Production patch v0.9 (was: Little patch that disables decre

[belugas]

Yeah, but the only problem so far it that you need to design some GRF files in order to change these values.

There are a lot of good industries grf already available one the "market". Each has its individual style. Once you've tasted them, believe me, you kinda get hooked on them

Anyone can say "I want only coal mines and powerplants in my game", but only a very few can make the GRF that set up these settings.

Before I started to work on newhouses, way back than, i've never wrote a C code line in my entire life. Now, i can. Because I took time to LEARN how to do so.
If very few people can make GRF, it's because, at some point, they started to LEARN NFO. GRF might LOOK horribly hard to learn, but it isn't THAT hard to grasp even the basics to do just what you've suggested. In fact, you will be very surprised to find how easy it would be.
All you would need to do is learn about Action 08 and Action 00 for Industries. You will need to learn what are the properties required to disable all the industries but the ones you wish to keep in game, and that's pretty much it.

But halas, I believe people lack the drive and the patience required to learn something new. Everything is there, but people just go with the easy and fast way, even if this way is the less powerfull one. Would yoiu prove me wrong and come with your own disabling-industries-GRF ?

[MagicBuzz]

All you would need to do is learn about Action 08 and Action 00 for Industries. You will need to learn what are the properties required to disable all the industries but the ones you wish to keep in game, and that's pretty much it.

But halas, I believe people lack the drive and the patience required to learn something new. Everything is there, but people just go with the easy and fast way, even if this way is the less powerfull one. Would yoiu prove me wrong and come with your own disabling-industries-GRF ?

That's why I'm not opposed to a patch that helps changing these actions values at run time. But it must only override the values, not override the way they are used, and that's why I think this patch should wait until the new industries feature is released.

May be this patch should not be a patch, but a feature in the scenario editor : it should create a standalone GRF really easily with GUI, in order to set up parameters for industries (and why not some other stuffs like economy modifiers, etc.).
So the player could create his own "settings GRF" like you can do with most scenario editor, then choose to use them with a scenario or any randomly created game.

I agree with you, it's not so hard to learn C or GRF format (well, I got bored after 2 pages of wiki about GRF format), like you I didn't know anything about the C language until the last months, then I started learning by creating some small patches. I like it (I hate C, but I like learning languages) but I just understand most people don't want to even try to read a C source file or a GRF NFO file.
When you take the train, you can say "wow, this one is crapy, I want a faster one" but I doubt you can build your own train This patch just allow the user to get what he wants without boring on "how does it work?"

[DaleStan]

May be this patch should not be a patch, but a feature in the scenario editor : it should create a standalone GRF really easily with GUI, in order to set up parameters for industries (and why not some other stuffs like economy modifiers, etc.).

The creatures would like not to be feeped, please.

If you're going to create a GRF-creating program, create an external program. Don't try to hack it into Open. If for no other reason than that it's far more likely to get released that way.

[sc79]

I'm not aware of the path you will follow to allow modification of these values, but there are two ways that i see : a lot of little gui or a massive one.

Is it not possible to simply use the cfg file and skip a GUI completely (or atleast mostly)?

And I still think that all that you offer is TOTALLY possible to be done with newindustries, therefore making this patch TOTALLY irrelevant. But agreed, this does imply that if one wants to write a grf implementing this or that or even all of the features you are proposing, he will have to LEARN NFO (and of course that i finish the feature, but this is beside the point).

One of the appealing things about OTTD for me, which is a large reason I never got into TTDPatch, is its accessability. Having to write and (I assume) continually rewrite a GRF file to change settings doesn't sounds like much of a solution.

Yes, if Jaume was the only one who wanted to change these values, or they were very specific (similar to the first version of this patch), a GRF would likely be the best solution. However, I expect that just about everyone would like to be able to adjust atleast a few of the settings in this patch. Few things in OTTD currently annoy me as much as the current behavior of industries (such as ~50% of secondary industries (and some primary) closing within 10 years of starting a game). Maybe it should wait until after newindustries is added to trunk (and I'm sure, even in the best case, it would anyway) to see what issues develop. Even then, I don't see why (though I'm sure there are problems from a dev point of view) the options couldn't be available, with a disclaimer that changing the default settings might impact the behaviour of any newGRF files.

Either way, I don't think the fact it will be doable with a GRF file is reason enough alone to abandon the patch.

I also think you could consider the possibility that not everyone enjoys coding, can learn NFO, or has the time to do so.

edit: Maybe its worth considering (both Jaume and devs) breaking this up into many smaller patches (considering recent threads), because a few of them I expect could be added hopefully without impacting on newindustries (ones that cover all industries, such as not closing down).

[DaleStan]

Is it not possible to simply use the cfg file and skip a GUI completely?

Sure. But most people would call it "a GRF", not "the cfg file".

Having to write and (I assume) continually rewrite a GRF file

Why would you have to continually rewrite it?

Either way, I don't think the fact it will be doable with a GRF file is reason enough alone to abandon the patch.

Well, most of the devs, both for Patch and Open, seem to think that is sufficient reason.

[sc79]

[Sure. But most people would call it "a GRF", not "the cfg file".

This is the YAPF section in the openttdcfg file;

Code: Select all

ship_use_yapf = false
road_use_yapf = true
rail_use_yapf = true
disable_node_optimization = false
max_search_nodes = 10000
rail_firstred_twoway_eol = false
rail_firstred_penalty = 1000
rail_firstred_exit_penalty = 10000
rail_lastred_penalty = 1000
rail_lastred_exit_penalty = 10000
rail_station_penalty = 3000
rail_slope_penalty = 200
rail_curve45_penalty = 100
rail_curve90_penalty = 600
rail_depot_reverse_penalty = 5000
rail_crossing_penalty = 300
rail_look_ahead_max_signals = 10
rail_look_ahead_signal_p0 = 500
rail_look_ahead_signal_p1 = -100
rail_look_ahead_signal_p2 = 5
rail_longer_platform_penalty = 800
rail_longer_platform_per_tile_penalty = 0
rail_shorter_platform_penalty = 4000
rail_shorter_platform_per_tile_penalty = 0
road_slope_penalty = 0
road_crossing_penalty = 3000
road_curve_penalty = 100
road_stop_penalty = 800

3 of those lines can be changed from the GUI ingame. My point being that the arguement of a complex GUI being needed isn't really valid. But I'm sure even you grasped that, and are just stiring crap.

Thinking more about this patch (since, I conceed, my knowledge is limited), I can see how it would probably work just as well as a GRF. If for no other reason than avoiding extra work for the devs.

[belugas]

Thinking more about this patch (since, I conceed, my knowledge is limited), I can see how it would probably work just as well as a GRF. If for no other reason than avoiding extra work for the devs.

Please, do me a favor (and this is not solely addressed at sc79, but to everyone concerned about the industry aspect of the game): take all the time required to read those following pages, which are talking about the grf properties of Industries, Industry tiles and the callbacks. And bear in mind that this is only a portion of what newindustries are, not the whole specs. Csaboka have been REALLY imaginative (and still is...) and brilliant when he wrote it.
http://wiki.ttdpatch.net/tiki-index.php ... Industries
http://wiki.ttdpatch.net/tiki-index.php ... ustryTiles
http://wiki.ttdpatch.net/tiki-index.php?page=Callbacks

When I mean take your time, i actually mean read the pages and understand what they are talking about. I mean grasp the idea, the essence of what newindustries are. When you're done, take a look at that patch and see the changes required to support only 5 properties. Imagine what will be required to support more. And imagine the pleasure of maintaining it all, not to mention the work of translators.

So, yes, to a certain point, the patch does the same as newindustries, but with far less elegance, far less power and quite fewer options. Extra work for the devs? You bet. Necessary? it would be VERY hard to convince me. And even if you do, good luck at convincing the other devs. I'm not against work on industries. I'm just opposed of having duplicate and fundamentaly rival code/feature.