[UNIV] ISR - Industrial Stations Renewal

[Maedhros]

I've just noticed that some of my bounding boxes are horribly wrong, at least with the mineral silo, which causes some nasty effects with electric rails. This patch should fix it (based on the code I've got for 0.4.0).

[m4rek]

Perhaps we could have some eye-candy wagons on a few of those eye-candy rails? If it's not too much work that is...

That would probably cause a bit of an issue with all the different train sets, as everyone has their own wagons... Perhaps it could be done by using a sprite from the active train set, instead of actually having a drawn sprite...? Not sure if this is even possible, I'm no GRF coder.

[Sanchimaru]

> Mart: I see how the "detection" mechanism works, it's very interesting. I think we can use it as it is now, and be aware of its limitations. If any more sprites editing is needed, please let me know!

In the meantime, I have prepared the new version of the switchyard, check out the updates:
- added tiles for more fake tracks versatility
- added shading under rails to make them easier to see
- removed transparent tiles under the sheds

[mart3p]

>Maedros: thanks, I will incorporate your changes.

>M4rek: your suggestion was already discussed on the previous page. It's a nice idea but not very high on my todo list. I don't think that it's possible to use sprites from another active set though.

>Sanchimaru: thanks for the updated switchyard sprites.

There’s a slight problem with the new overhead crane platform sprites. The sprites for each side of the platform both show the crane rails offset in the same direction, they should be symmetrical.

The water tower is coded, the new overhead crane is buildable but not yet animated. Does the alignment of the back and front parts look ok?

It would also help with sprite alignment, if the areas on the back crane sprite that are covered by the front one could be indicated by a different colour.

[Sanchimaru]

>Mart: I'm not sure I understood correctly the issue about the crane rails offset. I have however done some modifications, check it below.
- fixed the rails of the crane on rails so that they are better centered on the platform
- added "magic pink" to the back of the crane so that you know where the front part should fit and changed slightly the shape
- recolored a little bit the crane of the overhead crane, and added a red dot that marks what part should be in line with the grey rails on the overhead structures
- moved a little bit the supporting beams of the overhead rails so that they are better centered on the platform

newfixtures.png (24.89 KiB) Viewed 2999 times

I will keep an eye in the future for sprites placement, and add magic ping to mark where the front sprites should fit. To make the coder's work easier is a very important task of the artists!

The water tower is looking fine!

[Sanchimaru]

Watch the last release of the mines facilities update!

These are the changes:
- mineral silo upgraded, now it will can be 1 tile longer, with a small building attached, and minerals piling on the other platforms. The sprite for the empty platform is the default base concrete platform of this set.
- mineral unloading platform upgraded, now when you build an unloading platform longer than 2, you get first a building (3 length), then a building with small conveyor belt (4 length), and in longer structures, the building + conveyor belt with empty unloading platforms randomly placed.

this is a preview:

minestation.png (7.55 KiB) Viewed 9750 times

I hope you all likethem and that we can use them in our games soon
All the credit is for the artists who drew those buildings and fixtures for the original industrial stations set.

[mart3p]

The overhead crane and crane on rails are now animated. The new cranes in operation at a steel mill station:

Anim cranes.png (37.7 KiB) Viewed 9598 times

Unfortunately OpenTTD doesn't yet support animated stations, so if any OpenTTD devs are reading, can we have animated station grf support please? A test grf and documented nfo are available if it would help.

Please note if you downloaded the Switchyard station taster; it will no longer work correctly in the OpenTTD nightlies from r12108. While coding this station I found a bug in OpenTTD. I included a work-around for this and posted a bug report. Happily, peter1138 has now fixed the bug, but this means my 'work-around' no longer works. This will of course be fixed in future releases.

>Sanchimaru: I like your changes to the mine facilities. I will have a look at coding it once I have done the updates to the switchyard.

[richk67]

Unfortunately OpenTTD doesn't yet support animated stations, so if any OpenTTD devs are reading, can we have animated station grf support please? A test grf and documented nfo are available if it would help.

This is exactly what we have been waiting for - we need a known working animated station to be able to test any code we develop. Once the code is in for stations, I can then get NewGRF_ports up and animated for spinning radars, windsocks, etc.

If you let peter1138 know, then hopefully this can progress quickly.

[peter1138]

Yup, I do have a patch for station animation but I've not been able to test it properly...

[mart3p]

>peter1138 & richk67: That's great news a PM has been sent...

>Sanchimaru: I have been trying to sort out the remaining parts of 'newfacilities.pcx' that had not been coded. From the list of names that where posted previously (numbers are the row from newfacilities.pcx):

5- open storage shed
6- shipping offices
7- large warehouse
8- storage tanks
9- small warehouses
10- modern warehouse
11- repair bay
12- production facility

Firstly should the names be singlular or plural? You see we have "Large warehouse" but "Small warehouses". IMO they should all be plural.

• 5 - Open storage shed - I have coded
  6 - Shipping offices - I have coded
  7 - Large warehouse - I have coded
  8 - Storage tanks - I have coded
  9 - Small warehouses - Is already in v0.4.0 as "Warehouse B". I will rename it.
  10 - Modern warehouse - I have coded
  11 - Repair bay - Is already in v0.4.0 as "Storage Facility". I will rename it.
  12 - Production facility - Is already in v0.4.0 as "Brick warehouse". I will rename it.

"Warehouse A" in v0.4.0 is an 'old' version (from newharbour2.pcx) of the "Small warehouse". Do you want to use both or should I remove "Warehouse A"?

Are you ok with the current naming of Warehouses A, B, C etc. or should we think of something more descriptive?

I have also coded the Water station. It’s ok but I feel it could do with a little more randomness. There’s not much difference currently between the 2 types of water tank platform tiles. Maybe some variation in the height of the tanks would help. I could add some additional (randomly chosen) tiles, if you want to do the artwork.

[Atlantis]

Hmm, maybe different coloured tanks for the hot and cold water... hehe (you wanted randomness, you got it!)

This looks really good. Not looked on here for ages but this is progressing really well!
I wasn't quite sure about the transparent platform bits, with the sand/snow showing, but it's quickly growing on me.

[mart3p]

Some more randomness:

The last full-time job I had, was working for a company that made equipment for steels mills. I programmed the control and user interface software. One of my more interesting commissioning jobs was a visit to Handan Steel in China. This may sound a bit off-topic but please have a look at this. I thought the pictures of the snow-covered switchyard were particularly relevant.

[MrMox]

Very interesting pictures - not a place I'd like to live though. I particularly liked the ones with the slag dumping.

[mart3p]

Very interesting pictures - not a place I'd like to live though.

No, I wouldn’t like to live there either, the air pollution was horrendous. Three weeks was quite enough.

>Sanchimaru: The new additions to the mineral silo are done. The screenshot shows the new platform building and mineral piles. You can also see the new north-facing conveyor belt.

Mineral silo.png (35.22 KiB) Viewed 8680 times

I have made a slight change to the suggested station layout. I couldn't see any reason to limit the station to 2 tiles long, so I have put no restriction on the length. Any additional tiles show the small building and mineral piles.

I have added Maedhros’s fix for the mineral silo bounding boxes. This seems to have worked nicely.

I have fixed the problem with the mineral piles, they no longer flash between empty and full while trains are loading. But I still think there is room for improvement here. I would like to have some sprites with smaller mineral piles for when only a little cargo is waiting.

[Sanchimaru]

Hey, that is a good idea! I like how it looks, your screenshots are very good
Here is the updated version of the switchyard (I forgot to add some of the shading under rails to make them more visible)

By the way, I enjoyed a lot the pictures of the trainyard in China. What are you currently enroled to?

- - -

edit: Following the coder's suggestion, I have made an extra tile for the water station, here it is

[Nite Owl]

Wonderful work but I do have a few concerns. Please correct me if I am wrong in any of the following assumptions. From the above conversations and screenshots it seems that only one tile of a mineral loading station will be allowed to have the conveyor belt that crosses above the tracks while all of the other tiles of that station will have either smaller buildings or mineral piles? If that is correct then I would like to suggest a change. Please allow for more customization on the builders part. If a player wants to have the the conveyor belt that crosses above the tracks on every tile of their station please allow them the freedom to do so. The same should apply to every tile in every station. It should be up to the builder to pick and choose what tiles make up a station instead of the station set imposing restrictions that the builder must then think their way around to achieve the results that they might desire. Once again if I am wrong in my assumptions and have misinterpreted the previous posts then please let me know and I will put my suggestions aside.

[mart3p]

>Nite Owl: Don't worry, there are plenty of opportunities for the player to customise their stations. Of course, there has to be some compromise between having completely fixed station layouts and building with individual tiles. Personally I like stations that I can quickly build while playing that automatically take on a nice looking layout.

Each station element that can be separately built uses a station ID and an entry in the build menu. If every part of every station were buildable separately it would quickly use up the available IDs.

In the case of the mineral silo it is still quite possible for the user to achieve other layouts. The screenshot shows an example. This consists of three mineral silos with empty platform tiles in-between.

[Sanchimaru]

Mart3p explained everything perfectly

By the way, I forgot to include the last update to the fixtures, it's the fix for the road crossing over tracks, which was 6 lines wide instead of 5 as the rest of the plarforms. Sorry for the inconvenience, I thought that I had already posted it.

[Sanchimaru]

And it is finally ready!!

Mart3p sent me this morning the file! Here it is for you all, we hope that you enjoy it.

There are still a couple of elements that must be added, but we have got pretty much what we had drawn already coded and working.

Don't miss the animated overhead and rail cranes, as well as the ground level facilities, the renewed warehouses and a bunch of new raw materials platforms and facilities

[mart3p]

Industrial Stations Renewal v0.5.0

Harbour.png (47.96 KiB) Viewed 8865 times

We thought it was time for a new release. We still consider Industrial Stations Renewal to be in the beta stage, so Sanchimaru's warnings in the first post still apply. And yes, I've had to rearrange some station IDs again.

There are a couple of things for OpenTTD players to be aware of. The switchyard requires the changes made at r12108 to operate correctly. With versions of OpenTTD earlier than this (including 0.6.0 beta3) the switchyard will not be available. Animated stations are not supported by OpenTTD, so no moving cranes (yet ).

Please report any problems in this thread and help us it improve ISR even further.

Have fun!

And here is the DOS version...