FIRS Industry Replacement Set - releases

[supermop]

Andy, even if quarries remained flat, would you be open to including more layouts? I am sure some smaller or different shapes could be formed reusing most of the same tiles.

[Phreeze]

you can draw them and send them to andy it's easy work for him then

[andythenorth]

you can draw them and send them to andy it's easy work for him then

If they're to the same standard as the other sprites, they'll maybe get included. The quarry layouts and spritesheets are a total PITA to work with though.

Also I want to animate quarries some time, and the spritesheets need refactored to do that. More sprites = less likely animation ever happens.

[oftcrash]

This is a REALLY rough mock up, but what about something along these lines for the quarries?

quarry-mock.png (47 KiB) Viewed 3897 times

[ISA]

This is a REALLY rough mock up, but what about something along these lines for the quarries?

I also some time back made something... Scroll down If anyone wants to use and redraw something like that, please go ahead! If needed I should have some drawing on my USB drive to use! Just let me know!

[andythenorth]

This is a REALLY rough mock up, but what about something along these lines for the quarries?

Pretty good. I could make the sprites react to height level, so quarries at low level are water-filled pits, and quarries on higher levels are deeper.

The water has always been a quick fix because I'm too lazy to draw good rock texture for an open-pit mine. Even the 'quick' fix was a couple of days drawing in total

[leifbk]

The FIRS set is awesome, I'm playing with it all the time!

I like to start in 1700, with the eGRVTS horse carriages and Mouse's sailing ships. Combined with FIRS (and the newly discovered Canadian dirt roads), this gives a mostly realistic feeling of the 18th century. However, the Sugar refinery is definitely out of place. One thing is that the building looks far too modern, but also, according to Wikipedia, sugar extraction from beets didn't take off until around 1800, when cane sugar became unobtainable in France due to the Napoleonic wars.

In the 18th century, beets were used as food for both men and beasts, and IMO they should be possible to handle as ordinary food until 1800. It would also be nice to have a pre-1900 Sugar refinery image (as well as for the Stockyard).

Would it also be possible to disable hotels before 1900? Or at least before 1870? Pleease? Even if they would indeed do as beet sinks, they're just totally out of place in the early economy.

[supermop]

beet sinks

Can we please have an industry called 'beet sink'? It can be a hole with an animated conveyor dumping beets into it!

[Wahazar]

Would it also be possible to disable hotels before 1900? Or at least before 1870?

Agree. I'm playing with Early Houses, and those hotels produce unbalanced streams of passengers.
Similar to iron works as predecessor of steel mill,
maybe there should be inn, with much lower passenger production, as predecessor of hotel.

[leifbk]

Would it also be possible to disable hotels before 1900? Or at least before 1870?

Agree. I'm playing with Early Houses, and those hotels produce unbalanced streams of passengers.

I don't care about passengers at all. Until 1830, when the 4-horse and 6-horse passenger carriages arrive, the means of passenger transport are hopelessly inadequate. In the 18th century, the most lucrative business is mail transport with 4-horse wagons between nearby towns, 20-50 tiles apart. I can easily get a 50% annual growth rate in road vehicle income in the early years by concentrating on mail.

Similar to iron works as predecessor of steel mill, maybe there should be inn, with much lower passenger production, as predecessor of hotel.

Sounds like a good idea. Talking of iron works, they went mostly belly up when the steel works based on the Bessemer method started pouring out cheap steel in the 1850s. Maybe they just should close down at that time. An option in the NewGRF settings to close down obsolete secondary industries, like the iron works and the smithy forges, should make the game much more dynamic.

[Alberth]

FIRS has a GPL license, you can fork the project, rename it to avoid confusion, and change anything you like.

[leifbk]

FIRS has a GPL license, you can fork the project, rename it to avoid confusion, and change anything you like.

So I take it that suggestions for improvements are not welcome here? Thanks for the info, then.

[kamnet]

No, he's not saying that at all. Rather than compiling a list of ideas here, you can actually take the code and try these changes out for yourself.

[Alberth]

FIRS has a GPL license, you can fork the project, rename it to avoid confusion, and change anything you like.

So I take it that suggestions for improvements are not welcome here? Thanks for the info, then.

You're drawing conclusions a bit too fast.

If you look at current FIRS, you can see it is not designed with realism in mind, the set doesn't radiate realism. Your arguments of "improve it in this way, since in RL it is done in such and such way" thus probably will give some trouble in trying to convince the author. A second consideration is that andythenorth is not replying here. Either he doesn't like your ideas, or he is busy. I think he's just very busy, he usually is. Also, even if he likes your ideas, he will need time to think about the ideas, any implementation is thus a long time away even for the smallest change. A third consideration is that if you design FIRS from a realism point of view, the set as a whole will change. I have no idea how, probably none of us knows. It could be a popular direction, given the large number of realistic vehicle newgrfs that exist. Making a realistic industry set is a much longer process.

In other words, it is an open question whether making such changes in current FIRS is the best way to proceed. I pointed out a safe alternative which I know andythenorth will not mind. Make a clone of the project, where you can really try your own ideas in the way you want it, and experience yourself how it works out, in your own pace without being dependent on others to realize your dream. Cloning FIRS gives you a jump start, since you already have a working industry set with graphics, and fully coded. That is much better than starting from scratch with an empty pixel editor (unless you like drawing pixels of course).

Transformation from a dream to reality is a lot of work, but I find it very rewarding when you find that solution that you are looking for, and all puzzle pieces suddenly drop at the right place. In addition, you will learn a lot of stuff, and have lots of fun. What more can you wish?

[leifbk]

Alberth,
thanks for your latest reply, which I find is in a far friendlier tone than the first one. That was a response that I immediately associate with some of the grimmer sides of OS projects, where a developer declares that "its my way or the highway". Now that you've made yourself clear, I see that was not your intention.

I've done a fair bit of coding, mostly in scripting languages like PHP, bash, and Perl. I've even done a largish PostgreSQL/PHP genealogy Web application. I can do a little C, but I'm not very comfortable with it.

The NML language looks interesting, and yesterday, as a prelude, I made my very own town names NewGRF. I got some very quick and helpful hints from Transportman, and am looking forward to explore the world of NewGRFs further. I will indeed download the source of FIRS and see what it's like. I've got quite a few ideas about it, and may even manage to do a few rough images.

Some further thoughts: I do not believe that openttd ever will be able to mimic real life. It's probably not even desirable. But as it's now able to span the years 1700-2050, I feel that the scenery should at least try to be historically correct, and avoid gross anachronisms.

I have a dream that one day it may be possible to create a scenario / game script that re-enacts the entire Industrial Revolution, where transportation played an essential role. It could make wonderful education, and a whole lot of fun.

[kamnet]

If it's basically a matter of keeping the same type of industries but changing the graphics and adjusting the outputs, that shouldn't be too difficult.

[kamnet]

I found an error in the readme.txt file included with FIRS 1.3.0:

A full list of conflicting newgrfs can be found here:
http://dev.openttdcoop.org/projects/fir ... hecks.pnml

The resulting URL produces an Error 404.

[Alberth]

It should probably be http://dev.openttdcoop.org/projects/fir ... cks.pypnml

[Sabre_Justice]

Alberth,
thanks for your latest reply, which I find is in a far friendlier tone than the first one. That was a response that I immediately associate with some of the grimmer sides of OS projects, where a developer declares that "its my way or the highway". Now that you've made yourself clear, I see that was not your intention.

I've done a fair bit of coding, mostly in scripting languages like PHP, bash, and Perl. I've even done a largish PostgreSQL/PHP genealogy Web application. I can do a little C, but I'm not very comfortable with it.

The NML language looks interesting, and yesterday, as a prelude, I made my very own town names NewGRF. I got some very quick and helpful hints from Transportman, and am looking forward to explore the world of NewGRFs further. I will indeed download the source of FIRS and see what it's like. I've got quite a few ideas about it, and may even manage to do a few rough images.

Some further thoughts: I do not believe that openttd ever will be able to mimic real life. It's probably not even desirable. But as it's now able to span the years 1700-2050, I feel that the scenery should at least try to be historically correct, and avoid gross anachronisms.

I have a dream that one day it may be possible to create a scenario / game script that re-enacts the entire Industrial Revolution, where transportation played an essential role. It could make wonderful education, and a whole lot of fun.

While I know jack about coding, I have a feeling that if you want to make a more Industrial Revolution style OTTD game... it's probably possible, but you'd probably be better off building it from the ground up, at least with the economic system and payments and whatnot. I've tried it once and it gets frustrating very quickly with the slow vehicles and tiny loads, I'm sure some people love that but it makes it clear that the original and FIRS economies are both based around 20th century vehicles at least.

To get a 18th century game working, you'd probably want to adjust cargo amounts and payouts to reflect how everything is so short-range and even mail from the next town over is a valuable service, just for starters. Boats would probably be the only feasible large-scale transportation, and I can see heavy use of barges and sailing ships to get industry working.

[Sabre_Justice]

Alberth,
thanks for your latest reply, which I find is in a far friendlier tone than the first one. That was a response that I immediately associate with some of the grimmer sides of OS projects, where a developer declares that "its my way or the highway". Now that you've made yourself clear, I see that was not your intention.

I've done a fair bit of coding, mostly in scripting languages like PHP, bash, and Perl. I've even done a largish PostgreSQL/PHP genealogy Web application. I can do a little C, but I'm not very comfortable with it.

The NML language looks interesting, and yesterday, as a prelude, I made my very own town names NewGRF. I got some very quick and helpful hints from Transportman, and am looking forward to explore the world of NewGRFs further. I will indeed download the source of FIRS and see what it's like. I've got quite a few ideas about it, and may even manage to do a few rough images.

Some further thoughts: I do not believe that openttd ever will be able to mimic real life. It's probably not even desirable. But as it's now able to span the years 1700-2050, I feel that the scenery should at least try to be historically correct, and avoid gross anachronisms.

I have a dream that one day it may be possible to create a scenario / game script that re-enacts the entire Industrial Revolution, where transportation played an essential role. It could make wonderful education, and a whole lot of fun.

While I know jack about coding, I have a feeling that if you want to make a more Industrial Revolution style OTTD game... it's probably possible, but you'd probably be better off building it from the ground up, at least with the economic system and payments and whatnot. I've tried it once and it gets frustrating very quickly with the slow vehicles and tiny loads, I'm sure some people love that but it makes it clear that the original and FIRS economies are both based around 20th century vehicles at least.

To get a 18th century game working, you'd probably want to adjust cargo amounts and payouts to reflect how everything is so short-range and even mail from the next town over is a valuable service, just for starters. Boats would probably be the only feasible large-scale transportation, and I can see heavy use of barges and sailing ships to get industry working.