Page 3 of 4

Re: [OTTD] Some screenshots by Dr. B. Ching (2.0)

Posted: 05 Nov 2018 17:52
by Dr. B. Ching
Yeah, that turned out quite nicely, didn't it? Though a significant portion of the initial sprawl came from the scenario editor. While you can grow cities quite fast by providing transportation and goods, it appears expansion is less rapid the further away you get from the core. Wreedingstone is also a city and was left to expand "naturally" aside from providing roads, but I don't even know how long it'd take for genuine suburbs to appear. Not really feasible with any kind of daylength factor involved, I'm afraid.

Also attached: an up-to-date map.

Re: [OTTD] Some screenshots by Dr. B. Ching (2.0)

Posted: 09 Nov 2018 11:09
by Dr. B. Ching
There's been a change of plan, I'm afraid! I've grown increasingly frustrated with the limitations of my ancient version of OpenTTD and had a look around, trying out various modern builds of OpenTTD. Regrettably, all the work I put into this scenario is wasted because it cannot be ported, but the many features of JGRpp are just too seductive to pass up:
  • Auto-timetables and -separation alone would be worth switching for. Manual schedules were a HUGE time sink.
  • Cargodist for realistic passenger routes!
  • Lots and lots and lots of minor UI improvements.
  • Compatibility with modern NewGRFs.
  • Adjustable town cargo generation ratio.
  • Bug-fixed version of signal simulation (tunnel/bridge), two types of programmable signals, bridges over stations and underwater.
  • And so on...
I'm currently playing a quick&dirty test game to see if the settings and NewGRFs are set up to my liking before I commit to something bigger. Passenger lines work exactly as expected, but freight cargodist has been a weird experience thus far if I'm honest. Still trying to wrap my head around automatically generated links in relation to production, vehicle orders and saturation.

Anyway, this is FIRS3 "In a hot country" on a 1024x1024 island highmap in the 1930s. The main objective if the company is, of course, to export raw materials and other exotic goods to our colonial masters in Europe...

Re: [OTTD] Some screenshots by Dr. B. Ching (2.0)

Posted: 16 Nov 2018 10:15
by Dr. B. Ching
Alright, I think I'm done here. Admittedly, the sub-tropical landscape is certainly not a favorite of mine (desert portions are especially bland), but the game has taught me a good deal about JGRpp's various features and cargodist as well as programmable signals in particular. However, I still don't get why passengers were so fixated on those ferries...why take a bus from main station to the docks and embark on a veeery leisurely journey when they could have arrived much, much sooner on an intercity train departing from the very same station? The ferry doesn't even take a direct route and one transfer to another ship is required to boot. In the end I've had to cut a number of (in theory) sensible train/ship transfer points just to force them to travel by rail. Bus lines paralleling rail out of necessity, for example when dictated by terrain, also seem to be unreasonably popular even in instances where it doesn't make logical sense.

Re: [OTTD] Some screenshots by Dr. B. Ching (2.0)

Posted: 16 Nov 2018 10:24
by Dr. B. Ching
Sub-tropical or not, I still like how some areas worked out visually. Oh, and as far as rural branch lines go, I came up with these settings in the end:

Day length factor: 50
Town growth: normal (may be a little too slow, though)
Town cargo generation ratio: -2.5
Cargodist mode: all asymmetric
Cargodist effect of distance on demand: 50%
Cargodist saturation of shortest path: 67%

Are these ideal numbers? Probably not, but they can be tweaked as I gain more experience with cargodist.

PS: Single-car DMUs able to keep up with demand and being actually worthwhile? How cute!

Re: [OTTD] Some screenshots by Dr. B. Ching (2.0)

Posted: 19 Nov 2018 17:45
by Dr. B. Ching
Back to the scenario editor. Just can't help myself, evidently!

Re: [OTTD] Some screenshots by Dr. B. Ching (2.0)

Posted: 28 Nov 2018 10:42
by Dr. B. Ching
And done! You can get it here in case you're interested.

Re: [OTTD] Some screenshots by Dr. B. Ching (2.0)

Posted: 02 Dec 2018 17:38
by Dr. B. Ching
I've put some work into Fortune Bay City's initial public transit network. Once again, my aim was to preserve as much of the existing infrastructure and buildings as possible and since I had designed the scenario with this eventuality in mind, it was a challenging but feasible task. Couldn't make room for the main station, all the rails and keep the river alongside M1 Motorway, but it was a minor concession. My only gripe with ELs is the need for +2 elevation between tunnel entrances and bridge abutments because they can't share the same tile. Oh well!

Re: [OTTD] Some screenshots by Dr. B. Ching (2.0)

Posted: 06 Dec 2018 10:24
by Dr. B. Ching
All of Fortune Bay City's network is now up and running! New Town is somewhat smaller in comparison, but regardless there was ample opportunity for new, extended and above all not completely-out-of-scale lines. For those wondering about the impact of daylength 50 on passenger transportation: yes, for individual routes in low-density suburbs, the level of ridership is low, however numbers do add up with transfers and cargodist. In a large city like this, or even express train connections between them, a sufficient number of high-capacity vehicles is still very much needed. The key difference I've found is the fact that the infrastructure required can be much more reasonably sized with regard to real life, and as a result gameplay tends to be more about building a manageable web of lines and accompanying vehicles as opposed to four-track super rail highways and bus convoys everywhere to move all those people in vanilla OpenTTD. And long single-track routes with tiny DMUs do work as well. Just the right balance for me!

By the way, savegame is available on request in case anybody wants to tinker with the scenario posted in my other thread.

Re: [OTTD] Some screenshots by Dr. B. Ching (2.0)

Posted: 06 Dec 2018 11:30
by acs121
Clapham Common, Clapham North and Clapham South... I didn't find them in New Clapham, but yeah.

Re: [OTTD] Some screenshots by Dr. B. Ching (2.0)

Posted: 07 Dec 2018 12:00
by arikover
Dr. B. Ching wrote:For those wondering about the impact of daylength 50 on passenger transportation: yes, for individual routes in low-density suburbs, the level of ridership is low, however numbers do add up with transfers and cargodist. In a large city like this, or even express train connections between them, a sufficient number of high-capacity vehicles is still very much needed. The key difference I've found is the fact that the infrastructure required can be much more reasonably sized with regard to real life, and as a result gameplay tends to be more about building a manageable web of lines and accompanying vehicles as opposed to four-track super rail highways and bus convoys everywhere to move all those people in vanilla OpenTTD. And long single-track routes with tiny DMUs do work as well. Just the right balance for me!
Nice to hear that! I think I'm going to give the daylength feature a try, now...

Nice screenshots as well! Impressive tramway line!

However I must say that your screenshots would look even better if you used the .png format instead of the .jpg format. As other members already pointed out, .jpg is really not optimal when it comes to TTD-screenshots.

Re: [OTTD] Some screenshots by Dr. B. Ching (2.0)

Posted: 10 Dec 2018 17:26
by Dr. B. Ching
Thanks for the praise! While I'm aware of the trade-off concerning .jpeg, most of my screenshots are zoomed-out for a nice overview, but also large enough to let you see a lot of detail at native resolution. To that end, I find the degradation in quality acceptable since I don't want to upload 10+ MB files a piece to a small forum or bother with separate file hosters. All the pictures in my first screenshot thread are lost precisely because they depended on an external server.

For smaller screenshots I could switch to .png as long as the file size doesn't get out of hand, however.

Re: [OTTD] Some screenshots by Dr. B. Ching (2.0)

Posted: 11 Dec 2018 02:59
by kamnet
I believe the file upload limit is 1MB anyhow, so no worries about breaking anything. If you're happy with JPEG, do JPEG.

Re: [OTTD] Some screenshots by Dr. B. Ching (2.0)

Posted: 11 Dec 2018 12:12
by Pyoro
I think the limit has been lifted to something like 10MB; I've certainly uploaded screenshots bigger than 1MB.

That being said, the thing about jpeg screenshots is not only that they are more blurry, they are also larger, unless you cut the quality even further. It really depends on the screenshot in question and how much picture quality you are willing to sacrifice if it's worth doing ^^;

But as kamnet said; your screenshots, so do what you feel is right for you :mrgreen:

Re: [OTTD] Some screenshots by Dr. B. Ching (2.0)

Posted: 11 Dec 2018 14:45
by STD
Making the result to this whole discussion, I can only add one thing-we are all waiting for new screenshots from you. You're doing a great job :)) .

Re: [OTTD] Some screenshots by Dr. B. Ching (2.0)

Posted: 14 Dec 2018 19:40
by Dr. B. Ching
Cheers! I'm glad you're enjoying them, but I don't think I deserve that much of a commendation. Whereas other people put in a lot more time and effort than me to create coherent structures or cities with numerous eyecandy newGRFs, I just build what feels and looks "right" in my eyes and take snapshots. No beautification for screenshots.

Speaking of screenshots: here's Port Victoria. Too small for a subway or metro network, so the most important modes of transportation are trams, ferries and buses (in that order). Little Swordfish Island is also home to the only tram/hovercraft/floatplane transfer station in the entire world, I'd wager. Not the most efficient or realistic arrangement to be sure, however I really wanted to use that fancy seaplane port and float-equipped DHC-6s somewhere, damnit!

And in care you were wondering: while districts lacking a road connection to the city core are unable to spawn new buildings, they can redevelop existing ones. Who knew?

Re: [OTTD] Some screenshots by Dr. B. Ching (2.0)

Posted: 14 Dec 2018 19:58
by acs121
It's very good, but please, stop using JPG. On the first picture you can clearly see there is a huge loss of color. It isn't really possible to see what was built.

Re: [OTTD] Some screenshots by Dr. B. Ching (2.0)

Posted: 15 Dec 2018 01:23
by kamnet
acs121 wrote:It's very good, but please, stop using JPG. On the first picture you can clearly see there is a huge loss of color. It isn't really possible to see what was built.
Maybe it's time for you to get an eye exam? I'm 42, and even though I need bifocals now, I can see what was built pretty clearly.

Re: [OTTD] Some screenshots by Dr. B. Ching (2.0)

Posted: 15 Dec 2018 05:33
by STD
On the new screenshots show everything well. I personally watch each image without glasses :wink: . Perhaps you mean the use of a larger scale than selected in the screenshots :?:

Re: [OTTD] Some screenshots by Dr. B. Ching (2.0)

Posted: 16 Dec 2018 13:35
by acs121
kamnet wrote:
acs121 wrote:It's very good, but please, stop using JPG. On the first picture you can clearly see there is a huge loss of color. It isn't really possible to see what was built.
Maybe it's time for you to get an eye exam? I'm 42, and even though I need bifocals now, I can see what was built pretty clearly.
I also need bifocals since a lot of time, and by "it isn't really possible to see" I meant that it was a bit blurry.

Re: [OTTD] Some screenshots by Dr. B. Ching (2.0)

Posted: 17 Dec 2018 02:16
by Dave
Dr. B. Ching wrote:All of Fortune Bay City's network is now up and running! New Town is somewhat smaller in comparison, but regardless there was ample opportunity for new, extended and above all not completely-out-of-scale lines. For those wondering about the impact of daylength 50 on passenger transportation: yes, for individual routes in low-density suburbs, the level of ridership is low, however numbers do add up with transfers and cargodist. In a large city like this, or even express train connections between them, a sufficient number of high-capacity vehicles is still very much needed. The key difference I've found is the fact that the infrastructure required can be much more reasonably sized with regard to real life, and as a result gameplay tends to be more about building a manageable web of lines and accompanying vehicles as opposed to four-track super rail highways and bus convoys everywhere to move all those people in vanilla OpenTTD. And long single-track routes with tiny DMUs do work as well. Just the right balance for me!

By the way, savegame is available on request in case anybody wants to tinker with the scenario posted in my other thread.
I most enjoy that big long bridge! Your building style is rather languid and without all the flapping about stupid four way junctions and “maximum throughput” and I rather like it that way.

Lovely.