New Size Relations in 32-bit

[Aracirion]

**** CONCERNING VOTE *****
somethings have been put down too vague. Completely realistic scales are impossible, obviousle. As I understand it, option 3 and 4 mean the same concerning size:

if possible it should be apparent that the same homunculus coming out of that house could also get into that bus, and then walk through the airport terminal and enter the airplane.

Still, high-rises can't be 100 floors, and runways will be only about 4x a plane's length etc. Option 4 was meant to check how much it matters to integrate Graphics with a new economy from the beginning.

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As the Issue of how the new 32-bit Grafix will deal with size relations has again come up, I tried to describe the different positions taken so far. As of now, my list is probably quite incomplete and biased , so please post your opinioin, and as the thread progresses I will update:


realistic
Sizes should be made more realistic. Runways will never be realistic in lenght, and everything will be crowded as close together as possible, but A Jumbo Jet should be considerably larger than a Bus. Many office blocks can be larger than 1 tile.

+ airplanes would be less easy money with bigger airports. Originally, things had to be small because maps were so small! Now, bigger airports might for example make the difference between different types of vehicles more interesting (cf. wiki)

+ This would also fit in with a larger picture of a new economy, if there were programmers willing to work on it.:

This should not be a problem on huge maps. I hope someone will work on a patch so we can be able to reduce the number of generated towns, and make them bigger. ... Then we can have properly scaled airports and tankers in the open sea. To build a huge airport to transport passengers 100 tiles away doesn't make any sense (we 'd better use rail or ships) but 300 or more it makes. ... Also with "passengers destination patch" airports can be out of the city, as in real life, and it would be a nightmare with more cities to transfer passengers around!

- needs coding work

- with certain types of maps (lots of narrow high hills) placing larger structures might be difficult.


original TTD
Only make new versions of all the old sprites, don't change anything with the gameplay

+ needs no additional coding work

+ Gameplay would be conserved (in certain aspects this can also be seen as a drawback)

- One problem I see with this is that unrealistic realitions will be much more apparent if you can zoom in than they were before (cf small airport).


Gameplay
A frequent argument is concerns about destroying gameplay. I would say that this shouldn't be made on a general level but specifically. It seems to me that large airports for example might enhance gameplay just as well if they are integrated properly, by creating more difference between trains and planes.
Turn it off?
might it be possible to make two versions, so that realistic scaling can be turned on and off? Putting together the small airport from the big one I made previously was no problem, also scaling down large planes should be easy.

[Field-Mouse]

I think 2 versions would be nice.
The realistic version could have new buildings too, not just buildings based on the original TT.
The non-realistic version should be an exact copy of the OTTD, just with higher resolution 32 bpp graphics. Preferably, this would be a patch or something, so that you can download newest version of OTTD and just patch it to get 32 bpp.

Gameplay IS the MOST IMPORTANT thing we have to concider, if the is no good gameplay, no-one will play the game. But changing game play doesnt mean it will be bad gameplay. Current OTTD has changed A LOT in gameplay from original TT.. A LOT! So perhaps we can make a nice gameplay too. One important thing though, we have to decide how the gameplay should be, think through it carefully, many times. And if something might be odd to code or take time to code, just let it take time.

[brupje]

if you are about to do such a lot of recoding, you might consider to make it all 3d as well Which would be nice, but just to show how much work it would be.

[Field-Mouse]

Cant you include "make 2 versions" in that vote? :S
I must say that vote is pretty off.. I dont like the sound of either of the alternatives..
Realistic sizes are not possible..
Powerplant: 3 towns in size. oil refinery 4 towns. airport fullscreen ++. no vehicle would be the same lenght. Skyscrapers would block view. farms: vast lands.

I think we should have:
Version 1: Same as OTTD, but 32bpp higher resolution
Version 2: More realistic sizes (not completely realistic), create a good gameplay that fits the new scale.

[Field-Mouse]

if you are about to do such a lot of recoding, you might consider to make it all 3d as well Which would be nice, but just to show how much work it would be.

Im not a gamecoder, but I dont think thats comparable.. I think this pretty much is about changing a few values here and there.
Of course there will be more advanced coding too, but its neccesary if more realistic scale is to be implemented.
(Sorry for double posting)

[Aracirion]

Cant you include "make 2 versions" in that vote? :S

For now I didn't so that people have to decide what they prefer .... However, if making 2 versions would be an option I guess that's what we should do.

I must say that vote is pretty off.. I dont like the sound of either of the alternatives..
Realistic sizes are not possible..
Powerplant: 3 towns in size. oil refinery 4 towns. airport fullscreen ++. no vehicle would be the same lenght. Skyscrapers would block view. farms: vast lands.

with "try to make realistic sizes for vehicles" I meant that, as the game really centres on vehicles, they should be more realistic above all. Buildings are secondary. For example, just crowd the airport together as much as possible, and the same for other buildings. The Basic Idea is I think that if possible it should be apparent that the same Homunculus coming out of that house could also get into that bus, and then walk through the airport terminal and enter the airplane.

[Field-Mouse]

I must say that vote is pretty off.. I dont like the sound of either of the alternatives..
Realistic sizes are not possible..
Powerplant: 3 towns in size. oil refinery 4 towns. airport fullscreen ++. no vehicle would be the same lenght. Skyscrapers would block view. farms: vast lands.

with "try to make realistic sizes for vehicles" I meant that, as the game really centres on vehicles, they should be more realistic above all. Buildings are secondary. For example, just crowd the airport together as much as possible, and the same for other buildings. The Basic Idea is I think that if possible it should be apparent that the same Homunculus coming out of that house could also get into that bus, and then walk through the airport terminal and enter the airplane.

I was reffering to "make realistic sizes and if possible combine it with new economy". (sry i didnt say that)

[Aracirion]

Field-Mouse@ Yes here my wording was too inconsiderate .... what I meant was the same as fa as sizes are concerned like in the one above, I just wanted to know whether it really matters to people to integrate it with a new economy (the "larger picture" I quoted above)...

[Ben_Robbins_]

"make 2 versions" Could it not just be like all other parts of openttd, where theres the option to have the patch on or off?

There is 4 options, wich have been said, but I think can be discribed quite basically as:

1) Duplicate the originals
2) Rescale to be beleiable* with a size max of x squares.
3) Rescale to be beleiable
4) Rescale to be realistic

*although the max square would actually make them unbeleivable.

So far nearly everything has been made to '3'. e.g. (as I'm awair has been mentioned), the runway isnt hundreds of tiles long. If I take the Mill I recently posted. The floors in the towers would only be 1 room, wich is very unlikely, but I tried to make the doors and windows to scale, and accsess to the dfferent floors, so people dont need to fly up to there floors. The arch doesnt need to be crawled under, but at the same time in realiy it wouldnt be there because the building isnt large enough, so it would be expected that you walk round. This, i think therefore, fits in with '3'.

There are advantages and disadvantages with all of the 4, but if everything is modelled to a beleiable size, then all the other 3 options can be created (rendered) from this. Realistic would involve more tiles, for the runway legth example. 2 and 1 would be shrunk.

If we were to model things to the original scale then if someone wanted to have them realistic scale they couldnt becuase the .blend (or whatever) meshes and textures would not be good enough.

In conclusion I say we model the best to limit the least. Then, if the coding is done, each option would be in the games options menu. In making the larger graphics there will be elements of gameplay that need altering, but I think where ever posible this should be avoided, as this is graphics replacement, not a new game.

[Aracirion]

So as to have something more tangible to talk about I tried to model a "sketch" for the way I imagine "realistic" sizes could look. I assumed Train cars and buses of about 12,5m length.

[Field-Mouse]

This is a perfect way of planning a game. This is the way I do when I do HL and CS maps, 3d sketches.
I think this sketch looks pretty good.. allthough, some buildings might be a bit larger, and the big airports will be larger too of course, but I like the looks of this

[Moriarty]

I'm assuming 3*3 aeroplanes would look too large? How about just 2 wide and 3 long?
Just wondering because that plane still looks a little small.

[sidew]

I'm assuming 3*3 aeroplanes would look too large? How about just 2 wide and 3 long?
Just wondering because that plane still looks a little small.

The aircraft in the city mockup is the Sud-Aviation Caravelle and it has 32m as lenght and 34m as wingspan. considering the standard square lenght as 12.5m the aircraft have aprox a footprint of 3x3 tiles

If you get a wide-body like the 747-400 series that have lenght of 70m and wingspan of 64m the footprint is aprox 6x6 tiles (the 740-100 series have a less small wingspan that gets 6x5 as footprint)

[Volny]

I'm assuming 3*3 aeroplanes would look too large? How about just 2 wide and 3 long?
Just wondering because that plane still looks a little small.

I guess that ratio of plane width and length is approx 1:1 so they cannot do it 2*3. I think that 3*3 would be more realistic but much more annoying - airports would have to be more than twice bigger. I think that also during flight it wont be much nice, because it will be simply too big. It will drag too much attention and it may feel disturbing?

[Field-Mouse]

I think it looks good the way it is on this picture. Of course a jumbo jet will be larger, but not too much larger. This is one aspect where it wont be realistic, but we will just have to live with that. Probably we should make the windows on the jumbo jet larger and fewer than the real one, so that it wont look redicolous standing beside this caravelle for example.

[Dissy]

actually, i think scaling the huge planes realistically, is a nice thing to have. thus making the intercon'airports very big as well. so the player considers to build a _huge_ airport to let jumbos land there or whether its better to build a smaller "normal" airport for smaller vessels. i dont see an intercon airport at every 2nd inh: 40k town...

in real life many airlines refuse to get the A380 as the airports would have to be updated to use better boarding.

Maybe seperating maintenance hangars w/ airfield and boarding/aiport w/ airfield is a way to reduce the size?

[brupje]

the image looks good, although I don't see much difference with the way it is now, except for train and bus sizes.

[Aracirion]

thanks fieldmouse. I also made a sketch of a city in a late stage. The B-747 dummy is realistically sized. For comparison I also put the Caravelle in there.

On first sight the airport might look huge and it might seem advisible to reduce the size of large aircraft. However, consider the following:

* compare the airport to the train station, which is 6x12 tiles. That is rather big, but hardly the biggest train station you will ever build (especially if train carriages get somewhat longer for new gfx). In terms of work (you will have to build tracks as well!) and catchment area, it is far inferior (as of now). Apart from nostaligia, why should you use trains even for short distances if stations were also as big as airports?

* Such a Jumbo will look massive. Not tiny as in the original one. (I like big planes too much ... ) For some real life size comparisons see:
image 1
image 1
image 1
image 1
image 1

* Small planes would have more of an advantage again. You wouldn't always just wait for the next bigger Jumbo to appear to replace all your planes. And you wouldn't build an international airport as soon as a town gets its first 2 buildings with more than 10 storys (as Dissy said 2 posts ago).

* As has been mentioned before, everything could be a little bigger, now that we can go beyond 256x256 maps. (An aside: if system resources would be a problem, personally I would consider dropping the 400% zoom level, rather than multi-tile buildings. Another advantage of that would be drastically reduced modelling work .. which would mean finishing sooner, and probably also getting more NewGRF ...)

* In combination with a new economy (passenger destination) you would build that airport in a swamp area some distance from the city. You would connect it with trains to the centres of about 3 surrounding cities. As there would maybe be less cities per square kilometre (but they would be larger with multi-tile buildings), and you couldn't just take all passengers from a single city to that other place at the other edge of the map, you would have maybe 4 Airports of that size on a medium sized map.
*-*-*- In the old economy where you just build 2 airports and put 40 planes on the same route, it would probably be difficult to use because it is too small. So I think it is important to consider integration of larger issues as well.

[Field-Mouse]

It could seem OK to have large airports.. but seriously, when using 2 runways and parking spaces for 6 planes or so.. its gonna be fullscreen size.. not possible, you wont find a site to build it on! there´ll be factorys in the way!
Take a look at this picture where I have used the 80 wingspan of the A380 (80 meters) and there would not be enough room for 3 of them on this airport.. It wouldnt fit the runway either..
And this rather small airport would still be 3 to 4 times larger than that large trainstation you have there. 3 to 4 TIMES larger, thats pretty much..
We gotta keep the sizes down a bit of the large planes.. Otherwise it just wont work!

[Aracirion]

Test Take-off animation with approximately realistic Vr speed

@Field-Mouse: um, the trainstation is 12 tiles long, the runway 24. I used 6x6 tiles as aircraft size (--> wiki; I would propose to cram the A380 into 6x6 too). With carriages 1 tile long, that would probably be an average station.

And yes, I agree that the airport wouldn't be suited to the game-play as it is now, with the 40 planes serving the same route. I think however it might work with a new economy: there would be way less passengers for the same long-range destinaton. And if you don't have to wait for full-load you don't need as many parking spaces. And with taxiway, the Runway would be way more efficient than the old city-airport, so maybe airports with 2 runways wouldn't be necessary at all.

Of course it might be difficult to build in hilly terrain , but then there are few international airports in the mountains, and you can always build a regional airport.

I think it would really be a question of trying it together with a new economy. So for now (40 Jumbos/route), we might down-size it, but as a new economy is developed I think we should try if it works with game-play.


EDIT: I hope the format isn't a problem (I made it with quicktime...) otherwise pm me and I'll see if I can change it.