Screenshots

[Arathorn]

45 degree turns. Just like it is in TTD now.

[Born Acorn]

Like in TT but with gentle curves where is goes straight again

[SHADOW-XIII]

yap .. in TG there will be no vertical/horizontal tracks .. only | and - (no / and \)

[krtaylor]

Here's what I mean.

Think about what it is like when you are laying track in TTD. You have a track that is going straight in one direction, and now you want it to turn. What are your choices?

You can keep going straight.
You can make a 90 degree turn - not very realistic, but it's there.
You can make a 45 degree turn, now you are going at an angle to the original track.

If what we are hearing is true, then all corners can only be 90 degree right angles. They won't be as abrupt as in TTD, they will be gentle curves, but you can't stop the curve partway through, it has to go all the way until the route of the track is exactly perpendicular to whatever it was to start with.

This makes it impossible to do gentle curves, to jog a little to go around an obstacle, to have complex networks - in short, to do most of what makes TTD fun. And this is a shame, because the rest of TG looks great.

Of course, there still might be something else to the curves that we haven't seen, which will make it worthwhile.

[spaceman-spiff]

I'll still buy it, from what I see in this screenshot I can do what I want with tracks
The maps are much bigger, you have more space

[ThorRune]

From wath we've seen it seems like wer cant have complex networks at all, only the ai-style point to point... Waths the point? Cant be nuffin but boring.

Jowood realy disapoints me.

[ThorRune]

and I would like it graphical

Like this:

[krtaylor]

One word: GAAAAKKH!

[Born Acorn]

you can lay really long 90 degree curves, which is a kind of 45 dgeree

[krtaylor]

No it isn't, unless you can bulldoze part of it later, back to the point at which you want to continue or curve back.

[Hyronymus]

It is as they say it: 90 degrees. Why would they give us a disappointment if the game is due to be publiced?

[krtaylor]

Probably you are right, which would mean, this is a bitter, bitter disappointment since everything else about the game looks so great. And since they already programmed the graphics of the trains to look right going around the corners, I cannot imagine why it would be so hard to let the tracks go at 45 degree angles.

[Hajo]

You can build that crossing in 90 degree geometry too.
Don't get me wrong, Simutrans supports 45 degree geometry, I just want to show that it is doable in 90 degree geometry, too.

I think 90 degree geometry is not as bad as most people here seem to think.



Sorry I forgot to place few needed signals - use your imagination

[krtaylor]

Right, I'm not saying that the game wouldn't be functional, just that it would be horribly ugly. Think about what the trains would look like going around that sharp of a corner. And it would be particularly bad in comparison to all the rest of the graphics, which are gorgeous and pretty realistic.

[Oracle]

Maybe they're trying to make you be more realistic?
Not that trains only travel on N, S, E or W tracks in real life, but have you ever seen that sort of crossing on a real railway line? It just doesn't happen in reality. They're probably expecting that you'll just build simple, level ground crossings with not too tight corners, where the tracks simply cross each other and only one train can go at a time (although, saying that, you get lots of 45º corners at major railway stations).

[krtaylor]

I don't mind not being able to do the complex flying intersections. The only reason they are needed in TTD is because the distance scale is so very small. In a normal rail line, trains are relatively few and far between and it is unlikely that one would have to wait for another one crossing its track. Only in very high-density situations like heavy commuter rail are flying junctions used.

What I do mind is not having the ability to have a straight track go diagonally. This skews the whole design of track systems mercilessly, as follows.

Consider if you have a square map, and you want to run a rail line from the upper left hand corner down to the lower right hand corner. Let's just ignore terrain and obstacles for this example. In TTD, you'd just do a diagonal track straight from one corner to the opposite one, job done.

But as shown, TG doesn't let you do that. The closest you could get would be a series of S curves as the track zig-zags its way down in a rough diagonal. This looks ugly.

It's even worse though if you consider that trains slow down on curves. If you do the track this way then the train is ALWAYS on a curve, and thus always going at curve-speed.

It makes much more sense to run the track straight down the side of the map from the upper left corner to the lower left corner, then have ONE curve there, and then go straight across the bottom to the lower right corner, which is where you wanted to go. A train on this track would get there much faster than a train on the zig-zag quasi-diagonal track.

This is bizarre, it gets rid of the fundamental geometric rule that a straight line is the shortest distance between two points.

[Hajo]

Think about what the trains would look like going around that sharp of a corner.

All former JoWooD games had 16 views of each vehciles (each 22.5 degress). From the vehicle images it seems TG has 16 views, too. So I assume it won't look bad if they go through a proper sequence of those views.

The only problem I see is the small radius, but actually that's good because it takes less space on teh map than curves that need 4 or more tiles for a 90 degree turn.

[Hajo]

Consider if you have a square map, and you want to run a rail line from the upper left hand corner down to the lower right hand corner.

[...]

It makes much more sense to run the track straight down the side of the map from the upper left corner to the lower left corner, then have ONE curve there, and then go straight across the bottom to the lower right corner, which is where you wanted to go. A train on this track would get there much faster than a train on the zig-zag quasi-diagonal track.

This is bizarre, it gets rid of the fundamental geometric rule that a straight line is the shortest distance between two points.

It depends on your distance measure. I.e. for gridded geomteries there are two, one called "Kings distance" (movements like a king in a chess game, 8 directions) and "Manhatten distance" (only 4 directrions allowed).

In both, the shortes connection isn't always a straight line. In Kings distance it usally is a diagonal line plus a a vertical or horizontal line, and in Manhatten distance it is a combination of vertical and horizontal line.

It only seems bizarre if you use Euclidian geometry, but in a non-continous world like a grid, euclidian geometry won't work well.

I wouldn't mind the two section square-angled track. In TG world it is the shortest connection, because the measurement is Manhatten distance, and not Euclidian.

[Arathorn]

Think about what the trains would look like going around that sharp of a corner.

All former JoWooD games had 16 views of each vehciles (each 22.5 degress). From the vehicle images it seems TG has 16 views, too. So I assume it won't look bad if they go through a proper sequence of those views.

The only problem I see is the small radius, but actually that's good because it takes less space on teh map than curves that need 4 or more tiles for a 90 degree turn.

What I don't understand is what the fuss would be to create horizontal and vertical tracks when you already have the enough views for your trains.

[Hajo]

I'm wondering a bit too.

But honestly, when I started Simutrans, I thought a 90 degree geometry would be good enough. Later on testers and players started to complain, and after a while I've patched the data structures to support diagonal tracks, too - it still is kind of hack, because of this wrong start. (And still Simutrans has less track combinations than TTD has).

Maybe the TG developers made/make the same mistake?