Iron Horse trains - releases

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Re: Iron Horse! 2.2.0 Released 1st December 2019

Post by andythenorth »

Iron Horse 2.2.1 now on Bananas :)

-------------
2.2.1 Release
-------------

Not savegame compatible with previous versions of Iron Horse (sorry - nothing actually breaks, but moving from hg to git changes revision numbers).

Features
  • added 2 Driving Van Trailers (driving cab cars)
    • attach to front or rear of a train with at least one other engine
    • for OpenTTD reasons, vehicles must have power to lead a train, so these vehicles include a small amount of power
    • refittable to mail and express freight cargos
    • first available around 1990
    • multiple liveries, livery shown depends on consist cargo and user choice (depot flip the vehicle)
    • automatically flips if last vehicle in train
  • added 3 Joker vehicles with limited gameplay benefit
    • Grub small steam engine (1860), 35mph, 250hp
    • Gronk small diesel engine (1951), 35mph, 400hp
    • Snowplough (1900)
      • has a small amount of power set so it can lead a train
      • can transport a small amount of mail or express freight cargos
      • automatically flips if last vehicle in train
  • added parameter to disable Joker vehicles (enabled by default)
  • added narrow gauge mineral car for gen 2 (around 1905)
  • improved appearance of steam engines, diesel shunters, some electric engines by reducing contrast of pixels in the wheel area
Fixes
  • Zeus railcar had incorrect electric power value when built (buy menu showed correct value)
  • Scooby and Dover mailcars had incorrect sprites for 2 angles
Docs
  • added experimental tech tree page, showing engine progression
Codechanges
  • ported version / revision info from hg to git
  • rewrote parts of compile for compatibility with python 3.8
  • rewrote parts of compile for speed
  • using combination of python 3.8 and pypy interpreters, compile speed reduced by 40% in local tests
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snowplough_3.png
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Re: Iron Horse! 2.2.1 Released 1st December 2019

Post by andythenorth »

Iron Horse 2.3.0 now on Bananas.

I'll do some screenshots later eh? :)

-------------
2.3.0 Release
-------------
  • added 9 Silo Wagons
    • multiple liveries, livery shown depends on vehicle cargo and/or user choice (depot flip the vehicle to toggle cargo livery / solid company colour)
  • added alternative solid company livery (toggle by depot-flipping the vehicle) for the following vehicle types:
    • Chemicals Tankers
    • Cryo Tankers
    • Edibles Tankers
    • Tankers
  • improved Covered Hopper appearance, including some cargo-specific liveries and tweaks to pixels
  • added opening doors to Livestock Wagons
  • adjusted which default cargo will be set for some vehicles (depends on which cargos are available in game)
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Re: Iron Horse! 2.2.1 Released 1st December 2019

Post by andythenorth »

Also the covered hopper liveries. The kaolin (china clay) option is really over-specific and probably regrettable, but eh, I don't get out much :twisted:
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Re: Iron Horse! 2.2.1 Released 1st December 2019

Post by MajorMiner »

absolutely loving this trainset but ive been having trouble with insanely high running costs :cry: any chance we could get a multiplier in settings?
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Re: Iron Horse! 2.2.1 Released 1st December 2019

Post by andythenorth »

MajorMiner wrote: 16 Jan 2020 13:03 absolutely loving this trainset but ive been having trouble with insanely high running costs :cry: any chance we could get a multiplier in settings?
TL;DR; the next Iron Horse version will reduce running costs by about 25% for engines, 30% for metro, and 40% for wagons.

Longer: I originally set Iron Horse 2 costs and tested them using a bunch of test games, with OpenTTD running costs set to 'medium', and everything seemed fine, trains were very profitable point-to-point. However I've just played 2 big games with a lot of cargodist transfers, and it was very hard to make money for some trains / routes. So I've reduced costs a bit.

I probably won't do a cost parameter - if Iron Horse costs continue to be an issue with OpenTTD running costs on 'medium', I'll reduce Iron Horse costs further.

'Not enough money' is worse than 'too much money' (which is where all OpenTTD games end up anyway). :twisted:
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Re: Iron Horse! 2.2.1 Released 1st December 2019

Post by nihues »

I've had financial problems with electric trains only (was using open wagon with refit to avaliable plus some pax/mail) and not because of running costs, but track maintence.... (Nutracks), was barely profitable with electric, also cargodist for everything. Diesel trains with non electric tracks was very good profits, perhaps up the electric trains reliability to 95%+ too? everything was around 80% if I remember.

I find it very balanced and enjoyable the way it is now, it will force to use more than one type of train. If used electric only for express cargo/pax probably it will be making a lot of money.

I always play with high costs/maintence and infraestructure costs on.
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Re: Iron Horse! 2.2.1 Released 1st December 2019

Post by NekoMaster »

nihues wrote: 16 Jan 2020 18:23 I've had financial problems with electric trains only (was using open wagon with refit to avaliable plus some pax/mail) and not because of running costs, but track maintence.... (Nutracks), was barely profitable with electric, also cargodist for everything. Diesel trains with non electric tracks was very good profits, perhaps up the electric trains reliability to 95%+ too? everything was around 80% if I remember.

I find it very balanced and enjoyable the way it is now, it will force to use more than one type of train. If used electric only for express cargo/pax probably it will be making a lot of money.

I always play with high costs/maintence and infraestructure costs on.
The reliability of vehicles is randomized and GRF authors have no control over what the max reliability will be when a vehicle is officially introduced
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Re: Iron Horse! 2.2.1 Released 1st December 2019

Post by Oakman »

Sorry for the stupid question, but when will this list:

https://firs-test-1.s3.eu-west-2.amazon ... ony_gen_2U

go live? I'm especially waiting for the molten steel transports.
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Re: Iron Horse! 2.2.1 Released 1st December 2019

Post by andythenorth »

Oakman wrote: 22 Jan 2020 21:43 Sorry for the stupid question, but when will this list go live?
"When it's done" is the only answer :D

You can try out the version attached, but the sprites are broken / unfinished for all the torpedo cars, and a few other vehicles. The slag ladle cars are done though.
iron-horse.grf
(16.92 MiB) Downloaded 195 times
https://wiki.openttd.org/NewGRF#Manual_install

Also the attached version is not savegame compatible with previous versions of Iron Horse.
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Re: Iron Horse! 2.2.1 Released 1st December 2019

Post by Oakman »

Thanks for providing some beta and in general for the great good work!
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Re: Iron Horse! 2.4.0 Released 16th February 2020

Post by andythenorth »

Iron Horse 2.4.0 is now on Bananas! This started as a small release to add some wagons, and became a big release. Oof :twisted:

Full changelog below. TL;DR highlights:
  • Reduced running costs for more fun
  • Repainted all the steam engines, they looked quite bad before
  • Revised engine tech tree. New trains. Medium power engines more useful. More balance.
  • New wagons for use with FIRS v4 Steeltown. Tweaks to some other wagon types.
Couple of things I'm not happy with in the new balance, but eh, dive in, give it a go :D

Some of the repainted steam engines with 1CC/2CC
Some of the repainted steam engines with 1CC/2CC
2.4.0-steam-engines.png (216.12 KiB) Viewed 6593 times
----

2.4.0 Release

Not savegame compatible with previous Iron Horse releases.

New and Changed Engines
  • reworked medium-power general/purpose express engines
    • reduced running costs on these to make them genuinely viable for general freight as well as express trains
    • provided more generations of these engines as they're very useful for trains around 5-6 tiles long
    • renamed 4-6-0 Upcountry to 4-6-0 Thunderer
    • added 4-6-0 Strongbow express / general purpose steam engine
      • inspired by Jubilee / Royal Scot, as featured in original TTD
      • available around 1930
    • added Vanguard express / general purpose diesel engine
      • inspired by the never-built British Rail class 38, a medium-power engine using a class 60 bodyshell
      • available around 1992
    • removed Thunderbird
    • Revolution bi-mode engine adjusted to better fit medium-power general purpose/express role
      • in diesel mode, Revolution follows Vanguard
      • in electric mode, power is increased, Revolution follows Fury
  • reworked high-power general purpose express engines
    • added Onslaught diesel engine, follows Dragon
      • inspired by British Rail class 50 and the never-built 'Super Deltic'
      • available around 1982
    • added Relentless diesel engine, follows Onslaught
      • inspired by Vossloh and similar European diesel engines
    • Screamer and Sizzler electric engine power reduced for game balance
  • electric heavy freight engine changes
    • renamed Gosling Blast to Triton
    • repainted Triton to be boxy, too many cheese-slope electric locomotives
    • reduced power of Flanders Storm and Triton for game balance
  • diesel heavy freight engine changes
    • renamed Chimera to Endeavour
    • repainted Endeavour, I didn't like the class 70-ish sprite, it's now class 66-ish (livery inspired by Freightliner)
    • reduced power of Cheddar Valley and Endeavour for game balance
  • added luxury passenger railcars
    • these run at express train speeds, and have more power but lower capacity than standard railcars
    • High Flyer (available around 1930)
    • Sunshine Coast (available around 1960)
    • Olympic (available around 1990)
    • Bright Country (available around 2020)
    • electric railcar power adjusted to balance with the new luxury railcars
  • added Firebird high speed train
    • inspired by UK Blue Pullman train, but featuring Deltic-type power and speed
    • available around 1960
  • increased power of Driving Cab Cars a little, as it's of benefit for diesel express trains
  • most steam engines redrawn for improved appearance
  • changed livery for
    • Fury (inspired by UK Freightliner livery)
    • Revolution (freestyle livery matching generation 6 driving carb car)
    • Tencendur (to provide variety in steam engines)
  • tweaks to sprites for
    • Athena
    • Blaze
    • Blackthorn
    • Dover
    • Dragon
    • Flanders Storm
    • Geronimo
    • Grid
    • Happy Train
    • Jupiter
    • Plastic Postbox
    • Scooby
    • Scorcher
    • Sizzler
    • Slammer
    • Zeus
  • rebalanced power and weight for many engines
    • based on a ratio derived from power, weight and maximum speed
    • relative performance differences across multiple generations for each engine role are now more deliberately designed
New and Changed Wagons
  • added 7 Carbon Black Hoppers
    • dedicated to carbon black cargo (found in FIRS v4 Steeltown economy)
  • added 5 Torpedo Wagons
    • dedicated to pig iron cargo (found in FIRS v4 Steeltown economy)
  • added 3 Slag Ladle Wagons
    • 2 standard gauge, 1 narrow gauge
    • dedicated to slag cargo (found in FIRS v4 Steeltown economy)
    • limited to 35mph due to carrying red-hot molten slag in open top ladles
  • adjusted some wagon types that had an alternative hand-drawn livery using ctrl-click in depot
    • for most wagon types ctrl-click in depot now only toggles 1st / 2nd company colour
    • some wagon types have been split or combined
  • hopper-type wagons adjusted to
    • Hopper (grey)
    • Rock Hopper (company colour)
    • Ore Hopper (brown)
  • mineral-type wagons adjusted to
    • Mineral Wagon (company colour)
    • High Side Mineral Wagon (company colour)
    • Scrap Wagon (black)
  • covered-hopper type wagons adjusted to
    • Covered Hopper (brown)
    • Grain Hopper (company color + grey)
    • Pellet Hopper (grey)
  • silo type wagons adjusted to
    • Silo Wagon (company colour)
    • Cement Silo Wagon (dirty grey colour)
  • removed Chemicals Tanker in favour of Product Tanker
    • same refits as Tanker
    • shiny appearance
  • removed some generation 6 short wagons, not needed
  • improved appearance for
    • Tarpaulin Cars
    • generation 6 Passenger Coaches (all types)
  • use mail as default cargo for Express Vans, not engineering supplies, avoids confusion when adding Express Vans to mail trains
Changes
  • play-testing showed that running costs were too high in many cases
    • running costs reduced for many trains
    • should generally aid profitability, too little profit is a bigger gameplay evil than too much profit
    • notably routes involving transfers should be more profitable
  • minor reduction of speeds of railcars / freight vehicles in later game
    • 84mph for generation 5 (around 1990), previously 87mph
    • 93mph generation 6 (around 2020), previously 96mph
  • increased spacing of buffer pixels in - views
  • added description text for Jokers parameter
  • use 3-unit sets for some electric mail railcars (previously 2-unit sets)
Fixes
  • haulage speed bonus calculation was broken, causing electric railcar default speed to be too high
  • HST coaches were too heavy
  • adjusted HST coach buy cost to be about same as luxury passenger coach
  • removed alternative company livery option that was added for certain wagon types in 2.3, on reflection it was a flawed idea
Docs
  • show hp/speed ratio in docs, as a guide to relative performance of engines
  • option for tech tree table in 1CC (blue) or 2CC (red &amp; white)
  • show both power ratings for bi-mode engines in tech-tree table
  • show 'replaced by' info in tech tree table
  • add anchor links to sections on code reference page
Codechanges
  • local refactoring including removal of unused legacy vars and simplifying of templates
  • Makefile fixes
    • some shells expanded the roster asterisk in the Makefile, use ALL instead
    • NML needs the graphics sources at least on first run, so add them as order-only dependencies
    • don't use directories as dependencies in Makefiles
  • compile optimisation for speed and filesize
    • save 5k realsprites by setting purchase sprites to [] when no realsprites is needed
    • set additional grfcodec container and compression options in makefile
    • forcibly suppress animated pixel warnings
    • remove around ~7k duplicated realsprites by only providing 4 realsprites for some symmetrical 8/8 vehicles
    • use stored procedures in multiple places, significantly reducing NML switch counts
    • use global switches for tail-lights, not per vehicle, significantly reducing NML switch counts
Lang
  • removed some outdated/unused lang strings
Attachments
torpedo_cars.png
torpedo_cars.png (59.62 KiB) Viewed 6588 times
2.4.0-mixed.png
2.4.0-mixed.png (112.3 KiB) Viewed 6587 times
Last edited by andythenorth on 16 Feb 2020 21:45, edited 6 times in total.
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Re: Iron Horse! 2.4.0 Released 16th February 2020

Post by rotterdxm »

andythenorth wrote: 16 Feb 2020 13:13 Iron Horse 2.4.0 is now on Bananas! This started as a small release to add some wagons, and became a big release. Oof :twisted:
Nice work chief! I will be enjoying this :)
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Re: Iron Horse! 2.4.0 Released 16th February 2020

Post by 2TallTyler »

Well darn, I'd just finished an Iron Horse game and started a NARS playthrough. Now I'll have to try your new trains.

Can you explain the luxury passenger cars? Is there a gameplay reason to use them, or are they simply for variety?
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Re: Iron Horse! 2.4.0 Released 16th February 2020

Post by andythenorth »

2TallTyler wrote: 17 Feb 2020 04:19 Can you explain the luxury passenger cars? Is there a gameplay reason to use them, or are they simply for variety?
Passenger Coaches vs. Luxury Passenger Coaches
  • on long routes (64 tiles or more) luxury passenger coaches will benefit from a better cargo payment rate compared to ordinary coaches
  • on shorter routes there is little difference
64 tiles isn't an exact number, it will depend on other things such as how long the train takes to deliver, any newgrfs that change cargo payment, etc. It's just a guideline that worked out ok when tested.

Horse gameplay guide here :) viewtopic.php?p=1223786#p1223786
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Re: Iron Horse! 2.4.0 Released 16th February 2020

Post by Fairyfloss »

Shiny new update with shiny new trains!

I'm curious, though, what the 'recommended' train length is for Iron Horse. How many tiles long do you usually make a cargo train with a single locomotive, since I think i might make mine a bit too short for the cargo weight to have much of an impact on my trains
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Re: Iron Horse! 2.4.0 Released 16th February 2020

Post by andythenorth »

Darthrafael wrote: 17 Feb 2020 11:51 I'm curious, though, what the 'recommended' train length is for Iron Horse. How many tiles long do you usually make a cargo train with a single locomotive.
TL;DR
Most trains in my games are 5-6 tiles long. I use freight weight multiplier 1.

Longer answer
Depends which engine you're using. Horse engines fit into power bands. The power for each band increases every generation, as the maximum speed and cargo capacity also increase, which means more power is needed.

Generation 1 has just 2 power bands for engines:
  • Small (Lark)
  • Medium (Spinner, Gwynt)
By Generation 6 there are about 5 power bands for engines:
  • small (Goliath, Ultra Shoebox on diesel)
  • medium (Shredder, Phoenix, Vanguard, Revolution on diesel, Ultra Shoebox on electric)
  • heavy (Relentless, Blackthorn,)
  • very heavy (Endeavour, Revolution on electric)
  • super heavy (Sizzler, Triton)
As a rough rule for train length <-> engine:
  • 2-3 tiles - small
  • 3-5 tiles - medium
  • 5-7 tiles - heavy
  • 6-8 tiles - very heavy, or double engines
  • 8+ tiles - super heavy, or double engines
It's not a very precise rule, and will depend on a few things like:
  • how steep the slopes on the route are
  • how often the train has to stop for signals etc, and how long you want it to take to clear junctions etc
On busy routes trains need to get up to speed quickly, and not block junctions etc for very long, and not slow too much on hills. So choose plenty of power for those trains.
But if a train is on a flat route with few other trains, it can be low powered and just accelerate slower.

There is helpful physics/maths for this, and I have used it recently when adjusting Horse engine stats :) http://cs.trains.com/trn/f/111/t/188661.aspx

It's not necessary for players to do any maths to use Horse, but for anyone who want an easy calculation, try this:
  • Gen 1-2: freight needs around 200-300hp per tile length of train
  • Gen 3: 300-400hp per tile length
  • Gen 4: 450-550hp per tile length
  • Gen 5-6: 600-700hp per tile length
This should result in trains that can reach max speed in a sensible distance, and can travel up reasonable hills at a good speed.

Finally for freight weight multipliers higher than 1, just add bigger or more engines :twisted:
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Re: Iron Horse! 2.4.0 Released 16th February 2020

Post by Gadg8eer »

Would you consider adding a switch to have IH's metro trains be available as trams that run on the "MTRO" tramtype instead of as trains on the "MTRO" railtype? Thanks for the great set, regardless of whether you take my suggestion.
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Re: Iron Horse! 2.4.0 Released 16th February 2020

Post by andythenorth »

Gadg8eer wrote: 21 Feb 2020 00:47 Would you consider adding a switch to have IH's metro trains be available as trams that run on the "MTRO" tramtype instead of as trains on the "MTRO" railtype?
Interesting idea, but it's not just a single change, it means adding a copy of the metro trains coded entirely as road vehicles.

So nice idea, but no :twisted:

Enjoy Horse though :)
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Re: Iron Horse! 2.4.0 Released 16th February 2020

Post by Gadg8eer »

andythenorth wrote: 21 Feb 2020 18:54
Gadg8eer wrote: 21 Feb 2020 00:47 Would you consider adding a switch to have IH's metro trains be available as trams that run on the "MTRO" tramtype instead of as trains on the "MTRO" railtype?
Interesting idea, but it's not just a single change, it means adding a copy of the metro trains coded entirely as road vehicles.

So nice idea, but no :twisted:

Enjoy Horse though :)
Fair enough. Can you add a parameter to disable the metro trains then?
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