Timberwolf's UK Road Vehicles

[Argus]

The stagecoaches do not work with other roads.... They get into the Waterways at least if they can't find another suitable type of road. Older versions did not do this.

[Timberwolf]

Stagecoaches use the roadtype DIRT if available, and fall back to ROAD if it isn't. What road types are waterways coded as?

(The older versions don't do this as they didn't use roadtypes at all - I was put off for a long time by the problems with compatibility between roadtype/vehicle sets and the way road types in general didn't seem to go more than a month without some kind of forum drama. Maybe I was making the right decision back then...)

[Argus]

I don't know what types of roads are coded as waterways, I use waterway.grf. So I would rather use other cars with another road set to avoid problems It will probably not be appropriate to mix more road sets together anyway, but I like to experiment

[Timberwolf]

I suspect the problem is the compatibility list in the waterways roadtype - something defines DIRT, but then sets it so the vehicles aren't compatible with any other road types.

(Whereas in Timberwolf's Roads, things are set up so DIRT vehicles are powered on all other road types)

If I knew what Waterways was doing with its compatibility list, I might be able to add a roadtype to the DIRT vehicles so they work with that compatibility scheme. Weirdly, the author's page suggests it doesn't define a DIRT type at all, so this might be a problem elsewhere. Without a set with which to open up and experiment though, it's difficult to tell whether this is coming from the vehicle set, the road set, or even something in Roadtypes itself. And there's no way I'm going near the tyre fire that is roadtype sets and source code thereof... all I can say in lieu of a good test case is these vehicles are designed to work with either the base game or Timberwolf's Roads and everything else is unsupported

[Argus]

When I use only waterways and timberwolf road, the stagecoaches are just where they should be. Author of waterway.grf is Krummelchen.

[Timberwolf]

Yes, works fine for me even with just Waterways. So I don't think the problem is with Waterways, it's actually something else messing up the compatibility table. (A shame, because Kruemelchen had been good with documentation and source so I'd have had a decent chance of figuring out what was going on had it been just Waterways)

Could you add your roadtypes one by one and let me know which is the first one you add where the problem occurs?

[Argus]

Same problem with waterways and U-Ratt (my keyboard not and char) Stagecoaches also appear on asphalt set as base road, they ignore dirt road
RattRoads - No problem. Stagecoaches uses dirt and other road, not waterways.
CZTR Road set - Stagecoaches using city roads and waterways
I noticed the problem for the first time in the new DROP set. The only road available in 1830 is the brick road, the stagecoaches are moved to waterways. But this set is still under development.
Countryroads and Docklands are just accessories similar to waterways.

[Argus]

I almost forgot. Waterways have new ice roads that can be used by all cars, stagecoaches do not appear there either. Of the cars, only Daimler Charabanc and Traction Engine.

[Timberwolf]

I think I see a potential cause. DROP defines a weird roadtype table in which it tries to make "ROAD" fall back to BRIC, then NL30, then NL50... I suspect the other sets might do similar but given the seemingly endless drama surrounding RaTT and CZTR I think I'd rather work with the DROP sources and see if there are issues with either that kind of road type table or with ROAD being a hidden type.

Will experiment this evening and see if I find anything useful.

With the ice roads, are you using Kruemelchen's SUV set?

[Argus]

If I use an SUV, your cars won't show up on the frozen river (probably the limit openttd?) And from your roads they only work on Sett Road and Unpaved road, except Trabant. But that's probably okay, it's the same in RattRoads.

[Timberwolf]

I've looked at this, and it isn't an easily solvable problem. (At least, on my end)

Stagecoaches have a roadtype "DIRT". They also fall back to "ROAD" if that road type is not available.

The problem when you're using a large combination of roadsets is you have at least one in your list which defines "DIRT" as a roadtype. So now stagecoaches are not "ROAD" vehicles, they are "DIRT" vehicles. And they use the compatibility information from whichever set defined "DIRT".

If you have my road set, it will define "DIRT" vehicles as being compatible with ROAD,A_RD,B_RD,TOWN,CONC,ELRD and ELR2. None of which are featured in DROP as available roadtypes. (ROAD is hidden in DROP, and compatibility lists aren't transitive). Probably similar case with your other sets.

This configuration is made worse by the fact your multiple roadtype sets are all fighting over who gets to define "ROAD". (Sometimes this is a hidden roadtype, sometimes it's used as one of the road types). Depending on the order you load your GRF files in, this means you'll sometimes lose the sett road in favour of the hidden road type. This means no stagecoaches at all, until you get Concrete Road available.

I can provide a bit more outbound compatibility in Roads so if things load in the right order you can at least build the stagecoaches on brick roads (or GRVL/OFFR if other sets provide those) but really your problem is you have several different roadsets all fighting over what "DIRT" and "ROAD" mean, and since the vehicle set relies on the roadsets to provide a sensible tech tree of what a "DIRT" road vehicle can drive on, there's not much I can do about it - NRT is designed to work for the use cases of either a single comprehensive road set defining an entire tech tree for each road type it introduces, or multiple specialist road sets which don't interfere with each other's roads.

[Argus]

I understand. It was to be expected that problems could occur when combining multiple road sets, especially if there were more authors and thus different types of roads. By the way, if I try the new CZTR tram 2.0.0, an invalid sprite message will appear in combination with your roadset. I'd rather always use one roadset.

[Timberwolf]

I think long-term we'll see a similar situation to cargo labels where there's a fairly common set in use, and you know that if you're defining a particular road set there are ~10-20 other road type labels it needs to have compatibility with.

I updated Roads 1.0.3 which will at least solve your problem with being unable to build horse-drawn vehicles on DROP's early brick road, although the later road types won't work you should have buses and other vehicles by the time they're introduced.

[Timberwolf]

Another package on the update wagon - 3.0.6 rounds out the early '70s with the addition of ERF LV rigid lorry and A-series articulated unit. I've also given the '90s a little boost with the addition of a Volvo FH12.

[Argus]

Great. Besides Roadhog and Polroad, in short, another great set Only Polroad, not counting fictitious cars. The rest is either no longer evolving or not finished yet.

[Timberwolf]

Anyone fancy a game of spot the (tiny) difference?



Similar to Trains, I've done a re-render of the set using the new version of GoRender. There might be some further tuning to find the optimal settings but while there are no massive changes it's already giving subtle improvements to the detail around cab windows, headlights and some of the small pieces like fuel tanks. Other sprites like horses and the traction engine show bigger improvements.

Version 3.1.0 is the update.

[Timberwolf]

It's been a little while, and more importantly I spotted a vehicle length bug while adding a new truck, so I should probably throw a release up.

I forget exactly what's in this one, but in a continuation of the "if it was a popular Matchbox model, it goes in" spirit that brought you the Thompson Autotanker we definitely now have a wildly inappropriate for the UK Scania T142, and a perhaps more appropriate Karrier Bantam so you don't run out of articulated lorries in the 1950s.



This also fixes the Scammell and Beardmore lorries having a large gap between tractor unit and trailer. (At the cost of getting a warning dialogue if you apply the upgrade to an existing game where you've built either of those units - I preferred this to breaking compatibility and leaving old savegames orphaned with bugged lorries.)

[perverted monkey]

Cool!
Comparing above posts, in the first one road white lanes look too thick and short and this makes the vehicles appear oversized compared to the road. Second one is the way to go with the extra zoom you have gifted us.

[Timberwolf]

It's deliberate: the first road is "Town Road" from Timberwolf's Roads, on which trucks should look as if they're slightly too large for their surroundings (which is exactly the case when a truck is navigating through urban streets). The second is "B Road", which represents a country road and thus trucks shouldn't appear quite so out of place. All part of how you play with Transport Tycoon's wonderful inconsistency of scale!

[perverted monkey]