"French Trains Set - freight rolling stock needs drawing

krtaylor · Post by **krtaylor** » 08 Dec 2005 02:25

I strongly recommend that both the Excel file with all the data, and also the website with current sprites, be brought up to date immediately, and kept that way. This has been an issue on previous sets, and solves a great deal of confusion. Coding and drawing are hard work, and nobody likes having to do it over because of a data glitch.

OzTrans · Post by **OzTrans** » 08 Dec 2005 03:27

DaleStan wrote:
OzTransLtd wrote:The [vehicle motion] counter only runs from 0 to 4095 and the low bit will not be picked accurately enough.
I'm assuming you meant s/bit/byte/, but where does it say that? I see "4096 motion units mean motion across one tile", but the wiki's pretty good about reporting meaningless bits, and the given format is "32-bit value", not "00000ccc".

First I did mean the lower 8 bits; then I did read that wiki again, my memory must haven been playing up a bit.

Nevertheless, I did do a lot of testing and because we need something that counts nicely 0-1-2-3-0-1-2-3 etc in a 4 frame sequence (assumeing that vehicle does not move too fast). The only thing I came up with was shift-num 08h and-mask 03h; that does it flawlessly. Anything else I tried always resulted in skipped sprites.

Snail wrote:Well, if 6 frames won't work, it means I'll have to add 2 more sprites to ...

You'll need a nice sequence of 0-1-2-3-4-5 and again; I would not want to make it to complicated, after all this is a sprite that gets executed countless times. I could try again, as that counter now seems to have a much higher value. Maybe a modolus-6 can do it, disregarding the low byte. I'll let you know.

jvassie · Post by **jvassie** » 08 Dec 2005 20:25

Thanks for all that info Snail,im sorry to perhaps sound slightly annoying here, i wish it wasnt so, but the way the graphics are snt readable by GRFMaker... Would it be possible to rejiggle them so there is a gap of 5 pixels between the edge of the picture and between all sprites, ive found that this way its readable and has wroked everytime with the swiss set.

As for the spreadsheet, ive never, ever seen anything so amazingly organised!

Cheers
James

DaleStan · Post by **DaleStan** » 08 Dec 2005 20:31

My general opinion is that it's the artist's job to draw the right sprites.

Once that's done, everything else: arranging the sprites correctly, cropping the sprites (if necessary), &c. is the coder's job.

Not that artists shouldn't attempt to provide the sprites in a sane order, but they shouldn't be expected to know, nor cater to, the idiosyncrasies of every single coding program, nor which coder uses which program(s).

Snail · Post by **Snail** » 08 Dec 2005 22:22

Jamesvassie wrote:im sorry to perhaps sound slightly annoying here, i wish it wasnt so, but the way the graphics are snt readable by GRFMaker

Of course, here are the new sprites. Hope they work.
If you like, I can adopt this standard for all my work from now on. The steamers need revisiting anyway, due to animation to be added.

This only slowed down the decapods' development

They're 1/4 done as of now, i.e. the horizontal views, so hold your breath a bit more. Hopefully it won't take that long. They historically shared some parts with other steamers that I've already drawn, so I think it's sensible to take those parts from some of my already drawn sprites (for instance the 150B's boiler was the same as the 231C's, so that part of the sprites will be the same). Don't worry anyway, they'll appear different in the game.

Jamesvassie wrote:As for the spreadsheet, ive never, ever seen anything so amazingly organised!

Ty!

Working on updating it. It'll contain the final steamers' scheme, hopefully it'll be ready in a few days or so.

krtaylor · Post by **krtaylor** » 08 Dec 2005 22:56

DaleStan wrote: Not that artists shouldn't attempt to provide the sprites in a sane order, but they shouldn't be expected to know, nor cater to, the idiosyncrasies of every single coding program, nor which coder uses which program(s).

Do different programs have different standards? All the sprites I've seen collected for my various sets, look very much the same - have the angles in the same order, small white border, etc. I figured there was basically one standard that everything followed, is that not so?

The Irish · Post by **The Irish** » 09 Dec 2005 09:39

Great stuff, guys...

I would like to welcome Jamesvassie and Comrade_Sanchez as our new coder team. Thanks for helping out, guys.

HT, If you don't mind, I would like to make some of the missing liveries on the CC72000. Can I use your sprites as a basis?

Snail, If I'm not mistaken, we still need the Fret, the blue and the Voyage liveries, correct?

Snail · Post by **Snail** » 09 Dec 2005 09:55

The Irish wrote:Snail, If I'm not mistaken, we still need the Fret, the blue and the Voyage liveries, correct?

Yup! You'll find some links to them a couple of pages ago, right below HT's sprites, and more on the spreadsheet (on the sheets "Electric&Diesel" and "Pix"; the data about electrics and diesels is still up to date).
Great to see you back to the drawing scene, man.

The Irish · Post by **The Irish** » 09 Dec 2005 10:28

Snail wrote:
The Irish wrote:Snail, If I'm not mistaken, we still need the Fret, the blue and the Voyage liveries, correct?
Yup! You'll find some links to them a couple of pages ago, right below HT's sprites, and more on the spreadsheet (on the sheets "Electric&Diesel" and "Pix"; the data about electrics and diesels is still up to date).

Great. I will check it out.

Snail wrote: Great to see you back to the drawing scene, man.

Don't count on that too much. I have a weekend in Prague coming up, the weather is freezing cold and rainy, So I might have some time on Sunday... Drawing is more or less the only "non business" thing I can do on my laptop.

I hope I will also find some time over the christmas period... We will see.

jvassie · Post by **jvassie** » 09 Dec 2005 17:50

Great to here about some more possible drawings here!

Snail, for some reason, which i dont know why, even with your new file, GRFMaker still wont accept it...

The Irish, would it be possible for you to post all your sprites here please?

Cheers
James

Snail · Post by **Snail** » 09 Dec 2005 18:32

Ok, why don't you post here one of the sprites you coded with GRFMaker for me to use as a template? I can try to reproduce that structure exactly (or, better, just copy and paste my sprites over yours).

jvassie · Post by **jvassie** » 09 Dec 2005 19:09

Ok that might work out better!

Here is one of mine: the Re 4/4 II liveries

Also, id be interested in drawing some of the coaches, would that be ok, i can get the liveries from the tracking table if thats ok...

James

DaleStan · Post by **DaleStan** » 09 Dec 2005 19:17

krtaylor wrote:Do different programs have different standards?

Yes.
grfcodec only requires that no sprite be higher than the previous sprite.[0] GRFMaker seem to have far more stringent requirements, which I've never cared enough to figure out or memorize.

[0] If you so desired, you could arrange the sprites so that there is no whitespace between them and grfcodec would still be happy.

Snail · Post by **Snail** » 09 Dec 2005 19:55

Alright, let's try with this 2CC2.
This engine is longer than your Re 4/4 II (it's 32 pixels long in the horizontal view), so I had to lengthen the horizontal sprites by 3 pixels each. I kept all the other measures intact, so that this .png file is actually 6 pixels larger than yours. For the rest, I just copied the sprites and put them over yours.

Only a thing, I remember DaleStan once told that the sprites should be put with the northbound one first, then clockwise. In your .png, though, you started with the southbound...
I put as DaleStan suggested, I can switch the order of the sprites if you prefer. Let me know if at least GRFMaker can read this thing.

Cheers

-EDIT- the red pixels on the bottom got screwed, here's the correct pic

jvassie · Post by **jvassie** » 09 Dec 2005 20:01

Snail, that works like a dream!

If theyre all like that, then we should be fine.

Anyhow, i decided id draw some coaches, so i did the Corail+ coaches, plus the end car, what do you think?

James

Snail · Post by **Snail** » 09 Dec 2005 20:37

Happy to hear that man!

I'll try and do the other engines, too, with this scheme. Might take a while though. I wanna get through with the 150 and 151's first.
Very nice Coraux! I like the colors, they're very accurate. We're gonna need those carriages, as HT only drew the old style. Here they are. I still didn't check yours out, but I'm posting HT's ones here, so you can have an idea of what's the style of our coaches. If you create wagons that go well with Teacup's ones, they'll surely be included in the set.

Back to my drawing (I'll be away for the weekend, so the decapods shall be halted until sunday evening!)

jvassie · Post by **jvassie** » 09 Dec 2005 21:21

They look amazing! I shall start on some other liveries right away!

James

Snail · Post by **Snail** » 09 Dec 2005 21:46

I think so too, HT's style is very, very professional. I didn't have a close look before, but it seem the Corail+ are already included in HT's Corail pack. However, some combinations are missing, such as the mixed 1st-2nd class carriage, or the bar carriage with yellow doors. Are you willing to do them? From what he told me, I think Teacup might agree to let you add those combinations.
Also, it seems we only have the Corail driving carriage, so the Corail+ is needed. A good shading is gonna be very important

Here I'm posting a zip of all the carriages we have now. You can easily find the list of the needed coaches in my .XLS file, so you'll be able to see what is left to do. As you can see, there's still lot of work to be done...

Thank you very much for your interest!

jvassie · Post by **jvassie** » 09 Dec 2005 21:52

Wow, i never realised that many had been done!

I shall get around to doing some more over thee weekend most likely.

Its nice to be able to help out with such a wonderfully organised set...

Cheers
James

Comrade_sanchez · Post by **Comrade_sanchez** » 09 Dec 2005 22:22

Ok this is my first post for this set

woo-hoo
So finding myself with a free evening i have started work coding for this set.
I'm feeling relativly comfortable using all the normal actions now and i have therefore managed to make a start on the diesels/electrics by doing the basic coding for the PO BB1280 and getting it in the game with the correct stats.
I've just some conflicting issues with the wagons to tidy up in / and then i'll be happy with her.
As set work is all relatively new to me (though i'm mostly upto date with all the issues in this set after spending this morning reading all of the pages)
do you mind if i chuck out some questions mainly to snail and james but anyone else is most welcome to advise.
Firstly would you prefer each engine i code to be as an individual .grf or all lumped together in one.
Secondly when it comes organisational things i.e allocation of a loco to a vehicle ID should we do that now or just leave it until we compile the teaser/completed set.
Also at snail the spreadsheet looks great unfortunatly i'm having to run it through MS works spreadsheet which has to delete all the formulas to run it, so there is certain info i'm not sure if i'm missing or not.
i.e certain TEs and all of the air drags. Is it possible i could get these in a table in word or in a spreadsheet without the calculating formulas. Don't worry if its too much of a hassle i can just ask here when i need them and i'm sure you can reference them easy enough for me.

Finally @ james if you haven't started work on them yet do you mind if i shotgun the BB61000 and 2BB2, i might be able to get them done this weekend.

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"French Trains Set - freight rolling stock needs drawing

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