New Foster bus design

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justaplayer
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New Foster bus design

Post by justaplayer »

Since ive been playing the Hereford Leopard bus and the Foster bus have been the same.But they are two independent buses so i decided to make an idea for the foster since since its newer and its a nice idea to at least make the windows look better.
Heres the bus:
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Bus-foster.png
Bus-foster.png (1.6 KiB) Viewed 1456 times
LaChupacabra
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Re: New Foster bus design

Post by LaChupacabra »

Slightly modifying the current graphics to make these vehicles not identical would not be a bad thing. :) Your reworking of the graphics seems to go too far though, and it doesn't even match the style of the other buses. Rather a more suitable place for it would be the new NewGRF, even a small one that just replaces this bus.

In general, the very similar, or actually identical graphics of different vehicles is quite a common problem in the game and it affects even more planes, ships and trains. I think it would be useful to make a slight tweak to the graphics to make these vehicles distinguishable. Some time ago I thought about a similar change for the Chaney Jubilee locomotive to distinguish it from the SH 8P.
Chaney Jubilee vs. SH 8P x4.png
Chaney Jubilee vs. SH 8P x4.png (8.63 KiB) Viewed 1377 times
A similar problem is with the SH 30 vs. SH 40 and SH/Hendry 25 vs. Floss 47, which are also currently identical. In the case of airplanes, 20 models share just 4 graphics.
What do you think about introducing such or similar small modifications?
I am sorry for may English. I know is bed.
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justaplayer
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Re: New Foster bus design

Post by justaplayer »

Atleast theres some small difference. its just hard to distinguish these two busses on-road
Taschi
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Re: New Foster bus design

Post by Taschi »

TBH, in the 8P <-> Jubilee comparison, I can barely see the difference between the two, even when looking at them at a far higher zoom level than I would in-game, and even while they're standing still.

The different colors of the cab are just not something that immediately jump at you.

I feel like there are two angles here, the gameplay perspective and the realism perspective.

From the gameplay perspective, it would be better to have every vehicle very clearly differentiated from a visual standpoint, especially when the number of vehicles is fairly low in total. And in that regard, I think having two buses with slightly different window arrangements, or having two models based on the LNER A4 class with minor color scheme differences, just doesn't cut it.

From the realism perspective, well, sometimes vehicles in real life just look 95% the same. Just look at the German classes 216, 217, 218, 210 and 215, or the Deltics, Baby Deltics, Tractors, and Peaks in the UK. Sure, they have fairly clear differences but they really vanish at OpenTTD scale.

The default vehicles, of course, are not too constrained by realism because, while they take their design cues from real-life vehicles, they are clearly fictionalized. That means you can fully lean into the gameplay perspective, by having every vehicle look clearly different from one another.

And given the vast range of real-life buses, locos et cetera, personally I feel like having two different vehicles that are very close in their visual design is not really optimal.

Then again, I barely ever play with the default vehicles so take my opinions with a grain of salt.
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Andrew350
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Re: New Foster bus design

Post by Andrew350 »

It should be pointed out that in the base game, many vehicles do actually reuse the same sprites (as in they are the same sprite numbers), meaning there is no way to make them unique. That said, new vehicle designs can always be used in a NewGRF so that's no reason to stop making new ones :)
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