"French Trains Set - freight rolling stock needs drawing

[Snail]

Here I am guys!

Wally and The Irish said it all... after many months of absence, our website will soon be up and running again. We are working hard to construct a trainset that will give a new dimension to any TTD playing

The website has been down for quite some time, but development of the FRSet never really stopped. Steamers are done and I'm now gradually doing all the electrics, some from scratch and some starting from HT's sprites and adding the missing liveries.

Right now, before the webpage gets posted, I'd like to introduce two unpublished vehicles of the set. One is the 141TD steamer, last engine of that kind to be included: it's a push-pull loco, mainly used with early bilevel cars, and the recently added push-pull feature experimented by Pikka inspired me to include this engine. It's available in two liveries, the old black and the newer dark green.
Another one is the BB1280 saltbox (boîte à sel) early electric. Some of you might recall that this was my first creation ever... well, that's true, but it's been more than a year now since I started drawing. So I decided to redo it from scratch using all the tricks I've learnt on the road. I did both a version to run under catenary (with panto up) and on 3rd rail tracks (panto down and 3rd rail shoes). Ideally, panto should be up or down according to the type of track it's running on, so we will need aa variable in NewRoutes that tells what exact type of track the engine is running on. You can compare it with my early attempt, here.

What do you think? Much, much more to come, quite soon.

Cheers!

Snail

-EDIT-

I wanted to add an announcement... the set is desperately looking for a coder!!!
What we would look for is someone who would be willing to give us some help in getting first a teaser and then the set properly coded.
We would appreciate someone with some experience in dealing with animated engines, two-parts engines, livery refits and multiple liveries handling, and complex MU construction. Since, as you can see, there's a huge amount of stuff yet to be coded, the job would require some kind of commitment. Although it would be a plus, no prior knowledge about French trains would really be needed (if you have none, we will give you enough guidance to get the engines and the cars coded correctly). Also, familiarity with all the new features included in the patch (for instance the push-pull feature) would be greatly appreciated.

We offer a highly competitive compensation, a 35-hours working week, paid holidays and many benefits (including excellent wines and cheese from France ).

Anyone brave enough?

[The Irish]

Aaah, looks great, as always. The BB1280 certainly did improve, which is quite difficult, as the first version was already very good.

Keep them coming.

[Snail]

Hi guys!

News from my side: two new locomotives

They are both coming from South-Western France, and were built for Compagnie du Midi.
The 1C1 3000 is a new entry in the set. It was a very original prototype built in 1911, intended to give birth to a new series of medium-sized electric locomotives to use on hilly lines close to the Spanish border. WWI canceled this project and no more units were built. Still, I feel it's an interesting engine that didn't make it more for political than technical reasons, so it's in. It has three liveries, the original blue and the later purple blue of the Midi railway company; and I also did a dark green one, a would-be SNCF livery which was never applied to the prototype. Had the engine been built in numbers, this is the most likely looks SNCF would have given to the series.
You can find a pic of the engine here. The website also provides with some info about its history (in French).
Its transmission system working with rods, the engine is animated

The second one is the later 2C2 3100, another classic of Midi railways. More modern, larger and more powerful, this engine was luckier than the previous one, and was built in fairly large numbers. It was a fast engine to pull rapid passenger trains, also across the lines of South-Western France. The livery schemes are the same as the 1C1 3900 (original blue, purple blue, and SNCF green; no more guesswork here, all of these liveries really existed). Here is a page about this engine (in French).

Here you go, sprites and animations. To Wally: please redownload this version of the 1C1 3900, I modified it a bit since I sent you my first version.

Comments and constructive critics welcome...

More to come... so stay tuned!

[The Irish]

Aaah, some more quality work from Snail Locomotion Factory.

Very nice stuff indeed. What else can I say...

[befsztyk]

Great locos and animations. Can't wait to that day when I will have that set in my game

[Snail]

Thanks for your support befsztyk! It will still take some time, but the FRSet is always advancing and getting more complete step by step.

This week it's the turn of the Boîtes à Ozone to get released. They were small, reliable engines that would be the backbone of French medium and light freight traffic for many decades.
Their concept was first developed by the Compagnie du Midi (the same that made the 1C1 and 2C2), with the E.4000 series (later renamed BB1600 by SNCF). Here you can see it in its original white livery and here in the classical dark green colors.
After more than 10 years, impressed by these engines's great reliability, the newly formed SNCF decided to build another batch of similar locomotives with a more powerful engine: so the BB300 was born. The first units were similar to the old Midi BB's, while the later batch had a different look and also a different paint scheme. The last units were repainted in Béton livery.
Ten years later, SNCF saw its rolling stock devastated by the war, and new, cheap and efficient locomotives were urgently needed. So, they found no better solution than to dust off the more than 20-year-old design and to build a new locomotive class with very similar charateristics. It was called BB8100 and some of these engines, a refined and more powerful version of an already intensively tested design that proved its robustness through the years, are still in service now. They came first with a very sober dark green livery, later repainted to Béton livery.

Here you go. All of the mentioned variants will be included in the FRSet. What do you think?

To Wally: Please use these files for the website, as they include some slight editing from the versions you already have. Thanks!!

[MagicBuzz]

Is there a "alpha-preview-demo" of this set anywhere ?
I can't wait it's finished

[Snail]

Thanks for your interest!

Hopefully, a beta release might be available in the foreseeable future (not next future though). We might have found a coder and we already have some finished engines.

Now for the hard part... after some recent discussions with more experienced artists and coders, though, I decided I have to go through all of my already drawn engines and re-edit them so that they comply with the TTD internal rules. If we leave the sprites as they are now, the set would still be playable, but some engines might look awful when multiheaded (it has to do with the length of the sprite). For this reason, all the sprites drawn so far will have to go through a test.
Luckily, only the horizontal views will have to be tested, so hopefully it won't take long. The 040TA and 131TB are the only engines already corrected. When I'm done, I will keep drawing new engines as I've always done.

[Purno]

Nice graphics Snail. Keep up the good work!

[vinnys]

Hi i just found this forum when searching patch for Transport Tycoon Delux
through Google.

i spent most of my free time of last week reading all the posts in FRset post

I realy wanted to use the FR set to play TTDx

all those Cool Engines, my my !! When is the set is going to be lanched !!!!!!:twisted: .

Spidy.

[Wile E. Coyote]

Some coding is in progress, we hope it'll be some taster in near future...

[vinnys]

Belive me when i am saying this
I AM VERY HAPPY to hear from you

As the Last Post was in Nov 18 2006....
I was thinking there was a Halt in the FRset
Phew what a Relif....

[BobDendry]

It's a shame about your situation with coders. If I had not so much on my plate, I would offer you my services.

[Wile E. Coyote]

There is allways lack of coders, more than artists. I did some coding job here, but have no much time to do it fast.

[Snail]

Nice to see there is still interest in this set!

Work on the FRSet has never really stopped, it has just been going underground for a while. I've been spending the last month updating my steamers (the tenders had to be redone, some glitches had to be fixed, and now that my Dutch steamers are complete I'll add the last touch darkening the wheels a bit). Then I'll have to fix my electrics in order to make them multihead-friendly. Since no new engines have been developed lately, no work has been shown.

I'm working on a tilting version of the TGV as well though (the Pendulaire) starting from Coalroad's template, he drew some excellent TGVs some time ago (Coalroads, if you're reading this, did you ever complete the Duplex and the TransManche?).

Also, our website should appear as soon as the steamers are finally updated!

[Purno]

You know, I drew some TGVs too, the Thalys, Atlantique and Duplex, FYI.

[Snail]

I remember, Purno! It's just that we'd like to have a look at all the already drawn versions, before deciding which one to go with.

We will also need the new AGV (the link is in German, but it includes other links to cool pics), which will eventually replace all TGVs except the Pendulaire.

[Purno]

Hmm... that AGV looks... überugly...

[Raichase]

Hmm... that AGV looks... überugly...

Yes indeed. Still, talented artists, plus TT's rather vauge scaling, seems to make ugly trains look good. I notice there are some ugly DB trains that Michael made look good in the DBXL

[Snail]

We could launch a contest... who can make that train look good?