Multitile depots

[Juanjo]

Some time ago I though about adding depots that could use several tiles, very similar to how stations are built. I even wrote the code for them. Unfortunately, nowadays I don't have much time for testing it, so I need feedback and testing from players.

Here you will find binaries for Windows and MacOS provided by openttd.org. In these, you will find this new type of depot. The savegames you create with these binaries will only work with this version. So do take care and do not overwrite any savegame you want to play in vanilla OpenTTD.

I will name the current depots (the ones that only have one tile) "small depots" and the ones I introduce "big depots". The name probably is not ok, but it was the best I could come up with.

How to test the new depots:

• From the settings, you can enable the small/big version for rail, road and water transport. Search the setting "depot type".

• Also from settings, you can enable/disable replacement vehicles with different railtypes or roadtypes. Search the setting "cross-replacement" (I am not good at deciding names for new things). If enabled and using big rail depots, you can replace your 1950 old rail train with its monorail or maglev version.

• When building depots, in your building toolbar you will have one or two buttons for depots (depending whether you have one or two depot types enabled). With the tooltip, you can see which one is the big depot. Choose it for building big depots.

• You can build big depots very similar to stations. You can also press CTRL to distant-join depot tiles.

The behavior of these new depots is different from the small depots:

• For big water depots, only one ship can be stopped or servicing in each depot part.

• For big road depots, there can be at most 3 vehicles stopped/servicing in each tile.

• For big train depots, if you have a train with a length of 5 tiles, you have to build a depot platform of five tiles so it can leave the depot.

These new depots try to make the depot building a little more complex and challenging.

Feedback will be appreciated. Note as well, that there may be some unexpected crashes. Please report them in this forum or in the GitHub repository.

The graphics of the original depots are not good for big rail depots. You can download and use the "Bigger Depots" NewGRF or any other NewGRF that adds graphics for modular depots.

[kamnet]

I enabled both types of depots, but in the game I cannot tell the difference between them. Beyond having the same graphics of course, the toolbar icons are identical, the tooltip description is identical. I built two of them, and then tried to use the ctrl key for distant join, only one of them was available (it was the 2nd icon, I'm assuming that's the big depot). When I select the 2nd depot to join, the new one is now listed as #3 and doesn't appear to be linked at all, although the tile does show up as if it's being selected.

I have a couple of crashes and save games. In the first one, I had two NewGRF sets activated that I had forgotten about, so I don't know if they played a factor, but I did not have a NRT set loaded. It crashed while I was trying to distant join a depot. In the second one, I have only RattRoads 1.0.2 enabled. It crashed after I built a bus in the 2nd depot and tried to send it to the first depot.

[Aegir]

With the big rail depots, apart from length restrictions, will the depots still allow only one train (or maybe two?) to be serviced at a time?

Honestly the whole thing sounds absurdly punitive and awkward especially for smaller/technical maps and I can't freakin wait to get my mitts on it .

[Gadg8eer]

With the big rail depots, apart from length restrictions, will the depots still allow only one train (or maybe two?) to be serviced at a time?

Honestly the whole thing sounds absurdly punitive and awkward especially for smaller/technical maps and I can't freakin wait to get my mitts on it .

Me too! I hope this is still being worked on. Whoops, I thought this was posted in 2011 because I read the wrong date from OP's post.

[wallyweb]

Bit busy for time to do some testing but I definitely see the possibilities.
A word of caution ... K.I.S.S. ... Keep It Simple Sam.
I've got some ideas to suggest, but it's a bit early yet.

[Juanjo]

I enabled both types of depots, but in the game I cannot tell the difference between them. Beyond having the same graphics of course, the toolbar icons are identical, the tooltip description is identical. I built two of them, and then tried to use the ctrl key for distant join, only one of them was available (it was the 2nd icon, I'm assuming that's the big depot). When I select the 2nd depot to join, the new one is now listed as #3 and doesn't appear to be linked at all, although the tile does show up as if it's being selected.

I have a couple of crashes and save games. In the first one, I had two NewGRF sets activated that I had forgotten about, so I don't know if they played a factor, but I did not have a NRT set loaded. It crashed while I was trying to distant join a depot. In the second one, I have only RattRoads 1.0.2 enabled. It crashed after I built a bus in the 2nd depot and tried to send it to the first depot.

I also don't like that both depot types have the same graphics. But it is out of scope right now. I fixed the tooltips, which weren't descriptive enough.
I fixed joining with the Ctrl key, as the depot joiner was shown even for small depots.
The other problem with orders is also fixed in the new binaries (2021/01/08). Thanks for noticing these bugs.

With the big rail depots, apart from length restrictions, will the depots still allow only one train (or maybe two?) to be serviced at a time?

Yes, each train can be serviced only if it has an assigned platform.
But rail depots allow rearrangement of vehicles and this makes having only one train in each platform more difficult. So, right now there is a certain freedom allowed in train depots when buying/rearranging vehicles.

[kamnet]

One thing that should be noted, and I don't know if it's a bug or a limitation on OpenTTD's part, but the cloned depots cannot be built end-on-end to make one long depot because the entrance for each depot sprite must be connected to a road. If you build them end-to-end and start cloning vehicles, due to the limitation of available storage slots, the extra ones will be built in the 2nd depot and not be able to leave.

So far have I have no uncovered any new crashes.

[Aegir]

With the big rail depots, apart from length restrictions, will the depots still allow only one train (or maybe two?) to be serviced at a time?

Yes, each train can be serviced only if it has an assigned platform.
But rail depots allow rearrangement of vehicles and this makes having only one train in each platform more difficult. So, right now there is a certain freedom allowed in train depots when buying/rearranging vehicles.

Perhaps allow two/three trains per depot? Should allow construction to still take place and provide a gameplay reason to build sprawling depot complexes. Or only allow multiple if they're turned off? Should solve the edge case of re-arranging consists but only allow one train to service at a time.

Edit: Just doing some fooling around since it looks like you've squashed the crashes, a couple of things I noticed; when creating a new train and letting it lose it tried to drive away from the track before hitting the end, reversing, and then leaving the depot (Minor, doesn't do that when servicing). When constructing a multi-tile length depot (4 and 5) side by side the train on a return to depot order always tries to go to the closest one, can't fit due to tile length, and pops back out again. It never tries to reach the other depot platform. I remember this was a problem back in the super super early days of TTDPatch with 'irregular shaped' train stations, we used to work around it back then with waypoints before the path finder was able to handle it.

Also, I love the subtle detail of using only the two views and then depending which side a track is placed then swapping the graphics, looks beautiful with Ufiby's track sets!

depot pathfinding.PNG (197.36 KiB) Viewed 746 times

[wallyweb]

Now this is getting interesting. I'm having visions of using this with Karn's realistic shunting to build the maximum length trains (~200 car consists) that I have been experimenting with.

[madrito]

It's nice that someone took this option topic to develop.

If the following conditions are met, it can be a contribution to the railways :
- for entry and exit from one side
minimum length of the depot with the possibility of extension
* in the depot maximum train length in tiles not greater than the lagging length in tiles
- number of parallel levels in the depot, max. 2
* the train could enter the depot only when all levels are not occupied

Of course this is subjective concept

[Aegir]

Okay, wow, I didn't even notice you could do RO-RO with the train depots now... This changes things dramatically! I think I might actually give this a proper game playthrough since it's seeming stable enough.

[michael blunck]

Got a crash when buying a train, see below.
In addition it's not possible to built any waypoints?

Hm, can't upload crash.log, "invalid extension"?

regards
Michael

[edit]
Assertion failed at line 254 of ..\src\train_pos_backup.cpp: this->info > PI_FAILED_PLATFORM_TYPE

[Eddi]

Hm, can't upload crash.log, "invalid extension"?

rename it to "crash.log.txt"

[Juanjo]

Got a crash when buying a train, see below.
In addition it's not possible to built any waypoints?

I have been fixing some bugs I found, but I am not sure whether I fixed the one you came across. Could you describe what did you do to cause the crash with some more details? A savegame to produce it would be great. Were you playing with the binaries from the link above or did you compile the branch? (I am asking as the branch was updated after building the binaries.)
About waypoints, I tried and it seemed to work as expected. You should build them over already built rail.

Perhaps allow two/three trains per depot? Should allow construction to still take place and provide a gameplay reason to build sprawling depot complexes. Or only allow multiple if they're turned off? Should solve the edge case of re-arranging consists but only allow one train to service at a time.

Edit: Just doing some fooling around since it looks like you've squashed the crashes, a couple of things I noticed; when creating a new train and letting it lose it tried to drive away from the track before hitting the end, reversing, and then leaving the depot (Minor, doesn't do that when servicing). When constructing a multi-tile length depot (4 and 5) side by side the train on a return to depot order always tries to go to the closest one, can't fit due to tile length, and pops back out again. It never tries to reach the other depot platform. I remember this was a problem back in the super super early days of TTDPatch with 'irregular shaped' train stations, we used to work around it back then with waypoints before the path finder was able to handle it.

Also, I love the subtle detail of using only the two views and then depending which side a track is placed then swapping the graphics, looks beautiful with Ufiby's track sets!

Good choice of depot graphics. The way for drawing big rail depots is just some hack as there are no specific graphics for the different depots by now. It doesn't look so good for maglev or monorail base graphics.

Yes, there are some cases to solve with pathfinding (like selecting a platform long enough), but if the train has a specific order set, after servicing it should automatically reverse if that is the best path for the train.

One thing that should be noted, and I don't know if it's a bug or a limitation on OpenTTD's part, but the cloned depots cannot be built end-on-end to make one long depot because the entrance for each depot sprite must be connected to a road. If you build them end-to-end and start cloning vehicles, due to the limitation of available storage slots, the extra ones will be built in the 2nd depot and not be able to leave.

I don't want it to be more complex right now, but it is something to consider. Anyway, I think it is very difficult to do it, as you have to deal with converting the road type or destroying one depot tile when a vehicle is inside.

[Aegir]

Yes, there are some cases to solve with pathfinding (like selecting a platform long enough), but if the train has a specific order set, after servicing it should automatically reverse if that is the best path for the train

I was finding they weren't servicing if the train was too long and they were just turning around and leaving the depot.

Still, superb progress, I wish you a speedy inclusion to the base game!