American Bridge Replacement Set [0.5.0 Released 12-13-2020]

[wallyweb]

Seeing as the discussion is leading away from the main topic, perhaps it is best moved to PMs or split off to a new development thread

Agreed. Perhaps a moderator could delete the discussion between Gadg8eer and myself.

[Andrew350]

After quite a long break from working on this I've come back to continue what I started on a few months ago: revamping the existing bridges to work better with NRT and railtypes. Currently several bridges are too narrow and cause the NRT road surfaces to overlap the bridge heads which looks very ugly and distracting. The only way to solve this is to widen the bridge heads far enough that the guardrails will not get overlapped by the roadset. The bridge structure itself then also needs to be widened to match, resulting in me having to redo most of the graphics, alignments, and offsets all over again

Needless to say it isn't a 5-minute job so I've been procrastinating on fixing it. My first target was the steel truss bridge, which I already revamped the rail version of for the 0.4 release to turn into a rusty white cantilever bridge. I decided not to do any major changes to the road version since it is pretty much fine how it is, but the result looks much better now that it's wider, especially when using roadtypes. Here is a comparison of the old vs new:

steel_truss_revamp.png (13.98 KiB) Viewed 11982 times

While I had the bridge apart for maintenance I went ahead and freshened up the paintjob a little bit as well, adding a few more high and lowlights to make it just a bit more lively, and also fixed the lighting in the \ direction (shown above) which apparently was never flipped properly All in all the result looks much better and I think I'm happy with it for now, so now it's on to the next one!

[2TallTyler]

It looks great!

[Andrew350]

It looks great!

Thanks

Target #2 is perhaps the worst offender of this NRT-overlapping and the one I most looked forward to fixing: the stone bridge. This bridge is pretty much completely flattened out when using an NRT road set due to being so narrow and having tall railings. The reason it was so narrow originally was to preserve the sense that it is an old bridge, and old bridges tend to be fairly narrow compared to modern ones. There was always a slight issue with vehicles overlapping the bridge heads, but that seemed minor enough to live with. With NRT though, the issue is just too obvious and ugly, so needed to be fixed

In order to fix it completely, I had to forego the narrow aspect and sort of "flare out" the ends of the bridge heads to prevent them from being overlapped, but while still maintaining the same overall look. I did however decide to change this into an arch bridge like the rail version instead of the flimsy-looking pillar design it was before. In that respect it looks less like the bridge I originally intended it to emulate, but I think it looks much better regardless

stone_bridge_revamp.png (17.31 KiB) Viewed 11877 times

This image shows an example of just how ugly the old bridge looks with RattRoads compared to the new, along with a small bridge in the bottom right of each to compare how it looks without an NRT roadset.

Two down, many more to go!

[arikover]

Really nice!

[Andrew350]

Hi all, it's been almost two weeks since my last update, but I've still been (slowly) working on this. I got a bit bored with widening the existing bridges so I decided to have a go at something a little more fun:

tubular_bridge_preview.png (113.13 KiB) Viewed 11695 times

I've been sort of struggling to come up with ideas for more "futuristic" bridges to include for the later years, especially things which can be done nicely within OpenTTD's restrictions. There's just not a lot of unique designs that look good in an isometric view with a small repeating layout. So I decided to just work with what's already there, and give a new look to the tubular bridge.

The design was pretty tricky, and not just because of the awkward curves. I tried it first with "flat" glass but it looked a bit too boring, so I had to go and make it more complicated Each piece of the tube is actually two pieces which fit together with different levels of transparency, which is how the glass looks like it's sort of wavy or ribbed (still playing with the levels). It makes working with this bridge a lot more complicated than what I normally do, since each piece has to be layered and fit together perfectly in order to get the transparency effect right. I normally just draw everything as-is in Paint and only use GIMP for special things, so it's a bit different using it for the majority of the drawing process.

The bridge is still very much a work in progress (I only have this one view done so far) but I wanted to share it anyway. I'm still not sure what to do with the bridge heads, since the glass railings didn't quite work out like I was hoping. And I'm still considering trying to add some kind of "stripes" or something to the main tube to try to spice it up a little, but at this point I'm just happy to have the basic design in place and working in-game


Meanwhile, the other thing I've been spending time on in the past couple weeks was finally diving in to the specs and figuring out how to get parameters working. After a little bit of hair-pulling-out due to conflicting with the GRM, I managed to sort it out, so the next release will have a couple basic parameters for setting speeds and intro dates. I'm still not going to make settings for every bridge individually, but both options have "Sandbox" mode so you don't have to worry about speeds or introduction dates at all, something I personally will always have on

bridge_parameters.png (7.84 KiB) Viewed 11695 times

[odisseus]

The tubular bridge already looks great, and the bridgehead railings look good as well. There is a slight problem though: it looks like there are triangular gaps where the railing meets the tube edge. I think this can be fixed by raising the outermost part of the edge a few pixels so that its slope starts at the height of the railing, not at the surface height.

[Gadg8eer]

Hi all, it's been almost two weeks since my last update, but I've still been (slowly) working on this. I got a bit bored with widening the existing bridges so I decided to have a go at something a little more fun:


tubular_bridge_preview.png

I've been sort of struggling to come up with ideas for more "futuristic" bridges to include for the later years, especially things which can be done nicely within OpenTTD's restrictions. There's just not a lot of unique designs that look good in an isometric view with a small repeating layout. So I decided to just work with what's already there, and give a new look to the tubular bridge.

The design was pretty tricky, and not just because of the awkward curves. I tried it first with "flat" glass but it looked a bit too boring, so I had to go and make it more complicated Each piece of the tube is actually two pieces which fit together with different levels of transparency, which is how the glass looks like it's sort of wavy or ribbed (still playing with the levels). It makes working with this bridge a lot more complicated than what I normally do, since each piece has to be layered and fit together perfectly in order to get the transparency effect right. I normally just draw everything as-is in Paint and only use GIMP for special things, so it's a bit different using it for the majority of the drawing process.

The bridge is still very much a work in progress (I only have this one view done so far) but I wanted to share it anyway. I'm still not sure what to do with the bridge heads, since the glass railings didn't quite work out like I was hoping. And I'm still considering trying to add some kind of "stripes" or something to the main tube to try to spice it up a little, but at this point I'm just happy to have the basic design in place and working in-game


Meanwhile, the other thing I've been spending time on in the past couple weeks was finally diving in to the specs and figuring out how to get parameters working. After a little bit of hair-pulling-out due to conflicting with the GRM, I managed to sort it out, so the next release will have a couple basic parameters for setting speeds and intro dates. I'm still not going to make settings for every bridge individually, but both options have "Sandbox" mode so you don't have to worry about speeds or introduction dates at all, something I personally will always have on


bridge_parameters.png

Awesome! I'm looking forward to this, not a single bridge set is compatible with NRT, let alone custom bridge heads. NRT compatibility could lead to custom bridge head compatibility with the right modifications.

[Gadg8eer]

...

Not trying to rush you, but have you made any more progress? It would be nice to at least see some screenshots!

[Andrew350]

Not trying to rush you, but have you made any more progress? It would be nice to at least see some screenshots!

Not at the moment, sorry; I sort of got distracted with Wasteland for a while

Now that it's out of my system though, this is once again my priority and I should be making progress soon

[Andrew350]

So it's been a couple weeks and I know I said I'd make more progress to show off, but I've been a bit busy I do have a little bit of something in the form of the wooden road bridge, which I gave a little sprucing up and the obligatory widening to accommodate roadtypes. This bridge doesn't need nearly as drastic of a remodel as some of the others thanks to its simplicity, but still a little bit of tweaking is necessary. So, while I'm at it, just like the others I figured I ought to have a go at improving the texture a bit, even though probably 95% of people will use it with roadtypes and will never see it, which is a shame. I'm still holding out hope that someday road and railtype surfaces on bridges will be optional (along with all the other additions the bridge spec needs)

wood_bridge_new.png (7.04 KiB) Viewed 11232 times

Sorry I don't have something more interesting, but more to come as I have the time

[perverted monkey]

I like how you used more contrast and so the pieces of wood look longer. Thus the bridge appears more 'slim'.

[Quast65]

probably 95% of people will use it with roadtypes and will never see it, which is a shame.

As you can now have many roadtypes in a game, you could make a few roadtypes just for bridge surfaces...

[Andrew350]

As you can now have many roadtypes in a game, you could make a few roadtypes just for bridge surfaces...

Well yeah, but that's a bit over-complicated I think Plus it clutters the roadtype list with roads which are effectively useless 99.9% of the time, even for eyecandy.

Besides, I already use a wooden bridge surface for the dirt road in RattRoads, so, if I update that to use this texture (which I plan to) it's essentially the same thing. It's just that most people don't use RattRoads and therefore still won't see it

[Andrew350]

Minor progress report!

I wasn't totally happy with the tubular bridge shown earlier, but couldn't quite put my finger on what it was that bothered me, so tonight I finally sat down and tried to figure out how to make it better:

tubular_bridge_improved.png (78.23 KiB) Viewed 10851 times

After many hours of trying different concepts and tweaking things, I think I'm finally happy enough with this design to start making the rest of the pieces

[piratescooby]

Yes ats a cracking wee bridge , Id be happy to let my road crews build it .

[Andrew350]

Hello all!

After much delay I'm finally ready to release the 0.5 update, bringing mostly graphical changes to the existing bridges plus a couple other things. It's not much for how long its been since the last update, but, what else is new

Highlights:
========================

All existing bridges have been modified to allow for road and railtypes to fit seamlessly into their profile, hopefully eliminating the ugly overlapping of the bridge overlays. One tiny caveat to that: not all railtype NewGRFs are guaranteed to fit perfectly. I tried about a dozen different railtype GRFs, and unfortunately unlike roadtype NewGRFs, there seems to be a bit more variety in the size and offsets of the bridge overlays between different sets, making a one-size-fits-all solution basically impossible without some quite extreme (read: ugly) widening of the bridge heads to accommodate all possibilities. As a result I had to compromise "perfect" for "good enough" and just accept that some railtypes will cause overlaps (NATS and Termite were notable in my tests, for example). In most cases though, the overlap, if any, should be minor and hardly noticeable

On a similar note, there was an ugly problem with some bridges (worst was concrete viaduct) where the bridge decking would poke through between the overlays when using railtypes due to some erroneous pixels. I never noticed before due to never really using railtypes myself, but that should now be fixed

Speaking of pixels, some of the bridges received a bit of an art pass to improve quality. The biggest changes were shown off earlier, with some additional tweaks elsewhere.

The one true addition in this release is the new tubular bridge shown earlier. In the interest of time I opted to only include the road version for now and work on the rail version later, since it will require a complete rework of the shape to get it right. With how slow I am, I'm not sure when that will get done, so I might as well release what I have Here is the current family portrait of all bridges available:

Sonfingbridge Transport, 2077-05-22.png (173.67 KiB) Viewed 10664 times

Also as mentioned before, I've now included parameters with a "sandbox" setting to allow disabling introduction dates (all bridges available from year 0) and increasing speed limits (either "increased" or "sandbox" [set to max]). Note with the speed setting: the actual speed limit is still influenced by the road or railtype used, i.e. the lowest speed wins. Here's an updated table showing the current stats:

Code: Select all

                         |   SPEED SETTING   |
id |     type     | year |   low   |   high  |   transport types
----------------------------
00  wood          -    0 -  25 mph -  40 mph - road + rail
01  stone         -    0 -  35 mph -  80 mph - road + rail
02  steel truss   - 1870 -  60 mph - 100 mph - road + rail
03  cable-stayed  - 1990 - 200 mph - 350 mph - road + rail
04                -      -         -         -
05                -      -         -         -
06  plate girder  - 1920 -  80 mph - 140 mph - road + rail
07  concrete      - 1960 - 120 mph - 200 mph - road + rail
08                -      -         -         -
09  covered       - 1850 -  40 mph -  60 mph - road + rail
10  tubular       - 2010 - 400 mph - 800 mph - road
11                -      -         -         -
12                -      -         -         -

As you can see, there are still 5 empty bridge slots, plus the monorail and maglev variations left to do. I still haven't quite decided what to put in those slots yet, so suggestions are welcome

========================

That's all for this release! This update is compatible with previous releases, so feel free to update your savegames. I especially recommend it if you are playing with roadtypes; the improvements to the road bridges alone is worth the upgrade

Please do let me know if you encounter any issues, and as always, enjoy!

[Gadg8eer]

Hello all!

After much delay I'm finally ready to release the 0.5 update, bringing mostly graphical changes to the existing bridges plus a couple other things. It's not much for how long its been since the last update, but, what else is new

Highlights:
========================

All existing bridges have been modified to allow for road and railtypes to fit seamlessly into their profile, hopefully eliminating the ugly overlapping of the bridge overlays. One tiny caveat to that: not all railtype NewGRFs are guaranteed to fit perfectly. I tried about a dozen different railtype GRFs, and unfortunately unlike roadtype NewGRFs, there seems to be a bit more variety in the size and offsets of the bridge overlays between different sets, making a one-size-fits-all solution basically impossible without some quite extreme (read: ugly) widening of the bridge heads to accommodate all possibilities. As a result I had to compromise "perfect" for "good enough" and just accept that some railtypes will cause overlaps (NATS and Termite were notable in my tests, for example). In most cases though, the overlap, if any, should be minor and hardly noticeable

On a similar note, there was an ugly problem with some bridges (worst was concrete viaduct) where the bridge decking would poke through between the overlays when using railtypes due to some erroneous pixels. I never noticed before due to never really using railtypes myself, but that should now be fixed

Speaking of pixels, some of the bridges received a bit of an art pass to improve quality. The biggest changes were shown off earlier, with some additional tweaks elsewhere.

The one true addition in this release is the new tubular bridge shown earlier. In the interest of time I opted to only include the road version for now and work on the rail version later, since it will require a complete rework of the shape to get it right. With how slow I am, I'm not sure when that will get done, so I might as well release what I have Here is the current family portrait of all bridges available:

Sonfingbridge Transport, 2077-05-22.png

Also as mentioned before, I've now included parameters with a "sandbox" setting to allow disabling introduction dates (all bridges available from year 0) and increasing speed limits (either "increased" or "sandbox" [set to max]). Note with the speed setting: the actual speed limit is still influenced by the road or railtype used, i.e. the lowest speed wins. Here's an updated table showing the current stats:

Code: Select all

                         |   SPEED SETTING   |
id |     type     | year |   low   |   high  |   transport types
----------------------------
00  wood          -    0 -  25 mph -  40 mph - road + rail
01  stone         -    0 -  35 mph -  80 mph - road + rail
02  steel truss   - 1870 -  60 mph - 100 mph - road + rail
03  cable-stayed  - 1990 - 200 mph - 350 mph - road + rail
04                -      -         -         -
05                -      -         -         -
06  plate girder  - 1920 -  80 mph - 140 mph - road + rail
07  concrete      - 1960 - 120 mph - 200 mph - road + rail
08                -      -         -         -
09  covered       - 1850 -  40 mph -  60 mph - road + rail
10  tubular       - 2010 - 400 mph - 800 mph - road
11                -      -         -         -
12                -      -         -         -

As you can see, there are still 5 empty bridge slots, plus the monorail and maglev variations left to do. I still haven't quite decided what to put in those slots yet, so suggestions are welcome

========================

That's all for this release! This update is compatible with previous releases, so feel free to update your savegames. I especially recommend it if you are playing with roadtypes; the improvements to the road bridges alone is worth the upgrade

Please do let me know if you encounter any issues, and as always, enjoy!

Nice! I modified it a tiny bit because the NW-SE road cable-stayed bridge has a hole in it when used with JGRPP custom bridge heads. Full credits to you.

[Gadg8eer]

...

Would it be possible for you to make a GRF that only replaces bridge 05 with the Cable-Stayed bridge? I understand if that's too much to ask. Thanks for your hard work!

[Andrew350]

Would it be possible for you to make a GRF that only replaces bridge 05 with the Cable-Stayed bridge? I understand if that's too much to ask. Thanks for your hard work!

I can probably make one in a few days for you, I'll send a PM when it's done.