Possibility of Cable Car mountain lift ?

[SwissFan91]

Hi all,

I'm new to this whole graphics making thing. As i enjoy making and playing on realistic scenario's, i was wondering if it would be possibly to make a train set / rail set for a cable car ?

It is my understanding that cable car does also mean tram, so i hope this isnt too confusing. I was hoping to try and take the electric railway, and possible remove the rail and fences, so you would just be left with the electric pylons and wires, which could look like the cable car lines ? From there i thought it might be quite easy to code a train that looks like it is just attached to the wire ?

HELP would be greatly appreciated

[Roujin]

Zephyris made a newgrf that comes close to what you're suggesting: Urban Suspended Monorail
It replaces the tram with futuristic looking suspended (= hanging) trains.

While that is not exactly cable cars, I think it answers your question: yes, it's possible.

[SirXavius]

I'm sure you could use the tram feature to create a new method of transportation by cable car. It seems like you could put together in a .grf, but i bet you'd have to replace the whole tram setup and replace them with cable cars. If you only want them to use slopes, i'm not sure you can do that with some NFO edting but it's worth looking into. Of course you'd have to restrict all of your vehicles to passengers and tourists only, unless you want to create cargo-carrying cable cars!

Basically you'll have to create (or borrow) graphics for the cars and create NFO sprites, but i bet it can be done!

[SwissFan91]

Zephyris made a newgrf that comes close to what you're suggesting: Urban Suspended Monorail
It replaces the tram with futuristic looking suspended (= hanging) trains.

I have looked into that, and it is the correct idea, but the lines they run on seem a bit bulky, but at least it shows it can be done.

Of course you'd have to restrict all of your vehicles to passengers and tourists only, unless you want to create cargo-carrying cable cars!

Yeah i wouldn't want to move into the whole cargo sector, that would make it a bit hard

As i am relatively new to the grf's, and have no real idea about how to create them, i was wondering if there was anyone who would be interested in this mode of transport ?

[SwissFan91]

This is a shameful bump of my old topic, and i apologise, but it beats making a new topic. As i now have a few free weeks, i was wondering if a drawer/coder could give me a hand in starting this ? It probably doesn't appeal to many people, but i would have thought that there are far bigger projects than this, so it shouldn't take too many people too long. Don't take this as me saying 'someone else do it' because i am more than willing to learn drawing, starting from when i return from Wimbledon on wednesday.

[cmoiromain]

Hi

Being a great fan of cable cars, I'd really like to see them in OpenTTD too, even if they are totally useless.
I can try to draw a couple of graphics, but I am totally useless when it comes to coding (I've tried, but I just don't get the hang of NFO ).

To begin with, I have done a quick little sketch of how I imagine it. it is not in the right scale, has no shading at all etc, but it's just to show my basic idea. The main problems I can see is to make the chairs behave as they should (ie all at the same speed...) since trams take some time to accelerate.

The simplest way to implement would be IMO to replace the trams, to not modify the game, and tell the user not to use junctions. Or we can draw junction, though that would look totally out of place.

[SwissFan91]

I think the best bet is to ignore the junctions, it would be of relatively little sacfrice. I am glad to see there is interest in this set

[andythenorth]

I think the best bet is to ignore the junctions, it would be of relatively little sacfrice. I am glad to see there is interest in this set

I am quite interested in this. It could also work as an aerial cableway for cargo (see the film Get Carter for a good reference). However whilst hacking it on existing trams is really the only route available right now, I think it's not going to have great results - too many flaky elements to deal with

Good luck though! Might as well see what it looks like.

A solution would be some kind of closed loop or 'line' system for aerial cableways; this would:
- permit corners
- not permit junctions
- permit stations and depot(s)
Vehicles could be added to this 'line' in a depot.
- All vehicles would travel at a constant speed. Vehicles would stop in stations (detach from traction rope).
- Vehicles wouldn't be routed by the player, they would just follow the line all the way around the closed loop. At a code level they would be pathfinding, but the player would have no control.
- Breakdowns would need considering.

This is considerably more involved than the trams hack. From what little I know of the code I _think_ it would be possible, but it might be fairly abusive of features like shared orders, so might not be desirable!

cheers,

Andy

[SwissFan91]

How often are corners used in mountain lifts though ? I know many people wouldn't like it if they were only drawn to work in a straight line, but in terms of realism i think that corners aren't of a greatest priority. I think the mains areas are the speed of the cars, and work on the depot/station. It seems it will be harder than i first thought, but at least there is some interest

[SwissFan91]

I was wondering if a (experienced) drawer could tell me how difficult it would be to draw the stations for this ? I was thinking something along the lines of the one in the attached diagram, although that picture isn't very clear.

[cmoiromain]

I don't think this sort of station would fit best if we were to replace trams with cable cars. I'd go for the kind of stations of the skyride in roller coaster tycoon, and only use drive through stations (as trams already do). And right behind it, build a half tile of track to make the cable do a 180° turn.

[SwissFan91]

So this station really isn't possible ? I was hoping it would be I know that tramways only have the drive-through stations available at the moment, is there any reason why there weren't terminus stations drawn for the original tram graphics ?

[Zutty]

A solution would be some kind of closed loop or 'line' system for aerial cableways; this would:
- permit corners
- not permit junctions
- permit stations and depot(s)
Vehicles could be added to this 'line' in a depot.
- All vehicles would travel at a constant speed. Vehicles would stop in stations (detach from traction rope).
- Vehicles wouldn't be routed by the player, they would just follow the line all the way around the closed loop. At a code level they would be pathfinding, but the player would have no control.
- Breakdowns would need considering.

In implementation terms this sounds more like a pipeline or conveyor belt; a type of transport that TTD seems to have avoided so far. I think roughly this type of thing has been discussed before, but the devs didn't like it.

As cool as this is, I doubt that a patch for this would ever get accepted, even if it was perfectly written.

[Eddi]

this is just not a transport type that you can construct sensible networks of... if you want to implement those as trams, you have to go through all kinds of hoops to disallow crossings and bends.

the more appropriate place for such a thing would imho be an industry (tourist center) like this one:

[SwissFan91]

That does look very good, but how flexible is it ? In terms of height of hill, suitability with Alpine Climate etc. ?

[DaleStan]

Exactly as flexible or inflexible as you make it.

[SwissFan91]

Right. Is the pictured one from FIRS, or something similar ?

[Eddi]

no, this is not from FIRS. i got the picture from a post of MB in the german forum on a similar topic, he said DanMacK made it

and alpine climate is generally not compatible with other newindustries grfs, because alpine uses newindustries itself to copy the temperate industry chain

[SwissFan91]

Ahh that could be problematic, well thank you for your help.

[andythenorth]

That does look very good, but how flexible is it ? In terms of height of hill, suitability with Alpine Climate etc. ?

It's just a graphic (which would be animated). So like DaleStan said...

This did make me think of another monstrous hack you could use to achieve this as partly-functional eye candy: station tiles with animation. There would be some complexities to it, but like most things, with enough work, it could be done.