Different catchment aeras

[Celestar]

Hi peops, this is my first contribution to these forums (as I just downloaded OTTD yesterday )

I've thought that it might be a nice idea to have different catchment area sizes for different kinds of stations:

Bus, Truck, Oil-Helipads: 3
Train Stations, Heliport, Small airport: 4
Docks, Large Airports: 5
Metro Airports: 6
International Airports: 8

The player side was pretty easy to code and works pretty nicely, however the AI stuff gives me some headache.

Note: Mixed mode stations always have the largest possible radius of all integrated stations.

Suggestions or comments?

Celestar

[dominik81]

Keep in mind that bigger stations - such as the international airport already have a much bigger coverage area than e.g. a bus station, simply because they are bigger.

[Purno]

Not all stations should have the same catchment area size. Small stations should have smaller areas than large stations.

[AlienDNA]

And even though the airport has a large radius, most of it isn't used, because it is always at the edge of a city, because of it's size. Since most towns won't grow enitirely around an airport, most not even halfway, all that catchment is useless, while a train-station can easily be in the center, and have almost all of it's catchment area actually USED... I already suggested enlarging the catchment area once in this forum, and I can suggest it again here

[Rexxie]

I really, really like your idea. I personally feel that it's kind of unbalanced to have a bus stop in the middle of the city with 2000 passengers waiting and you have no means to get them out even with a squadrillion buses, and at the same time you have an airport at the end of town, or a huge railroad station, and because they're on the edge of the city they never get all that many passengers. I end up trying to work a way into the city with building heliport => bus station => truck station to get a bus station or heliport inside the city which is in the same station as the railroad station, just to get passengers to it.

[Korenn]

This is a nice patch, but personally I'm more interested in proper feeder services, since I like using buses and small trains to supply passengers to my IC trains and planes. Currently that's not possible in ottd.

[Airtaxi Pilot]

International Airports should get all the passengers/mail from a city and not just catchment area.

[Villem]

Or not...then train stations or buses would have nothing to transport.

[Airtaxi Pilot]

Or not...then train stations or buses would have nothing to transport.

you could link a train/bus station to the airport

i agree, maybes the Int. Airport shouldn't get all the passengers/mail, but maybes they should get a large percentage

[Celestar]

Just for those who care:

Display of correct catchment area during production: Works
Use of correct catchment area for accepted goods: Works mostly
Use of correct catchment area for "stored" goods: In Progress
Use of modified catchment areas for AI players: Doesn't work, and don't have an idea how to make it unless I rewrite half of the AI-station-placement code

Celestar

[Airtaxi Pilot]

For Int. Airports (or other big stations), maybes you could direct the catchment area to one direction, instead of all around it.

Use of correct catchment area for "stored" goods: In Progress

I dont understan that one.

[lucaspiller]

This is a nice patch, but personally I'm more interested in proper feeder services, since I like using buses and small trains to supply passengers to my IC trains and planes. Currently that's not possible in ottd.

I agree with you there, currently this is probably the only thing I don't like about OTTD.

[Elshar]

Use of correct catchment area for "stored" goods: In Progress

I dont understan that one.

I think what he means is say coal from a coal mine. The catchment area for the station there to pick up the coal, and store it until the train gets there to pick it up and bring it where it needs to go.

[Celestar]

Good news:

Seems it works. The catchment areas for BOTH incoming and outgoing cargo for the stations appears to be working properly. I'll now clean up the code a bit, hope to have a diff file tomorrow.

Maybe I'll get an idea what to do about the AI in my dreams

Celestar

[Celestar]

I have made a preliminary diff file, for those of you who feel like testing during the night, or sit in other timezones. Please drop me a message here if something doesn't work.

the diff file was built against OpenTTD 0.3.2.1 with the Larger Airports Patch 672 installed. If your version is different, you better hack the stuff in manually

Celestar

edit: acutally attached the diff file

[ChrisCF]

You'll probably have to update your source from the svn repo, and then re-diff it, if you really want this patch to go in. Developers can be lazy gits sometimes

[Darkvater]

Celestar I'm happy to see others working on the codebase too, but if in the future you decide to make other patches, please don't make them against an old release! Do it against the latest SVN. This way it might actually work without maybe rewriting the whole thing, because so many things have changed

[Wolf01]

question: how i can use diffs files?
i think i had to use tortoiseSVN...
i had installed tortoiseSVN but i'm don't be able to use it

[Celestar]

Darkvater:
yes I know , I somehow missed the fact that there was a newer source tree, I'll do these changes against the new tree soon, but first I'm trying to find out what to do with the AI, currently they're very good at misplacing the truck stations out-of-reach for industries.
Other question: is there ANY kind of documentation, I'm just rather reverse-engineering the code which takes quite some time (time that I rather ought to spend for my Master thesis )

Celestar

[dominik81]

Did you take a look a the "docs" folder? The landscape documentation there is quit helpful. It's taken from Marcin's "TTD savegame internals" document which you find on the web and which is a great source of information.