Bridge Station

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How would I go around turning a bridge, into part of, or all of, a station?

I am thinking of trying to do something similar to Blackfriars station in London, which is situated above the River Thames.
Image of Blackfriars & Google Maps location.

It's a rather impressive structure, but how would I go about doing this in OpenTTD, obviously ignoring the artwork, can this be done with GRF trickery, or are we talking about edits to OpenTTD, light edits, heavy edits? I love the idea of doing this for OTTD, but not sure if it'll break 'normal' bridge working, or what have you.

Cheers for any replies!

[SwissFan91]

Are you wanting the bridge/station (bration?! stidge?!) to function like a station accepting/loading cargo? I'm going to guess that would require a big overhaul.

I struggled to get Blackfriars in my game too.

Network Rail, 11th Nov 2036.png

(456.47 KiB) Not downloaded yet

I think if you made a bridge type that matched the station graphics (bridge heads and bridge itself) and then just built a 1 tile station at the far end then you would get the visual appearance of a bridge/station at least.

[Quast65]

I also think that it is probably impossible to have a bridge function like a station (so with un/loading being done on the bridge).

However it is fake-able, using a combination of bridge, objects and stations...

First, you would need a bridge with as few graphics as possible (just "floating" tracks/road).
Second, you provide the actual graphics via objects, placed in front and behind (and maybe also under) that bridge (objects are needed, as stations can not be build on water and also not on some slopes).
Finally, you need stations (that match the object-graphics) at the far ends of the bridge, where the actual un/loading takes place.

I experimented with this (well not the station part of it, but with the graphics) a while ago:
viewtopic.php?f=26&t=74510&p=1167305&hi ... e#p1167290

I abandoned it for a couple of reasons:
- I am not a bridge coder, I dont have the knowledge to make a bridgetype (that could be used in combination with regular bridge-sets, as you would probably still want those) with the required graphics.
- The object part is rather tricky... It needs a couple of separate pieces, where some are on slopes, some not and uses a lot of space. Coding it as a whole makes it impossible to have vehicles/ships passing under the bridge anymore, so some overlapping is necessary... Coding objects that are partly on slopes and partly on flat land is already something I cant do, but also how would one explain how to use the various parts to a player?... (keeping in mind that most players wont look at a ReadMe)

So, with some trickery you can get close for your personal games, but is it something that can be explained to (and then used by) everyone?....

[Redirect Left]

Ideally, i'd want to add it as an actual buildable option on the games GUI, although whether it'd be listed under bridge or station, who knows. I'm interested in doing this as a patch usable by others if so wished.

However, before I seriously consider it, i'd be aiming to see how much work it'd be to get a bridge to function as a station, whilst also being able to build bridges that still act as a normal one.
Sounds like quite a lot of effort for not much though, currently. Seems in OTTD you constantly have to fake things rather than implement the actual feature.

[andythenorth]

In the tile array, bridges don't actually exist, whereas stations do. So that would be the first problem.

There are probably others.

[SwissFan91]

You can already fake it, to some degree, using Auz objects and Dutch Stations:

Bridge.png

(74.58 KiB) Not downloaded yet