North America / Great Lakes Scenario/Industries, etc. [WIP]

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fultron78
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North America / Great Lakes Scenario/Industries, etc. [WIP]

Post by fultron78 »

Added Jan. 11, 2015: Package (v1.1) hosting location has changed, and all screenshots have been lost. The pacakge is now in a .7z file (like .zip) with the password "gllp" (no quotes).

http://www.bryanmel.com/public/gllp.7z




This is still in a test phase, please post suggests/bugs/comments to this thread.

Hi,

It's been a long time since I have posted to these forums, but I may soon release the modded changes I have made.

Basically, I wanted to model the Great Lakes region of North America to focus on rail and ship transportation. The primary addition/change has been several new commodities, including:

Petrochemicals
Liquid Chemicals
Dry Chemicals
Plastics
Fertilizer
Aggregates (ie: limestone, sand, gravel)
Cement
Salt
Auto Parts
Automobiles
Imports (ie: intermodal traffic)
Exports (ie: intermodal traffic)
Scrap
Non-Ferrous Ore
Base Metals (ie: aluminum/nickel/copper)
Metallurgical Coal (for steel)
Steam Coal (for power plants)
Construction Steel
Rolled Steel
Lumber (for construction)

as well as several new industries:

Quarry
Construction Depot
Road Maintence
Cement Plant
Plastics Plant
Steel Recycler
Non-Ferrous Ore Mine
Base Metal Smelter
Met Coal Mine
Steam Coal Mine
Intermodal Port
Chemical Plant (Dry, Liq, Petro)
Gas Distribution Centre
Goods Distribution Centre
Auto Parts Plant
Auto Plant
Metal Goods Plant (ie: machinery)
Consumer Goods Factory (ie: electronics, appliances)
Chemical Goods Factory (ie: paint, pharmaceuticals)

and maybe some stuff I'm forgetting. A large part of these "industries" are city buildings set to produce/accept new commodities. None of the graphics are "new" in the sense that I have recoloured and used sprites provided with the game to produce different looking buildings (ex: the cement plant is a gray brewery, the plastics plant is a green chemical plant, etc.).

I have also made an accompanying scenario which I feel is a fairly nice map of the Great Lakes regions with a ton of industries. Unfortunately the computer AI has no idea how to deal with the new commodities/industries, so you basically build a massive network of the ~100+ industries for yourself. I've playtested it a couple of times (maybe 5 or 6), and I've found it has more than enough possibilities to keep you busy. There are some quirks because some industries produce/accept commodities on the same rail cars (ie: a steel mill produces both construction and rolled steel, but one type goes to a construction depot, while the other is for manufactured goods, so you have to specify which to load), but after awhile you get the hang of it.

I'd say it is almost ready for release. About the only thing I have left to do is make the intermodal cars (ie: flatbeds with boxes on them). I don't really plan to make mods for trucks. I've increased ship speed, size and names to greater reflect the region and also make them competitive. Unfortunately, I made these mods about two months ago and haven't really touched them since. Maybe I'll upload in another week or two, or maybe in September, who knows? :? I also haven't been very graceful about my changes...to install them basically requires backing up and completely overwriting your Objects folder. I've though about making a .dat file for the region but I'd already made my complicated map in the North American region, plus I have found that Loco behaves very strangely when your cargoes number gets up around the 32 limit, and you have many city buildings creating/accepting cargoes. (Have any other modders had these problems?)

If any one is interested in this, let me know. I don't know if this community is still active or not, especially with North American users who would care.

Fultron
Last edited by fultron78 on 12 Jan 2015 00:46, edited 5 times in total.
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chevyrider
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Post by chevyrider »

That would be really great if you get this running.
I think everybody is waiting for something like this.
Scrat has stopped his NL region project.
The only one i know of who is making progress with such a project is Loewe 13, who is developing a thing like this.
So i'm very curious to see what you can make of it. :wink:
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Post by Villem »

Looks very nice, but why 2 types of coal mines?
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Post by fultron78 »

Akalamanaia wrote:Looks very nice, but why 2 types of coal mines?
This reflects the two uses of coal in the region. True I could use just one coal mine (and in the scenario, the met and steam coal mines are grouped together), but I wanted to make them seperate cargoes to give more options. For example, why ship coal to a power plant at all, from coal to $, when you can ship it to a steel mill to produce steel to produce auto parts to produce cars to $$$$$!? So I made a seperate cargo to generate *some* power plant traffic, which more accurately reflects how the shipping is done on the Great Lakes.

I'll post some screenshots in a few minutes.

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Post by chevyrider »

The more stages in the transportline before getting the finished final product, the better. :D
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Post by fultron78 »

ADDED OCT. 29 2009: The screenshot are all dead links. See the first post to this thread.


Here are some screenshots. Maybe this really belongs in the "Scenarios" forum, but oh well. :)

http://www.bryanmel.com/public/Screenshot9.JPG
The map

http://www.bryanmel.com/public/Screenshot4.JPG
Ohio
Including heavy manufacturing, chemical plants and plastics plants in the Ohio River valley, plus coal from the fields of Ohio/Pennsylvania. On the shores of Lake Erie are Lorain, Sandusky and Toledo, with its auto parts (tires!) plant.

http://www.bryanmel.com/public/Screenshot7.JPG
Western USA
At the edge of the map, representing the farms of the Great Plains, non-ferrous ore (zinc, copper) from the southwest, and an intermodal transfer point for the major shipping ports of Los Angeles/Long Beach/Oakland.

http://www.bryanmel.com/public/Screenshot11.JPG
Ontario
Action on Lake Ontario and Erie. Ships bring iron ore from Quebec and coal from Ohio to Hamilton, to manufacture rolled steel. Plastic from Sarnia and steel from Hamilton go to auto parts plants in London, ON. The parts are taken via Toronto to an auto plant in Oshawa (eastern Toronto). The automobiles, and some consumer goods (in Toronto) all terminate the commodity tree at the Distribution Centre north of the city (Mac Yard, for any CN railfans out there!). To the east are the cement plants near Picton and Bath, ON, in Prince Edward County.

http://www.bryanmel.com/public/Screenshot2.JPG
Detroit I
Train carrying autoparts from London to an auto plant in Detroit. Notice also the Renaissance Center and Ambassador Bridge. Salt is mined from the Canadian side at Windsor, and limestone from south of Detroit, with nearby coal power plants on Lake St. Clair and in Monroe, MI.

http://www.bryanmel.com/public/Screenshot13.JPG
Detroit II
A ship loads aggregates bound for a cement plant, while a Detroit-Chicago autorack train heads to the station for a load of cars.

http://www.bryanmel.com/public/Screenshot10.JPG
Iron Ore I
Ships load on Lake Superior at Two Harbors and Taconite Harbor, MN, load iron ore bound for steel mills on Lake Michigan.

http://www.bryanmel.com/public/Screenshot8.JPG
Iron Ore II
Full ships downbound through the Soo Locks and empties returning to Lake Superior. Notice the Algoma steel recycler in Sault Ste. Marie and aggregate docks at Port Dolomite, MI.

http://www.bryanmel.com/public/Screenshot5.JPG
Iron Ore III
Busy shipping activity on Lake Michigan! Ships bring iron ore to Gary and Indiana Harbor, met with coal via train from the southeastern USA (Kentucky/W.Virginia), plus scrap iron recycled from shipyards in Manitowoc. A refinery also produces petrochemicals and fuel for distribution in Chicago. The rail hub of Chicago ships and receives intermodal imports, construction steel, goods and grain. Notice the "single log" flatbed cars? These are intermodal import/exports (soon to be fixed).

http://www.bryanmel.com/public/Screenshot6.JPG
Lake Michigan
With the Chicago metropolis and industrial southern Chicago, forest and paper industries around Green Bay, iron ore in Escanaba, dairy farms in Wisconsin, and even the Dow chemical plant in Ludington, MI.

Fultron
Last edited by fultron78 on 12 Oct 2010 20:35, edited 2 times in total.
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Post by d00mh4mm3r »

farrr, look cool, cant wait for the set to download, if its all cosmettic, there is a carrage that carrys cars already, but only cosmettic, it holds goods.

I liekd that cargo holden bay building, but the colours are a tad bright.
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Post by Samo »

wow, this is going to be the biggest release since the 21st century set

u know wut would be really cool, this is probably impossible, but make locks like the ones on the erie canal :D
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Post by WWW »

what happens to the automobiles?
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Post by Loewe13 »

errr
like chevyrider said, im still working on a modpak with some of your industries also in it too.
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Post by PennCentral »

A map with the DT&I on it.
Very nice. :)
DT&I forever!!!! :)
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Post by thompson_fan »

those screen shots look brilliant. cann't wait for release
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Post by metalangel »

That looks great... it's a shame the stupid game doesn't support the huge maps your mod so richly deserves.
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fultron78
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Post by fultron78 »

Samo wrote:wow, this is going to be the biggest release since the 21st century set

u know wut would be really cool, this is probably impossible, but make locks like the ones on the erie canal :D
Yeah, I think it's impossible. There is a huge elevation change from the Ocean to Lake Superior (Ontario to Erie is ~100m itself), and making maps of this region from DEMs pretty much impossible. If you have water on "split levels" ships cannot travel between them.

As for the release, it's coming soon. :) I've created all of the necessary .pngs for the intermodal version of the flatbed and for the aggregate-filled hopper. Now I just need to recolour/modify them and package it up. It should take about one day's work, but I'm pretty busy for the rest of this month with "real" work. Maybe by the end of the week?

Cheers,
Fultron
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Post by fultron78 »

www wrote:what happens to the automobiles?
Hi,

Automobiles are accepted by a "Cargo Depot". The cargo depot looks like a warehouse, and accepts Goods, Food, Automobiles and Imports. I generally placed them near large cities on my map, and at the edges of the board.

City buildings still accept Goods, Mail, Passengers and Food, but I have designed the scenario so you don't need to deliver these things to a downtown station, they can go to warehouses on the outskirts of the city (or, well, anywhere on your map).

Fultron
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Post by fultron78 »

Hi,

About a year later, I am releasing this package. Better late than never, I suppose. Unfortunately I haven't had the time to perfect it, but for those interested, they can download it and play around with it. Feel free to mod it further. Be sure to thoroughly read the documentation (in the .zip file) to learn about all of the changes and how this mod works.

For now, you can try to get it at this link:
http://www.physics.ubc.ca/~fulsom/locop ... ackage.zip

Warning, it is large (40 MB) and I don't know if the location will let me house it for long. I will post an update to this thread if the file has to be moved somewhere new.

Cheers,
Fultron
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Post by Samo »

ok, i dl'd it, but i'm not going one more step until u make one major change:

instead of having users override their entire objdat folder, how about i give u a list of the files that need to be overriden so that everything else can be left alone
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Post by fultron78 »

Great, let me know what you think! Despite saying that I have no plans to follow up on this package, if I get some good suggestions and beta testing, I just might.

Post any questions or suggestions here to this thread. Of course, bug reports too.

Thanks,
Fultron
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Post by Plastikman »

fultron78 wrote:Great, let me know what you think! Despite saying that I have no plans to follow up on this package, if I get some good suggestions and beta testing, I just might.

Post any questions or suggestions here to this thread. Of course, bug reports too.

Thanks,
Fultron
i have been secretly working on some mods just like this behind closed doors. maybe this would be what we need to give us a good base to pick at. i want to look at this but i am busy beta testing my "kill canada" pack. it sounds good so far. you had a similar idea to what we had in mind for using buildings. we were going to try and make things like an auto dealership and stuff. just to many mods not enough time. i am sure thst if you chose to continue with this mod, people would be willing to help.
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Post by fultron78 »

Samo wrote:ok, i dl'd it, but i'm not going one more step until u make one major change:

instead of having users override their entire objdat folder, how about i give u a list of the files that need to be overriden so that everything else can be left alone
I am not changing the installation method. I still firmly suggest that you rename your original "ObjData" folder to "ObjData_Backup". Then copy the Great Lakes Mod "ObjData_Play" or "ObjData_Build" into your Locomotive directory and rename it "ObjData". This is the easiest and safest way to do it. I strongly advise against overwriting anything. It is best to swap in and out this package by renaming the entire folder.

If you only want to copy bits and pieces of this package into your ObjData folder, you do so at your own risk, and I believe it is a mistake. I have made lots of changes to commodities, industries, city buildings, and railcars/ships. If you already have a large set of rolling stock they won't work out of the box without modding them too. (The engines should be fine, but non-Great Lakes railcars won't be able to transport 1/2 of the commodities correctly). Existing building data may be written over, and trying to play a saved game from the original Loco will not be the same (it will work, but industries will produce different commodities, etc.). Again, step 1 is absolutely to backup your original ObjData folder.

If you still insist on going this way, the easiest way to see what files are new/modified is to unzip the ObjData_Play folder, and sort it by date. Anything newer than 2004 has been modified from it's original form. Alternatively, I have attached a list here (filename.txt) of all new/modified files for interest sake. There are 142 .DAT files that need to be changed. At some point, it becomes pointless to keep track of all of these and easier to just swap in/out the entire folder in a self-consistent block.

Fultron
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