Conditional signals

[toff]

Hi!

I've looked at the forums first pages and searched, but I couldn't find any topic on this issue...

I'm thinking of a feature that can shorten my train routes. In my game it is in many cases useless to go to a station to load goods when the train is already full.

So I came up with the idea of conditional signals. It works something like this: a train reaches this new kind of signal, here is checked if the current weight of the train is equal to the maximum weigth of the train. If so, take one route, else, take the other route.

But this doesn't work. The train does still want to go to the next order and doesn't care about its weight.

To solve this issue all what needs to be done is introducing conditional branches in de orderlist of the train. Then, depending on the weightcheck, the next station/waypoint is determened.

On the other hand is it equally useless to go to a station if the station doesn't have the goods the train wants. This is a little more complex, but can also be solved with conditional signals.

There are many more situations that can use this feature to do things more intelligent.

Good idea?

Greetz,
toff

[iNVERTED]

I don't see any point in this, why would you have trains load twice in a row before unloading?

[toff]

Because they are not full after the first load...

I don't let my trains waiting in a station until they are full. I let them load what is available and they go to other stations to do the same.
So you create loops, transporting huge amounts of goods and make lots of money.

[iNVERTED]

Well, that's rather inefficient.

[toff]

Mabye I should tell that I unload the goods and than load the goods again in the station that is the most far away from where the goods are going to. This way, all the goods come from the farest station, and are worth the most of money.

And with over 450 trains running I have a nice yearincome

If you don't unload in the last station, you are right, that's very inefficient!
Sorry, I assumed that was obvious.

Why I play this way: its a challange to design endstations with enough througput capacities. I have some stations where ALL the trains pass through. Nice to see
And the economical aspect of cource...

I'll see for some snapshots

[toff]

screenshots of the end stations

[Wolf01]

aaargh jpg ... my eyes ;_;

where is the problem? make trains full load or use shorter trains

[Bjarni]

I refuse to comment on jpg screenshots. Use the png screenshot function in the game. It works way better.

also use full load

[toff]

I know about full load and i use it, thats not the problem. I have a suggestion for a feature. And I'm wondering if developers are interested.

A orderlist of a train looks like this:
Goto 1st station (S1): load goods if there are any;
Goto 2nd station (S2): load goods if there are any;
Goto 3rd station (S3): load goods if there are any;
...
Goto last but one station (Sn): load goods if there are any;
Goto last station (Slast): unload goods, and load them back. This way all the goods are from this last station.
Goto deliverystation (S0) and collect money. The amount is calculated as if all the goods are from the last (most far away) station, so it is mutch more.
End of orderlist

unload -----------train is gradually filling or full------------>
S0-------->S1-------->S2-------->S3------....------->Sn------->Slast
|
|--------<----------long, but fast way back-----------<-------------|

Because the number of visited stations is high (~20) and of cource the number of trains is too, it comes to conjestions at the last stations.

So my idea is, if a train is full while visiting intermediate stations, it actually only needs to go to the last station and do the unload and load. It doesn't has to bother the rest of the intermediate stations.
But this can't be done with a fixed order list. Thats what my first post is about.

[Mr.Killer]

Hi,

I noticed two things, first, not everybody has the ability to convert to PNG, because not everybody is not as smart as you. So, stop naggin' about it. Second, i find it is usefuller to make a signal which works quit different than i experience in the latest tested OTTD. When a station has only two tracks, and two trains waiting to fill, it happens that a third train wants to pass at the crossing.Even with pre-signals trains tend to block crossings. The end result is that many trains get stuck from that point.
Ps. if you want to write your picture in PNG, go to Window's own PAINT. It has a various save-format mode.
Thank you

[DaleStan]

I noticed two things, first, not everybody has the ability to convert to PNG, because

OpenTTD isn't capable of saving .PNG images? Um... Which version of Open do you think people are using?

As for that image, set up a presignal block, and then don't let the train go to the depot before it visits the station. Problem solved.

[mike[F]]

I have a suggestion for a feature. And I'm wondering if developers are interested..

This sounds pretty much like a cheat, to be honest. You're asking to implement a feature which deliberately and specifically exploits a bug in the game's mechanics for calculating the value of a delivery.

[Wolf01]

I noticed two things, first, not everybody has the ability to convert to PNG, because

OpenTTD isn't capable of saving .PNG images? Um... Which version of Open do you think people are using?

As for that image, set up a presignal block, and then don't let the train go to the depot before it visits the station. Problem solved.

use presignals without changing the layout, depots have a entrance presignal inside

[Mr.Killer]

Wolf01 wrote: use presignals without changing the layout, depots have a entrance presignal inside

Duh! i can't know practically everything? How about a picture to support your suggestion? (In PNG-format please )
The pre-signals do not do their work properly, i tried several combinations, but every time it becomes rock solid... the trains i meant.

As in the first part, the 'print screen button' in game.... under the question mark, saves in ...BMP. So, i used my solution, Alt-Printscreen - MSPAINT - paste, change size, add text and an arrow, and save as... PNG... Does work as fast as from the game i think.

And at last for your info(tainment) i, we use 0.4.7 the latest tested version which is stable.

Thanks again...

[Mr.Killer]

Sorry Wolf01, i meant DaleStan who wrote

OpenTTD isn't capable of saving .PNG images? Um... Which version of Open do you think people are using?

As for that image, set up a presignal block, and then don't let the train go to the depot before it visits the station. Problem solved.

Well, i tried to answer, to the wrong guy, but i did answer...

Thanks again mates..

[iNVERTED]

There's an edit button for a reason.

By the way, OTTD used to have a PNG screenshot option. However, it seems to have been removed.

[Mr.Killer]

For some strange reason i reinstalled ottd again and now i can change save format....

Also a suggestion, when playing a network game i get always tears in my eyes. I can send gigabytes to the moon (if it would be usefull) but i can't play a stable game with two pc's standing next to each other on a 100 Mbit connection linked switch...
What's that? Playing UT2K4 for instance works rather fine, flashy images, neat graphics, 3d holy mozes maps, bi-linear lighting etc etc all works rather sweet and nice. Looking at a 2d 32 colors(?) no special graphic abilities kind of game and it runs like s***....
Now, don't quote me on this, but i think this was never properly good tuned. Still, i can't understand that others run a server and that works fine... Where is that manual that says "Hey you user! You made a mistake. Correct this and do that and it works."

I'm listening.... always....

[Graphite]

It still does... in the game-options menu you can set the screenshot format to PNG.

What's that? Playing UT2K4 for instance works rather fine, flashy images, neat graphics, 3d holy mozes maps, bi-linear lighting etc etc all works rather sweet and nice. Looking at a 2d 32 colors(?) no special graphic abilities kind of game and it runs like s***....

1. 3D games are popular and fast because graphics-hardware has focused solely on 3D for the past years. In fact, nowadays some videocards just about rival the CPU of your computer. So yes, 3D games probably have better performance nowadays since the videocard takes over about half of the game's workload.

2. OpenTTD does a lot more than draw pretty 2d graphics. It needs to perform path-finding for tons of trains, needs to update truckloads of tiles every second and many more things. UT2K4 on the other hand probably has fairly little of this. Path-finding in games like that is generally easier due to the relatively small mapsize and there's not that much that needs to be updated every second.

[Mr.Killer]

Graphite : It still does... in the game-options menu you can set the screenshot format to PNG

fixed, thanx.

inVERTED wrote: There's an edit button for a reason.

By the way, OTTD used to have a PNG screenshot option. However, it seems to have been removed.

Not quit true! sorry, but Graphite is right.
And why do people talk in riddles when they can talk straight at a person, Please inVERTED, do tell us more, or, i have no idea what you are talking about.

[Bjarni]

By the way, OTTD used to have a PNG screenshot option. However, it seems to have been removed.

no, but since it was added, the Makefile can detect the presence of libpng on the building system at compiletime and en/dis-able png support. If it fails to be detected, then make a bug report about it. If you just installed it later (or something like that), then edit Makefile.config and enable WITH_PNG (adding 1 after "=")
That should do it.