New Graphics - Blender ".blend" thread (Works In Progress)

[Crazy Vaclav]

For the bus stations, Bigger depots will just need to be used for bigger busses, but I think those depots will be fine for the smaller viecles.

The vehicles will have to be really small for that depot to work. If the bus is longer than the white line, an incomming bus will drive right through the waiting one. I would guess the white line is only around 3m long, and I don't think there are busses that small.
And I don't think that depot will give the vehicles any room to turn either.

[brupje]

Brupje: There 2 really cool models.

I notice you have lifted the pavement above the road, rather than sink the road beneath the pavement, wich is the same as what I have done. I think every building that sits on a pavement needs to be raised up, to allow roads to be sunk, but not beneath the level of the base tile.

You are correct. To me it's more logical to have pavement raised up, but we will have to see what's the best choice from the game development perspective. I can also see the pavement to be on the same level as the road, to make it easier to fit tiles.

I have some road textures, but there not completely sorted, and I was thinking of just waiting until its posible to test them in the game, as otherwise I'm never completly shore if a tile works.

There is some tool for tile testing right? I would _REALLY_ like some road tiles to have to align with.

For scale, I think everything should be made to the same sized tiles as before, but made beleiveable (door/window sizes etc). Resized and additonal graphics can be for people to choose if they want, but moving too far from the original graphics for the standard 32bpp ones is making the assumption that thats what everyone would agree with. So i think its better to stick. For the bus stations, Bigger depots will just need to be used for bigger busses, but I think those depots will be fine for the smaller viecles.

Also, drive threw stations will handle the bigger viecles better graphically, as exceeding the dimensions of the tile would still look ok.

To my perspective we have three choises:
1. We make the busses smaller, this way we will avoid breaking with the current situation.
2. We make the stations larger, gives me more space
3. We make small and large stations

I don't like breaking with the current situation, as it would probably require a lot of reprogramming the way busses arrive at the station. A positive thing about larger stations would be to have capacity for 3 or 4 busses, which it's nice to have to.

I think the best choice is to stay with the current situation (1x1 for a station) and wait for the ability to test the graphics in the game, and concentrate on creating the other buildings first.

The TTD lorry loading bay (out of scale horrendously) was surrounded by a brick building, presumably for that task.

I didn't see a way to fit a loading bay in this station. Although I wanted at first.

Remember that things like fueling would takr place in the depots when vehicles get serviced.

I know enough depots which also have fuel stations. So it's not a very ridiculous idea to have one here. A verhicle gets serviced once a year or so, I assume they need fuel more often

[mexicoshanty]

I reckon it'd be cool if bus stops looked something like this:

[brupje]

that would be cool indeed but you would need it on both sides of the road then

[mexicoshanty]

that would be cool indeed but you would need it on both sides of the road then

true

[Silky]

To my perspective we have three choises:
1. We make the busses smaller, this way we will avoid breaking with the current situation.
2. We make the stations larger, gives me more space
3. We make small and large stations

I don't like breaking with the current situation, as it would probably require a lot of reprogramming the way busses arrive at the station. A positive thing about larger stations would be to have capacity for 3 or 4 busses, which it's nice to have to.

I think the best choice is to stay with the current situation (1x1 for a station) and wait for the ability to test the graphics in the game, and concentrate on creating the other buildings first.

Making the bus stations 1x1 *would* be breaking with the current situation. Since the 32bpp tiles are half the size they are now, a bus station should be 2x2 with the new graphics. With the buses the same size as the current graphics, this should give the same capacity, and allow them to arrive in the same way as before. I believe the main reason for smaller tiles is to allow roads/rails to be closer together?

[Born Acorn]

I reckon it'd be cool if bus stops looked something like this:

We'd also require larger tiles, or for roads to be smaller on tiles. It'd be easier on the coders to just have them on the road instead of laybys for them.

[brupje]

Making the bus stations 1x1 *would* be breaking with the current situation. Since the 32bpp tiles are half the size they are now, a bus station should be 2x2 with the new graphics. With the buses the same size as the current graphics, this should give the same capacity, and allow them to arrive in the same way as before. I believe the main reason for smaller tiles is to allow roads/rails to be closer together?

current situation is that the buses park on 1x1 tile, you will have to reprogram them to park on 2x2. Also buses didn't get twice as long, but rather 1.5. Increasing the size of the station by 4 times therefore leaves a lot of space.

[mexicoshanty]

I reckon it'd be cool if bus stops looked something like this:

We'd also require larger tiles, or for roads to be smaller on tiles. It'd be easier on the coders to just have them on the road instead of laybys for them.

Yeah it would be. I guess it just depends on what the coders feel like doing. The only thing i wouldn't like about the bus stops being on the road is that they will hinder traffic flow. But a bonus is they do not require extra space. So just as in real life i'd like to be able to use the bus stop that is most appropriate. Three possible designs are:

- The on the road kind
- One similar to the 'on the road' design except having a parking bay (as i illustrated)
- Bus stations (which can handle multiple buses at once)

[Field-Mouse]

To be honest, i cant understand why it was decided to change the scale at all.. Why not just keep exact scale the way it is in the old ottd? Its kind of ugly, i know, but we have to keep the gameplay in mind, we should NOT crap gameplay up just to make the game look alittle nicer! Wouldnt it be a mess to have to remove 4 bits of road to build a busstation of 2x2? Perhaps I have missunderstood the situation..? if we are gonna use real scale, a factory is gonna take enormous space!
As I said, gameplay must come first! The best thing would be to resize the buildings in ottd and just add whatever as a sprite for it and play with different sizes and scales to see what makes the best gameplay, thats sorta how I build maps for HL2 and CSS.. hehe

EDI:: Oops, did a typo hehe

[Born Acorn]

Remember that most things that people imagine with the new graphics engine most likely won't happen, due to constraints of the game. (as in it'd take a lot of hard work and hacks to make them work)

For example, right now, residential/city buildings cannot be bigger than 2x2, railways can't bend, and vehicles only have 8 sprites.

[Ben_Robbins_]

When people say the old tiles are 25 by 25, I think that is ok for calculating trains speed, but for scaling buildings I think the old graphics shouldnt be seen as any particual scale. I was looking at a tt building earlier, where the windows would inply it was 12.5m, but the main door made it seem about 30m. The sizes are all over the place.

We are making sprites at 'the new scale', wich is not twice 'the original scale', its just 'the new scale'.

brupje: I understand that you would _REALLY_ like some road tiles, as all base sprites are critical for alignment. I stopped on them until I could check them for shore in the game, but I'll take a look tommorw at finding/rendering the basic bit just as a test peice for alignment (so as to have some standardisation of dimensions). The problem I had was until 1 tile is made, how do you 'jigsaw' fit the other bits. I was asuming more tiles where in the making than actually were, so I suppose i should just take my finger out and make some.

[brupje]

Remember that most things that people imagine with the new graphics engine most likely won't happen, due to constraints of the game. (as in it'd take a lot of hard work and hacks to make them work)

For example, right now, residential/city buildings cannot be bigger than 2x2, railways can't bend, and vehicles only have 8 sprites.

I can imagine that's a problem indeed. So why not try to create 32 bit images replacements for the whole game and implement that first. The great thing about using .blend files is that's easy to change. Even someone who never used the program can within 5 minutes learn how the move objects around and rescale them. Building larger station later on isn't that hard.

@Ben_Robbins_: great, I'm looking forward to it. I'm especially interested in how you did the pavements

[Moriarty]

ok, newbie question-- what do these .blend files do? are they supposed to replace grfs?
How do you use them in you game?
Thanks in advance!

The .blend files aren't for the game itself. They're 3d meshes (I think) which are used to allow folks to render the pretty pictures you see in this thread.
These pretty pictures will then be used to replace the current in-game images.

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On the matter of the bus-station - has anyone considered Articulated buses? Because they're much longer than 12.5 meters (the article says up to 18m). Wouldn't a Real bus terminal - the sort that could cover multiple tiles and that you find in city centres - be necessary to accomodate a thing?

[Ben_Robbins_]

Here is some road tiles rendered, and made tileable, I attached a birds eye shot of one for scaling, and the road texture, and the blend file used for the straight bit.

brupje: In the attached image I just played around with the bus station and blended it in with the other tiles. You're gunna have to modify the texture accordingly, so its fits your depots

edit: reattached the .rar, as Crazy has textured the tile in blender

[Griff]

Is it possible to handle bus stations with more than 2 bays.

Then you can do..village, town and city. With perhaps 2, 4 and 8 bays.

[brupje]

Here is some road tiles rendered, and made tileable, I attached a birds eye shot of one for scaling, and the road texture, and the blend file used for the straight bit.

brupje: In the attached image I just played around with the bus station and blended it in with the other tiles. You're gunna have to modify the texture accordingly, so its fits your depots

edit: reattached the .rar, as Crazy has textured the tile in blender

wow, they look great

I will try to work on them asap

[Moriarty]

Is it possible to handle bus stations with more than 2 bays.

Then you can do..village, town and city. With perhaps 2, 4 and 8 bays.

Wasn't there a patch that allowed mutliple bays in a bus station, or was it just allowing you to glue lots of bus stations together. Don't recall.

[maquinista]

I have done with GIMP (joining tiles) this fake screenshot:


It not have a great quality, but it gives some impression.

Im my humble opinion, buses and trucks must stop without acrobatic turns, they must stop with their front in the bottom wall.

[tormentum]

nice screen man...

the roads are looking okay, but still need a little work on the 90 degree corners... they almost have a simutrans feel :S