Void station tile not compatible with railtypes?

[Nagyzee]

Hello!

I've been wondering for years why only MB's Newstations has a void station tile (bare ground with rail without any platforms, pavement or buildings, just like any railway track). It's (or it should be) the most basic freight station tile in my opinion, it's extremely common IRL as well in freight yards to not have any infrastructure besides quite a lot of tracks. Anyhow it never got included in ISR either and since then several new rail graphics have been made and now we have railtypes, too. MB's Newstations supports none of these unfortunately. Also we have at least 2 new quite substantial freight station sets since then (DWE and CHIPS) but neither of these two included it either.

Yesterday I sent a pm to the authors of these two sets asking whether they'd consider adding it and I got the answer from andythenorth that he considered adding it but the void station tile is not compatible with railtypes specs. He also advised me to ask here why that is so. So yeah, that's the question. What makes a void station tile unimplementable with railtypes while more complex station tiles are fine? Is it the fact that a void station tile would have no sprite whatsoever besides the bare ground and the rail drawn over it? If so wouldn't adding a small transparent object fix this? Is there any workaround? If yes, please share and then andythenorth might add this tile to CHIPS in the future hopefully.

Thanks a lot in advance for the explanations.

[FooBar]

I didn't check all details, but I think a void platform can be coded like any other platform, just with transparent platform sprites.

[Nagyzee]

I see we are thinking along the same lines, suggesting using the transparent colour to circumvent the alleged limitation.

[Yexo]

It's possible to make such a void tile. However you'll always have one issue: the ground will always be grass. That means in arctic above the snowline: grass. In tropic in the desert: also grass. The grass type is the correct one for the climate (so grass/arctic grass/tropic grass). You can check for snow/desert and add an overlay to fix that, but that way you can only be compatible with either the TTD baseset or the OpenGFX baseset. The problem is there that you have to include the snow/desert graphics in your grf since there are no graphics with snow/desert where only half the tile is covered in the baseset.

The answer you got from andythenorth was based on the answer I gave on IRC. That answer came down to the above.

See the attached test grf for how it behaves.

[Nagyzee]

So technically the half platforms of the Canadian Station Set (and any other station tile where a part of the base tile is shown) would also suffer from this problem if they were updated to support the railtypes feature?

And if I got your answer right it's technically doable just quite complicated and would need two grf versions to support both the original and the OpenGFX base set? Is there no way for a newgrf to detect which base set is used and show the snow/sand overlay accordingly?

[Yexo]

So technically the half platforms of the Canadian Station Set (and any other station tile where a part of the base tile is shown) would also suffer from this problem if they were updated to support the railtypes feature?

Correct.

And if I got your answer right it's technically doable just quite complicated

The opposite, it's very easy.

and would need two grf versions to support both the original and the OpenGFX base set?

Sadly, that is true. This means that it's impossible to support properly in multiplayer since all players need to have the same grfs but can have different basesets.

Is there no way for a newgrf to detect which base set is used and show the snow/sand overlay accordingly?

There is no way and there won't be a way.

[Nagyzee]

Well, I expected worse. It's not a huge thing imho that the snow and sand might look a bit weird (the grf being optimized for one base set, the user using it with the other). I'd go for it if I were in some freight station grf authors' shoes. I'll start using your test grf till then, it will be very handy for me even without the snow/sand support. Only downside is that it takes up one more place on my already long grf list.

[Yexo]

Removed the grf from my previous post since it wsan't really meant to be used ingame. It needs a proper grfid at least. Please fix that before you redistribute it.

[Nagyzee]

Could you add a name and grfid to it then maybe and re-upload? I don't think it would become widespread if you only post it here but some of us would find it highly useful.

[Yexo]

I'll discuss it with andythenorth again and maybe include it in CHIPS.

[Nagyzee]

Thanks a lot, much appreciated.

[NekoMaster]

my thoughts on this is just add a parameter to provide graphics for the Original TTD graphics or the OpenGFX graphics so that things will hopefully look alright.

[FooBar]

That works fine for single-player games, it doesn't for multiplayer.

[NekoMaster]

That works fine for single-player games, it doesn't for multiplayer.

well then I guess some people are going to have to deal with it being one way or the other.

[jvassie]

There's been a .grf around since 2005 which I believe has everything you wish (except for climate support), it supports both NuTracks and OpenGFX+ Landscape.

bare_tiles-w.grf

Made by Aegir, so perhaps have a search through the forum for it, as I dont have the license for the .grf, so not sure if i can distribute it

[Nagyzee]

That's what I've found after a quick search:

http://www.tt-forums.net/viewtopic.php?p=414594#p414594

The bare tiles .grf isn't to be used anymore. Development on it has been halted, and it should not be availible for download anywhere, except for the older versions floating around on the forums attachment system.

I would appreciate it if all future questions and comments about my station sets be forwarded to my projects thread, linked in my signature undeneath.

Thank you and good day.

And then no newer version in that thread or on Aegir's homepage.

So is this the last version:
http://www.tt-forums.net/viewtopic.php?p=323771#p323771 ?


Anyhow it's not that economical to have a separate grf only for a bare station tile so I'd prefer inclusion into a bigger station set. Let's hope Andy is positive about the idea.