Transport Tycoon Forums

I switch to 3d graphics with P1SIM.

// edit: screnshot deleted since graphics style has changed a lot and deletion avoids misleading assumptions regarding future look of the game

looks great so allowing to see inside buildings? and such?

Yes please! Looks like good progress changing the engine over!

This looks similar to what you envisaged all those years ago! I like it!

There have been a few games which combine 2D graphics with 3D-animated vehicles like simcity4 or rise of nations.
If I look at the building on the screenshot, it's made of blocks, which reminds me the game block'hood, which is a good looking, creative game, but would probably perform much better in 2D like RCT2 than in 3D.

Playing around with simple train graphics ...

Oh wow, I'm glad to see you are still making progress on this project.

I like the concentric curves, they are very clean. You can see the track is one grid square wide, how "tall" is it? That is, how much vertical clearance is reserved? I guess that's not important now, I'm just curious.

I will say, I don't like the slopes. It's a constant limitation in Locomotion, where you can have a slope OR a curve. Just like real railroads, you'd want the option to have both in the same location. The entire network of track, switches and sometimes stations may be on a constant grade / slope. I'd like to see much longer shallower slopes which function the same as flat track (with curves and switches), except of course the trains themselves would struggle up hill and roll easier down. It that case you would not need new 3D models for slopes, the track slope is mild enough you can just display flat track at a slight angle. The joints between the flat and slope would be unnoticed and it would eliminate the vertical curves seen in your image at the beginning/end of each slope.
Anyway, for P1SIM long more mild slopes may be impractical. You can choose to make it more like a game with exaggerated slopes, or more like a simulation with much flatter track. I guess the real consideration is how far you want the train to need to travel horizontally before it gets high/low enough to pass over/under other track, roads, buildings, etc. The farther the distance, the more difficult the game. Lighter trains can overcome steeper slopes, heavy freight trains need long mild slopes and broad curves. Oh man, this goes on and on...

... I guess I'm more passionate about slopes than I thought.

Yeah steep slope angles are really a problem ... But as you already said they quickly get impractical if I set them too long. I will play around a bit with different settings. In parallel to Unity3d engine I am currently learning Ruby for Sketchup so that I can build up big show cases for P1SIM and perhaps animate some trains for a video. Then it is easier to discuss that stuff with better and dynamic visualization. By the way the vertical grid is 10 Meters, same like horizontal grid. My current approach is doing all the road and citizen stuff on the ground (level 0) and doing all the train stuff on level 1/2/3/4. Vertical distance between two train levels is 10 meters.

I am planning an outdoor and indoor view: (bigger screenshot attached)

Bigger version attached.

Further screenshots will be posted on Twitter

https://twitter.com/P1SIM

glenjimen wrote: ↑14 Jun 2020 19:20 Oh wow, I'm glad to see you are still making progress on this project.

This seems as good a thing to quote as any, even if not written by the author.

OK, I know, I said I'd let it lie, but it's been a decade, and furthermore this doesn't look like progress; it looks like throwing away a chunk of the 3D graphics engine written after throwing away whatever was written for the original idea of making something work in 2D (which at the very least included a bunch of pixel art) and quite possibly some other throwings-away. (Likewise, how many Websites have been put up and thrown down? I think I count two, and that was just to 2011.) Of course, sometimes a new tool or library or whatever is so good it's worth doing that... but sometimes you need to stick with the devil you know or you'll never get anything out.

smallfly: in your most productive year so far, how many lines of code dealing with actual gameplay did you write that are still in the game?

Let's assume, generously, that you enjoy the life expectancy of a Japanese man born today, and that from now on you will always be as productive as your best year - to the very day you die, you will be just as mentally capable, physically able to program, unconstrained by IRL circumstances, and dedicated to the project as you are now - or rather, as you have been at the peak of the last decade.

Since you were in your early 20s when you started, given these assumptions, you can expect to live around 50 more years.

How many lines of gameplay code would 50 times your most productive year be? Would it be more than OpenTTD? Would it be, even possibly, as many as a project vastly more ambitious than OpenTTD?

(Let me be a cynic and ask - would it be more than robotfindskitten?)

Quite aggressively omitting anything that is OS-specific or pertains to sound or music or the details of how graphics are done, I find about 300,000 lines of code in OpenTTD. In other words, assuming (again) you are exceptionally fortunate in terms of physical and mental health, if you write 16 lines of code _every day_ from now until they prise the keyboard from your cold dead hands, you will have a project _as_ complex as OpenTTD. How does that compare with your productivity over the last decade? (You can count your comments too...)

Are you using a version control system yet?

In view of the answers to the questions above, what are the odds of you ever releasing anything like what you originally envisaged?

I'm saying this not to be unpleasant but to say, for God's sake, don't spend another decade of your life on this. Even if tinkering with it brings you pleasure, you could find a project you can finish and get pleasure from doing that!

@damerell
Thank you for your opinion on the project. The project had fundamental graphical changes and there were long periods when nobody worked on the project. Thus your assessment is completely understandable.

Since isometric graphics (prerendered in blender) was too ambitious for me, I switched to top-down graphics long time ago. Then the project quickly made progress. After having reached ~50k lines of code I realized that the top-down graphics do not give me enough freedom of gameplay possibilities. I did not see big advantages of my game to others. And it was not the game of my dreams at all. Thus my motivation to proceed with the top-down graphics was gone. It would have been just work, and no fun, to finish the top-down version of P1SIM.

A few years later I realized that the combination of Unity3d and Sketchup allows me to switch from pixelbased graphics to 3d models while even speeding up the development time. Unity3d allows me to code in my favorite programming language C# and provides a lot of basic functionality enabling quick coding progress. Sketchup on the other hand is super easy to use, straight forward and is supported by Unity3d for model import. Both tools are simply the perfect combination for me to realize P1SIM in a way that the outcome will really be the logistics game of my dreams.

Currently I am modelling all the game graphics and position them in a mockup scene, which I regularly share on Twitter (see preview below). As soon as I have created all game graphics (already ~50% done) I will then import all those (already named with their final ingame name ) Sketchup components to Unity3d and bring the models to live. That is a pretty straight forward process.

Maybe it takes another decade or even longer. But I don't care. In the end I would like to play the logistics game of my dreams. And I hope a few of you will join me latest by then

//edit: To answer your questions: No single line of code of the top-down version will be taken over to 3d version. Not only because we are speaking about two different coding languages (Java vs. C#) but mainly because the existing 50k lines of code simply make no sense in a 3d version of the game. And no, I do not use a version control system. In the days when I worked intensively on the code I saved the whole source code in a daily backup on several drives. The odds of me ever releasing anything like what I originally envisaged => Very good You should bet on it! (Only risk: I could die before publishing the game. For this case, sorry in advance.)

smallfly wrote: ↑27 Sep 2020 11:13//edit: To answer your questions: No single line of code of the top-down version will be taken over to 3d version. Not only because we are speaking about two different coding languages (Java vs. C#) but mainly because the existing 50k lines of code simply make no sense in a 3d version of the game.

So, in other words, after a decade you have produced no actual game code which might be in the final version of the game. I was joking, but you are, based on performance so far, not going to finish a project the size of robotfindskitten.

But let's suppose every line of those 50k lines is usable. Then (assuming, once again, the keyboard is prised from your cold dead hands at 82), based on that performance, you will have a project circa 150% as complex as OpenTTD. This is unfortunate since what you intend to do is considerably more complex than that, you presumably do not have the 82 year life expectancy of a male Japanese baby today, and if you want to actually play the thing you'd better finish it a bit earlier than that. (Earlier still if you want anyone else who saw the initial announcement to play it; I was not in my early 20s when I read it.)

Only risk: I could die before publishing the game. For this case, sorry in advance.)

My point is it is practically certain that you will - even that the hypothetical you whose last decade's work is all usable, doesn't make any false starts from now, and enjoys the best of fortune for the next fifty years isn't going to finish.

And no, I do not use a version control system. In the days when I worked intensively on the code I saved the whole source code in a daily backup on several drives.

Also, after a decade, you appear to think the sole point of version control is backups. Ten years ago I compared the project to climbing Everest naked in winter. In that analogy, I've just checked in to find you're still wondering if mountains are the sticky-up ones or not.

Well, I tried. If I am still alive - the odds favour it - I'll check in again in 2030.

damerell wrote: ↑27 Sep 2020 11:47Well, I tried. If I am still alive - the odds favour it - I'll check in again in 2030.

I would be pleased

smallfly wrote: ↑27 Sep 2020 16:52

damerell wrote: ↑27 Sep 2020 11:47Well, I tried. If I am still alive - the odds favour it - I'll check in again in 2030.

I would be pleased

I'll be pleased too, you're doing fine Smallfly, this isn't a project for you to earn money, so take your time. I've tried countless times to get into game development and made 0 progress. You're on the right path, keep it up.