Timberwolf's UK Road Vehicles

[Timberwolf]

Release Pi is upon us! 3.1.4 (on BaNaNaS now) adds the MAN TGS for a late-game truck, and also a new easter egg buried somewhere in the past for those determined egg-hunters.

A couple variants of the new MAN:



I'm close to what I wanted to achieve with the v3 upgrade apart from one thing, which is a full generation of freight vehicles to introduce between 2015-2020:

* Articulated lorry, succeeding Volvo FM9
* Large rigid lorry (currently tempted by the latest generation Mercedes-Benz Arocs)
* Medium-duty truck, succeeding DAF LF
* Light-duty truck, succeeding Mitsubishi Canter
* Large Van, succeeding MB Sprinter

Any thoughts?

Admittedly, usually when I ask for suggestions within a scope it takes about 3 seconds to go wildly off topic and I'll end up with "ideas for UK themed vehicles introduced 2015-2021" that consist of a 1920s artillery tractor, the NASA crawler transport, some 1950s gas turbine prototype it is impossible to find specs or an unobscured high-resolution photo of, and a series of novelty eggcups. But I'm ever optimistic (and I did get some useful bus ideas from Discord, hence the above wantlist being freight-only)

[perverted monkey]

Wait till next month's landing of Perseverance Mars Rover and you will get even more weird requests.

[PEPSprinterPacer]

(and I did get some useful bus ideas from Discord

OOH! B6BLE no more optare solos and darts!


Jk I will not betray you, my darty wartys

[Rezot]

Speaking of 'useful' bus ideas.. might there be potential for an early single decker to sit alongside the LGOC vehicles, after the Charibanc?

Also, as a dabbler in really early things.. an early horse omnibus to provide a City Cousin to the handsome Stagecoach?

Just a couple of thoughts that occurred in play!
Otherwise, many thanks for this wonderful set and hours of fun!

[Electricfox]

Speaking of 'useful' bus ideas.. might there be potential for an early single decker to sit alongside the LGOC vehicles, after the Charibanc?

Also, as a dabbler in really early things.. an early horse omnibus to provide a City Cousin to the handsome Stagecoach?

Just a couple of thoughts that occurred in play!
Otherwise, many thanks for this wonderful set and hours of fun!

Maybe an 1912 Commer WP1 for the former, the LNWR had one with a 25 seat bodywork, most of the single deckers around that time though were the charabanc 'torpedo' types.

For the latter...the first horse omnibuses were introduced in London around 1829, which puts it very close to the Hancock steam bus, so perhaps to compensate you could make it carry more passengers, perhaps a bit like the horse drawn tram, somewhere in the 30s mark.

[Rezot]

Those would be cool, just to add a little more spice to the early game.

Also, possibly.. electric parcels tram? Akin to the Kinver Light Railway / Bessbrook & Newry Light Railway.
Hopefully not getting greedy

[jo3do88y]

Hi Timberwolf! Your packs just make OpenTTD for me!

Is there any space on your "to do" list for some additional buses? Such as single door spec of existing buses, as well as maybe some Wrightbus things like Renown/Eclipse/Gemini etc?

Thanks!!

Joe

[Timberwolf]

The most important thing with my to-do list on these sets is it has to be fun, and I've found that with the development threads turning into endless request treadmills it's the opposite of that, which is why quite often I will end up picking some old thing only mentioned in passing six months ago, because it feels better to draw when there's no sense of obligation.

Eagle-eyed spotters will note I added a Bedford CF recently, and it was something I really enjoyed: there was a gap of about 5 years with no vans so I was fixing an actual problem, it has a distinctive shape which is fun to voxelise, and I also knew that I could release it without immediately getting, "you added one van, here's half a dozen more from within the same five year time period you ought to add" because nobody had asked for it in the first place.

I think some of it's that I like starting with a theme or a particular gameplay problem, and then figuring out what fits where from that - and the discovery is part of the fun. But that's not the whole story, because I know I've done stuff as the result of conversations - maybe it's because the conversations have been silly ones, and looking at what Matchbox used for their prototypes triggers some creative impulse that "add a Scania 142 in the '80s trucks" doesn't.

It's weird, I never realised how much serendipity was important to the way I create things. Kind of like the way I read voraciously and indiscriminately when younger, but hated everything I was made to read for English class.

[perverted monkey]

Being forced to learn something and have to be examined by a teacher, kills all the joy of reading.

[Railwaymodeler]

I once turned down a job with an architectural firm. They offered me a good starting salary to make scale models of buildings. It did not sound fun to be told what to build, exactly how to build it, and what materials to make the model out of. $80,000 per year just was not worth it to me. I think, Timberwolf, that we are artists, and that makes a difference.

I do want to say that I've been using your sets quite a lot, and your UK road vehicles set works well even when I play American themed games. I use your horse drawn vehicles as they are, in my view, the best available. Even early vehicles like the Leyland steam van had similar American counterparts and at OpenTTD's scales, they are not out of place, and the steam trams like the J70s did have somewhat similar American counterparts. Heck, the New York Central railroad had Shay steam locos they used around New York City that had sideplates and a box body. They looked like someone bolted three J70s end to end together.

I enjoy this set, keep up the good work.

[audigex]

Being forced to learn something and have to be examined by a teacher, kills all the joy of reading.

This is pretty much exactly how I found academia

I LOVE learning.... but I hate writing an assignment, that is also being written by 200 other people at the same time, which will be read once and then thrown away. It just seems so unrewarding

[perverted monkey]

Same thoughts.

[Lt_Joker]

Quick question, do the Steeltown cargo graphics work with XIS too?

[WolfRamXx]

I was thinking that OTTD graphics are just enough size to play around from time to time, now looking at the awesome MAN truck i kinda want to draw some similar sized graphics...

[corrim]

Ive been playing with friend on multiple mod and usually starting early as 1830+.

One thing that is outstading in that period with your GFRs (combaining with your Trains GFR) are Horse-Drawn Wagons (trams). Seems too powerful compairing to other types of transportation, probably should be either slower or carring less (or both).

I was thinking of moddyfing it locally for myself, but I have 0 knowlegde at this stage if that's an easy task as it would be easier to test it bit myself of which direction would be better for our gameplay time to balance different vechicles.

If you are not thinking of rebalancing, any advise how I could amend stuff locally (to be used for MP game as host)? Is that even doable?

Thanks for all the great work!

[CTarana45]

I think Timberwolf's Projects are Excellent! They are right there with PikkaBirds!

Christopher Tarana

[Argus]

I have a minor problem with Timberwolf vehicles, URatt and Waterway road. For some unknown reason, when used with Timberwolf vehicles, some will move to waterways, specifically stagecoaches.

[ionickuk]

I have a minor problem with Timberwolf vehicles, URatt and Waterway road. For some unknown reason, when used with Timberwolf vehicles, some will move to waterways, specifically stagecoaches.

Same. I also found that the vehicles in Timberwolfs Road Vechicles won't use the A roads in U&RaTT at all. I learnt this the hard way by converting an entire city, then finding all my vehicles were "stuck" not being able to find a path.

[eV_Vgen]

Hello, Timberwolf!

Found a minor issue with the MCW bus: the roof looks extra wobbly on the player-facing diagonal sprite. All while the mirrored sprite (facing away) seems to be sleek like all the other sprites.

Thanks for creating this wonderful set, I've stopped using any other grfs because of it.

[Timberwolf]

Ah yes... this was a rendering idea to increase contrast that never quite worked out. I might have a play around with it to see if I can get some nicer results, otherwise I'll remove it as the weird banding looks worse than just having a flat area of colour.

Edit: I think there's some promise to be had here. I've not got this perfect (such is the awkwardness of trying to replicate hand-drawn artwork by bulk-rendering 3D models) but it's calmed down some of the bizarre roof shading choices.



More testing needed as I think this is also applicable to Trains, which has similar issues on some vehicles.