Let us modify the NewGRFs we can use in scenarios

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Let us modify the NewGRFs we can use in scenarios

Post by Effwon »

The Uk map i was playing has ECS but I can't enable the right wagons to carry it and enable the Locomotives i want in it?
If there is actually a way to do it, please, give us an easier automatic prompt to change the NewGRFs we are using before we start playing the scenarios.
Thanks.
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Re: Let us modify the NewGRFs we can use in scenarios

Post by Gwyd »

As some people will forever tell you changing NewGRFs makes the game unstable. What you need to do to change NewGRFs is when you start the game, open the console with the key to the left of 1, and type "set newgrf_developer_tools 1". Then you should be able to change the NewGRFs in the "NewGRF settings menu"

DISCLAIMER: This may well break your save, or cause multiple crashes. Be careful to think about what you are adding or removing. Don't file bug reports.
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Re: Let us modify the NewGRFs we can use in scenarios

Post by Effwon »

Gwyd wrote:As some people will forever tell you changing NewGRFs makes the game unstable. What you need to do to change NewGRFs is when you start the game, open the console with the key to the left of 1, and type "set newgrf_developer_tools 1". Then you should be able to change the NewGRFs in the "NewGRF settings menu"

DISCLAIMER: This may well break your save, or cause multiple crashes. Be careful to think about what you are adding or removing. Don't file bug reports.
Thanks for this!
But I am not going to stop the thread yet, I'm asking for them to give us the opportunity to do this before we've even started playing. Scenarios have requirements and so thoes are enabled by default, but you can't add extra NewGRFs before you start in a GUI which makes SENSE like the rest of most of the stuff. For example I was playing a map of the Uk with ECS, but I couldn't transport most of the materials the industries required, and without using the console, I couldn't because on the requirements list there was not the ECS mod that refits stock wagons so that they actually work with ECS cargoes. Newbies and people who don't like commands in video games like myself may enjoy not having to key in console commands to get the right NewGRFs on their Scenarios!

Thanks for the help however, and I'll remember to use that until someone implements a GUI for it.

Effwon

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Re: Let us modify the NewGRFs we can use in scenarios

Post by Comm Cody »

and what if someone removed a town set or an industry set, which would bork up and destroy the scenario?

adding and removing newgrfs should NEVER be supported by default in both games and scenarios.
Something goes here, hell if I know.
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Re: Let us modify the NewGRFs we can use in scenarios

Post by kamnet »

There's always been a way you can do it. The problem is that there's never a way to do it without potential consequences.

Once upon a time, though, we didn't know those consequences existed. One could create a scenario with just a bare minimum of NewGRFs and one could then later add any other NewGRFs they wanted. As time went on we discovered that problems were developing related to this activity, and unnecessary bug reports were piling up because of it. This is why the ability to add or remove NewGRFs from a scenario or running game was hidden by default several years ago, and it's why it is largely discouraged today.

What we really need is for individuals with time and dedication is to re-create those scenarios from scratch, and including precisely the NewGRFs needed to play.

Now, for the most part, you SHOULD be okay with going into the scenario editor and adding a new vehicle, and saving that before you start your game. Nobody can guarantee that this will be 100% safe, but as far as I know nobody has ever had a problem creep up in a game if that's all they have done. Problems normally arise if you try to change the industry/economies (say, from default to ECS, or ECS to FIRS), or if you try to remove other NewGRFs. And there's no known pattern or common description for what those issues may be.
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Re: Let us modify the NewGRFs we can use in scenarios

Post by Alberth »

Gwyd wrote:DISCLAIMER: This may well break your save, or cause multiple crashes. Be careful to think about what you are adding or removing. Don't file bug reports.
It used to be simply available from the GUI, but people filed bug-reports anyway, as they cannot read or remember warnings.

We got so swamped with false bug reports, and getting blamed for breaking save games which they messed up themselves by ignoring the warnings, that we had to take some action.

The simplest action would have been to take the feature out completely.
However, that would severely impact NewGRF development. For this reason, and this reason ony, we kept the feature, but have hidden it so players don't generally find it, yet NewGRF developers who need it, can still use it.

That is the one and only reason it still exists is because newgrf developers need it for testing.

By posting how to get around the limitation for players, for long enough, we will eventually get back to the situation we had before, all players just ignore everything, get themselves in trouble, and come screaming for us to rescue their dead game. We can only say at that point it's not possible, and then we are the bad guys for messing up the game, rather than some Gwyd, who told them it's ok to ignore all warnings and red message windows.
So thank you so much.

Do this long enough, and we will get swamped again with such reports. At that point there is only one solution left, remove the entire feature.
It will make NewGRF development impossible, and might even kill OpenTTD NewGRF development.

So please consider carefully what fire you're playing with here.
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Re: Let us modify the NewGRFs we can use in scenarios

Post by Gwyd »

Did I say to ignore warnings? I don't think so. Did I say why you might not do it? Yes. Why am I all of a sudden a bad guy for simply stating what is on the OpenTTD wiki?
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Re: Let us modify the NewGRFs we can use in scenarios

Post by Pilot »

Alberth wrote:So please consider carefully what fire you're playing with here.
The issue is, this feature is always going to be one that people want, and if it is possible, then people will continue to tell others, if they explicitly ask for it (like was asked for at the start of this thread). Gwyd also explained the risks, told them it could cause their save to break or crash, and NOT to file any bug reports, which was a key part of your post.

This information has been openly available on the forums for so long, a simple search will find you what you need anyway, so why kick up a fuss now?

The only way to stop it would be to remove the feature, but like you say, that would severely hamper the development of NewGRFs, and thus would be insane to remove. Even if it was removed, I'm sure many players of OTTD would likely carry on using old versions with the feature, or patched versions, as they want to add/remove things from time to time.
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Re: Let us modify the NewGRFs we can use in scenarios

Post by Wolf01 »

Pilot wrote:
Alberth wrote:So please consider carefully what fire you're playing with here.
The issue is, this feature is always going to be one that people want, and if it is possible, then people will continue to tell others, if they explicitly ask for it (like was asked for at the start of this thread). Gwyd also explained the risks, told them it could cause their save to break or crash, and NOT to file any bug reports, which was a key part of your post.
Still.
People won't read game's warnings, why they should read Gwyd ones?
If devs will find in future a way to not crash the game by changing grfs I'm sure they will be happy to add this feature, and they well know this.
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Re: Let us modify the NewGRFs we can use in scenarios

Post by Gwyd »

But changing NewGRFs is like messing about in a time machine. It's doubtful that it can ever end well...
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Re: Let us modify the NewGRFs we can use in scenarios

Post by Alberth »

Gwyd wrote:But changing NewGRFs is like messing about in a time machine. It's doubtful that it can ever end well...
Yet you recommend it to arbitrary players as a valid solution. Note that they do not have the insights that you have.
To them it's a simple trick you can do to get what you want, without even realizing what they are doing.

It's like people playing with grenades that don't know it are things that may go boom.


The problem here is mostly that it often goes alright (or seems to go alright). People expcet things to work or break immediately. If it doesn't break immediately, "it's alright", and they forget all about it.
However this stuff MIGHT break in the future, months to years after they did it.

At that point they won't even remember that they messed it up themselves, or who told them or how they found that knowledge, or whether there was a red warning window three months ago. They have a game that they sank dozens to hundreds of hours into, and it's broken!!!


Do you really want to send players into that situation?

I know it's tempting to help, but I believe it's better to say "just start a new game". Yes it's not nice, but it's far better than ending with an irrepairable broken game dozens of hours later.

Worst that happens is that they have to play more openttd, but things do keep working.



And indeed, we would like to fix the scenarios very much. In fact, there exists a plan for it, and it's on my list of things I work on. Unfortunately, I have many things I work on, and it's not a simple addition, lots of internals need work before you fold the new functionality nicely into the system.
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Re: Let us modify the NewGRFs we can use in scenarios

Post by Effwon »

Alberth wrote:
Gwyd wrote:But changing NewGRFs is like messing about in a time machine. It's doubtful that it can ever end well...
Yet you recommend it to arbitrary players as a valid solution. Note that they do not have the insights that you have.
To them it's a simple trick you can do to get what you want, without even realizing what they are doing.

It's like people playing with grenades that don't know it are things that may go boom.


The problem here is mostly that it often goes alright (or seems to go alright). People expcet things to work or break immediately. If it doesn't break immediately, "it's alright", and they forget all about it.
However this stuff MIGHT break in the future, months to years after they did it.

At that point they won't even remember that they messed it up themselves, or who told them or how they found that knowledge, or whether there was a red warning window three months ago. They have a game that they sank dozens to hundreds of hours into, and it's broken!!!


Do you really want to send players into that situation?

I know it's tempting to help, but I believe it's better to say "just start a new game". Yes it's not nice, but it's far better than ending with an irrepairable broken game dozens of hours later.

Worst that happens is that they have to play more openttd, but things do keep working.



And indeed, we would like to fix the scenarios very much. In fact, there exists a plan for it, and it's on my list of things I work on. Unfortunately, I have many things I work on, and it's not a simple addition, lots of internals need work before you fold the new functionality nicely into the system.
I agree! Doing it in the middle of a game/Scenario kills it. Bug glitch galore. What I'm asking for is a GUI before we start playing that lets us add NewGRFs onto scenarios :bow: . If this is already the case, I just don't know how to use it...
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Re: Let us modify the NewGRFs we can use in scenarios

Post by andythenorth »

Effwon wrote:What I'm asking for is a GUI before we start playing that lets us add NewGRFs onto scenarios :bow:
It's barely possible. I agree that it's very restrictive that a scenario fixes the newgrf choices for everything - vehicles, objects, stations, railtypes etc. But it's practically impossible to detect which grfs would be safe to add and what would break the game.

Someone could do it, with enough time. There would be a lot of frustrating 'this grf cannot be added' messages, but it could be done. But I will bet £££$$$ that nobody will. Anyone take that bet? £100 on it, I am serious :)
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Re: Let us modify the NewGRFs we can use in scenarios

Post by Gwyd »

How many newGRFs are there on BaNaNaS...?
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Re: Let us modify the NewGRFs we can use in scenarios

Post by andythenorth »

Gwyd wrote:How many newGRFs are there on BaNaNaS...?
At time of writing, 544 http://bananas.openttd.org/en/newgrf/

There will be more newgrfs in total, as there can be multiple versions of the same grf.

There are also grfs created by authors who can't or won't use Bananas ;)
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Re: Let us modify the NewGRFs we can use in scenarios

Post by Pyoro »

Can such guarantees even made? I'd for example, in my experience, and I change GRFs a lot, consider changing NewObject GRFs as harmless. At worst, you have to replace objects. Generally speaking. But I did have a save that for some reason crashed if TownWall objects was added. So apparently not even that is "safe". Although, who knows, it might be caused by something entirely unrelated ^^

That being said, with how OpenTTD changed over the years, it'd really help if such features existed at least for scenarios if not running games. It's one thing to pick 5 GRFs for a 256x256 game you'll complete on a nice weekend. It's an entirely different challenge to setup a game out of hundreds of GRFs on a huge map that you might be working on or playing for months. Especially if GRFs might contain bugs or whatever; I mean, how'd you even notice? Sure, you can test your GRFs first a bit, but who knows if 50 years down the game you suddenly notice "oops, X apparently doesn't work for some reason" ...

For me, it's the primary reason why I stay away from scenarios. GRFs are inevitably outdated (if it's a direct update I suppose you can just delete the old version and hope that "compatible" changing GRFs that way causes less problems than other changes, but that's not guaranteed either, is it? ^^; ).
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Re: Let us modify the NewGRFs we can use in scenarios

Post by andythenorth »

Pyoro wrote:Can such guarantees even made?
Possibly not. The nearest to feasible might be adding vehicle grfs and station grfs, but then other grfs might disable themselves.

Anything touching industries, cargos, houses is out.

I'm fairly certain that I can bet £100 on this without losing it. Tempted to make it £1000, but eh, that's daft.
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Re: Let us modify the NewGRFs we can use in scenarios

Post by Gwyd »

Even adding vehicles can be risky. Overlapping vehicle IDs are bound to cause problems.
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Re: Let us modify the NewGRFs we can use in scenarios

Post by kamnet »

andythenorth wrote:
Gwyd wrote:How many newGRFs are there on BaNaNaS...?
At time of writing, 544 http://bananas.openttd.org/en/newgrf/

There will be more newgrfs in total, as there can be multiple versions of the same grf.

There are also grfs created by authors who can't or won't use Bananas ;)
Between the various versions released, NewGRFs no longer being distributed or available, and my own stuff I've worked on, I've got 1700 files sitting on my computer.
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Re: Let us modify the NewGRFs we can use in scenarios

Post by Effwon »

andythenorth wrote:
Effwon wrote:What I'm asking for is a GUI before we start playing that lets us add NewGRFs onto scenarios :bow:
It's barely possible. I agree that it's very restrictive that a scenario fixes the newgrf choices for everything - vehicles, objects, stations, railtypes etc. But it's practically impossible to detect which grfs would be safe to add and what would break the game.

Someone could do it, with enough time. There would be a lot of frustrating 'this grf cannot be added' messages, but it could be done. But I will bet £££$$$ that nobody will. Anyone take that bet? £100 on it, I am serious :)
A dev will take you up on that, probably! :lol:
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