Japan Set Development

[krtaylor]

I moved it to another server where I thought I'd have more space. I'm not sure that was the wisest decision... It seems to have a lot of troubles.

[Toni Babelony]

Agh! I accidentally deleted my map with all the Japanset development graphics! No worry though since I've been able to recover the trains from the development page. However, all data I made in the tables are lost. Also not to worry much though since the data I changed wasn't that extensive and it was messy anyway.

What this all means: the data will have to wait another few days... I hope to finish it next week as I have an useless week of vacation. (What the hell? I want to study and go to college! Such a waste of time )

P.s. the development website works perfectly again!

[dandan]

Hi, it's been pretty quiet in here recently. Is this because summerly weather has finally arrived? If so, that's a very good reason.

Toni, I hope you didn't loose too much valuable data. If you could finish the data for the multiple unit trains some time, I would be ready to start coding them, but no hurry.

I have started to give some thought to New Industry/Cargo support. It's a bit of a mess with all those labels and classes really... There are several threads around discussing the pros and cons of these concepts and I don't want to start it here. I am trying to follow George's suggestion which is to start off using cargo classes only (to keep it as generic and open to future developments as possible) and then add as few exceptions as possible.

Now I went through our list of wagons and tried to figure out which of all those ECS cargos each one could carry (I couldn't find a list of PBI cargos with classes anywhere). It's mostly rather straightforward, but I have some trouble with the hoppers:

In the first generation (before 1950), we have only one hopper (TOMU 500), but later we have separate hoppers for Grain/Wheat (HOKI 1000) and Coal/Iron Ore (TORA 55000, HOKI 2500), respectively. Now the principle difference is that the HOKI 1000 is a closed hopper while the others are open. That is a rather important distinction for some ECS cargos, so I wonder whether we should perhaps add another early closed hopper to carry grain/wheat as well as some ECS cargos in place of the TOMU 500. Anybody willing to draw such a wagon?

By the way, does anybody know what is the matter with the "covered/sheltered freight" cargo class? It would seem really useful if there actually were any cargos in that class...

[Toni Babelony]

Hi, it's been pretty quiet in here recently. Is this because summerly weather has finally arrived? If so, that's a very good reason.

Toni, I hope you didn't loose too much valuable data. If you could finish the data for the multiple unit trains some time, I would be ready to start coding them, but no hurry.

Yeah, you're lucky to find me at home with this weather! Well, quite some data has been lost, but it's not too hard to redo all of it again... It just takes some time.

In the first generation (before 1950), we have only one hopper (TOMU 500), but later we have separate hoppers for Grain/Wheat (HOKI 1000) and Coal/Iron Ore (TORA 55000, HOKI 2500), respectively. Now the principle difference is that the HOKI 1000 is a closed hopper while the others are open. That is a rather important distinction for some ECS cargos, so I wonder whether we should perhaps add another early closed hopper to carry grain/wheat as well as some ECS cargos in place of the TOMU 500. Anybody willing to draw such a wagon?

As far as I know grain/wheat/rice was transported in bags back in the days. These were loaded on open wagons or in closed vans. When carried in open wagons these would most probably have been covered by a sheet of some kind. (Jute perhaps?) I don't recall any old loading installations in Japan for these goods. Also, most rice was locally produced and consumed. I guess early transport of these dry grains would probably the best in bags.

[krtaylor]

The other sets handle that question in a variety of ways. The US Set has grain carried in boxcars. The assumption is that it was loaded in sacks - although I've seen old photos of a boxcar-tipping cylinder, where the roof of the boxcar was hinged so the sacked grain contents could be easily dumped out. Odd.

In Michael Blunck's DBset, he goes the other route, with grain hauled in open hoppers (very similar to the Japanset's) but with tarps over them. Not sure how well that would work for rice though.

I think I agree with Toni here, we should assume those cargoes to be hauled in sacks, in boxcars. When we get the proper graphics to replace farm-fields with rice paddies, we'll want to make the same change for grain, and not have it hauled in open hoppers anymore.

[dandan]

I agree with you both. I think this makes sense and has the additional advantage that we won't need new sprites.

Also, I have been experimenting a bit with the possibilities of the Cargo Class/Label system. The idea is in principle that the question whether a particular wagon can carry some cargo should be based solely on the cargo class, so that you can provide support for cargos you do not yet know about. The existing classes don't seem to be quite sophisticated enough for that but anyway, this will only work properly with wagons that are closed and hence do not need cargo-depending sprites. So I suggest we do the following: The open wagons (open hoppers, flatcars, car racks) will be coded "the old way" only allowing the cargos we specify and provide graphics for. The closed wagons (tankers, closed hoppers, and in particular boxcars) will use cargo classes and be able to carry pretty much anything (within reasonable limits; no liquids in boxcars, of course). We can be more specific for the most common cargos (standard ones and potentially Japanese ones that are yet to come, some ECS/PBI ones). I will try to make sure that all combinations of ECS vectors and PBI work reasonably well which, based on my current sketch, will mean exceptional rules for about half the wagons and half the cargos while everything else should be covered by cargo classes.

[Roujin]

Rice?? Are you planning a newgrf industry set?

Have you already made a draft of that? I'd like to see it

[krtaylor]

There is a very, very old draft of a replacement industry vector on the development website.

http://www.as-st.com/ttd/eastsasia

However, I think that in the near term, the most likely change would be a simple graphic replacement. Once we have proper Japanese farm graphics, the "farm fields" would instead look like rice paddies, and thus presumably produce rice as the grain. The vector itself wouldn't change really - you'd still use the "rice" just the same as the previous grain. A total industry vector replacement requires appropriate industry graphics, which is quite a bit of work and hasn't been touched as of yet. Unless you'd like to work on some?

[Toni Babelony]

There is a very, very old draft of a replacement industry vector on the development website.

http://www.as-st.com/ttd/eastsasia

Om nom nom? http://www.as-st.com/ttd/eastasia/index.html

It seems your new server doesn't like automatic linking...

[PikkaBird]

It seems your new server doesn't like automatic linking...

No, just when he puts superflous esses in his url (eastsasia)...

[Toni Babelony]

It seems your new server doesn't like automatic linking...

No, just when he puts superflous esses in his url (eastsasia)...

/HEADDESK

[krtaylor]

ok, I misspelled it...

But at least we all are reminded where it is!

[Roujin]

There is a very, very old draft of a replacement industry vector on the development website.

http://www.as-st.com/ttd/eastsasia

However, I think that in the near term, the most likely change would be a simple graphic replacement. Once we have proper Japanese farm graphics, the "farm fields" would instead look like rice paddies, and thus presumably produce rice as the grain. The vector itself wouldn't change really - you'd still use the "rice" just the same as the previous grain. A total industry vector replacement requires appropriate industry graphics, which is quite a bit of work and hasn't been touched as of yet. Unless you'd like to work on some?

Thanks. Yes, that's rather old hehe...

Unfortunately I'm no artist, so I can't help you there

While browsing at that site, I found in the buildings tracking table the building Tojo-View by Zimmlock. Is this in an already released .grf version somewhere? O_O never seen it before, looks awesome

[krtaylor]

Yes, there is a released test-version of the Japanese buildings. It's on the Japan public website

http://www.as-st.com/ttd/japan

However, it's somewhat old, and does not include all of them. I do not know if it includes that particular building or not.

[pagani_zonda]

Just an observation: your website has a slight error. The 789 series EMU does not serve super hokuto services but rather super hakucho services (and occasionally tsugaru services too).

Nice work though guys! Any more room for other trains?

[krtaylor]

Yes, we could squeeze another train or two in there, but I don't think it's necessary. However if you have a favorite train you'd really like to see, and want to draw it, we can consider including it.

Any other news, dandan or Sanchimaru?

[dandan]

Any other news, dandan or Sanchimaru?

I've been quiet recently, and now I am away from home for one week and can't do anything for TTD. But things have been progressing very well. I have mostly included the graphics of all the new trains and just need to code the MU consists now, plus some other improvements. Will still take a while though.

Any more room for other trains?

There should be a few slots left but there are also some new trains already that are not included in the train list. So I can't tell how many free IDs exactly we still have. We will know soon.

[Toni Babelony]

I'm now in a busy period with University, so there is almost no progress on providing renewed graphics of the original trains and the data on teh consists. (sorry for forgetting to reply to your PM dandan!)

@pagani_zonda: You're right! My mistake! Maybe it's my lack of knowledge on JR Hokkaido trains Since I'm more keen on Tohoku trains I sometimes forget the correct names of the Hokkaido trains, although the funniest of all Ltd. Express runs on Hokkaido, namely the 'Super Soya'. (Okay, it's the name of a town, but still...)

Also, ATM I don't know what other trains to include aside from the Joyful trains (tourists only) I'm planning later on, as the set seems balanced enough IMO. Any suggestions?

EDIT:

黄色線の内側まで，お下がりください！

[pagani_zonda]

Hakone Tozan Railroad? Or if you don't mind you can add an update to the Odakyu family: the series 50000 VSE. (and perhaps even maybe the 60000 MSE ). And perhaps the KiHa 183 series Express DMU (ideally the variant used by JR Kyushu in its original red livery).

[Toni Babelony]

Hakone Tozan Railroad? Or if you don't mind you can add an update to the Odakyu family: the series 50000 VSE. (and perhaps even maybe the 60000 MSE ). And perhaps the KiHa 183 series Express DMU (ideally the variant used by JR Kyushu in its original red livery).

Hakone Tozan: 1435mm gauge. Doesn't fit the general feeling (see Odakyû);

Odakyû: I'm not sure about more private rail trains, maybe we could do a seperate s*** (Private Rail) Set later and make a hard separation of the Japan Rail Set as the Kokutetsu Set and two private s*** Sets. This is because private rail trains can be separated into 1067mm (Odakyû, Meitetsu, Tôkyû, Tôbu, Nankai, Iyo, etc.) and 1435mm (Kintetsu, Hankyû, Keisei, Keikyû, Hanshin, etc.) gauge companies. Don't get me wrong! I'm a big fan of Odakyû and other private companies, but IMO it doesn't fit the feeling of the Japan Rail Set;

KIHA 183: it only runs in Kyûshû as a KIHA183-1000 series as the [FuyuDX] and [Oranda Mura Tokkyû]. Also, the KIHA183 comes out in 1988 and there has already been decided that the KIHA85 (JR Central) is being included (KIHA85 also released in 1988). Maybe we could include it as a Joyful Train later on as these express trains are mostly used by tourists rather than commuters.