US Set Development Thread

eis_os · Post by **eis_os** » 17 Feb 2007 08:54

I have spent some time to change the entries:

a) I removed all new entries
b) I added to the US Set / Station Set entries "American Transition" in the Name (so if you search for American it should aswell give hits)
c) I added/fixed the links for the field formats. So now the entries have a discussion, download and homepage link.
d) To the American Signals by Pikka I added "(US Set)" so you can find it when you write US in the search field. Moved the links so the discussion and the download links are right.

Hopefully I haven't broken some entries. If someone want to overtake the mangement of an entry, the "old" owner should send me an PM with a proper forums username...

krtaylor · Post by **krtaylor** » 17 Feb 2007 18:14

Thank you eis_os!

I believe the old owner is Oracle, right? That's totally appropriate; the only problem is, he hasn't been seen in months. So he won't be sending PMs, or anything else.

DanMacK, would you like to take over the US Set GRF Crawler entries? There should be no objections to that, certainly not from me.

Concerning finishing the set, I would love to; but we have lost our coder, and have not found a new one. Unfortunately this has been a common problem with many sets - getting to 95% but not quite over the top; I've got three in that situation. Unless Oracle comes back, or another coder volunteers, I'm afraid there will not be a new release anytime soon. However, I will certainly not be destroying the work that has been done; I have it on the dev website at least for now, and if I have to take it down, I will certainly send it to owen for archiving, or anyone else who would like to have it.

And concerning credit, as Raichase so rightly puts it, the US Set thoroughly lists everyone who drew every single piece, and always will as long as I have anything to do with it.

lifeblood · Post by **lifeblood** » 17 Feb 2007 19:44

Mr. Taylor, have you ever considered learning to code?

krtaylor · Post by **krtaylor** » 17 Feb 2007 22:16

Well, honestly, I have done coding (Java, JSP, HTML, etc.) in the past, and while I am OK at it, I don't really enjoy it much. Also, from my understanding, coding GRF files takes a LOT of time, and I have had very very little time for the last year or more, and I don't see that changing much anytime soon. You'll notice I haven't tried to start, or get involved in, any more projects in a long while, although I've stayed involved in the ones I already committed to (the US set of course, the Japan set which was the very first, and the Spanish set.) They've all stalled for other reasons; I suppose I am not the only one with time problems.

I'd hoped that GRF Maker would make it so much easier to code GRFs, that there'd be lots more coders around, but it doesn't seem to have worked out so much that way as I'd have though. Oh well, that's life I guess.

DanMacK · Post by **DanMacK** » 18 Feb 2007 15:49

Honestly krtaylor, I'd say you take them. I'm just connected to the trains. As long as proper credit's given, I have no objections to your handling it.

AndersI · Post by **AndersI** » 18 Feb 2007 16:57

krtaylor wrote:I'd hoped that GRF Maker would make it so much easier to code GRFs, that there'd be lots more coders around, but it doesn't seem to have worked out so much that way as I'd have though.

I think we have seen a number of new coders thanks to GRFMaker, I have coded my Swedish trains myself, so far, for example.

GRFMaker definitely makes it easier and faster (at least for me) to get the trains placed and running in the game, but there's still a big hurdle to get over to start coding 'for real'. There's the problem of documentation - the wiki doesn't show how to do something in GRFMaker, only directly in NFO.

A lot of examples for GRMaker with the common idioms would help tremendously...

BobDendry · Post by **BobDendry** » 18 Feb 2007 21:22

As I've said several times, if someone needs some help with GRFMaker, they should try to send me a PM, and I'll get back to them with some advice.

krtaylor · Post by **krtaylor** » 19 Feb 2007 01:44

Whoa, whoa, I did NOT say that there were no new coders thanks to GRF Maker. I simply said that there were not as many new coders as I'd hoped and thought there would be. Of course, I'd hoped there'd be 100 new coders...

GRF Maker is a very helpful tool and we would be much worse off without it. Of course, as with every set and every software program, there are things that could perhaps be made easier, improved, or better documented, but as long as it is still being actively developed and documented, it's all good.

AndersI, is there any possibility that you might consider working on a recode of the US set?

Also, is there any facility in GRF Maker to allow it to "decompile" an existing GRF to allow revisions and improvements to it, without completely starting from scratch?

DaleStan · Post by **DaleStan** » 19 Feb 2007 03:45

krtaylor wrote:Also, is there any facility in GRF Maker to allow it to "decompile" an existing GRF to allow revisions and improvements to it

Nope. NFO is entirely too complicated for that. It's self-modifying, for one.

Even the mere act of disassembling self-modifying machine code is difficult, at best; trying to convert it to anything higher than assembly requires intimate knowledge of the meanings of the changes.

BobDendry · Post by **BobDendry** » 19 Feb 2007 05:03

krtaylor, last time I checked there was, but it's functionality isn't as good as you probably would hope.

EDIT: On second, thought, I was mistaken. Support for this was removed due to the fact that it didn't work as well as was hoped. Cheers for the heads-up, DaleStan.

AndersI · Post by **AndersI** » 19 Feb 2007 19:04

krtaylor wrote:AndersI, is there any possibility that you might consider working on a recode of the US set?

No way! Sorry, but neither my knowledge nor my available time is enough for that.

goalie · Post by **goalie** » 10 Apr 2007 17:49

is this set still alive

krtaylor · Post by **krtaylor** » 10 Apr 2007 21:56

Not really. I still collect sprites when they come by, but with no coder, they're not going to see the light of day unless Oracle returns or another coder volunteers.

CharlieMTA · Post by **CharlieMTA** » 11 Apr 2007 14:42

I'm still working on liveries, stations, and buildings now and then...but work has been taking too much of my time to really complete something. If a coder ever pops up maybe I'll be motivated to finish half the wip's on my desktop

krtaylor · Post by **krtaylor** » 12 Apr 2007 00:17

Well, if they are half-done and you finish them, I assure you that I will collect them and post them on the tracking website, neatly organized and ready to be coded.

It's not totally impossible that we might get a coder. Death is about finished coding the Spanish set and elements of the Japan set; possibly he might have a go at revising the legendary US Set.

Chicago Rail Authority · Post by **Chicago Rail Authority** » 12 Apr 2007 01:21

[OT]
I'm sorry - just can't resist commenting on the fact that we're on a whim and a prayer that "Death" will come to us...
[/OT]

krtaylor · Post by **krtaylor** » 12 Apr 2007 02:01

Well, I'm glad to report that Death comes to us all.

Death · Post by **Death** » 13 Apr 2007 13:54

Hey, I've been heard that you need me here.
What can I do for you?

krtaylor · Post by **krtaylor** » 13 Apr 2007 21:35

There are quite a few new liveries / new trains waiting to be coded:

http://www.as-st.com/ttd/usa/trains.html

But, I don't know, does the GRF file have to be completely recoded from scratch to add them? Or can it be modified/extended?

Also, if you are able to code, there will be more sprites from CharlieMTA and perhaps others.

Last, it would be great to have a tram-set. Some are drawn, others could be drawn. Do you know about coding trams?

http://www.as-st.com/ttd/usa/trams.html

Death · Post by **Death** » 14 Apr 2007 20:42

krtaylor wrote:But, I don't know, does the GRF file have to be completely recoded from scratch to add them? Or can it be modified/extended?

I can add them without recode the whole set (and of course I won't ignore Oracle's copyrights)
But which vehicles in the list to code?

krtaylor wrote:Last, it would be great to have a tram-set. Some are drawn, others could be drawn. Do you know about coding trams?

Aye. easier than trains.

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