Newbie questions, GRF location & deleting part of a station

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NetMax
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Newbie questions, GRF location & deleting part of a station

Post by NetMax »

First kudos to OpenTTD contributors! Dec 2017 download on a W7 machine NOT connected to internet. Game runs great but a few quirks.
1. GRF window can't find any new GRFs. Put them into baseset where game was installed on E drive. The install made a set of folders on C: for saves but that baseset folder is empty. I read some tar files are read by the game. Should I decompress and install them in E: gameset folder and only use C: for saves?
2. Deleting part of a station deletes all of it and new station has different name (not TTDP behavior I'm used to).
Many other questions, but I'll keep searching for those. Thanks in advance for any advice.
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Re: Newbie questions, GRF location & deleting part of a station

Post by Sylf »

GRF files should be placed in newgrf folder. When you ran openttd the first time, it should have created openttd folder in your My Documents (assuming you're running on Windows7 - that's what you meant by W7, right?) If newgrf folder doesn't exist in openttd folder there, then create it, then place newgrf files (you can keep them in *.tar format) in there.

When you're removing station tiles, select station building tool, then select Toggle/Remove button (the bulldozer icon). Then you can remove any arbitrary station tile. If you use dynamite (demolish) tool to remove a station tile, the entire station will be removed. If you place a replacement station immediately (before the gray station name label disappears) nearby, then you can still retain the same station name (and if you had cargo waiting at the station, you keep those too.)
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Re: Newbie questions, GRF location & deleting part of a station

Post by NetMax »

Thanks, but didn't work. I put a variety (trains, music, stations eg: Canadian_Trains_Railways-1.6.3-3.tar.gz) into c:...openttd/game/newgrf and also c:...openttd\content_download\game\newgrf. Game cannot find any new grf.

Should I be thinking of reinstalling the game from scratch in c: instead of e:?
OS is Windows7, Openttd is 1.7.2
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Re: Newbie questions, GRF location & deleting part of a station

Post by acs121 »

Hmmm...sure it didn't work ?
You must put it either in OpenTTD/newgrf or OpenTTD/content-download/newgrf.
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Re: Newbie questions, GRF location & deleting part of a station

Post by NetMax »

Sadly nope.
c:\users\owner\My Documents\OpenTTD\content_download\newgrf\Canadian_Trains_Railway-1.6.3-3.tar.gz
and another copy in
c:\users\owner\My Documents\OpenTTD\newgrf\Canadian_Trains_Railway-1.6.3-3.tar.gz
and OpenTTD finds nothing. I say Rescan files and nada.
I've tried other newgrfs in the folders.

OpenTTD works. Using recommended OpenGFX, OpenSFX and OpenMSX. I've successfully edited the openttd.cfg files (setting fonts & adjusting sizes).
This is a non-networked pc, so it's a non-updated OS W7 SP1 clean install (no AV or FW running).
I'm at a loss. Should have been easy.
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Re: Newbie questions, GRF location & deleting part of a station

Post by Sylf »

You have to unzip the .gz files. Use tools like 7-zip to do that.
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Re: Newbie questions, GRF location & deleting part of a station

Post by NetMax »

Done & some progress. From 7-zip, I told it to 'extract here' and it gave me a renamed 3410.tar which the opening screen recognized as the Canadian Train set.
I moved it to active and hit apply.

Going into a running game, I can't see the new grf train set. I tried different tracks and years in case the train set was not applicable.
I started a new game and the railroad button is grayed out.
I'm so close, I can taste it.
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Re: Newbie questions, GRF location & deleting part of a station

Post by Leanden »

Sounds like youve got the start date of you game too early.

Try starting at later date. (1900 is a good startbench)
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Re: Newbie questions, GRF location & deleting part of a station

Post by NetMax »

I managed to get some British trains loaded in a new game. I'm assuming if the time period were correct, I can add these to existing games?
I'm puzzled why the default trains did not appear when in an incorrect time period for the downloaded train set.
Should I move all grfs into newgrf folder? I may have TTDP trains in there (I'd like to), but these sets should add to each other (within the program limits).

ps: Sweet Jesus you guys have done a lot of work building openTTD. It even has some of the old quirks (oilwells suck), but the new features were obviously designed for real users. Awesome work!
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Re: Newbie questions, GRF location & deleting part of a station

Post by NetMax »

Sorry to post on my own message, but I have things sorted well enough. There is probably TOO much info online so sorting can take a while.
For anyone else uploading without going through OpenTTD, visit https://bananas.openttd.org/en/newgrf/ for newgrfs, and then go to https://wiki.openttd.org/NewGRF_FAQ.

cheers!
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Re: Newbie questions, GRF location & deleting part of a station

Post by Gwyd »

NetMax wrote:I managed to get some British trains loaded in a new game. I'm assuming if the time period were correct, I can add these to existing games?
I'm puzzled why the default trains did not appear when in an incorrect time period for the downloaded train set.
As far as I know, all British train sets remove the default trains. Adding a train grf that removes trains you're using is a poor idea.

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Re: Newbie questions, GRF location & deleting part of a station

Post by kamnet »

NetMax wrote:Going into a running game, I can't see the new grf train set.
While it is technically possible to modify settings so that you can add or remove a NewGRF into a running game, it immediately creates an unstable game that may crash or misbehave in any number of unpredictable ways. Which is why this behavior has been disabled by default for the last several years. Best practices is to always start a new game with the NewGRFs you intend to use.
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Re: Newbie questions, GRF location & deleting part of a station

Post by NetMax »

Started a new game several times. The railway button stays grayed out.
Tried British Rail + industrial stations + new ships.
Tried British Rail alone
Tried Canadian Trails alone
I'm in the correct time period. The industrial stations and new ships worked in the first attempt.
OpenTTD shows the newgrf, it's in the upper window active but rail button is grayed out.
Files are decompressed.
Do I need to put this pc online and download it? Am I missing some supporting files?

Thanks for any help.
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Re: Newbie questions, GRF location & deleting part of a station

Post by Sylf »

Once you have a game started with those trouble-causing train sets, save the game. It will create a .sav file in the "save" folder inside My Documents/openttd. If you can post that .sav file, we should be able to pin-point what's causing the trouble. Those sets don't need to be installed via the in-game content downloader. They can be installed manually, and they should work. So I don't know yet why some features are not working for you, but that save file should give us more clues.
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Re: Newbie questions, GRF location & deleting part of a station

Post by NetMax »

Attached. When I was trying to get grfs working last month, I may have copying grfs from TTDP into the OpenTTF baseset folder on the drive where I installed OpenTTD. The Wiki said the TTDP grfs would work but would lack functionality. That's the only unusual action I can think of which might be relevant.

The save game has a lot of road vehicles to prime the cities while I was waiting for trains to appear, but after a few years I realized there was some other issue blocking trains.

Thanks
Attachments
Winchester Transport, Jan 18th, 1975.sav
(121.27 KiB) Downloaded 120 times
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Re: Newbie questions, GRF location & deleting part of a station

Post by NetMax »

Found some TTDP grf in e: drive installed baseset and removed them.
Found some TTDP grf in a subfolder in C: after newgrf and removed them.
Apparently not all grfs are displayed. but when I tried an older OpenTTD game, they were reported as missing.
Re-tried new game with only OpenTTD British and then Canadian train set (rail button remains grayed out)

Thanks for any advice.

If I re-install, can I leave the folders (empty) or should I delete them all out of C:?
Maybe I should re-install the E: installation?
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Re: Newbie questions, GRF location & deleting part of a station

Post by Sylf »

NetMax wrote:Attached...
The only train set used in that attached file is the BROS set. In that set, the earliest train available comes out around 1980.
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Re: Newbie questions, GRF location & deleting part of a station

Post by PaulC »

BROS set only seems to contain five trains, the first of which is available in 1980 (as Sylf said) - I've not been following development of that set but it looks like the current grf is only a taster.

Canadian Trains 1.6.3 is the "latest" version that's on Bananas. There was some big drama over the Canadian sets a few years ago, didn't the author of those sets make them all unusable before leaving the community?

In any case, I don't think you're doing anything wrong, just an unfortunate choice of train sets! :wink: Try UKRS2 or North American Renewal Set. Or something else, there's plenty of other train sets to choose from. Good luck!
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Re: Newbie questions, GRF location & deleting part of a station

Post by Gwyd »

BROS (I think) was some kind of predecessor to BRTrains. That starts in the 1930s. It contains most of the trains in that set.

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Re: Newbie questions, GRF location & deleting part of a station

Post by NetMax »

That did it, trains appeared in 1982. When I check Wiki, they had described steam trains which must be their other BT set.

6 months in, some of the games introduce an ai. Is this something I can fix?

Disabling the Canadian set was a very unCanadian thing to do! If the Newgrfs are not vetted, is there a thread where people recommend Newgrfs and the order to have them load. Otherwise it's a lot of experimenting and lost time.

Thanks for everyone's help getting me up and running!
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