief snippets of vehicle history at the bottom of the purchase window.

One suggestion I have is to make conduit cars use non-electrified streetcar track. The slot in the middle of the track would not look good in TTD-scale anyway. It's minor, but it is very noticable. Conduit cars were not common in the USA, but Washington DC had them, as there was a ban on overhead wires in the city itself. I don't know if that was the case in any UK cities too, but from my perspective catenary with conduit cars looks odd.

[Timberwolf]

A minor update - sacks now correctly show cargo-dependent colours. I also added a couple of new horse vehicles to push the start date back to 1700.



(Technically these are 16th century prototypes, but from what I recall even the early start sets draw the line at 1700...)

[Electricfox]

A minor update - sacks now correctly show cargo-dependent colours. I also added a couple of new horse vehicles to push the start date back to 1700.



(Technically these are 16th century prototypes, but from what I recall even the early start sets draw the line at 1700...)

My hero!

[PEPSprinterPacer]

The new update breaks roads so I can't build them as the menu doesn't appear.

Which version of OpenTTD and which road set (if any) are you using?

I don't see this with 1.10.3, either using the built-in road and tram rails or using Timberwolf's Roads.

Edit: it works, I just closed it and opened it

[Timberwolf]

Filling in a few odds and ends while I figure out which modern vehicles I want to include. (The new BYD electric Enviros need to go in there, although the end game is getting a little Enviro-heavy and probably needs some non-Dennis options).

Latest off the voxel line, two generations of Vulcan lorry:



The aim with these fill-ins is to get a little closer to the feeling of Timberwolf's Trains where once you get into the "core" 1900-2020 period, there's always something new around the corner to expand your options. I already have the large scale decision of whether to use smaller, faster trucks like the Bedford TK or set up some crate-gulping Octopodes when your plan is to get a lot of cargo and deliver it... eventually. What I'd like is to add some more of these smaller scale decisions, for example the Mk.II Vulcan is contemporary with the S20 Foden, but is a little faster at the cost of carrying slightly less.

(And to get further away from the original game model where there is a single optimal truck model for any point in time, which will be replaced next generation by a new more optimal truck model)

[PEPSprinterPacer]

(The new BYD electric Enviros need to go in there, although the end game is getting a little Enviro-heavy and probably needs some non-Dennis options).

And the Enviro 400 looks like a MMC that was introduced in 2005!

[Timberwolf]

Some '70s action with Seddon Atkinson 400s in 8x4 format:



I fancy sticking some more trucks in around the '70s, it's been a bit of an under-represented decade for the cargo haulers. But for now, it'd probably be a good idea to get some of the new vehicles and improvements to existing sprites out into the wild to find the inevitable bugs I've failed to spot, so there's a shiny new 3.0.5 release on BaNaNaS to try out.