Automated timetables and separation

[gizmo]

Just for the record, patch applies cleanly and compiles well with latest revision 27500, and in small tests it works like a charm for me.
Unfortunately, I cannot test it with my bigger scenarios, because it complains about corrupted savegames.
I wonder, why is that? Just from the UI perspective, it seems that this feature would only need 1 additional bit per train (or group?, if the automatic seperation is enabled or not) that could have been squeezed into some unused flag variable without breaking savegame compatibility? Most likely this is not all and additional space in a savegame is really required, but there must be some way to enable at least upward compatibility? How is this done for other features?

Disclaimer first: I cannot promise anything and most likely will not have the time to work on that, but I looked at the patch and got curious..

Will this patch ever be included in trunk ?

This patch is quite essential to enjoy passengers and mail servicing.

Probably not in its current stage. If it were picked up by one or more developers who could put some serious time in it; then it might... But currently this feature patch is not being maintained and thus it is sort of dead...

What is needed further for considering inclusion?

EDIT: You might want to look at http://www.tt-forums.net/viewtopic.php?t=54332 as an alternative

This patch is what is now in trunk, the ctrl-click for automatic distribution of start dates, right?

I think this patch is much superior and what 99% of the people playing want and need: If you have a group of trains you want to have them separated, there is no other optimum with regard to station ratings, network capacity, profit maximization and eyecandyness. Achieving this with one click is gold, while the automatic distribution of start dates takes a lot of time to get right (at least one round trip for measuring travel times), wastes capacity of your trains (because you need a buffer for breakdowns and jams, which is usually wasted time in case of normal operation, and then you still have incidents that exceed your buffer time and throw all your timetables off, which then need a long time to correct again), and needs adoption on every change (additional train, new station, upgrading vehicles). I wonder how many average players even look into timetables at all, because how they really work is very hard to figure out ingame only..

Thanks to the author for this brilliant and simple working idea!

[JGR]

This patch adds three new fields to the Vehicle structure and two settings, as well as the single extra flag bit.

All of the patches posted from page 7 of this thread onwards don't set the savegame version correctly and so can't load recent trunk savegames.
The easiest way to fix this is to set TIMESEP_SV to a large value (> 400) and set SAVEGAME_VERSION to equal TIMESEP_SV.

[Eddi]

EDIT: You might want to look at http://www.tt-forums.net/viewtopic.php?t=54332 as an alternative

This patch is what is now in trunk, the ctrl-click for automatic distribution of start dates, right?

the thing that ended up in trunk is even more reduced than that.

[gizmo]

This patch adds three new fields to the Vehicle structure and two settings, as well as the single extra flag bit.

All of the patches posted from page 7 of this thread onwards don't set the savegame version correctly and so can't load recent trunk savegames.
The easiest way to fix this is to set TIMESEP_SV to a large value (> 400) and set SAVEGAME_VERSION to equal TIMESEP_SV.

Worked like a charm, thanks!

EDIT: You might want to look at http://www.tt-forums.net/viewtopic.php?t=54332 as an alternative

This patch is what is now in trunk, the ctrl-click for automatic distribution of start dates, right?

the thing that ended up in trunk is even more reduced than that.

What got removed? While I still think this patch here is superior I have read now through the complete thread and partly understand the issues with integrating this .. that is a pity.

[Patagonicus]

Have to agree with Gismo, the one-button solution of the patch is a pretty elegant solution when you don't fancy micro-managing timetables.

Savegame versions are a bit tricky when you need to consider not only the trunk versions but also the versions of multiple patches (I do not play with this alone) - and all of them can get updated over time.

Today, I merged the patch with the most recent official commit (https://github.com/OpenTTD/OpenTTD/tree ... 3097f0e436). File's attached in case it helps anyone...