Timberwolf's UK.... trains?

[Timberwolf]

About trains... I have a decently sized list of sub-surface and deep level Tube units I want to add to the set, so as and when I get the odd spare moment I'm slowly building those. Current progress:

[PEPSprinterPacer]

Hmmm

These are great looking units!

[Timberwolf]

More Tube units... and a great sense of personal nostalgia for the 1959 stock,which I spent a fair amount of childhood riding on. I guess if it's evocative I'm doing something vaguely right?



As a gameplay concession the A60 and 1967 stock come as four-car sets which can be coupled together, hence the red inner cab ends on this example. (I pondered doing something clever when multiple units are coupled together, but as it involves touching one of the hairiest sections of code I'm thinking maybe not.)

[Lex-Pelham]

Hey Timberwolf;

I Love the set and I love what you're doing to expanded it with new updates . I can not wait to get a small version of the London Underground started on my map. Specially in parts of the map where there are several towns/cities near each other.

Good luck, stay safe and keep bring on them updates.

[Timberwolf]

Thank you! Some further progress on Underground sets; C69 and D78 stock:



Current plan is to first release a representative set of "the ones everyone knows", so in addition to what I have now that means 1973 stock (Piccadilly Line), 1992 stock (Central/W&C lines), 1995/1996 stock (Northern/Jubilee lines), 2009 stock (Victoria line) and S stock (District/Metropolitan/Circle/etc.) Then at some point after that, bulking out the list with prewar units, early loco-hauled trains and the like - assuming I don't get distracted by some other shiny.

In terms of where the Tube sits gameplay-wise, I'd like the units to be distinct from just a slower, cheaper EMU. Their purpose is going to be shifting huge numbers of passengers from city centre stations. This means they will have stats similar to the real-world fully loaded capacity including seating and standing passengers, but balanced by slow speeds and a punishing cargo decay rate. As a result you'll be able to shift people around a city using simple double (or even single) track systems, but long distance travel won't be viable, and you'll need to build large exchange stations on the outskirts where there's space for them. This also opens up a gameplay niche for something like the Glasgow "Clockwork Orange" units as a lower capacity version for cities which aren't yet at the point of being able to fill up an 800-passenger train with ease.

[PEPSprinterPacer]

Don't think any town can fill it up by itself, it needs help from another station

[Electricfox]

Looking good there, I know what you mean about the 1959 stock, I have vague childhood memories of the 1962 stock on the Central Line, with the springy hand holds dangling from the ceiling swaying away.

While you're revisiting rolling stock, could I possibly tempt you into a Class 321?

[Timberwolf]

Early Christmas present time... news and releases!



v1.2.0 of Trains is now up on BaNaNaS, featuring a selection box of London Underground rolling stock. There have also been some bug fixes, tweaks to loading speeds (which were far too high) and a full re-render using the latest Stations spec version of GoRender - differences will be subtle at best but this may clear up a few noisy pixels here and there from better recovery of non-surface intersections.

There is also a new release of Tracks. v1.1.0 is sadly not save-compatible with previous versions, but introduces a new shared track type which combines 4th rail with overhead electric lines, allowing some possibly-not-prototypical* sharing of track between Tubes and 25kV AC units. (Plus third rail units, which could already run on 4th rail track to simulate the shared routes around e.g. Putney and Wimbledon). To avoid this becoming a default "jack of all trades" track it is both very expensive and speed restricted - you'll only want to use it for narrow urban corridors where there's no option but to share tracks.

Plateway is also revised so when using both Trains and Tracks together, horses and early locomotives with exposed footplates are unable to use tracks with ground-level electrification. 25kV tracks are still fair game, it's assumed horses will not arrange themselves into a tower and touch the electrical cables. (What the horses are equipped with to allow them to happily tread ballast and sleepers is left to the imagination).

* - I was convinced I'd seen a piece of track where this happened, but the only shared routes I can find have the 25kV trains run side by side without sharing the same running rails. I'd love to know if there's somewhere this actually happens, 25kV AC and Tube units sharing the same rails!

[Timberwolf]

While you're revisiting rolling stock, could I possibly tempt you into a Class 321?

Maaayyybeee...

[Lex-Pelham]

While you're revisiting rolling stock, could I possibly tempt you into a Class 321?

Maaayyybeee...

Can I also throw in the Class 323 as well?

[Lex-Pelham]

Early Christmas present time... news and releases!



v1.2.0 of Trains is now up on BaNaNaS, featuring a selection box of London Underground rolling stock. There have also been some bug fixes, tweaks to loading speeds (which were far too high) and a full re-render using the latest Stations spec version of GoRender - differences will be subtle at best but this may clear up a few noisy pixels here and there from better recovery of non-surface intersections.

There is also a new release of Tracks. v1.1.0 is sadly not save-compatible with previous versions, but introduces a new shared track type which combines 4th rail with overhead electric lines, allowing some possibly-not-prototypical* sharing of track between Tubes and 25kV AC units. (Plus third rail units, which could already run on 4th rail track to simulate the shared routes around e.g. Putney and Wimbledon). To avoid this becoming a default "jack of all trades" track it is both very expensive and speed restricted - you'll only want to use it for narrow urban corridors where there's no option but to share tracks.

Plateway is also revised so when using both Trains and Tracks together, horses and early locomotives with exposed footplates are unable to use tracks with ground-level electrification. 25kV tracks are still fair game, it's assumed horses will not arrange themselves into a tower and touch the electrical cables. (What the horses are equipped with to allow them to happily tread ballast and sleepers is left to the imagination).

* - I was convinced I'd seen a piece of track where this happened, but the only shared routes I can find have the 25kV trains run side by side without sharing the same running rails. I'd love to know if there's somewhere this actually happens, 25kV AC and Tube units sharing the same rails!

Early Christmas present indeed. I'm about to download them and give them London Underground train a test run.

[Electricfox]

While you're revisiting rolling stock, could I possibly tempt you into a Class 321?

Maaayyybeee...

Muchos Gracias!

[2TallTyler]

Are you not going to post a link to your very entertaining let's-play series? It's a great way to see your trains (horses, anyway) in action.

[Timberwolf]

Are you not going to post a link to your very entertaining let's-play series? It's a great way to see your trains (horses, anyway) in action.

I'm not a natural promoter of my own things, I tend to make something to scratch a personal itch and if anyone else stumbles across it and enjoys it, all the better. I did get rather a shock a couple of years ago when nearly all the Reddit gamescript threads were recommending Villages Is Villages, I was sitting there thinking, "you can't all play with that, it's just a silly thing written by some idiot who got annoyed his towns were growing too big, use a proper gamescript!"

This does lead to some amusing situations like the discussion on Discord the other day where someone had found this 2x track set which had a few basic options for 3rd rail, overhead electric and the like... and had no idea there were 200-odd trains to go with it.

The closest I get is the occasional moment of awkwardly popping up in discussions about extrazoom graphics and making them suddenly go very quiet by saying something technical with phrases like "sprite edge interface". This is mostly in the hope of quietly badgering the OpenTTD world into making a Fosterstyle 2x baseset, rather than create a precedent where you can summon Timberwolf to Discord by saying "ez sucks" three times in the same chat.

It's definitely noticeable in the way I go about the channel and its content, where if I thought about how to get people to discover it I'd have dedicated "OpenTTD tips" and "signalling tutorials" videos, rather than one main "watch me furtle about with plateway networks, I might go into detail about the local authority ratings and how to influence them but on the other hand I might go on about '80s television cartoons for several minutes before getting sidetracked by building a horse in the wrong depot, don't do this the way I'm doing it" series.

[Captain Rand]

Seeing as you're doing stations and London Underground trains, have you given any thought to drawing Leslie Greens beautiful oxblood tiled station buildings?

[Timberwolf]

Seeing as you're doing stations and London Underground trains, have you given any thought to drawing Leslie Greens beautiful oxblood tiled station buildings?

You may find a pleasant surprise if you download stations - there are already a couple of LU-style prototypes, including this:

[Captain Rand]

.....

[perverted monkey]

I love that! Leslie Green's stations are so iconic that they could make a separate big grf set. Wish there were more artists with free time to assist Timberwolf.

[Timberwolf]

A minor release (v1.2.1) with some bugfixes, as I noticed a missing cargo while making videos and found a couple of FIRS 4 cargo types that weren't mapped. Lye/Sodium Hydroxide should now appear correctly on early open wagons, and Aluminium and Steel Sections will have appropriate sprites.

I also improved the metal cargo sprites; previously they had subtly different shades to indicate different types of metal, but now the tie-down straps vary in colour for a bit more visual differentiation.

Finally, there are a couple of new units, including the 1980s Glasgow Subway stock to provide a metro option for towns that don't need quite as much capacity. (It's also a good option for starting out late-game, as the cost is low enough to establish a reasonable service even with only the £100,000 starting loan)

[PEPSprinterPacer]

Very good.