Wasteland [WIP] - 0.5.0 Released Sept 24, 2020!

[Taschi]

My image of a postapocalyptic wasteland doesn't really contain long-range, high-voltage power transmission - those kinds of networks are in some ways far more advanced than primitive railways. My personal image is more akin to some settlements having a power station that can directly provide electricity to the settlement and nowhere else, and everybody else using some beat-up generator fueled with s*** oil from a jerrycan, or some improvised-ish wind turbines (with the drawback of being susceptible to weather).

Incidentally, s*** oil is a lot easier to put in a truck or rail car than electricity is.

[andreasaspenberg]

i got an idea: why not rename some of the houses. makeshift, shack and self sustained is good but, instead of renewed, maybe you should call them restored.

[Andrew350]

My image of a postapocalyptic wasteland doesn't really contain long-range, high-voltage power transmission - those kinds of networks are in some ways far more advanced than primitive railways. My personal image is more akin to some settlements having a power station that can directly provide electricity to the settlement and nowhere else, and everybody else using some beat-up generator fueled with s*** oil from a jerrycan, or some improvised-ish wind turbines (with the drawback of being susceptible to weather).

Incidentally, s*** oil is a lot easier to put in a truck or rail car than electricity is.

In many ways I agree. But the idea is to eventually bring the modern "advanced" technology back and get the world back to what it was, so having a working electrical system isn't completely out-of-character here. Whether that happens too easily or too quickly may certainly be a valid concern, but you can also choose to simply ignore that aspect and keep towns as simple shack buildings without access to such modern amenities in order to keep the world in such a post-apocalyptic state forever. I'm always open to alternatives though

i got an idea: why not rename some of the houses. makeshift, shack and self sustained is good but, instead of renewed, maybe you should call them restored.

I'm not convinced that accomplishes anything. Calling them "renewed" buildings indeed may not be a very descriptive term, but all synonyms I could think of are equally vague, including your suggestion.

[BermudaTri]

Two early-AM thoughts occur to me:

1: The cables would be much more enjoyable if they were smaller, cheaper, and elevated at least to the point where they don't interrupt traffic. At the very least, they should be cheaper than the electric rail lines, right?
1.a: Alternatively, there are several modern industries that are dependent on massive amounts of cheap electricity (Copper and Steel refining, aluminum smelting, hydrogen production, arcweld shops, etc). It might be more fun to create industrial clusters around 1 power plant to reduce powerline costs than to wire 10 towns to a single power plant.

2: There's a lot of rocks/mines in this world already. As a bit of flavor, consider replacing "Mineral Mines" with coastal "Algae Scraper" industries that collect algae for chemical plants. You get a new cargo that's very time-sensitive, a bit of lore on why the oceans are unfishable/green and yucky, and a chemical source that raises awareness of phosphoric recycling and algae-muck-based fertilizers.

[andreasaspenberg]

the powerlines does not interupt trafic. buses and trucks drives right through them as if they had no been there. you should add mail to towns that have become self sustained. you could add it so that it arrives as towns grow. then you could try to find a way to remove wastelanders once the production of wastelanders stops. you should also add land based oil wells.

[Akell]

Hi. I found this awesome mod and even made scenario, but almost after a year i'm not sure if this project is still alive. Just want to be sure and even don't mind to help with drawing assets if needed, i have experience in that.

[Taschi]

OP's last comment in this thread was in June. That's not "almost a year".

[Fuerfrost]

*dog years

[andreasaspenberg]

the last update from the developer was right before the summer. i actually played through it once and got all cities up to self sustained. you can test it out if you want. i got tired of the mod after that but, i am still playing openttd. here is a few suggestions: mail= produced from self sustained cities. maybe a sewage reclamation plant and a sewage production from renewed and self-sustained houses. buildings that accepts wastelanders as workforce should also accept passengers and then produce tired passengers. land based oil production is also a good idea. maybe you should try to take it a step further and add a building that produces space ships and then use space ships for colonisation of other planets. you should add an oil refinery that can refine the oil. the refined oil can then run the powerplant.

[2TallTyler]

I've been doing a Wasteland playthrough and have some thoughts for minor ease-of-use improvements.

1. It's hard to tell how often/how many Wastelanders I need to deliver to mines. The industry window shows a stockpiled amount which never seems to increase. This can be hidden by setting the `cargo_subtype_display` callback to `CB_RESULT_IND_NO_TEXT_NO_AMOUNT`, but in my industry sets I've found this stockpile to be an easy way to show the player how much boost cargo to deliver. Check out my Lumberjack Industries NewGRF and look at the Farm, for example, to see how it handles Fertilizer with helptext and a clearly-visible stockpile amount.
2. It would be nice to show a conversion rate helptext for industries which aren't a 1:1 conversion, particularly the Food Lab. How many Seeds do I need per litre of Water, for example.
3. Once I've set up my distribution networks for Clean Food, Water, and Building Materials, it's almost too easy to grow towns since they don't care how much of each cargo is delivered. I can just provide a trickle with low-capacity road vehicles and never have to worry about producing enough cargo (while using some other cargo as a profit center, for example Water to a Food Lab). I understand that this is the limit of NewGRFs, but perhaps this is where a Game Script would come in handy to force the player to deliver enough of each cargo. Personally, I've just used Renewed Village Growth and PR'd my industry GRFs to add compatibility and the cargo amounts I think work best.

[andreasaspenberg]

some interesting ideas. i am just not sure if the developer is still around. last activity is october last year. i had to take it easy because of covid-19 and have as a result only focused on 2 forums, none of which is this one. i also stopped playing openttd for a while after getting tired of it. i will test future beta versions of this if they are released however.

[Andrew350]

Sorry for not responding earlier, I haven't been around much and I seem to not get notifications about replies to my topics any more

It's hard to tell how often/how many Wastelanders I need to deliver to mines. The industry window shows a stockpiled amount which never seems to increase. This can be hidden by setting the `cargo_subtype_display` callback to `CB_RESULT_IND_NO_TEXT_NO_AMOUNT`, but in my industry sets I've found this stockpile to be an easy way to show the player how much boost cargo to deliver. Check out my Lumberjack Industries NewGRF and look at the Farm, for example, to see how it handles Fertilizer with helptext and a clearly-visible stockpile amount.

Hmm, interesting bit about hiding the stockpile amount. I always wanted to do that but never saw the option how to achieve that. Was that just missing from the wiki before or is it a new NML feature?

Also, there is a bit of help text after that in the industry window which already explains the mechanic for getting the wastelander boost(s). Is the description not clear, or are you just saying a different format would work better?

It would be nice to show a conversion rate helptext for industries which aren't a 1:1 conversion, particularly the Food Lab. How many Seeds do I need per litre of Water, for example.

All cargoes are consumed in a 1:1 ratio relative to each other, e.g. you don't need more water compared to seeds, or coal compared to iron ore, etc. The output ratio is only dependent on how many of the required cargos are currently in the stockpile. Perhaps that could be stated more clearly within the help text to avoid any confusion, though I'm not immediately sure how to phrase that without being more confusing.

Once I've set up my distribution networks for Clean Food, Water, and Building Materials, it's almost too easy to grow towns since they don't care how much of each cargo is delivered. I can just provide a trickle with low-capacity road vehicles and never have to worry about producing enough cargo (while using some other cargo as a profit center, for example Water to a Food Lab). I understand that this is the limit of NewGRFs, but perhaps this is where a Game Script would come in handy to force the player to deliver enough of each cargo. Personally, I've just used Renewed Village Growth and PR'd my industry GRFs to add compatibility and the cargo amounts I think work best.

I agree a special GameScript would be interesting and it is something I'd like to do eventually, but for now it's kind of on the back burner. And as you say there are a few general GSs which can work well enough for extra challenge for now. I've played with the Think Globally, Act Locally GS before and it worked surprisingly well, although I think that may have been before this big overhaul, so no idea if that still holds true or not

[2TallTyler]

Hmm, interesting bit about hiding the stockpile amount. I always wanted to do that but never saw the option how to achieve that. Was that just missing from the wiki before or is it a new NML feature?

It was possible with NFO and there was a hack to do it in NML, but the NML feature was added relatively recently.

Also, there is a bit of help text after that in the industry window which already explains the mechanic for getting the wastelander boost(s). Is the description not clear, or are you just saying a different format would work better?

I think my confusion stems from not knowing how many Wastelanders are required, or how often they need to be delivered. In my industry sets Industries of the Caribbean and Lumberjack Industries, boost cargos are stockpiled and then used at a rate specified in the helptext:

fuel_boost.png (124.06 KiB) Viewed 12830 times

All cargoes are consumed in a 1:1 ratio relative to each other, e.g. you don't need more water compared to seeds, or coal compared to iron ore, etc. The output ratio is only dependent on how many of the required cargos are currently in the stockpile. Perhaps that could be stated more clearly within the help text to avoid any confusion, though I'm not immediately sure how to phrase that without being more confusing.

Perhaps some of my confusion stems from not knowing how many liquid units are equivalent to a weight or bag unit. If I have 78,000 litres of Chemicals, 55 bags of Seeds, and 103,000 litres of Water waiting, I had to look in NML cargo specs to remember that 1,000 volume units is equivalent to one weight or bag unit. In IOTC I used weight for all cargos including liquids to avoid this (and then got people complaining about how it's an unrealistic unit of measurement ).

I don't know what you mean about an "output ratio" so perhaps that needs explaining. I totally get help texts being hard to write, but in general I err toward providing information which may be confusing than providing no information at all and making the player guess at how something works.

I'll have to try Think Globally, Act Locally. Alternatively/additionally, if you feel like adding it to RVG, it's quite easy. Here's all that I needed to add my industry set.

[PikkaBird]

Perhaps some of my confusion stems from not knowing how many liquid units are equivalent to a weight or bag unit. If I have 78,000 litres of Chemicals, 55 bags of Seeds, and 103,000 litres of Water waiting, I had to look in NML cargo specs to remember that 1,000 volume units is equivalent to one weight or bag unit. In IOTC I used weight for all cargos including liquids to avoid this (and then got people complaining about how it's an unrealistic unit of measurement )

Americans, huh? 1,000 liters = 1 cubic meter = 1 ton (of water or similar density).

(Mind you, Chris Sawyer also got this wrong - in TTDX, 1 ton of water was only 100 liters!)

[Andrew350]

It was possible with NFO and there was a hack to do it in NML, but the NML feature was added relatively recently.

Oh good, I thought I was going crazy for a minute

I think my confusion stems from not knowing how many Wastelanders are required, or how often they need to be delivered. In my industry sets Industries of the Caribbean and Lumberjack Industries, boost cargos are stockpiled and then used at a rate specified in the helptext:

Hmm, I don't know. Stockpiling workers until they're needed might not be very popular with the locals or the labor unions

But joking aside, I can definitely understand that it would help to display the total amount of Wastelanders which have been delivered so far in order to gauge how many more might be needed to hit the threshold. I'd probably have to rework the way primary industries process Wastelanders in order for the stockpile amount to keep tracking the total amount over time rather than "processing" them immediately. Maybe doing some kind of trickery like I had to do with the offshore colony, where the displayed values and the internal values used for production are separated (that was a pain though ). Alternatively, I've also been told that the help text can change dynamically (as in: displaying values stored in memory), although I still haven't made a serious attempt to make that work, but that would probably help in this situation if I could just use a counter(s) to track recent deliveries. Either way, definitely something I will look into

Perhaps some of my confusion stems from not knowing how many liquid units are equivalent to a weight or bag unit. If I have 78,000 litres of Chemicals, 55 bags of Seeds, and 103,000 litres of Water waiting, I had to look in NML cargo specs to remember that 1,000 volume units is equivalent to one weight or bag unit.

Interesting, I had always made that connection, but perhaps that just comes from years of being familiar with it. It is irrelevant in this case anyway, since all cargoes are consumed at the same rate.

I don't know what you mean about an "output ratio" so perhaps that needs explaining.

Sorry, missing words there. Input to output ratio is what I meant to say

Americans, huh?

Hell yeah! Freedom units, brother!

[luk3Z]

From what I can see there is some progress here. Today I will test 0.7 a4 !
I'll not hesitate to share my opinions and suggestions soon (if there will be any).

[2TallTyler]

Irrelevant tangent here, but doesn’t the weight of a certain volume of liquid depend on the density? Don’t get me started on how dumb and frustrating our units of measurements are otherwise.

[Fuerfrost]

Completely irrelevant, but your dedication to proper mathematics is appreciated!

[Andrew350]

From what I can see there is some progress here. Today I will test 0.7 a4 !
I'll not hesitate to share my opinions and suggestions soon (if there will be any).

Woah there, progress is a big word I haven't even got a chance to open the files up yet!

Please do let me know what you think if you do give it a whirl, but make sure to use the latest version which is actually alpha 7

Irrelevant tangent here, but doesn’t the weight of a certain volume of liquid depend on the density?

Yes.

[luk3Z]

Wasteland best looking with Brixx grf in arctic climate: