OpenGFX Mars

[Zephyris]

Guided Ground Trains

Guided ground trains are the most common and cheapest form of rail-like travel. The engines are typically large and tracked or wheeled, while the carriages run on large mesh wheels which spread the carriage weight over the soft ground of the track. Some carriages with larger weight capacity use tracks to spread their weight more effectively.

[Transportman]

In order to maximise loading and unloading speeds additional airlock carriages can be used to help; if a pressurised cargo/passenger car is next to an airlock carriage then it increases the loading/unloading rate. Similar airlock cars are also used for guided ground trains and maglevs.

I'm not sure if this is actually possible using the current coding possibilities, NML has no variable to check properties of the next/previous car, only the selected car and the front engine. By using the vehid_chain variables and just assume that if a passenger car is the first/last in a chain the next/previous car is an airlock car (and check if such a car is in the train using count_veh_id) you might get something close to the behavior you want.

[Dave]

This is insane. So much cool stuff to see!

[Zephyris]

[I'm not sure if this is actually possible using the current coding possibilities, NML has no variable to check properties of the next/previous car, only the selected car and the front engine. By using the vehid_chain variables and just assume that if a passenger car is the first/last in a chain the next/previous car is an airlock car (and check if such a car is in the train using count_veh_id) you might get something close to the behavior you want.

I guess it would be possible to just do a count of number of pressurised cargo/passenger cars and a count of airlocks and do a bonus based on that ratio, maxing out at 2:1 cars to airlocks...

This is insane. So much cool stuff to see!

Thanks

[PikkaBird]

Great to see those vehicles Dan put so much work into finally see the light of day. It's looking good!

What are you going to do with the trees? Alien foliage?

[Zephyris]

What are you going to do with the trees? Alien foliage?

I was planning on trees being guided by the concept of genetically modifying extremeophile trees of various types that tend to live in deserts, at high altitude, or extreme cold on earth.
Joshua tree http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yucca_brevifolia
Baobab tree http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adansonia
Dragon tree http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dracaena_(plant)
Many xerophytes (cacti, succulents, etc.)
Under Martian gravity if a tree can get sufficient water and is warm enough then it actually has the capacity to grow extremely tall (the limit to the height of trees on Earth is gravitational pull vs. getting water to the leaves). Most trees will be small, with more occasional very large trees like the baobab.

[Zephyris]

Trees

Trees are central to the terraforming effort on Mars. Each tree is essentially a self-contained factory, taking carbon dioxide from the atmosphore, fixing the carbon and releasing the oxygen. This process does require water, which, along with the low temperature, is the limiting factor for plant growth rate on Mars. To maximise plant's chances in the thin, cold, Martian atmosphere there have been major genetic engineering efforts to take plants from Earth already adapted to extremely cold, dry or salty conditions and mix and match the genetic traits which confer these survival skills. The most successful route has been to take plants already adapted to extremely dry conditions, then add the necessary salt pump and natural antifreeze genes to allow them to grow in the cold so most Martian plant life looks fairly similar to terrestrial desert plant life. The one major difference is that Martian plants are typically very dark in colour. On Earth plants in direct sunlight tend to overheat, sacrificing water by evaporation to cool down, but on Mars they have instead been engineered to minimise water loss and have dark pigments to maximise warming from the limited sunlight.

(Help drawing some trees would be great! I am not very good... Snow covered versions of the trees (snow covered cacti!) will also be needed.)

[PikkaBird]

Very cool.

[Eddi]

In order to maximise loading and unloading speeds additional airlock carriages can be used to help; if a pressurised cargo/passenger car is next to an airlock carriage then it increases the loading/unloading rate. Similar airlock cars are also used for guided ground trains and maglevs.

I'm not sure if this is actually possible using the current coding possibilities, NML has no variable to check properties of the next/previous car, only the selected car and the front engine. By using the vehid_chain variables and just assume that if a passenger car is the first/last in a chain the next/previous car is an airlock car (and check if such a car is in the train using count_veh_id) you might get something close to the behavior you want.

you can use "STORE_TEMP(<offset>, 0x10F), var[0x61, 0, 0xFFFFFFFF, <NFO variable ID>]" to check variables of adjacent vehicles. the direct access through NML-native constructs is not implemented yet. offset is a signed value (negative: towards engine, positive: towards end)

[Zephyris]

Thanks Eddi, I hope we can test that out when things start getting coded... On a technical topic, when are NewGRFs applied? i.e. if the terrain generation sprites (for the original terrain generator) are replaced with more Mars-like ones (lots of craters!) by a NewGRF, will that take effect during terrain generation?

[Zephyris]

Ore Mine

Ore mines are the final common primary production industry on Mars. While many raw materials can be extracted from the regolith some, particularly the more dense metal ores, are quite rare near the surface. The ore mine is specialised deep-shaft mining centre which recovers a complex mixture of ores from deposits underneath the homogeneous regolith. Aluminium and magnesium ores are in greatest demand, in Martian gravity both of these metals represent an optimal balance of weight and strength, while the more common iron ore is simply not of economic interest as iron is far too dense for most applications. The surface footprint of ore mines are often very small as the majority of activity occurs deep underground in pressure-sealed shafts under the Martian surface.

[Zephyris]

Regolith Processing

The processing of regolith into useful material is a complex, multi-step process. The extracted rock goes through a complex maze of conveyors and processes to extract the key volatile elements that drive the chemical production industry on Mars, with a side product of some (a relatively limited quantity) of metal ore which can also be purified from the regolith.

Bored of industries yet? This is the last of the secondary industries, now all the primary and secondary industries are done.

[AMX]

Wait a second... why do you want to use airlocks between vehicles and stations?
They are both pressurized

[lawton27]

Wait a second... why do you want to use airlocks between vehicles and stations?
They are both pressurized

To prevent loosing the pressure when the doors open there'd need to be some kind of airlock connecting the vehicle and station building, like a moving walkway at an airport.

[ISA]

Wait a second... why do you want to use airlocks between vehicles and stations?
They are both pressurized

To prevent loosing the pressure when the doors open there'd need to be some kind of airlock connecting the vehicle and station building, like a moving walkway at an airport.

First thing what the system reminds me is Paris automated metro. See image. Theres also certain places where the train can stop and let people off... no air tight connections but works the same way!

[YNM]

I think what is meant by "airlock" here is air-tight doors, even when connected to another door. It makes sure there's no exchange between the air inside the vehicle and building and the air outside (else there would be some silly crash : "Airlock Fails ! 40 Passenger and Driver Killed in Loss of Air" ?).

EDIT : that last one is a good thing I think, could it be implemented ?

[Zephyris]

"Airlock Fails ! 40 Passenger and Driver Killed in Loss of Air".

Last time I was round here disasters were all still hardcoded and couldn't easily be modified... Is that still the case or can the gamescript language cause disasters now?

[planetmaker]

"Airlock Fails ! 40 Passenger and Driver Killed in Loss of Air".

Last time I was round here disasters were all still hardcoded and couldn't easily be modified... Is that still the case or can the gamescript language cause disasters now?

Disasters are still hardcoded. Yet GS can influence the game state in many ways, so some things they can do can definitely look like disasters (even though they strictly technically aren't any).

[Zephyris]

How hard would it be to rip the disasters out of the hard code and move them to scripts? Or at least make a scripted framework specifically for disasters? Some Mars-specific disasters would be fun

[skippern]

How is stations handled? There should be some sort of air-lock between passenger terminals and passenger carrying vehicles, also this could apply for the entire station (the vehicle passes into a pressurised environment, where people can work freely without vac-suites) or as loading-arms, accessing the pressurised city-domes to the vehicles