Ideas - Even the smallest helps. Be reasonable...

[Chris 'Awkward' McKenna]

I understand now, however I don't think any company would chop down loads of trees for a profit one year, and then have to wait 20 years for the next profit.

What happens in real life, as far as I understand it, is that the whole forrest is managed by one authoirty or company on a cycle of x years, where x is about 1-2 years longer than an average tree takes to grow (to allow for poor growing seasons, etc).
If we take x to be 20 years, then they will split the forrest into 20 sectors (A - T). they will chop down the trees in setcor A in year 1, and replant it. in year 2 they will do the same in sector B, in year 3 sector C.... and so to sector T in year 20. In year 21 sector A will have regrown, so the cycle starts again.

Chris

[Alltaken]

rates should be divided amongest the owners of the airport, the city council can also add to an existing players airport. (airports should not be controled as to location by the player, they should be controled by the local aurthority as they service the entire city, also the first time building of the first airport in the city should have a few options as to location after that its final.

I am not certain what you mean here, could you rephrase it slightly?

ok say player 1 builts the initial airport runway and first terminal building.

then player 2 added to this with another runway and a terminal

then the local authority added to it with 2 more runways and a terminal and radar system.

then the local authority gets 50% of the landing rate, the player each get 25% based on the percent of funding and maintainence they put into the airport

oh one other thing is you can offer to buy certain routes/ services off competitors, say a competitor builds a railroad from sawmill A- forest B and its in direct competition or you just want it, (but don't want shares in the company) then you can select all the things you want to buy and they tell you a price, the price being dependant on the profitability of the service, as well as the value of building it from scratch.

good idea, but you should also have the right to refuse to negotiate (i.e. you are not willing to sell at all).

definatly thats another option, couldn't be without it LOL

this would also be true for the buildings in an airport being able to buy/sell (which cost maintanence )

do you mean buy/sell landing slots from/to competitors?

no i mean same as last time, say i have a train route between a sawmill and a forest, i can put it on the market for another player to buy. they decide if its worth it or profitable, or if the assets are gonna be worth it and choose to buy it. like buying a competitors route but selling your own.

but also in an airport, as above you could offer to buy the 25% share in an airport that a competitor has.

oh and you can put things you dn't want anymore on the market to sell, as can competitors, and these will go for more than the asset value but less than the replacement value.

Do you mean that if you have finished with an engine that you can put it up for sale rather than trash it?
This might already be covered but I'm not certain.

also i do like the idea of not trashing engines, but relocating (for a fee) or putting them for sale to competitors. but if i have a non profitable track and i want to get rid of it but i am buildign a new track somewhere else, there should be a universal depot area where you transport any train to if you wish. and can have it appear in any other depot for a small loss. (less than selling then buying a new one)



to further talk about the airport idea.

first thing is, LOCATION DOESN'T MATTER. if the airport is considered as having a catchment area the size of a city, the location doesn't need to be that close to the buildings, it can be a long away (as in real life they often are out of the city)


this means there are new options, basicly the competitor has no advantage in location of it. so the local authority may as well choose a location or offer locations that are acceptable to it.

secondly user expandable features don't need to be placed in strategic locations either. so a click menu with the options.

BUILD
"build another terminal" (increases max number of planes)
"build extra runway" (increases simultaneous planes landing)
"build heliport" (more helicopters can be stationed, these would be used before plane slots if helicopters were landing, if no HP's available they would jsut take up a plane spot)

UPGRADE
"upgrade control tower" (decreases landing distance between planes)
"upgrade existing runway" (upgrades a single runway from sub sonic- super sonic/large planes)
"upgrade terminal (upgrades old terminal that unloads large planes slow to one with walkways for fast plane unloading times)


the player simply has tick boxes to tell it what to do. they don't choose the new location of the terminals or anything they just buy a new terminal.

the shares of an airport are done in the "share system" that is well known in TTD, as in each upgrade/ adition has a value. this is converted into a percentage of the total share of the airport. it can be sold (if you don't want it, and want some money back fast) or bought (if you want percentages of landing tax's)


i hope that makes sence and clarifys things.

basicly i am saying make the airports more random, and unique. each airport will have different restrictions on max size, they will remain functional while upgrading rather than large/small replacement.

there should be multiple graphics options for terminals and runways etc... and they are randomised like how a city is built. also airports only expand as far as their surroundings will let them, e.g. the city expands around an airport and the airport cannot expand any more if the buildings around it are not demolished by the local authority (the local authority will dictate in this case how big the airport should be based on the size of the city, it could comission a new airport further out if it wanted and bust the old one)


anyway thats my idea.

Alltaken

[Alltaken]

oh and BTW, a render export would be Sooooooo nice.

takes a 3d model snapshot of the screen.

compiles it into only the 3d models that are visable and exports it to .BLEND as a 3d file which can then be rendered in Blender, or edited first (like shaders and such if so needed) and rendered.

like a screenshot but so much nicer


perhaps there are low poly models for in the game and nicer higher polys for rendering and the extra pack can be downlaoded which the game exports high poly models if available.

this is coming from a graphics artist so imgnore if wanted

Alltaken

[Chris 'Awkward' McKenna]

I am part-way through completely revamping the ideas compendium.
Please could you have a look at the new version at http://www.sucs.org/~cmckenna/transport ... index.html and tell me whether the colour scheme works or not.

Not all of the links work yet, as it is still a work in progress, but I hope to have it live either later today or tomorrow.

Chris

[Alltaken]

the red rollover colour works well, but i don't think the yellow is as readable as it needs to be.

the background colour is fine, perhaps a dark blue instead of the yellow.


Alltaken

[Chris 'Awkward' McKenna]

dark blue doesn't work on low-grade monitors.
Lime has a nice contrast but I don't want it to be too garish.

look at http://www.w3schools.com/html/ref_color ... hex=8199fc
note that all those words are bold and plain doens't always work so well.

Chris

[Alltaken]

800080 128,0,128 Purple

FFFFFF 255,255,255 White

000080 0,0,128 Navy

8B0000 139,0,0 DarkRed

696969 105,105,105 DimGray


these are the colours most visable on my computer monitor.

however i have a new screen, and its been adjusted to ICC printing standars (so i can do PS work and print it as what i see on screen, without using a colour profile )

but those colours seem ok to me on my screen.

i can try them on another computer.

Alltaken

[Chris 'Awkward' McKenna]

Purple is already in use for comments
white looks too garish to me, but I'll try again as I thought of it for comments not links.
Navy doesn't work on poor monitors particularly well
darkred is too similar to the firebrickred I use for visited links
I'll have a look at dimgrey

Chris

[Alltaken]

you are using CSS i presume??

how about you switch the yellow and red around, or make white only a hover colour for hovering on links.

on my site (which is on a black background)

i used white links, with red hover. (your background probably won't be the same for that)

it just meant that if white wasn't easily readble on someones screen the red should be.

i dunno maybe having navy blue as the hover colour, so on old monitors the yellow is readable, and on others the blue is readable.

the red thats thre so far is great.

Alltaken

[Chris 'Awkward' McKenna]

no I'm not using CSS. If you look at the source you'll see that asside form the basic style definition at the start its all done using bog standard html.

I dislike links that change colour when you hover over them, so I will not be inlcuding that on the page.

I've had other peopel comment that the yellow is fine for them, is it unreadable for you or you just not like it?

I'll not be swapping the red and yellow either, as imho visited links should be darker than unvisited ones. I know from experience of one of Channel 4's forums that having it the other way around confuses a good deal of people.

Chris

[Alltaken]

i worked it out.

its not the colour its the "SATURATION"

you have photoshop or somthing???

the thing is the background blue is the exact same saturation as the yellow. e.g. if you convert the file into a grey scale image it will be a solid colour rather than two colours.

text on my monitor is smallish because of the resolution and it takes a while to focus on the colour difference.


perhaps the next shade darker (or lighter) of yellow, that will change the saturation of the colours.

i opened the page and for te first second my eye recognises it as a flat page untill i have time to look harder at which time i can see it fine.


also because my screen has been adjusted the red/green/blue levels are exactly equal (to my eye) if someones monitor was not adjusted (as 99.9% are not adjusted) it would make it easier to read.

so i guess that most people in reality won't have an issue, but that in theory they might (especially a colour blind person)

anyway i agree about clicked on links being darker, i hadn't thought about that.

good luck

Alltaken

[Alltaken]

ok here is an example (i did it for you)



i have desaturated an area of the page

i have not cut and paste any of it at all, the yellow text dissapearing is correct

the red stands out to me well because as you can see it still looks fine grey as does the black.

hope that helps (i will personally be checking all my future webpages for saturation now i have never thought of it myself before)


Alltaken

[Chris 'Awkward' McKenna]

thanks for that, its not something I'd come accross either.

I don't have photoshop, but I'm sure I can work somethign out with the GIMP (i'm sure it must be able to do it, I just don't know how), btu that will have to wait until my computer is working again.

Chris

[Alltaken]

yeah i did all that in the gimp

i have them both but frankly i use them both almost equally

anyway the examples there you don't really need to except to test the saturation.

in gimp its RMB-image-colours-desaturate (i think thats the menus)

cya round bro

Alltaken

[Arathorn]

Hello!
I, Arathorns lil sis, have just finished a graphic, and I thought it could be used for Transport Empire. If someone likes it anyway .
There only isn't a background yet. Still working on that.

[Alltaken]

you havea drawing tablet?? or was that all done witha mouse.

PS or GIMP???


Alltaken

[Arathorn]

She first made a drawing on paper with pencil, and then she scanned it and coloured it with photoshop.

[Lilman424]

Automatic naming of trains, or at least passenger trains.

For Example, say there was a train going from London to Paris.
You would have to set a three letter abbreviation for each passenger station, so London could be LON and Paris could be PAR.
so that train would be the "LON-PAR"
it'd be nice when a train was lost, or something, you could easily know where it should be.

[Chris 'Awkward' McKenna]

I like that idea - its how I usually name my trains, if I can be botherd as the name is lost when you upgrade/renew the train.

I will update the ideas website, but I'm having trouble getting online atm - its my first time since Wednesday now.

Chris

[epistax]

It was too long to read through this whole thing, and I know for a fact this suggestion is already in there, but I think it's important: Multiple grade slopes. It shouldn't be the most complicated thing to change, but would have wide spread effects. Specifically right now you can only have a slope of 1:1-- one move in the x/y for one move in the z. I think we should half and double that. One move in the X/Y can also be one half move in the Z, or two moves in the Z. This let's us keep the basic concept.

Some things that could be done with this includes disallowing a road or track to go two squares in a row against a high vertical grade (impossible climb) forcing roads and tracks to spiral up or blast to get past a mountain. Going perpendicular to a light slope should be relatively cheap while against a medium slope would be far more expensive.