Suggestion: Disable closure and opening of Industries

[planetmaker]

Sorry for digging up such a old thread, but why did this patch not make it into the sources?

The reason is simple: it's possible. Just use a NewGRF which supports that. So no need to implement the same thing twice.

[JacobD88]

...it's possible. Just use a NewGRF which supports that. So no need to implement the same thing twice.

Sorry, planetmaker, on this i must disagree, whilst i respect that the Devs have other priorities, the fact that this remains NewGRF dependant and not added as a standard functionality to trunk leaves all the power and responsibility with GRF makers.

Now for the most part, i recognise this is not a problem, as many NewGRF creators out there have either already begun to introduce the appropriate actions into their GRFs, or allow their GRFs to be altered by an individual so this control over closure and opening of industries can be added. But this means that the minority of GRF authors who disallow modifying their work, or those people who are not GRF savvy (which will increase in numbers as OTTD continues to get more attention from new gamers) means that there will always be issues with people not being able to turn off industry closure, and more thread creation and/or digging in the forums regarding this issue...

In short, requests will never cease whilst there is some need for the function, as a standard, in OTTD... Simply leaving it to NewGRF authors, or people with enough knowledge (and permission) to modify existing GRFs is not enough to stop the requests, giving players the option from the outset will allow for any issues with closure/opening behaviour to be stamped out and fits more in with the great thing about TTO/TTD(P)/OTTD which is that players are given CHOICE everywhere to tailor the game to run in a manner that pleases them industries are a major part of the game, so players would ideally be given choice over their creation and closure without the need to add, write or modify NewGRFs. We already can control their production with a cheat after-all

Now as Lord Arro pointed out, with regards to this specific patch, it's by no means clean enough (irrespective of Devs liking it) to make it as a trunk candidate, but i cannot see someone taking the time to make a clean patch without some form of reassurance from the Devs that they would consider the option if appropriately presented, and therein i believe lies the problem with noone seriously looking at this issue and simple referring back to the "NewGRF's can do it" stance

+ends ramblings+

[Yexo]

The best reason not to consider such a patch is that it can't be failsafe: The patch could disable the closing of the industry, but that doesn't help if it stops producing anything at all because the newgrf says it should close. You can't fix that problem without taking over the "how much is produced" code from the newgrf in openttd and that means that you disable a large part of the industry newgrf spec.

[JacobD88]

Thanks for the prompt reply

Surely that could be worked around by a further option, ideally added by the same patch, to allow the user to select NewGRF spec behaviour as priority over OTTD behaviour or vice-versa?

As mentioned in my post, NewGRF authors tend to give you the option of controlling industries in their work anyway. But, particularly with default industries, where that control is lacking without GRF mods, and where default industries are present, the functionalities of additional GRF industries would (i imagine) be secondary anyway due to most industry sets being blanket replacements rather than additions to a default industry game.

The priority workaround would cater for the player to have control over any instances where both are present as to how their game ran (and as a by-product, where they would have to "cheat" to demolish 0 production industries, otherwise leaving them on the map as abandoned or derelict)... Another alternative would be to make OTTD recognise when the 0 production situation may occur due to conflict and give an xx% chance of boosting (or reopening) that industries production to compensate, or forcibly removing the industry as would be expected, and as an exception to the "no closure" option, if the NewGRF would allow that normally

Either-way this i recognise this is all a lot of work, I'm just trying to get a feel of what a blanket function to control industry behaviour would bring to OTTD and in what form implementation would have to take

[fafler]

So, here's a store about a boy who liked to play with trains.

I have played with model trains as long as i can remember. Got my first H0 scale trainset when i was 3 or 4 and way to young to appreciate it. My dad had a thing for N scale German steam engines, and at age ten, I got all his tracks because he wanted to use tracks with real gravel instead of plastic. We even went on a trip, to collect samples of German railroad gravel and compare colors. Anyway, the main problem with "real" model trains is that their world isn't very living and I was kinda losing interest when i found Railroad Tycoon. It was great! The game world evolved around me. And the size of my railroad empire wasn't limited by my allowance. Transport Tycoon came and offered a much better gaming experience, but was still somewhat limited. The deluxe edition was a big step in the right direction and I made great transport empires, constantly challenging myself to make a better layout.

Now time went on and for a couple of years i actually forgot my passion. Until one day, i was browsing the debian repositories looking for a better civilization clone and i found OpenTTD. Man, you could build anything in that game! Proper signal behaviour and what seemed like and unlimited amount of trains. Wast amounts of space to build on. I keep my laptop with me for school and a game of OpenTTD is often paused on it. Waited to be resumed whenever I have some time to kill. Always improving, finding ways to avoid congestion, building bigger and bigger.

The latest craze is heightmaps. It's a much better experience than the autogenerated maps. And again i spend hour after hour building railroads. Recently i found a heightmap of my homeland, Denmark, and I've been making a scenario with it, with the larger town represented etc. and i want the industry to fit in as well. Which leads me to my conclusion:

Who will help the little boy inside this grown man, who really like to play with trains? Pleease write a patch

Also, I'm looking for a NewGRF set with European trains and industries that make more realistic impression. Any recommendations?

[planetmaker]

...it's possible. Just use a NewGRF which supports that. So no need to implement the same thing twice.

Sorry, planetmaker, on this i must disagree, whilst i respect that the Devs have other priorities, the fact that this remains NewGRF dependant and not added as a standard functionality to trunk leaves all the power and responsibility with GRF makers.

Now for the most part, i recognise this is not a problem, as many NewGRF creators out there have either already begun to introduce the appropriate actions into their GRFs, or allow their GRFs to be altered by an individual so this control over closure and opening of industries can be added. But this means that the minority of GRF authors who disallow modifying their work, or those people who are not GRF savvy (which will increase in numbers as OTTD continues to get more attention from new gamers) means that there will always be issues with people not being able to turn off industry closure, and more thread creation and/or digging in the forums regarding this issue...

Besides the technical aspect which cannot be explained better than Yexo didl, to my knowledge the possibility to control industry behaviour exists for all industries sets (including default ones, search for "manual industries" - not sure whether frosch uploaded it to bananas). The only problem I really see is that for default industries this is not obvious as you'll have to add an _additional_ newgrf; it's no problem IMHO, if you use an industry newgrf anyway - there at least in the upcoming stable version next year the possibility to present parameters in a human-friendly way will expose the parameter options much more prominently w/o the need to refer users to manuals which are not read anyway.

[Lord Aro]

How about we have something like the newgrf included in OTTD, just that it is only activated when only the default industries are active?

[Rubidium]

How about we have something like the newgrf included in OTTD, just that it is only activated when only the default industries are active?

Then I consider the NewGRF that does that and is on Bananas as being included (by proxy). As it's a "setting" it should therefor be enabled only when the user wants it, otherwise you'd for example never get oil rigs if you start too early. As it's a NewGRF it would therefor need to be enabled via the NewGRF settings window. So... in my opinion it's already included for a quite long time now.

[chirag]

Hi All,

really new to OpenTTD (less than a week infact). I have played something similar with railroad tycoon. Closure of industries was something rather irksome. In some cases by the time I got my line working. the industry was closed. in another case. the industry was being serviced, yet it closed down. Is there a final word on this feature being adopted?

I understand that grf's are modifers. Is there a grf that stops closure of industries? How does one install a grf (I use both the Linux and windows versions on the same machine). Linux does not allow me to copy the grf into the data folder.

Any help is appreciated.

[planetmaker]

Search for "manual industries" in the online content. Works from ingame, quite the same, independent of OS.

[Alberth]

How does one install a grf (I use both the Linux and windows versions on the same machine). Linux does not allow me to copy the grf into the data folder.

Actually, it does, you just have to get higher powers

A better solution however is to create a openttd corner in your home directory where you a) can read & write files, and b) share the data between several openttds.
Please consult the readme file that comes with the program for details on where, how, and what.

[chirag]

Search for "manual industries" in the online content. Works from ingame, quite the same, independent of OS.

tried this. No search results. I can see base graphics. tons of grf's and heighmaps.

[Alberth]

The online content version needs a 1.1.x openttd version or a nightly, do you have that?
In the gameplay FAQ at the wiki is a link to the previous version that also works with older openttds.

[Krizalys]

I'm bumping this thread for those of you who are still interested in a way to disable opening and closure of industries in the game core. This can be achieved applying a patch on the official source code package and recompiling the game. While the patch does not yet offer configuration from the user interface, one might still alter the file src/industrytype.h to decide which industry type can open or close at random. The patch is released under the GPLv3 and is known to work for OpenTTD version 1.2.3. Enjoy.

[SirkoZ]

I checked out your patch and to me it looks very elegantly done - through industry behaviour routine - nice and simple.
This should be elegant enough for trunk inclusion - I hope the developers see it worthy...

[PikkaBird]

This should be elegant enough for trunk inclusion - I hope the developers see it worthy...

It won't be, for the reasons explained above - it conflicts with the newgrf spec.

[Krizalys]

This should be elegant enough for trunk inclusion - I hope the developers see it worthy...

Thank you SirkoZ. Although I would also love to see such a feature included in the trunk one day, for now I have to agree with PikkaBird that the patch is not ready to be merged, mainly because of its current limitations. However, it might be improved from time to time and maybe its inclusion in the trunk could be reconsidered by then.

[SirkoZ]

Well it's either patch or newGRF system limitations. It can't be only one-way.