FIRS Industry Replacement Set - Development

[planetmaker]

A question related to the previous two posts: Is it possible (and would it be interesting above all) to make stockpile limits manually adjustable? (i.e. like the manual industries NewGRF).

Actually... Personally I'll put that not too low on my personal wish-I-will-do - list. Unless andy objects to adding a parameter concerning that to trunk FIRS.

[andythenorth]

Actually... Personally I'll put that not too low on my personal wish-I-will-do - list. Unless andy objects to adding a parameter concerning that to trunk FIRS.

I won't object to it, but it does produce a minor gameplay side-effect.

These supplies are processed at a fixed rate (they could be processed differently, but I'm not prepared to write the code for it). So delivering a lot will just leave a huge stockpile of supplies at the industry, players will get paid for delivering them, but they won't be used. Better off delivering them somewhere else....

That is only a small problem, if people want it I don't mind.

I think the easiest way to implement 'no limit' might be with a bunch of branching varaction 2s, however I don't really want to write that code It will need to deal with both industry production and acceptance code, and tile acceptance code. Or better might be to stick the value into persistent storage, and set it to either my limit value, or ~65k (openttd's limit) (hang it off one of the regular callbacks and just keep incessantly storing the same value).

We need a bitmapped parameter for a few things like 'Supply limits', 'Construct industries by surveying' etc.

[planetmaker]

Actually... Personally I'll put that not too low on my personal wish-I-will-do - list. Unless andy objects to adding a parameter concerning that to trunk FIRS.

I won't object to it, but it does produce a minor gameplay side-effect.

These supplies are processed at a fixed rate (they could be processed differently, but I'm not prepared to write the code for it). So delivering a lot will just leave a huge stockpile of supplies at the industry, players will get paid for delivering them, but they won't be used. Better off delivering them somewhere else....

We need a bitmapped parameter for a few things like 'Supply limits', 'Construct industries by surveying' etc.

The stockpile limit for those "boost-cargos" must be a parameter on its own in order to set the size of the stockpile and not a simple on/off. I'm aware that disabling a limit creates the possiblity to create a huge pile of that cargo at an industry, thus of course has a game-play influence. If a grf-parameter is needed to deactivate it or set the size, it's not a problem IMO - who reads the documentation anyway?

Construction only near survey camps could be a single flag - or also a separate parameter which gives the radius the camp works on (maybe, if possible, scaled by the size of the map).

[Voyager One]

Seems like I've opened a Pandora's box.
What I really ment in my post was: is it possible to make a "patch" GRF (or a switch within the FIRS which) would act like the manual industries GRF?

[planetmaker]

Seems like I've opened a Pandora's box.
What I really ment in my post was: is it possible to make a "patch" GRF (or a switch within the FIRS which) would act like the manual industries GRF?

Hehe. Pandora's box is already open, no worries We usually just try to cover it and andy is doing a good job at that - for good reasons.

Can you elaborate or give me a link which describes the behaviour of the grf? I never used it...

EDIT: I'm sure, if people supply patches for a particular feature, andy will consider them generously. It might need a bit to getting used to the code, though.

[andythenorth]

What I really ment in my post was: is it possible to make a "patch" GRF (or a switch within the FIRS which) would act like the manual industries GRF?

I'm not exactly sure what manual industries does? I am interested - what features does it bring to gameplay? Also why would having 'manual FIRS' be better than the current manual industries grf?

[Voyager One]

The manual industries (manindu.grf) changes the behaviour of default industries. It allows a player to place new industries for free, and to manually change production level. You can find it on GRFCrawler. It's not really a GRF to be used in a realistic economy but it's sometimes nice.

[andythenorth]

The manual industries (manindu.grf) changes the behaviour of default industries.

It would be quite a significant change to FIRS. Basically, it's possible, but it would require new industry code (action 0, 2, 3) in the FIRS grf for every single industry. We do have templating that could help with that, but it's a lot of work. We could probably reuse the existing tile code.

[planetmaker]

We once talked about a "scenario mode" or similar. That involves editing production level and placing industries freely in the scenario (and setting the 'scenario' grf parameter). If this parameter is set, industries wouldn't change (much) ingame. That's again what I would consider a nice feature . Allowing to edit everything ingame would not be very high on my personal priority list.

But so far as I'm aware, not much work has been done in either respect; as andy says, it's a lot of work.

[Voyager One]

As I said, it's a thought. Never mind. FIRS is great with or without this. Thanks for clearing thing up for me.

[planetmaker]

I don't mind. Not at all. And your proposals make sense. Just please don't mind, if we (or mostly andy that is) pick from all proposals those which according to our personal preference seem the best choice . But having good proposals and discussing options can help improve the game. The choice of 'economic models' instead of a climate dependence was the outcome of one of such discussions.

[Voyager One]

Why should I mind anything?!? You're the guys that keep this game interesting and improving. I'm just a player who can't help much with drawing and coding, but at least I can give you some feedback or bystander ideas about your work. And, as far as I can remember (since 0.5.something?), you're all GREAT!

[ostlandr]

I finally got around to trying out FIRS. Great work!

Love the graphics. Very much more US style than the original, OpenGFX or PBI.

Still prefer the gameplay of PBI, but that's just a personal opinion, not a judgement. I favor FIRS over ECS both in graphics and ease of use.

One thing I did notice was the tendency of secondary industries to pop up in the middle of nowhere. A textile mill out in the middle of a farm field?
If those would only pop up within X tiles of a town (of Y population?) and the secondary industries only pop up X tiles outside of town, that might make for a more rea. . ahem, err- sensible distribution.

Another thing I noticed was industry types being available years before one would expect- aluminum mills being supplied by wood- burning steam locomotives?

On my "to do" list is to use FIRS to make a US scenario, placing the industries in the editor. With the US roads set and US city set, I can end up with some seriously awesome and functional cities and production chains.

[NekoMaster]

Aluminum mills date pretty far back as i was told, when I brought up the whole aluminum mills in the 1800s question. some industrys that date far back should have older looking sprites and maybe a lower supply limit

[andythenorth]

Scenarios would be interesting (bear in mind that the FIRS nightly build changes frequently, and regularly breaks savegame compatibility). Screenshots are also welcome!

Industries have no dates applied yet - it makes it easier to test the grf as all the industries are available all the time Dates will be added later.

Similarly, only some industries have location code. That's coming soon. It won't be very strict but a few more industries will locate near town, and a few will locate away from town and the rest won't care.

Meanwhile here's an interesting problem that arises from map generation (this is with 'industry normal' in the map options).

location_suck.png (232.26 KiB) Viewed 3715 times

location_suck_2.png (193.04 KiB) Viewed 3715 times

location_suck_3.png (475.76 KiB) Viewed 3715 times

These industries are placed with no gaps between them. This makes it impossible for players to construct road/rail routes on this section of the map, which pretty much breaks game play. (I don't mean it's hard to service the industry, I mean routes just can't be built from NW to SE etc without tunneling.)


Ideally there would be at least a one tile gap between industries. This could be fixed in nfo, but it would be extremely difficult to do well, due to the number of different industries and layouts that would require complex distance checks.

Ideally either the game would check when placing industries to prevent this, or a 'magic' tile would be used in layouts, like tile FF which checks for empty water tiles, but doesn't build anything.
http://bugs.openttd.org/task/3585?proje ... &pagenum=1

[SwissFan91]

How are the snow versions of these industries going Andy ?

[andythenorth]

To test an OTTD industry code patch I created a larger windfarm. Looks pretty cool no?

windfarm_farm_farm_farm.png (236.38 KiB) Viewed 3520 times

Look closely and you'll see a wind turbine built in gap between the meatpacker buildings...which is appropriately enough what the patch is intended to prevent when finished

[Zephyris]

Looks great! Fingers crossed on trunk for your patch

[Kogut]

Looks much better than single alone turbine, but still is absolutely useless... Is it possible to have higher payment rate when supplies are delivered to wind turbin (bonuses for "green" company )

[CommanderZ]

Can these turbines be built on not so flat terrain?