Prohibition

[ebla71]

Prohibition industry NewGRF

[more explanation on the files to follow here soon]

[ebla71]

While working on another "full" industry NewGRF set, I was overwhelmed by the number of options and the amount of work this creates if you want to use the full range of cargos and include about a hundred industries.

Therefore, I decided to have a little fun side project with only a limited number of features, to learn more about NML coding while - at the same time - getting something playable quickly.

And while watching a crime movie on TV at night, I immediately had an idea for a theme and thus "Prohibition" was born

As the name suggests, this industry NewGRF is set in the 1920s United States, when alcohol was forbidden due to, well, the prohibition

Available cargos, in addition to the standard passengers and mail: moonshine, champagne, money, pizza, gangsters, jazz musicians, police officers, coast guard officers, suspects, convicts

Available industries: smuggler ship, moonshine destillery, pizzeria, hotel, illegal bar, jazz club, bank, police station, coast guard station, courthouse, prison

Some are primary or terminal industries, while others both accept and produce cargo.

Currently, there are two main limits:

a) cargo acceptance and cargo production are not "coupled" yet, so a courthouse will produce convicts even with no suspects delivered
b) the graphics are borrowed from OTIS, since the "main" industry GRF I'm working on also has "single tile" industries as a key element and I'm a major desaster at drawing graphics

Smuggler ship: produces champagne and suspects, accepts coast guard officers (to carry out a search )
Moonshine destillery: produces, well, moonshine (= illegally brewed whiskey)
Hotel: "produces" jazz musicians
Illegal bar: produces money and suspects, accepts moonshine, gangsters, and police officers
Jazz club: produces money and suspects, accepts champagne, jazz musicians, gangsters, and police officers
Pizzeria: produces gangsters (sorry, my dear Italian friends for this cliche) and pizza, accepts money
Police station: "produces" police officers
Coast guard station: surprise, surprise, "produces" coast guard officers (to raid the smuggler ship)
Bank: accepts gangster and police officers (when robbed), produces money and suspects (if police catches the gangsters )
Courthouse: accepts suspects and pizza (hey, the judge and clerks have to eat something during long court sessisons), produces convicts
Prison: accepts convicts (and if you are a gangster, a life-sentence is likely, therefore this is a terminal "industry")

To make things more interesting, different industries can only be built in different locations and the suspects and convicts need an armoured vehicle for transport

I tried playing around with it a bit and with the exceptions noted above, found no bugs - but would appreciate your comments and suggestions for improvement.

Also hope that you discover the pop cultural references that I have added here or there and don't take the overall thing too serious. And hey, is there any video game that allows you to transport jazz musicians around?!?

[ebla71]

Furthermore, maybe this industry set will inspire some people better at graphics than me?

Interesting targets for graphics and matching vehicle NewGRFs might be:

- a speedboat to get offshore to collect the champagne from the smugglers ship (aka "rum runners")
- a coast guard cutter trying to catch them
- 1920s/1930s limousines to carry around the gangsters and jazz musicians
- police cars of different styles (although not exactly matching the targeted epoch, wasn't there a vehicle set with the legenday "Bluesmobile"?)
- prisoner van to move convicts from courthouse to jail

[Quast65]

Hahaha, nice idea!

- 1920s/1930s limousines to carry around the gangsters and jazz musicians

Funny cars has two 1920's style gangstercars:
viewtopic.php?f=67&t=84564

EDIT:
There is also an old little GRF-pack around that has this car:

Example908.png (2.05 KiB) Viewed 8175 times

But I am unable to find a download location..
It's from an old pack, something called allwrhvehicles, the GRF itself is duesenburgtest.grf
Maybe Kamnet knows...

[kamnet]

There is also an old little GRF-pack around that has this car:
Example908.png
But I am unable to find a download location..
It's from an old pack, something called allwrhvehicles, the GRF itself is duesenburgtest.grf
Maybe Kamnet knows...

This is new to me!

[Quast65]

This is new to me!

Well, this is in the pack (all as separate GRFs):

Example911.png (5.01 KiB) Viewed 8051 times

It's probably from around 2009 and only 2 cars have some extra information:
drawn by AnD
coded by BeST-Com, and he may still be around...

PING!

[ebla71]

Well, this is in the pack (all as separate GRFs):
Example911.png
It's probably from around 2009 and only 2 cars have some extra information:
drawn by AnD
coded by BeST-Com, and he may still be around...

Oh, these cars are beautiful and would perfectly match with the theme of the Prohibition NewGRF.

It even looks like the "Anglia Panda car" has some police car light on top, so would only need to re-color to match the black-white style of many US police cars.

And the transit van would be perfect for "pizza delivery"

Finally, the long "Leyland van" strongly calls for adding another cargo and "industry" - "retired" gangsters to be transported to the cemetary (sorry, this set is possibly to be R-rated )

[ebla71]

This little fun project of mine is now also available via the online content download: https://bananas.openttd.org/package/newgrf/50524f48

[WolfRamXx]

Hi, just a few notes/ideas.

Gangsters and police need some "tools" for their work Those "tools" as well as some other evidence also could be taken away from gangsters by the police to help court decide the sentence. Where to get the "tools" thou? Smuggler ship, "tool" dealers (probably something like barn in the countryside) or straight from the source.

Another note is that gangsters need some hideouts as well. This could be the place where "tools" are given to gangsters (or maybe passengers turned into gangsters when both are delivered). Could be used as main producer of "gangsters" as well.

[ebla71]

Another note is that gangsters need some hideouts as well. This could be the place where "tools" are given to gangsters (or maybe passengers turned into gangsters when both are delivered). Could be used as main producer of "gangsters" as well.

Thank you very much for your suggestions - this project was pretty much mostly for me to learn a bit of NML and therefore I will possibly not spend much time on it in the near future.

The "gangster hideout" actually is already there - it's the pizzeria

As I'm a big fan of Martin Scorsese and related films, does not come as a surprise, I guess.

[kamnet]

There is also an old little GRF-pack around that has this car:
Example908.png
But I am unable to find a download location..
It's from an old pack, something called allwrhvehicles, the GRF itself is duesenburgtest.grf
Maybe Kamnet knows...

This is new to me!

I'm still annoyed that I've not found this little gem.

[Fredinho]

Haha, I've been looking for it too! This sounds like a fun set.

[Argus]

A lot of graphics were lost...
Otherwise, black and white police cars are in Eyecandy vehicles, and the new Real Cars.
OTIS based industry? Why not, at least I'll learn to work with objects.

[ebla71]

A lot of graphics were lost...

It's a strong reminder for all content developers to put their stuff on GitHub or at least post graphics and NML source files here, otherwise a lot of work will be lost forever and as far as I know there is no way to "reverse engineer" and extract at least the graphics from the *.grf file?!?

OTIS based industry? Why not, at least I'll learn to work with objects.

Well, the idea was also to learn how to do simple 1x1 graphics and then replace the OTIS marks one by one. But "real life" is a b**** and came in the way

The other thing that is still missing is to tune the cargo production.

If anybody wants to take the framework further - the source is here:

viewtopic.php?p=1264954#p1264954

[chujo]

there is no way to "reverse engineer" and extract at least the graphics from the *.grf file

For this purpose you can use grfcodec.exe:

Code: Select all

       grfcodec -d <grf-file>
       This will put a pcx file in a subdirectory called "sprites". It
       will also make a .NFO file that is needed to reconstruct the GRF
       file.

(Sometimes you have to switch to the correct palette - win/dos - but it works)

[Auge]

Hello

A lot of graphics were lost...

It's a strong reminder for all content developers to put their stuff on GitHub ...

... or any similar service like Gitlab, Codeberg ... just to formulate this in a provider-independent way.

Regardless of this, I can only agree with you. Making the sources available on an external platform or maybe on more than one platform makes them much more resilient against a local hardware fail (whereever "local" is). If the code and the sprites are also made publicly available under a suitable licence, this increases the likelihood that someone else will take care of any errors or further development if the author abandons the project.

Tschö, Auge

[ebla71]

there is no way to "reverse engineer" and extract at least the graphics from the *.grf file

For this purpose you can use grfcodec.exe:

Code: Select all

       grfcodec -d <grf-file>
       This will put a pcx file in a subdirectory called "sprites". It
       will also make a .NFO file that is needed to reconstruct the GRF
       file.

There isn't also, by any chance, also a *.nfo to *.nml converter, to complete the "reverse engineering cycle"?

I did a bit of Assembler programming about 100 years ago and I will not dive into such things again, simply too old brain for that

[2TallTyler]

NML to NFO is a one-way conversion that loses a lot of information. You could try YAGL to decompile a GRF file into something that tries to be human-readable.

[WolfRamXx]

Thank you very much for your suggestions - this project was pretty much mostly for me to learn a bit of NML and therefore I will possibly not spend much time on it in the near future.

I see, hope you learned a lot then Maybe in future we will see remake?

The "gangster hideout" actually is already there - it's the pizzeria

As I'm a big fan of Martin Scorsese and related films, does not come as a surprise, I guess.

Understood. I don't really watch movies so yeah... But the having an GRF based on movies is pretty cool

[ebla71]

Maybe in future we will see remake?

Depends on what timescale "in the future" indicates to you