Want: Ability to make vehicles nonpurchaseable after year x

459 · Post by **459** » 05 Dec 2004 23:10

Thinking of Planeset, it would be nice if there was an ability to make vehicles nonpurchaseable after year x. They vehicles out of production, however, wouldn't start "End Of Life" decay until the given endyear. So you wouldn't be able to buy a new DC-8 after 1973, for instance in year 2000 just to find out that it'd decay before reaching its max age.

Or does some existing ability do something to this? I haven't been able to figure it out...

DaleStan · Post by **DaleStan** » 06 Dec 2004 05:38

I think this has been requested before.
*search*
It's this thread.
Small wonder you hadn't seen it. The last post was back in April, over a month before you joined.

Looking at the save-game format, there seems to be some redundancy in the vehicle type array, between the words in 0x10-0x15 and the byte at 0x16. This may be exploitable.

ObDisclaimer: I've never looked at either TTD's or TTDPatch's code. There may be good reasons for this redundancy, and they may be insurmountable (at least without absurd effort).

Patchman · Post by **Patchman** » 06 Dec 2004 05:49

DaleStan wrote:Looking at the save-game format, there seems to be some redundancy in the vehicle type array, between the words in 0x10-0x15 and the byte at 0x16. This may be exploitable.

It's not really redundant. The first set of variables includes the random number of days/months/years TTD adds to the engine availability. The last variable is after how many years an engine will generate "getting old" messages.

There's really no simple way of making this change on a per-engine basis. It could possibly be done globally, to remove all engines that are less that n years before their reliability decay starts.

DaleStan · Post by **DaleStan** » 06 Dec 2004 07:01

Patchman wrote:
DaleStan wrote:Looking at the save-game format, there seems to be some redundancy in the vehicle type array, between the words in 0x10-0x15 and the byte at 0x16. This may be exploitable.
It's not really redundant. The first set of variables includes the random number of days/months/years TTD adds to the engine availability. The last variable is after how many years an engine will generate "getting old" messages.

*re-reads the savegame specs*
So what you're really saying is that those two sections are two completely different things, and I just read what I wanted to see, instead of what it actually said.

Sorry about that.

Rob · Post by **Rob** » 06 Dec 2004 16:15

DaleStan wrote:........and I just read what I wanted to see, instead of what it actually said.

Sorry about that.

Welcome to humanity.

krtaylor · Post by **krtaylor** » 06 Dec 2004 21:38

Patchman wrote:There's really no simple way of making this change on a per-engine basis. It could possibly be done globally, to remove all engines that are less that n years before their reliability decay starts.

AHA!

THERE'S the solution I've been seeking to all kinds of problems relating to engine decay and discontinuation...

Is it possible to make such a global constant? Because if it were, we could simply set that constant for a given set, to be the maximum life expectancy of the longest-lived loco in that set; and then, set the discontinuing dates for that loco to be the real date, plus that constant. Ergo, problem solved - the locos are discontinued at the right year, but any you already have can soldier on until they would naturally wear out anyway, without encountering the way-too-fast decay that the game likes to do. That would also add a new dimension to the game, the need to preserve particular locos rather than just throwing away the entire train and building a new one - because you can't buy any more of that loco, but the one you've got still has some life left in it, and nothing better has come on the market.

Prof. Frink · Post by **Prof. Frink** » 06 Dec 2004 22:13

Hmm, you could make it so that all locos built after a certain date get livery-overridden to 'STOP' style graphics.

Would also hurt my nice comfortable use of enginespersist

krtaylor · Post by **krtaylor** » 06 Dec 2004 22:39

I think I prefer my idea.

krtaylor · Post by **krtaylor** » 13 Dec 2004 20:17

I know you've been terribly busy, Patchman, but if you think it likely that you'll be able to do the solution you described in the near future, it would be useful to know that so we could fix the US Set and Planeset to work with it while we've got the hood up on those.

krtaylor · Post by **krtaylor** » 25 Feb 2005 17:37

(bump)

Hate to do this, but if this was done, we'd use it immediately in the Planeset, Japanset, and USset, all three of which are very near a major release.

Patchman · Post by **Patchman** » 26 Feb 2005 02:34

Oh alright then

(:mrgreen:)

In alpha 44, you can set for each engine, how many years before the end of phase 2 it will become unavailable, while the reliability doesn't start decreasing until the actual end of phase 2.

In the current implementation, this will interfere with persistentengines and make the model unavailable even if persistentengines is on, maybe I should change that.

krtaylor · Post by **krtaylor** » 26 Feb 2005 03:43

Yes, I think so... I want this feature, very badly, but not so much as to screw up everybody else.

Szappy · Post by **Szappy** » 28 Feb 2005 13:18

Please don't use this feature, as long as patcman corrects it for persistentengines.
I have already stated my opinion against this feature request.
Be happy that you finally forced you way through, but this will break any game that takes use of the persistenengines switch.

krtaylor · Post by **krtaylor** » 28 Feb 2005 14:26

No, you're wrong Szappy - The first test version of this feature would cause problems with persistentengines, but it isn't going to stay that way. Patchman said that would be fixed. Obviously I don't advocate breaking persistentengines, they both need to coexist. This fix has been needed for a long time, not at the expense of persistentengines as I said, but in it's own right.

Patchman · Post by **Patchman** » 28 Feb 2005 14:27

Hmm, I forgot to account for persistentengines in alpha 44, but I'll fix that for a45. Don't worry, this will cooperate with persistentengines too, there's no reason why it couldn't.

krtaylor · Post by **krtaylor** » 28 Feb 2005 14:34

Szappy, please believe that I will never try to force through a new feature if it will irremediably ruin a feature already existing. I'll try to talk it through and find some way both can work. But the whole point of the Patch is that you can turn on and off features at will. I have wanted this improvement for a while, to add to realism. Of course it's not relevant if you are using persistentengines. I know many people do, so no way will I break that in my sets. I know Patchman feels the same way. So don't worry, OK?

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