who actually want the new GFX engine?

[Invisble]

I would like to see the graphics updated, as Dalestan said, keep the sharp angles and crazy track routing that you get with the game as it stands, but sharper better renderd wagons/trains/planes and ships would be great.

Though of course there is one thing I would really love to see in the game, a button or two (or even a mouse click/movement) where you can rotate the whole game 45 or 90 degrees or so.

[LKRaider]

I want to see all new graphics.

With the new engine, it will be a lot easier to create mods and customizations, leading to a longer longevity of the game, not to mention attract new players.
I also would like to see new tracks, with actual curves and so on.

I see no point in keeping tied to the original game after that, and I see OTTD start to stand on his own then, growing to be a whole new game (change name at this point, perhaps?).

Maybe forking the game, keeping the old GFX and the new GFX as separate games would be an option? (This way OTTD-old-GFX would more or less take the place of TTDPatch after a while; afterall, it is easier to modify C code than Asm)

[Alltaken]

I want to see all new graphics.

With the new engine, it will be a lot easier to create mods and customizations, leading to a longer longevity of the game, not to mention attract new players.
I also would like to see new tracks, with actual curves and so on.

I see no point in keeping tied to the original game after that, and I see OTTD start to stand on his own then, growing to be a whole new game (change name at this point, perhaps?).

personally i agree with a lot of this.

however doing this would basicly mean a new game, and most of the coders (from the vibe i am getting from them) would not want to develope the new one, since it is not "OTTD"....

but personally i think OTTD really does need to stand on its own two feet sometime. why can't the game take the best from the current game, take the best from other games in the genre, and get it all right?

Alltaken

[DaleStan]

why can't the game take the best from the current game, take the best from other games in the genre, and get it all right?

Then we have to agree on what the best parts of TTD *are*. The graphics (or more accurately, their style) are the part I like best, followed closely by the game engine[0][1]. The parts I don't like (the limitations, especially num-vehicles) have mostly been removed. What parts of TTD did you intend to keep? You seem to be trying to replace both the graphics and the game engines, which leaves me wondering: What's left?

I do encourage the replacement of TTD's graphics (and sound/music) so OTTD can finally stand on its own, but I would much rather see those graphics in the TTD style, not the Loco/Transport Giant/&c. style.

[0] Though I would like a few more improvements:
- Bridges over more things
- Double-tracking for X/Y direction tracks
- Curved/sloped bridges (?)
[1] Changing to curved tracks will require changing the game engine too; the current one cannot support that.

[Born Acorn]

why can't the game take the best from the current game, take the best from other games in the genre, and get it all right?

Then we have to agree on what the best parts of TTD *are*.

Thats what all the noobs impressed by shiny things won't believe.

[Expresso]

New GFX, and new vehicle scale to replace the current fixed scale,

As long as you don't change the style of the gfx it'll be fine with me... except for one thing: don't change the rail types to look/work like the rails in locomotion (that's what broke locomotion for me).

As for the new scale: I think the folks who play this game at 1600x1200 will be happy with that.

[oboka]

Why nobody plays with the original TTD today? I think keeping attached to the old engined will lead this project to death (only a few nostalgics will play it next years).

Maybe you should fork the project into two branches, the old style and the new style. This way, everybody, the developers and designers are willing to jump to a new level and who still wants the old style, could have its game.

[Alltaken]

why can't the game take the best from the current game, take the best from other games in the genre, and get it all right?

Then we have to agree on what the best parts of TTD *are*. The graphics (or more accurately, their style) are the part I like best, followed closely by the game engine[0][1]. The parts I don't like (the limitations, especially num-vehicles) have mostly been removed. What parts of TTD did you intend to keep? You seem to be trying to replace both the graphics and the game engines, which leaves me wondering: What's left?

no i just want to change the GFX. however some fo the GFX options (such as smooth curves) are only possible with a few changes to how things are done.

i don't want to change the game engine, i am not a coder i don't even know the difficulties of either way.

the first step IMO is getting new GFX into the current thing, but still with the sharp track system (same layout as current) and change things minorly untill the game has slowly developed to a new form.

i am not trying to change the game all at once, (it may be easier to do, but the public would not like it)

As long as you don't change the style of the gfx it'll be fine with me... except for one thing: don't change the rail types to look/work like the rails in locomotion (that's what broke locomotion for me).

well what is the "style" of the GFX.

the new GRF support has already changed the "style" of the GFX (because custom GFX don't look like hte original ones).
as soon as we go to 32bpp support we have changed the "style" of the GFX because we now have smoother graduation in colours.
as soon as we add a new zoom level we have changed the "style" of the GFX,
as soon as we change the vehicle scale we have change the "style" of the GFX.
as soon as we add new industries we have changed the "style" of the GFX
...., .... we either develop the game or leave it as is and walk away.... why is coding development any less harmfull than GFX development? because its in the background or somthing? to me its a bit hypocritical to expect to change the code behind the game, but no the GFX and try to maintian that it is in the same "style" as the original game.

these things i am trying to keep in the game to maintain some sense of the style of the game.

the grass colour (the grass in the game is very important, and is one thing that differentiates OTTD from other games like simultrans)
the water colour
the grids on the tiles (will be done as a turn on/offable overlay)
the industry types
recreations of many of the things like stations... (i would like artists to try and recreate all the existing vehicles as well as adding real life vehicles)
....

its a very very very hard thing to balance, between maintianing what already exisits and developing a new thing. one one side you will always have people that think the styke has changed. on the other hand you will have people that want it more realistic.

you cannot have both of those groups of people kept happy at all times.

Thats what all the noobs impressed by shiny things won't believe.

let OTTD die with the old generations then. you don't need to be so derogatory to the group of people who will actually enjoy to play OTTD into the future, and keep it alive. i don't diss the people who wish to keep the GFX and things the same as they are now, i am trying my hardest to accomidate them. i am trying to determine what makes the OTTD style the OTTD style (so it can be maintianed in a new technology)

i played TTD back in 1996 when i was a kid, i played TT on the mars scenario all the time before TTD, i played ttd patch, and i followed it all through to now.

but think about this... i was playing the same GFX for almost 1 decade. that is a long time, and it is certainly time for a change in the graphics as there have been changes in the coding features. its time and it needs to happen. how its done is a hard hard thing, if someone else wants to take over my role (of organising it) feel free to do so, but you will get a lot more whining and compalaining that you expected from people on both sides

Maybe you should fork the project into two branches, the old style and the new style. This way, everybody, the developers and designers are willing to jump to a new level and who still wants the old style, could have its game.

i actually agree. however i think it would be nice to have a "nostalgic setting" in the new fork, where all the old things have been as closely converted to the new engine as possible

so new GFX, new technology, but the same old vehicles, the same buildings...

pixel art has personality that no renderer can duplicate

i agree, however pixel art is not practical if you want anything like a new zoom level.

however rendered art does not look equal to other rendered art, a lot is to do with the lighting. and the stylistic choices of artistic creativity vs realism.

don't change the rail types to look/work like the rails in locomotion (that's what broke locomotion for me).

how do they work/look in locomotion? i have not played the game.

Oskar devised a very very robust track method (i think there is one other game, not locomotion, that uses it) it gives curved tracks with minimal sprite numbers, its very nice) it allowed for drag and drop layout, without even needing to have more than one rail laying tool.

thankyou everyone for feedback, i take it ALL into consideration. not everyone will get their way on things (not even me) but i hope to try and have it turn out to be acceptable to as many people as possible.

Alltaken

[Dextro]

Raillroad Tycoon 2 had a few good ideas in it's track tool, the rail would bend automaticlly to create curves when you placed them close to each other. The way RRT2 did it wasn't the best, it was hard to create the tracks in the direction I wanted but that auto-curve thing was great and could be done using the current track layout tools in ottd. You would place a diagonal tool next to a straight one and the game would automaticly bend the connection to look like a curve.

What do you think?

Why nobody plays with the original TTD today? I think keeping attached to the old engined will lead this project to death (only a few nostalgics will play it next years).

I can't play TTD today because of the low resolution and no window mode, that's all. It's also the reason I don't like to play tddpatch even with all the new options: window mode and higher resolutions are very important to me

[antp]

Latest TTDPatch releases (2.0.1 alpha) allow to change resolution. The window is not resizeable with the mouse like OpenTTD, but you can fix any window size in the config file.

Like some other people said here, I'm afraid of major changes in OpenTTD. Completely changing the scale or the graphics would maybe result in a too different game, less fun than TTD? Locomotion is a good example of bad changes: the height of the train is 2 times TTD's height, so bridges/tunnels are more difficult to do. Same for corners, they're more realistic but less easy to do.

[Dextro]

Latest TTDPatch releases (2.0.1 alpha) allow to change resolution. The window is not resizeable with the mouse like OpenTTD, but you can fix any window size in the config file.

Like some other people said here, I'm afraid of major changes in OpenTTD. Completely changing the scale or the graphics would maybe result in a too different game, less fun than TTD? Locomotion is a good example of bad changes: the height of the train is 2 times TTD's height, so bridges/tunnels are more difficult to do. Same for corners, they're more realistic but less easy to do.

I can count all of the flaws in Locomotion:
1 - GUI and Track Building System
2 - no sandbox mode
3 - no cheats... (...or maybe that's not a flaw LOL )

Otherwise I kind of like locomotion

[DaleStan]

well what is the "style" of the GFX.

IMO, the style is mostly that everything is unrealistically bright. The muted tones of the real world have no place in TTD. The newgrf files, being tethered to the TTD palette, are still in this style, while anything in 32bbp will likely not be.

My opinions are:
32bbp: maybe, but only if things stay bright, not muted.
new zoom: probably
new scale: absolutely not
new industries: yes (how exactly does this change the graphics style?)

why is coding development any less harmfull than GFX development?

Because coding *adds* features. GFX *replaces* features. There's an important distinction there. Adding new things is not the sin. Forcibly removing the old is. If you can arrange it so that some people can use the shiny new GFX system, but I can still use the old one, then Go for it!

don't change the rail types to look/work like the rails in locomotion (that's what broke locomotion for me).

how do they work/look in locomotion? i have not played the game.

TTDPatch has a locomotion GUI for building tracks. You might want to try it if you can't acquire Locomotion. It's not quite the same, since the GUI was designed to drive Loco's engine, and TTD's engine doesn't have as much power, but you'll get a good idea of how Loco works.
If you've played Roller Coaster Tycoon (IIRC), Loco has the same rail GUI as RCT's roller-coaster GUI.

Why nobody plays with the original TTD today? I think keeping attached to the old engined will lead this project to death (only a few nostalgics will play it next years).

No one plays TTD because there's TTDPatch and OTTD. It has nothing to do with TTD being an old game, on the contrary, the fact that TTDPatch and OTTD are surviving and even thriving while tied to this old engine shows that there's something there (the nostalgia, maybe?) that people like.

[Alltaken]

IMO, the style is mostly that everything is unrealistically bright. The muted tones of the real world have no place in TTD. The newgrf files, being tethered to the TTD palette, are still in this style, while anything in 32bbp will likely not be.

My opinions are:
32bbp: maybe, but only if things stay bright, not muted.
new zoom: probably
new scale: absolutely not
new industries: yes (how exactly does this change the graphics style?)

yes i agree about the colour pallet situation.

the scale situation is a bit more of a problem though.
if we go back to Chris' intentions, he wanted to make things as realistic as possible. however with the technology and time he had, they could only make a "fixed" size for vehicles.

also the buildings only had 6 floors because the windows needed to be visable and a pixel is only so small, so a window cannot be smaller than a certain size...

with any more technology chris would have gone into variable sized vehicles, (as he did) and would have had 32bpp real world colours.

TTD patch has changed the scale of things (which still remaining ttd like) with their "long vehicles" and many users are pushing for the ttd patch GFX in OTTD.



i offer this sollution to the problem (which i would hope the nostalgics here would be happy with)

we recreate ALL the current TTD GFX in a new GFX format as close to colouring as possible, but with a 3d software program. these GFX are in an "incorrect" scale that meets the TTD scale perfectly (perhaps the buildings are the only exception to this rule, maybe some of the buildings follow a more realistic scale. (they are not such an influencing factor in the game as the vehicles...)

since we recreate the current system to current scales, we then have a "nostalgic mode"

all new graphics additions to the game are to a correct scale, with whatever colouring system they want. (if i can set up a script to automate out an incorrect scale output i would have all new GFX warped into the old scale.) these new GFX will be incompatible with the "nostalgic mode". but i will try to get all the TTD graphics created in "realistic" scale also (but to the same bright colour scheme) and will have all the original vehicles allowed in the new correct scale.

this way the nostalgic people can play their game with a new zoom level (or two) the same vehicles, and just how they want it.

while the rest of the people can play at real scales.

we only need 8 vehicles sprites for nostalgic mode, so the new GFX format can easily have 8 nostalgic scale vehciles appended and distributed with them. since the new GFX format will have many times the 8.


i think that is a possible sollution to everyones worries.

Alltaken

[DaleStan]

they could only make a "fixed" size for vehicles.

EXPN? TTDPatch has (and OTTD will have) variable length rail vehicles. They're the only ones for which length/size really matters, at least until we get road trains. Or did you mean longer vehicles? (Which can be done, but aren't very pretty.)

we recreate ALL the current TTD GFX in a new GFX format as close to colouring as possible, but with a 3d software program.

The suggestion is good, but "ALL" is an impressively tall order: (*opens newgrfw.cfg*)
electrified rail, canals, foundations, signals, new ships, DBSet, TempSet, Cargo Set, DBSetXL, newstations, USStations, industrial stations, P:GS, Long Vehicles, Arctic Set, mars climate, TropicSet, USSet, PlaneSet, new factories, new bridges.

The problem with a new scale is that either (1) the vehicles have to shrink substantially, or (2) the buildings have to grow substantially. Since this is a transport game, I think the over-size vehicles are acceptable, and probably even desirable. If we could get George's LVs to bend, that would be a Good Thing, but I don't think not having them bend is an excuse to shrink them.

On the other hand, shrinking the vehicles in relation to the landscape means we don't have to fight as hard to get the trains/RVs into tunnels and under bridges.

[Alltaken]

they could only make a "fixed" size for vehicles.

EXPN? TTDPatch has (and OTTD will have) variable length rail vehicles. They're the only ones for which length/size really matters, at least until we get road trains. Or did you mean longer vehicles? (Which can be done, but aren't very pretty.)

yes trucks need a length, they will be jointed (road trains, and semi's) in the new GFX design.

we recreate ALL the current TTD GFX in a new GFX format as close to colouring as possible, but with a 3d software program.

The suggestion is good, but "ALL" is an impressively tall order: (*opens newgrfw.cfg*)
electrified rail, canals, foundations, signals, new ships, DBSet, TempSet, Cargo Set, DBSetXL, newstations, USStations, industrial stations, P:GS, Long Vehicles, Arctic Set, mars climate, TropicSet, USSet, PlaneSet, new factories, new bridges.

they are not current TTD GFX, TTD consists of kirby paul --> maglev 4 the vehicles, and the scenery.

much of which will be needed in new GFX anyway, so a recreation will not be to bad. scr1.pcx (i think thats its naming) did not contain to many things, it will not be a huge problem to redo it. especially with some of the automation work i have done.

any extra GFX, well things like electrified railways are fine to do (we will do them anyway).

mars will possibly be left out to start with, and all other climates than temperate will possibly be reduced in priority.

The problem with a new scale is that either (1) the vehicles have to shrink substantially, or (2) the buildings have to grow substantially. Since this is a transport game, I think the over-size vehicles are acceptable, and probably even desirable. If we could get George's LVs to bend, that would be a Good Thing, but I don't think not having them bend is an excuse to shrink them.

vehicles get a lot larger, buildings get a bit larger. (buildings may still be smaller on screen as i agree they are less important than vehicles in the context of the screen.

a new scale means a realistic scale, a train will be about 1 square long per carridge, but you will be able to fit two trains side by side on a tile (perhaps done using quarter tiles, but with grid lines only every four tiles)

On the other hand, shrinking the vehicles in relation to the landscape means we don't have to fight as hard to get the trains/RVs into tunnels and under bridges.

tunnels and bridges will be handled differently.

tunnels will most likely need two squares of build up to enter the side of a hill, or will need to go down slightly to do so on one tile.

bridges like many bridges will probably go up slightly to get over somthing. it will bring a slightly new dinamic to the game i would think.

we caould create a specific compact "overpass" type item that will as small as possible drop one train down 1, and the other up 0.5 squares. (the new GFX in its latest form will have two levels of height per square, halving that of what we have currently. this was waiting for a map rewrite to be done, and was started by request of the coders)

Alltaken

[dmh_mac]

I think those who want everything to stay the way it is should realise there is already a version in which everything is the way it is.

[Dextro]

I think those who want everything to stay the way it is should realise there is already a version in which everything is the way it is.

LOL

Ok what about if we do this: the whole graphics engine will be replaced right? Then why not create it along side the old one? They would of course be incompatible among each other regarding save games and scenarios but a converter could be written latter on.

The whole point of doing this would be to make the decision of considering the old GFX engine "complete" and make no more than critical bug fixes to it and the new engine would take up all the priorities while still maintaning it as optional (until it would be considered stable). This would in conclusion lead to a new version number instead of just a .x increase but I think it should be the way to go don't you think?

[antp]

Lots of things could be added to the game without replacing the graphic engine itself; two examples:
- complete support for TTDPatch GRF
- new map array that would allow lots of features for bridges, as I've read on other topics
So I do not agree that people that want to keep current graphic engine have to keep current version...
IMHO, changing the scale may completely change the game. Alltaken said that tunnels will need two squares; that's for me one of the mistakes of Locomotion compared to TTD...

[DaleStan]

vehicles get a lot larger, buildings get a bit larger. (buildings may still be smaller on screen as i agree they are less important than vehicles in the context of the screen.

I thought that the vehicles were way too large, but that'll make them even bigger. TTD's original busses are half the length of a tile. If we say a tile is the length of a city block, that's what? .1 miles? (.16 km) that gives us busses that are 264 ft (80 m) long--almost the length of an American football field. For comparison, tractor-trailer rigs are 65 feet (20m) long. If, instead, we say a bus is 50 feet long, that makes a tile 100 feet on a side (15m and 30m, respectively), which is pretty short for a city block.

If we make the busses bigger, this problem will become even worse.

[Alltaken]

If we make the busses bigger, this problem will become even worse.

he he.

its not finalised, we make judgements on seeing actuall images.

i have been getting people to make mockups of different scales .... as new GFX come in to compare against.

nothing is finalised theoretically, but possible problems are thought about theoretically.

BTW here in my country a bus is about hlaf the length of the width of some buildings.

Alltaken