Heavy Equipment Set (HEQS) v1.5.2 released! [OTTD]

[andythenorth]

I found that the order for all HEQS v4 vehicle except MT.MCKINLEY DUMP TRUCK are something wrong.

The other guys are correct you need to use the drive through road stop with all articulated vehicles. This also applies to eGRVTS and other road vehicle sets.

Ostlandr's screenshot (linked on previous page) shows the drive through stops in use (with the US Roads set - default ones look slightly different).

cheers,

Andy

[leaderfrontier]

Oh thank,it work.

Just the speed too slow zzz

[andythenorth]

Just the speed too slow zzz

Ha ha, you're stuck with that I'm afraid . IRL the bulldozers would do a maximum of about 8mph, and more likely 4mph. For the set, I've bumped them up to 14mph or 15mph depending on the model.

Some of the later dump trucks are faster.

[michael blunck]

Just the speed too slow zzz

Seems they´re a candidate for "newgrf balancing".



regards
Michael

[ostlandr]

Crawler tractors in 1900? Sure! Benjamin Holt built his "Caterpillar" for working on soft soils in California in 1904. The original was steam powered. The Holt company ended up in a patent dispute with the owners of the patent rights to an earlier half-track logging tractor (also steam powered) that was used on the East coast. Later gasoline powered models were successfully used to tow field guns in WWI. Legend has it that the Brits snagged the technology to build the first "landships"

This site has a picture of the original Caterpillar:

http://www.holtcat.com/anniversary.asp

The links on the site have pictures of a Caterpillar "60" with the distinctive nose wheel steering. It wasn't until a mechanic at the factory moved one around without the nose wheel that they realized it wasn't necessary.

Here's another link with pictures you might like, if you aren't already a member:

http://www.acmoc.org/index.php

[andythenorth]

I'm looking for feedback from you guys on the HEQS grf so I can start on the next release.

The next release will be a cleanup release, and will not add many new vehicles. It will improve the set ready for more vehicles in the next-but-one release.

There have been about 600 downloads of the release, so I figure that I'm not the only one using it What I need to know is how the set is working for you in the gameplay.

Obviously it's nice when people post 'I love the set', and that keeps me working on it, but it's not much to go on for what improvements are needed

Here's my plan for the next release (might change):

1. v 0.4 uses 'drawbars' between articulated vehicles. These are coded as vehicles, and I can't shorten them any further. They look good in depot view, but are a complete headache to sort out the offsets for. These will be removed and we'll all have to live with trailers that having nothing connecting them together (one of many unrealistic but perfectly good compromises in the game I feel). This is a decision I've made and am sticking to, having looked at some complicated ways to code it better and decided it's too much work for the results.

2. Add some early bulldozers going back to about 1900
3. Add a rubber tracked crawler with high speed from about 199x (based on Cat challenger)
4. Add new sprites for the No. 9 bulldozer when first introduced (1970). Current graphics feature high-drive tracks which should really appear about 1980.
5. Fix some vehicle lengths and offsets (will need multiple boring offset tweaks)
6. Look into a possible weird conflict between HEQS and the trams in NA Roadsets (If I can reproduce it...I'm hoping it was a one-off weirdness or goes away in a future build of OTTD...)
7. Improvements to user manual if anyone gives me any comments on it
8. Try and fix any problems with ECS or PBI - nobody has reported any yet...have you found any??
9. Fix purchase and running costs. These have not been set yet properly - they are defaults copied from eGRVTS. This is where I most need feedback. How are your HEQS vehicles doing? Making too much money? Too little? Do they cost too much to buy? Too little?

For the next-but-one release I'm looking at adding some more logging vehicles and a generic farm tractor available about 1920. I also want to add a fast articulated crawler (Case Steiger style), however this would be introduced sometime after 2000, and I can never be bothered to play that long due to the 'too much money, too little challenge' problem It's a cool tractor though, and I can do a wheeled version easily, so I might add it.

cheers,

Andy

[FooBar]

This is a decision I've made and am sticking to

Maybe you can add the drawbar as a fixed element to the front of a trailer. Dunno how that looks in corners, but that way you can keep the drawbar, but they're easier to code. Maybe only try it for one or two new vehicles to see how it works and then make a final decision later on.

Improvements to user manual if anyone gives me any comments on it

There's a user manual?

Unfortunaltely I can't comment much on the cost part. I like this set a lot but haven't played much with it recently, because I'm playtesting OpenGFX in all climates and in order to spot problems with the OpenGFX default vehicle graphics I can't use any other NewGRFs with that. I'll have a look for you in the user manual instead. I'm pretty good at complaining about those things

EDIT:
I just read through the user manual. Very thorough indeed. Doesn't seem to be anything missing from it, at least not anything important.

[SirXavius]

For me HEQS is a must-have, just like eGRVTS, for basic vehicles. I didn't have any major problems with profit-making, as the capacities of these vehicles makes them desirable for trips too short or cargo too light for a train.

I'll tell you though, i play way beyond 2051 and would love to see some futuristic versions of these heavy-duty vehicles well into the 22nd and 23rd centuries. Perhaps "hovertrucks" (a version of Roujin's hoverbus) that last a lot longer than 20 years (so you don't hafta code a lot more sprites).

But other than that very minor complaint, i love this set and consider it a staple to my bevy of vehicles.

[andythenorth]

I'll tell you though, i play way beyond 2051 and would love to see some futuristic versions of these heavy-duty vehicles well into the 22nd and 23rd centuries.

How about HoverDozer? Sounds like a Vogon demolition ship in Hitchhikers Guide. Maybe Pikka Bird wants to do it. Personally though I'm holding out for an ice cream van grf from Pikka (he'll know what I mean if he reads this).

Hmmm, no plans here for hover vehicles, however HEQS is GPL and anyone else is welcome to mod in hover vehicles. If it's done well I'd copy it back to my release. I've got layered photoshop files of graphics if anyone wants to try.

cheers,

Andy

[OzTrans]

... weird conflict between HEQS and the trams in NA Roadsets ...

What is that weirdness ?

[DJ Nekkid]

9. Fix purchase and running costs. These have not been set yet properly - they are defaults copied from eGRVTS. This is where I most need feedback. How are your HEQS vehicles doing? Making too much money? Too little? Do they cost too much to buy? Too little?

i have an excel-file you might want

pm or msn' me

[andythenorth]

... weird conflict between HEQS and the trams in NA Roadsets ...

What is that weirdness ?

So far not reproducible, like all the best bugs. I saw it during testing, it appeared there were ID conflicts between HEQS and NA trams which shouldn't be happening when using the engine pool. I had certain HEQS vehicles not available to buy. Disabling NA trams using the parameter semi-fixed the HEQS problem, but left some of my articulated HEQS vehicles using tram sprites.

There are too many variables of nightly, save game, grf version etc to consider this a genuine issue unless I can reliably reproduce it, but I thought I'd better look into it.

cheers,

Andy

[DJ Nekkid]

enableing and disabling within the same game can, and will, do some wierd things some times

[OzTrans]

... HEQS, trams and engine pool ...

... enabling and disabling within the same game can, and will, do some weird things

Changing sets within a (saved) game can cause weird things. I have experienced that myself. FYI, trams in NARoads use vehicle IDs 0x4F through 0x57 inclusive and are GRM reserved. When you disable the trams in NA Roads in a save game or within a game via parameter, everything gets 'unloaded'; i.e all action-0, -1, -3, -4; and -2s also. The question remaining is, what happens to the GRM reserved vehicle IDs and the sprites that still sit somewhere.

Try moving NARoads around in your list of GRFs, it can go anywhere (i.e. above or below HEQS) and see what happens then. But you should avoid disabling the trams within a game.

[DJ Nekkid]

FYI, trams in NARoads use vehicle IDs 0x4F through 0x57 inclusive and are GRM reserved. When you disable the trams in NA Roads in a save game or within a game via parameter, everything gets 'unloaded'; i.e all action-0, -1, -3, -4; and -2s also. The question remaining is, what happens to the GRM reserved vehicle IDs and the sprites that still sit somewhere.

That probably explains a lot here... But what if (you make) the GRM-reserve is only valid for patch and not for openttd? Or even a nightly-leading-to-openttd-version-0.7-or-higher thingy

[peter1138]

FYI, trams in NARoads use vehicle IDs 0x4F through 0x57 inclusive and are GRM reserved. When you disable the trams in NA Roads in a save game or within a game via parameter, everything gets 'unloaded'; i.e all action-0, -1, -3, -4; and -2s also. The question remaining is, what happens to the GRM reserved vehicle IDs and the sprites that still sit somewhere.

That probably explains a lot here... But what if (you make) the GRM-reserve is only valid for patch and not for openttd? Or even a nightly-leading-to-openttd-version-0.7-or-higher thingy

What are you talking about? If you disable loading of vehicles with in a game, then either the default vehicle data will be used for those slots, or some other vehicles can replace them, if multiple set support is enabled. GRM doesn't affect this.

When you change NewGRFs in game, all NewGRFs are reloaded from scratch, so there are no 'left-over' reservations or sprites.

In addition, with multiple set support enabled, GRM (for vehicles) doesn't actually do anything, as each set gets its own space anyway.

[SirXavius]

As far as balancing:

Using eGRVTS and HEQS, when given the choice between the current hopper truck (i forget which one it was) and the first dump truck, i noticed they carried the same capacity, but i opted for the eGRVTS because it was slightly faster or slightly cheaper. I would have chosen the dump truck if it could carry considerably more. So in your next release, i might suggest higher capacities for the dump trucks to make them more attractive to transportation moguls like myself.

Other than the balancing issues, i love this set and hope it never goes away....

[OzTrans]

... When you change NewGRFs in game, all NewGRFs are reloaded from scratch, so there are no 'left-over' ... sprites. ...

That is what we expect should happen, but why has andythenorth had this problem ... “but left some of my articulated HEQS vehicles using tram sprites”. I had similar problems with sets that had some sprites disabled/removed via changing parameters, then pressing the apply button; such sprites then appear out of nowhere somewhere else. Unfortunately, I cannot prove it as it was a long time ago and I have destroyed the evidence.

... But what if (you make) the GRM-reserve is only valid for patch and not for openttd? ...

Currently, the GRM system is only really useful when you need sprite numbers for Action-0A activities. But, I do use it for everything else too, because some players accidentally turn on GRM; then my sets are fine, just other sets will fall over. It is no longer necessary to skip anything as it will work in TTDPatch either way. As for OpenTTD, we just don't know how it has been implemented, because it is not documented ...

... with multiple set support enabled, GRM (for vehicles) doesn't actually do anything ...

Where is that documented !! If I'm unsure how some features work or have been implemented, I will consult the wiki. If there is no answer, we may ask stupid questions or make such comments.

[andythenorth]

I had similar problems with sets that had some sprites disabled/removed via changing parameters, then pressing the apply button; such sprites then appear out of nowhere somewhere else. Unfortunately, I cannot prove it as it was a long time ago and I have destroyed the evidence.

Interesting point. I can't replicate the problem so far either. A very effective short term countermeasure is to tell players not to enable / disable vehicle grfs during a game, especially if vehicles from the set exist in the game at that point. Seems reasonable that screwy things will happen if a grf is removed whilst in use.

It does seem like there might be a wider debate here about whether a long term counter measure is needed; however I personally am out of my depth with these questions, and I think we may be running off topic

cheers,

Andy

[michael blunck]

[Problems with loading newgrfs] I can't replicate the problem so far either. [...]

ATM, I´m able to replicate this (or a related) bug in OTTD with my working copy of DBXL 0.9. The bug always enables exactly three of its locomotives in tropical climate, although all vehicles of the DBXL have their climate mask set correctly to temperate and "alpine" (i.e. arctic climate AND alpineclimate .grf available).

Slonborough Transport, 5. Feb 1956.png (5.14 KiB) Viewed 2849 times

This doesn´t happen in TTDPatch, BTW.

regards
Michael