2CC Trams 0.9c & 2CC Cargo Trams v0.8r

[kamnet]

In my original research and spreadsheets, I actually did note the various couplings of trams.

Is more research needed e.g. for trams that have been added more recently to the project? I don't code or draw, but I sure can nerd out and look stuff up.

For 2CC Trams, we're finished for now. However, 2CC Cargo Trams could probably use some more vehicles. Most cargo trams were not purpose created, but were cobbled together by operating companies who pieced them together from wrecked and salvaged passenger trams (typically much older and obsolete equipment for passenger revenue service) in order to suit their own needs. It was pretty common to rebuild a car, gut the passenger seats, and either close in all the windows and doors to make a box car, or to just seal off the operating cab and turn it into a flat car, or attach equipment to the deck to turn it into a work truck like a tower ladder, boom truck, crane or side-dump trailer. But, some companies like Brill, Jewett and Kuhlmann did build purpose-built work equipment. Some examples I've found include refrigerated meat cars for South America, tanker cars, plows and brooms to clean the railways, freight motors (cargo & mail vehicles), etc.

Our biggest challenge here is finding documented photos and specs. Lots of people have documented this info for passenger cars, but work vehicles don't typically get this type of attention.

[gebik]

[Cargo tram suggestion] If you will add more vehicles to cargo trams, what about adding this one: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Cate ... 2_(Prague), stats are similar to Tatra T3 tram (in fact it was build for purpose in 1990 for Prague Transport Authority (DPP), for transporting stuff, by repairing one T3 tram). Later, they changed its purpose to oiling tracks, and later a water tank for watering grassy track parts was added. At page, I linked to, are many photos of it. Cargo capacity is not known, so feel free to put there something for gameplay purposes. [End of cargo tram suggestion]
And that existing Prague cargo tram, should be named like that: Prague Ringhoffer+Křižík cargo tram (electric), not like it is now, that Střešovice is name of transport museum, where it is now, not manufacturers. And now let me work on that trolleybus table.

[Voyager One]

Hey guys!
As Kamnet has said, I've never had an interest in drawing 2x zoom stuff. As for the "normal" stuff, I'm truly sorry but I simply don't have the time to do it. However, I'll be more than happy if someone will continue my work and I'd give as much support as I can.
Anyways, I'm happy to see that this development goes on in my "absence" and I'm truly glad to see so many enthusiasts pushing things forward!
Cheers!

[Arnoud]

And a much smaller update:

-fixed London Joh Grantham's steam engine being coded as electric vehicle, this allso means that electrified tramtrack is no longer available on 1800s starts.

-added translations.

Running RattRoads 1.0.2, all 2CC Trams appear to be coded as electric - they're not available in non-electrified tram depots, though seven of the 2CC Cargo Trams are. That aside (and other cosmetic issues like invalid stats/strings in the purchase window), it looks great so far! I love the variety.

Beggars and choosers, but: Eventually, would it be possible to purchase (or refit, a la HEQs) certain interurban/LRV type vehicles in coupled form? I know this might make the capacity a bit overkill (side beg: Eventually, can we have cost/capacity balance parameters a la many many other sets?), but... well, for example, Portland MAX almost always runs two-car trains, so it feels odd seeing them singly here when I've never seen them run that way in person And all 3 generations of SF MUNI's LRVs could/can run coupled, and do so when capacity and route allow - the USSLRV even briefly ran with four-car consists through the subway.

The issue of invalid strings in the purchase window should no longer be present in the latest build of the passenger trams, please make sure you have deleted any old version from your graphics folder because that can cause issues like this.
The steam passenger trams not showing up on early starts is most likely due to the default paramater setting of short vehicle lives; on certain early starts all their short lifetimes have expired and so none are available, if you change this paramater it should solve the problem.

[Arnoud]

The cargo set I think is not in need of more sprites at the moment; there are still uncoded sprites for quite a few trams, some of them quite cool ones.

What would be usefull to have is a list of what you think the vehicles should cost, right now vehicle costs are mostly eyecandy.

After that the next big issue to make the set more playable is fix the cattle class capacity, I allready have an idea on how to do this, though this would be a large update and I havent come around to that yet.

Once these 2 issues are resolved I can start to add the remaining trams.

[Tsylatac]

The issue of invalid strings in the purchase window should no longer be present in the latest build of the passenger trams, please make sure you have deleted any old version from your graphics folder because that can cause issues like this.

Ah, thanks for the tip. For one thing, turns out changing the file extension from ".tar" to ".tar.old" does nothing to prevent OpenTTD from finding it. It looks like the current 0.9b release in the fruit store identifies itself as v5777 (you may want to correct this), so the "newer" v5884 I had downloaded four years ago was taking priority.

The steam passenger trams not showing up on early starts is most likely due to the default paramater setting of short vehicle lives; on certain early starts all their short lifetimes have expired and so none are available, if you change this paramater it should solve the problem.

This was actually with Vehicles Never Expire turned On for testing (the steam trams were available, but only from electrified depots), but that complaint is moot as it works properly now that I have the current version loaded.

[Arnoud]

First of all, thank you for uploading my work to bananas, I do not receive mail from bananas on either of my 2 e-mail accounts, not sure why, but this has stopped me from uploading it myself.

I have a small update for the passenger trams which fixes above mentioned issue, if you allready have the correct version loaded you dont really need to download this.

- fixed previous bananas version 0.1 taking priority over new 0.9 version; players no longer need to delete 0.1 in order for 0.9 to be loaded.
- I have added incompatibility between 0.9 and 0.1 to prevent version 0.1 save games with steam trams from becoming corrupted.

As a side consequence of these changes version 0.9c is incompatible with all previous versions; this means that you cannot use it in save games with version 0.9b, 0.8 etc, the game will load the older version used for the save game if still present.

[Arnoud]

I have another update for the cargotrams.

After some playtesting I noticed there were still some issues with incorrect cargo capacities.

They were caused by me using unit weight to calculate different cargo capacities, this seems to be the incorrect way of going about this.

Physical size is offcourse what should determine a vehicle's capacity; in most other vehicle sets is seems that crates of good take up slightly more space than 1 ton of some other material, even though it weighs only half a ton.

Calculating capacity simply on cargo unit produces far more satisfying results than on unit cargo weight, though it would seem cattle class cargoes still need a further adjustment.

-fix: cargo capacity is no longer calculated by weight.
-fix: players no longer need to delete older versions.
-fix: speed of slowest vehicles increased to 20km/h; the game engine displays slower speeds very unrealistically, they shock forward rather than move normally.

[kamnet]

Yay, finally got a minute to get those updates uploaded. Thank you again, Arnoud!

[Arnoud]

I have another update.

This time I did what I had wanted to do yesterday, though this may need some further finetuning.

-fix: eyecandy purchase and running costs are now (more)realistic.

[Arnoud]

I have another update for the cargotrams.

I was having problems coding the next tram I wanted to do and this has stopped me getting ahead for some time, so now I tried a different approach coding the easiest to code trams first.

In this release:
- added requirements to newgrf description
- changed url to point to this thread

3 new trams, all unarticulated electric box cars:
- Buenos Aires Interurban Freight Car (1935)
- Cincinnati Kuhlman Mail & Baggage Motor (1904)
- Melbourne Class V Freight Car (1927)

[MagicBuzz]

Hello,

I have to report an issue about the cargo tram "Paris L'Arpajonnais SteamCargoTram".

It was available in 1881 at the same time than the "Wantage Freighttram (steam)".

I bought 2 of them, and after a few months (1 or 2 years ?) I wanted to build another one but it is not available anymore in the list buying !

I think there is an issue with its building lifetime period.
First I thought I got a penality for not building the prototype fast enought, but now the date is 1887 and the penality should be ended...

It's very annoying because it's the first tram available that can transport anything, so I can't use trams at all for a big part of cargos but I already build lines as a tram was firstly avalable.

Capture d’écran 2022-02-17 142050.png

Screenshot

(1.17 MiB) Not downloaded yet

[kamnet]

I can confirm that this is happening. It appears that it's disappearing from the build menu sometime between 1883 and 1885. I was able to rescue it once using "resetengines", but it disappeared a second time and would not come back without enabling "Vehicles Never Expire".

Now, why is this happening? That's a good question. Unfortunately at this time I don't have a coder who can say for sure. My looking through the code, as far as I can understand it, shows that this vehicle should be available for 43 years, with an early removal from the buy list at 36 years if that feature is enabled.

Right now I'm also not able to set up, experiment and mess with stuff to see if I can make modifications. If somebody in the community is willing to step up and take a look, that'll be great, otherwise it might be a few weeks before I can get to it.

[Fairyfloss]

I can confirm that this is happening. It appears that it's disappearing from the build menu sometime between 1883 and 1885. I was able to rescue it once using "resetengines", but it disappeared a second time and would not come back without enabling "Vehicles Never Expire".

Now, why is this happening? That's a good question. Unfortunately at this time I don't have a coder who can say for sure. My looking through the code, as far as I can understand it, shows that this vehicle should be available for 43 years, with an early removal from the buy list at 36 years if that feature is enabled.

Right now I'm also not able to set up, experiment and mess with stuff to see if I can make modifications. If somebody in the community is willing to step up and take a look, that'll be great, otherwise it might be a few weeks before I can get to it.

If you can point me at where I can grab the sprites from, I'd be happy to take a look at it. I've never messed with trams before, but it doesn't seem too difficult since I have experience with trains and stuff.
My guess as to where the issue is that 'retire_early' - which is set to 36 - means the vehicle will be retired 36 years before it's reliability starts dropping.

[Fairyfloss]

Alright, the expiration issues should be fixed. Do let me know if I've broken anything else so I can fix it.

[OzTrans]

... an issue about the cargo tram "Paris L'Arpajonnais SteamCargoTram. ...

The data for this tram is totally wrong; no wonder it disappears from the purchase list so fast.

The following properties were set as follows :

Vehicle life : 43 yrs
Model life : 43 yrs
Retire Early : 36 yrs

The model life should be two to three times the vehicle life. The Retire Early Years are far too high.

I normally set these properties as follows :

Model Life = 'Years it should hang around' [available for purchase] + 'Vehicle Life' + 6.
Vehicle Life = Years available for purchase divided by 2.5 (recommended 2 to 3).
Retire Early = 2/3 of 'Vehicle Life'.

Lets assume a vehicle life of 25 years (a reasonable time); then :

Model Life = 2.5 x 25 + 25 + 6 = 93 years
Vehicle Life = 25 years
Retire Early = 16 years

This keeps vehicles reasonably healthy over their lifetime. The above sample keeps it on the purchase list for about 60+ years. You can disregard the 'Reliability Decay' (leave as default = 20), it is included in the above calculations.

-or-

... work backwards from 'Years available for Purchase'.

There is of course a lot of randomness present due to game mechanics.

[kamnet]

It looks like I need to go back through our specs and evaluate what the model life and vehicle life should be. For a lot of this stuff, the vehicles were only built for a few years, but were maintained for a long period of time. For gameplay purposes, though, we probably need to have it set so that you can purchase them for a few times and ensure that when it's time to retire them that there's a replacement model available.

[kamnet]

Here's a breakdown of what is and is not yet coded into Cargo Trams. Vehicles marked with an asterisk indicate they will be available through the entire game.

Paris L'Arpajonnais - Intro date should be 1894 instead of 1881.
Wantage Freight Tram
Dublin Guinness 0-4-0 Tram
Portsmouth Tanker Tram
Zutphen Vriijland Steam Tram
Cincinnati Kuhlman Freight Motor
Manchester Parcels Tram
Frazer Island Logging Tram
Oradea Freight Service Tram
* Bochum Tanker Tram
Kiso Logging Tram
Prague Střešovice Cargo Tram
Budapest MUKI Wagon
The Hague 2310
Melbourne Class V Freight Car
Buenos Aires Interurban Freight Car
Melbourne Class U Freight Car
Kaliningrad Tatra T4 Tanker Tram
Lohberg RD-60HST Mining Tram
* Dresden CarGoTram
* Amsterdam CityCargo 9G

Not coded
Hellingly Whiteley Tram
Kislovodsk Tram
New York Bulk Freight Car
Montreal Express Freight Motor
Manx Box Motor Car
Oslo Type S Cargo Tram
* Philadelphia Freight Trolley
Esch-sur-Alzette AEG U28 Mining Tram
* St. Gallen Xe 2/2 Tanker Tram
Alexandra Timber Tram
* Bernburg Mine Lew EL 3
Odessa MTV-82 Freight Tram - missing graphics
* Zürich Cargotram
* Vienna GüterBim

Once everything is coded, we should have a good set of vehicles where just about every type of cargo can be transported in either an open wagon, flatbed, tanker or boxcar by 1903. I'm looking over stats and everything appears to be OK, except that the Paris tram should not be introduced until 1894 to be historically accurate... but as pointed out by MagicBuzz, it's the only vehicle available that can transport everything but liquid, so for now I'm willing to leave it as-is unless we find a vehicle with an earlier start date that can move it all.

I'm also looking on some feedback. How do you feel about dropping the city names from the vehicles? In some cases (mostly early years) the city name may still be there because the municipality built their own vehicle, but in later years it was more common to have a manufacturer build the same train for many municipalities.

[LaChupacabra]

I'm also looking on some feedback. How do you feel about dropping the city names from the vehicles? In some cases (mostly early years) the city name may still be there because the municipality built their own vehicle, but in later years it was more common to have a manufacturer build the same train for many municipalities.

I'm not sure, but I think if the model is used in different cities it would be better to use the trade name of the model. The change could also apply to the flag when the model is used in many countries. For example, I will give Cluj Pesa 120Na. When I saw this model for the first time in the set, I was very surprised by both the name and the country of origin. It is a Pesa Swing and 80% of these trams run in Poland. 180 in Warsaw, and only 4 in Cluj, Romania. Maybe in the case of models used in many countries, it would be better to display the flag of the country of the manufacturer or the country where it is most often found? The problem is that most trams are probably used in many countries. There is also the issue of painting. Since each tram is assigned to the specific city, it should also have the appropriate characteristic painting, not 2CC. Well, this two concepts don't really fit together. So maybe it would actually be better to remove these cities from the names, but include them in the model info? On the other hand, these cities in names are a bit more interesting than "dry" model names... I really don't know which is better.

But this what would definitely be better, is the sound of trams instead of a splash. This can spoil the fun of the game if someone is playing with the sounds turned on. Please think about it.

Something that could be very useful are the settings for the price and the maintenance cost multiplier, similar to the 2cc Bus Set.

[Voyager One]

Hello people! A few considerations from me about the latest discussion...

The 2cc coloring has nothing to do with real life city liveries, it is because of matching this set with other 2cc sets (trains, buses, etc.)

Regarding city names, the main purpose was to "assigning" a tram to a specific country and therefore a region, as we have i.e. in the 2cc traibset which allows turning on/off of one one more regions. I am fully aware that i.e. the Pesa tram is more common in Poland than in Romania but in this occasion it was necessary to fill the niche of the Romania's region as the Poland's region has another tram as the equivalent.

That being said, I have absolutely no objection about changes in names or even in coloring (meaning somebody redrawing sprites) but keep in consideration that someone will be also required to recode all this stuff.

Cheers!

P.S. written from a cellphone so I apologize for possible grammar and spelling errors.