Monorail/Maglev/Trams

[kettel]

There are three types of rails in OpenTTD: common/electric rails, monorail and maglev. Plus there are tram tracks that can be buit over common roads.

So what do we have in real life? There are common/electric rails and trams - no difference here. But existing monorail systems unlike those in the game are not so common/unified and in fact the are used rather within cities than between them, just like tramways. Also some of them are maglev. Confusing, huh

I'd suggest to remove monorail from railroad types (who needs it with just two locomotives available anyway?) and make it a tramway type. I can see several reasons for that:

• Existing monorail systems are mostly used for metro transportation.
  They are often built over existing roads.
  They are not so fast (except maglev monorails, but those are maglevs ).
  They are not so big; google for monorail images, you won't find them longer than a few cars.
  Trams will probably look way too obsolete by the end of 21st century.

It shouldn't be very difficult: just remove monorail from railroads, add it to tramways and make a tool to convert tramway tracks into monorail tracks (yeah, existing monorail graphics must be re-drawn). Also we'll need some monorali cars, but they could look just like common trams only without wheels and pantographs.

[RaidSoft]

Even better idea, make monorail buildable on roads (suspended in the air above the road) including stations which are suspended mid-air. Possibly have a station length limit that is pretty small to make trains either very small or slow loaders. Could have a link that goes from "ground level" to road level so you'd have to have a depot on ground level for example.

[kettel]

THIS is (almost) exactly what I'm talking about!

[athanasios]

NO!!! It was done and it is abandoned.

[VoxDissident]

It would be really nice to see trams replaced by monorails later (or see both available simultaneously, though, as you pointed out, trams IRL are obsolete now). However, to remove monorails as a rail track type and implement a complete new monorail system might take a bit of work...

That susmon.grf file you linked to is really pretty nice, though.

EDIT: What was done and abandoned athanasios? The susmon.grf? Or a previous project for urban monorails?

-=Vox=-

[DJ Nekkid]

ditching monorail is imho not an option, as 4 railtypes are very nice to have...

picutre this:
normal diesel lines
normal electrical lines
monorail can be used for many things such as LGV's, shirasaken, or as a metro lines
maglev will probably remain in MANY sets, or it can be used to other things as well...

point is:
to us grf devs is the fact that we have 4 different tracktypes pretty nice...

[Batti5]

anh-mon-disney-monorail-trn-bmway-drippan.jpg (41.79 KiB) Viewed 6207 times

Yes, there are susspended monorails but not on the road 7 thei are still trains

[Tattoo]

I got a question about the suspended monorail. When I try to use it I get the error - fatal: unexpected sprite. Can anyone tell me why? I get the same error message without the eGRVTS loaded. I just tried to load it to see if that helped. That even happened when I loaded the one in the grf pack. Thanks.

susmon.grf.png (18.05 KiB) Viewed 5302 times

[Conditional Zenith]

The first thing to try is to disable every other GRF (you may wish to save your current list of GRFs as a preset so you can load it again once you have tested this), and only enable this one, and start a new game, and see if it still fails to load. Also, you should post which version of OTTD you are running.

[XeryusTC]

I got a question about the suspended monorail. When I try to use it I get the error - fatal: unexpected sprite. Can anyone tell me why? I get the same error message without the eGRVTS loaded. I just tried to load it to see if that helped. That even happened when I loaded the one in the grf pack. Thanks.

Try to load it with TTDP as that gives a more useful error. I suspect something is wrong with the newgrf itself and it will thus also fail to load in TTDP. It will be very useful to copy (or make a screenshot of) the entire error message.

[Tattoo]

I have tried to load it with nothing else and it's the same every time. What is TTDP?

[FooBar]

TTDP

TTDPatch


I think the error is in the grf and not in you computer. Probably has something to do with some code in the grf skipping an action but not the realsprites following the action.

EDIT: Error occurs here as wel. Try either posting a message in the set's topic or contacting the author via PM.

[planetmaker]

TTDP

TTDPatch


I think the error is in the grf and not in you computer. Probably has something to do with some code in the grf skipping an action but not the realsprites following the action.

EDIT: Error occurs here as wel. Try either posting a message in the set's topic or contacting the author via PM.

Probably it's an error in the grf. It doesn't obey grf rules 100% and recently in the rule checking in openttd became a bit stricter wrt what sprites are returned as opposed to what was expected.

[Tattoo]

Thank you for your replies. So basically I won't get to see this one work. This is one that I think I might have liked. This is kinda my idea I had but actually I thought of wanting one like the el trains in Chicago. If I knew how to program I'd try to make it myself but don't know how. Oh well, all the work you all are doing on openTTD is good enough. I thank you all for it. You all are doing some good work and I'm enjoying playing this game again. Thank you...

John

[Conditional Zenith]

As others have said, if you let the author of the GRF know (and they are still active), they will probably fix it.