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I decided to start another game and add in a few newer GRFs. Prior to doing so, I had a quick look at the 'non-English' Railsets, and I was very surprised to find that by using the Serbian Set, I can generate a new game staring at 1901, and have the MAVAG126 & wagons which will load the ECS cargos.

I had believed it to be "not possible" given comments on the forums a year or so ago, but I did read the 'Early Engines Set' thread, where it was suggested that the first Serbian loco was available in 1873 not 1901; but that short thread went silent in June 2007. Should the 1873 start still be possible?

If the start can go back to 0, an early 19th century starting date (1829 or whatever), should be reasonable - which would eventually allow the substitution of the later fantasy engines with 19th Century ones.

On a related tack, is there a reason why locos are released as 'sets' as opposed to being individual 'loco-grfs'. Having individual GRFs for a new loco, would allow it as a replacement for a variety of existing engines, with seemingly very little extra workload .... presumably just changing the VehicleID ... so that we punters could have a choice as to what it replaces, - & if that ID was always at the same offset, would make it easier to hack...

((win9x-OpenTTD 6 Beta 2, ECS & various other GRFs, temperate))

to my knowledge can we start at year 0 (with the extended introduction format), and afaik is year 2044 the max introdate with that. however, the sets are there because there are a certain number of available ID's to replace. IIRC it's aprox 120 for trains+wagons. aprox 80 for RV's, 10 ships and 40 airplanes+heilcopers.

zhargon wrote:is there a reason why locos are released as 'sets' as opposed to being individual 'loco-grfs'.

Read the FAQ:
http://wiki.ttdpatch.net/tiki-index.php ... own_trains_

regards
Michael

Michael, you refer to:

A (train) vehicle set isn´t just a simple collection of single vehicles. Instead, it represents the historical development of a specific region, a country or a single railway company. To do so, a set implements various interdependencies between its constituent locomotives and coaches/wagons (LiveryChanges, WagonOverride, ...) which requires to have all vehicles in one handy .grf file.

Of course that effectively explains why there are sets, but it also supposes that there is a requirement for 'many' livery changes, or that all engines should suddenly change. It also implies that all rolling stock has the same livery when pulled by a company engine - of course in real life this is not so. ((I haven't looked at the implications of WagonOverride))

It does answer the question posed, but perhaps I should have put it as a plea, rather than as a question; to elucidate.

The 'Railway' colours I remember when young in England were mainly black & green, with brown & yellow & maroon. Living in France I dimly remember yellow & light green, (though I remember the wooden seats more), & then Blue Electrics in Switzerland or Austria(?).

When playing OTTD, I'd like a mix of trains from different areas eg local GWR, provincial French, Mainline GWR, LMS, SNCF, Deltics & Flying Scots ((maybe one day)) - but using different engines & liveries from other times & countries as well, particularly for freight, which is most trains. It would be interesting & add variety (& be easier to keep track of, despite the excellent 'groups'). Because of the emphasis on Sets, it is very difficult to have a loco mix unless there happen to be gaps, which would allow some earlier locos through.

For example, for my next game I will be using the following combination:
newgrf/pb_ukrs.grf
newgrf/SerbStdSet.grf
newgrf/DTsetPRw.GRF
newgrf/ukrsap1w.grf

which means I can start in 1901, & use 6 English, 4 Dutch but predominantly Serbian engines up to 1980 when I'm likely to stop. Any 'odd' engine grfs can be added to the mix, provided that they are early enough for my taste, and existed. Thus a plea that some engines and wagons be released as seperate entities.
If all engines were released only in sets, such variety would disappear, as there would be no 'gaps' to allow such a mix.

- Of course, any engine & stock from the late 1830s would be welcome, whether in a set or not.

zhargon wrote:Thus a plea that some engines and wagons be released as seperate entities.

Problem here is "what ID would such a seperate entity use". Probably all seperate entities end up using the same ID (because the ID determines what vehicle gets replaced from another set, and you'd only want to replace the least-used engines).

Apart from that, there are not much artist who draw 'just one' vehicle. Most of the time, more vehicles are drawn, which end up in a set...

You are really in the need of the function that allows more vehicle sets to be active at the same time, which would allow you to use all vehicles from all active sets at the same time. There is/has been some discussion about such a feature, but I don't what the status is right now.

you could set the id in a parameter... i would like single vehicle grfs very much... another thing that i suggested in the channel once was a web database where all the single vehicles are listed, you can select the ones you want and it combines them to one grf.

You are really in the need of the function that allows more vehicle sets to be active at the same time, which would allow you to use all vehicles from all active sets at the same time. There is/has been some discussion about such a feature, but I don't what the status is right now.

Which would take on board Michael's point about sets maintaining the rolling stock livery, but speaking from ignorance, presumably you would not be able to do so at the 'run' time of OTTD because OTTD will only retain the last iteration of a specific Vehicle ID. (things overwrite).

This begs the question of the significance of Vehicle IDs in the GRF file ie are they only used for the one purpose, or are they used as a key by other elements/ actions.
- It looks like an Action 3 - "Livery Override", denotes wagon livery driven from the engine, - so possibly an existing Set could have all Vehicle IDs set to null/0/255 or whatever, and then have appropriate ID's inserted for those engines required to overwrite. - which would be fine for 'local' use, and require just a little administration to set up or maintain.
Surely if it was that easy, someone would have made a tool to do just that already, after all it is only a bit of data manipulation, not graphics??

Edit: Then noticed I'd used GRFID rather than Vehicle ID

zhargon wrote: Of course that effectively explains why there are sets, but it also supposes that there is a requirement for 'many' livery changes, or that all engines should suddenly change. It also implies that all rolling stock has the same livery when pulled by a company engine - of course in real life this is not so. [...]

That´s not the case, at least not in my train set .grfs. Here, every vehicle just gets the correct number of livery changes, few or many, but there´s no reason "that all engines [...] suddenly change [livery]". "Livery" is bound to the point in time when a vehicle is bought and is kept like this until the player decides to sell or repaint it. Which implies that o/c not "all rolling stock has the same livery when pulled by a company engine". In fact, those different liveries (in the DB set) mix quite realistically and are independent from the consist´s engine.

Likewise, "wagon override" acts quite different from what you think. I.e., this is only used if a train should be kept in one special livery, say the "TEE" livery. In this case, every suitable coach added to such a train changes its livery to TEE as well, but returns to its original livery when removed from that train (at a later time).

There´s more functionality with this concept, however.

Gonozal_VIII wrote: i would like single vehicle grfs very much

There´s absolutely no use in "single vehicle grfs", neither for the maintainer of those .grfs nor for the user.

regards
Michael

FooBar wrote: You are really in the need of the function that allows more vehicle sets to be active at the same time, which would allow you to use all vehicles from all active sets at the same time. There is/has been some discussion about such a feature, but I don't what the status is right now.

There is such a patch existing.. You should join IRC and ask peter_(the dev ) for that because I have lost the link.. It allows to have very many sets at the same time.. I haven't compiled it myself but I've seen sreenshots.

michael blunck wrote:There´s absolutely no use in "single vehicle grfs", neither for the maintainer of those .grfs nor for the user.

well... just yesterday i tried to extract the transrapid from your grf because i wanted to use only that (and on monorail tracks that i replaced with transrapid track) but not the rest of the set (not because it's bad!) p.s.: i failed terribly at that task.

zhargon wrote:I had believed it to be "not possible" given comments on the forums a year or so ago, but I did read the 'Early Engines Set' thread, where it was suggested that the first Serbian loco was available in 1873 not 1901; but that short thread went silent in June 2007. Should the 1873 start still be possible?

Only to answer that question for now, first Serbian loco is indeed available in 1873; but this is Narrow gauge loco. If I saw right, you are using Standard gauge part of set only; to have real historical impression of Serbian railways history, use both parts, and you'll start in 1873 with one weak locomotive, and later you'll have stronger Narrow gauge locomotives, and in 1901, first strong Standard gauge loco (see Tracking table for details). For all other questions you can poke me on, for example, MSN.
Of course, you can allways make "single-loco-grf" for your own use.

Yes, I was only using the standard - so now with the srsngw.grf dated 28/10/2007, tacked to the bottom of the config file, I have the NG working at 10mph.

Seems a little odd though - I'm not sure what I'v done ....

zhargon wrote:Seems a little odd though - I'm not sure what I'v done ....

Ah, the wonders of mixing sets...

As lordazamath suggested, this may well be possible at some point. Possibly a few too many in this particular case, mind you:

zhargon wrote:Yes, I was only using the standard - so now with the srsngw.grf dated 28/10/2007, tacked to the bottom of the config file, I have the NG working at 10mph.

Seems a little odd though - I'm not sure what I'v done ....

Obviously some other set overrode some properties, use peter's solution.
And yes, first loco ("RAMA") is really weak, but don't forget, it's 19th century, wait until stronger locomotives appear...

And Peter, you're missing ngrailsw.grf for make NG set to work correctly.