Faster regular trains for sub-tropic?

[Asperamanca]

I do feel a bit like stepping into a bee's nest. Given how my questions quickly led to a lengthy discussion, I can imagine this is a real pain for some of you.

As other have said, and based on the information I have from this thread, there probably is no easy solution. The ideal solution, of course, would be to make the feature so bug-proof that you could enable by default. As a dev, I know this it probably not feasible, ever. Especially given that NewGRFs are developed by a variety of people and groups.

The other, extreme approach would be to disable the feature entirely. Give the scenario designers a separate binary, which lacks some other features that the "normal" player needs (otherwise people would just install the "scenario editor edition"). It would make development and testing more challenging, because you would need to test two binaries, instead of one. Also, it's hidden features like this, the countless options that make OpenTTD so great.

The best approach I could suggest (and I mostly echo words already written here):
-) Make the option hidden, non-obvious (which it is right now)
-) Don't promote it, but document it. One would hope that if a person spends a couple of minutes searching for this option, they will also spend the 30 seconds to read the warning attached to it. One can hope...
-) Make it very easy to recognize a bug report in which the user used this option, to minimize costs for the cases where they are reported. For example, I recently added a little diagnosis component that collects interesting information about the state of a program, in text. When a user has an issue, click a button and send me the file. In the case of OpenTTD one look at the file should reveal the scenario editor option is enabled - sorry, cannot help.

[leifbk]

I'm not a scenario developer nor a newgrf developer, but I've still got the feature set to on. Quite often I find that an object file is set to the wrong palette, and I don't really believe that it's going to ruin my game to correct that in the grf settings. And once in a while I even may import an object set in a running game. And I'm fully aware of the consequences of my actions. If a game gets corrupted, it's probably my own fault. I seldom play on the same map for more than a couple of weeks anyway.

What I definitely wouldn't do, is changing vehicle sets or industry sets, or even upgrade them in a running game.

And I think that the situation is just fine the way it is. If some developers decide to remove the feature entirely, I wouldn't be surprised if a fork happened.

As an afterthought: If changing grfs in a running game can crash the program, perhaps the code is too fragile? Maybe there ought to be a more robust interface between the base game and the extensions?

[kamnet]

I do feel a bit like stepping into a bee's nest. Given how my questions quickly led to a lengthy discussion, I can imagine this is a real pain for some of you.

No bees nest at all! The discussion has been friendly and informative, IMO. Those discussions are worth having.

You just don't know the impact of your posts

I do, though! Why is why I made my suggestion. And it's because of the next part I'll quote.

Alberth talks about bad game experience with save games breaking, but I feel like it's a bad game experience not being able to add NewGRFs to a running game. It's replacing one bad experience with another. Kamnet, a very experienced and knowledgeable player, speaks here about "spending 4 hours setting up NewGRFs for new game, testing for conflicts, glitches, and arrangement in menus." I am willing to risk my game to avoid spending 4 hours curating a configuration I am then locked into

Several year ago, I was in the same position. New to the forums, and at that the devs had just disabled being able to change NewGRFs in a running game by default. I, too, felt that it should be up to the player to educate themselves on the risk just so that they could enjoy the game.

Then it happened. The most dreaded thing that Albert warns about. I messed around with the NewGRFs enough that I corrupted my game. Not just any game. A game that I had spent three years of my life playing. A game that I spent entire weekends (48-72 hours!) playing almost non-stop. A game so far developed and with so many changes, it was impossible to determine where or when I screwed up. So many changes, over 300 auto-backups, so many NewGRFs come and gone. Several devs and coders looked through a few of my save games. None could help identify just when I had poisoned my game through careless acts of adding and removing stuff.

I was absolutely crushed. I mean, it may seem silly to some to be that emotionally attached to a stupid video game, but you spend that much time working on something that feels big to you and you're going to develop a connection to it. Losing it felt like losing a loved pet. I loved that stupid game! Knowing that it would continue to crash and fail almost killed my joy for OpenTTD altogether. And, to be honest, I've never spent that much amount of time or dedication on another game since. The experience of losing my game like that changed how I played OpenTTD, and not for the better IMO. It's why I now do so much other stuff for OpenTTD other than play the game. I developed the music packs, I've created a couple of scenarios, I helped run some discussion threads, I'll help the devs promote things, I have articles on the Wiki that I curate, I sometimes dabble in making a NewGRF. Most of the last 2-3 years I've spent a lot of my free time researching stats for vehicles I'd like to see in the game and peddling them in vain hope that somebody will make them into NewGRFs (two sets so far, woohoo!). But I still haven't gotten back to the point where I feel really comfortable playing a good, long-term, multi-week game like I used to. And it's absolutely silly that I can't. But, what do you do?

The dev's aren't going to disable the ability to add NewGRFs to a running game altogether. That would certainly kill any hope of anybody else working with them, and it would fork the project and probably the community, and none of that would be good at all. So I've come to take the viewpoint that not making it the default action, and not publicizing it while keeping it documented is the best policy. While some users may be engineers and logical thinkers and can understand the ramifications of their actions, there's also many players who do not. Heck we still have some players who have been here for years who effectively ask the same basic questions about gameplay every week. And you never know which one you'll be talking to.

I'd rather save some heartache, and I think it's better to let a new player first become seasoned in the game, and then let them come to the discovery of changing NewGRFs on their own - and ignore it at their own peril - than to point them down a path of predictable failure.

[Toffo]

I think in a roundabout way we agree with each other I've been here a long time too, though I rarely post, but I've seen this game grow from humble beginnings and seen its highs and lows from the sidelines.

I'm sorry about your game loss - I've also lost games and scenarios that I spent countless hours playing and designing. I recognise that it was due to something I did and accept the data loss but I know that not everyone will do the same with grace! Agreed that the way things are is probably best; either that or one of Pyoro's or Asperamanca's suggestions.

[Asperamanca]

Nice

I am more a casual "make industrial cargo network" player, I don't want to bother about costs. If you want to further improve costs, add a basecost mod, which can tune many of the costs for doing something.

Making terraforming terribly expensive to avoid you from modifying terrain is an interesting one

It's not really that I want to shift the focus of the game to the economy. The challenge I enjoy here is that I have the option of faster and/or more powerful trains, but they are so expensive I really have to choose wisely which trains to upgrade, and I can't automatically upgrade all of them to the "best" option. With all the consequences, like having trains of different speeds run in the same network.

The map is rather small, and using FIRS, I only have one or two of each industry.

If you're using FIRS, then you definitely want to be using a NewGRF train set anyhow. So, so that respect, there shouldn't be any reason why you can't find a set that meets your need for speed.

This is exactly the point. He "definitely wants to be" using a NewGRF trainset but he is told it is impossible to add one to a running game and hence his only option is to start a new game. I merely gave him another option with a strong warning attached.

I realized very quickly that I need special vehicles for FIRS, but all I got (at that was enough to start) are carriages that can handle the new wares that exist. That newgrf didn't include any different engines.