Subways

[cmoiromain]

Hi all

I have often read people asking for metros/subways in TTD. I thought the best way to achieve this without a load of coding would be to replace trams with subways.

I had some thoughts on the matter, and had a go at drawing the graphics for the station and the rails. This is what I came up with:

rails.png (12.89 KiB) Viewed 6370 times

replace tram rails with simply a different colour for the white line in the middle of the road. Of cours, this would look weird on other than original road set, but compatibility can be brought in later. I used brown on there because it is rather discreet, but not totally invisible. Maybe on the brown dirt (when there is no road built) it would look strange, I have not tested that. This also lacks details when wanting to know where the rail turns etc... The ideal solution to this would be to enable the drawing of catenaries, so we know what we are doing, and the the player can make them transparent via a parameter of simply with the game GUI (in OpenTTD, I do not know if/how this could be done in TTD Patch). The parameter solution would IMO be better, because it would allow to still have catenaries for normal trains.

After the rails, I had a go at the station:

subway.png (7.84 KiB) Viewed 6370 times

For the colours, They would be drawn in company colour. Although I am not quite sure about the shadings, I found these looked pretty good. There again, I do not know how this would look on the dirt, but IIRC tarmac is always built when building a tram stop. Other stops would be needed for goods, but I have yet never heard of goods being transported by subway.

I had a few tries at building a depot, but it looked rather ugly. Here is the basic idea though, maybe some real artists can have a go at it.

depot.png (446 Bytes) Viewed 6368 times

Last thing, the vehicles. Either make them transparent (as someone did some time ago, for an eyecandy loco) but that would be a nightmare to use. Have them as a shadow would be pretty neat IMO, but I do not now if this is possible with the current system. I it can be done, then this is the way it should be done. Seeing the details of the train can be done with the train list GUI or in the depot.

I am no artist, so maybe if someone can come up with better graphics feel free to do so. As for the coding, I had a go at grf coding but never got the hang of it, I merely achieved replacing the sprite of a single train, but never made it to change the stats or the name. But I know some of you are interested in this idea, so if someone would be kind enough to code a test file so we could try it (have, say, one train to begin with) it would be really awesome.

I had a lot of fun with the suspended monorails by Zephyris, and I hope a similar transformation can be made possible with subways!

Have a good evening

Romain

[trainboy2004]

Concept: 10/10

[trainmaster611]

Yup, brilliant concept idea. Now we just have to implement it

Obviously, making this user friendly will be difficult. You can't really see the train, just an above ground indication that it is there. As far as I know, nobody has made a patch or anything that allows the ground to be transparent and thereby revealing underground structures. Since this idea really relies more on graphic cheating then actually creating an underground ROW, it would be tricky.

Food for thought -- perhaps you could have the ability to place a tunnel portal that allows transition from an underground subway state to a ground level track -- the tram tracks specifically.

Perhaps this might be better suited for installation in the OTTD project instead of just a graphics project?

[Purno]

If you use the tram system, subway trains will hold up road traffic...

Anyways, if you need graphics of subway trains, I drew a few for the 2ccSet (see sig).

[cmoiromain]

I am aware this is just a graphical cheat, but since coding a whole subway system would be a nightmare, I think at least at the moment it is the best we can do to simulate subways. I hadn't thought about the trams delaying the trafic though, but I don't think that is much of a problem since road vehicles are often few in a town. The idea of the indicator for showing the position of the trains if pretty good, in case drawing a kind of transparent/shadowish shape of the train is impossible.

I repeat that I am absolutely useless when it comes to grf coding, so if someone would be kind enough to have a go at it, I can provide some basic sprites needed, just tell me which ones are needed.

[Aphfaneire]

When road vehicle's pass or cross each other they loose their structure and can be driven through by other vehicle's. I don't think this is a coding thing, im not an expert, even a fault but if you could set it that the Subway/tram's were always not really there, then road vehicle's would not be slowed down by their presence.


I know this is a graphic cheat that is in essence the best way of doing this, but i subways, or at least modern one's are not directly under road's. You would also have to build tram tracks inside city blocks. For this you would need a non-road graphic of the Tram track's that would either feature a view of the train's or be shown as a series of vents.


I "try" and build subway's all the time. There's one map in particular that i try it in all the time.

Here is a save of that map and it's scenario:

[Leanden]

If you make the subway trains "transparent" to vehicles, it will mean the sub trains can drive through each other too, which is a problem.

[Railwaymodeler]

Ships and planes do it all the time in TTD-land.

Besides, wasn't there an old glitch in original TT or TTD where trains could drive through each other in regular tunnels too?

[Dave]

Ships and planes do it all the time in TTD-land.

Besides, wasn't there an old glitch in original TT or TTD where trains could drive through each other in regular tunnels too?

That's not the issue here though, because even though road vehicles TURN across each other, they will only overtake slower vehicles ahead of them, they can't just ghost through them.

[Leanden]

Ay, the subway trains would somehow have to occupy a different space to buses and trams, while still effectively using the same network. I like someones suggestion recently about treating movement similar to tunnels.

[rosa]

I search this subway grf´s

[Benny]

This is not a grf yet, but just some sprite examples.

[audigex]

I was just wondering about using helicopters... bear with me...

Heliports are just single tile stations - you could place them next to roads, and just make it look like some sort of station building. Helicopters move independantly of other vehicles and road layouts, and instead of a picture of a train, a designation could be used instead - a representation of where the "train" is rather than what it looks like.

Again, not perfect, but some of us like to use trams it would likely need some code changes, however. (Airports are very restrictive, for starters)

[Benny]

I was just wondering about using helicopters... bear with me...

Heliports are just single tile stations - you could place them next to roads, and just make it look like some sort of station building. Helicopters move independantly of other vehicles and road layouts, and instead of a picture of a train, a designation could be used instead - a representation of where the "train" is rather than what it looks like.

Again, not perfect, but some of us like to use trams it would likely need some code changes, however. (Airports are very restrictive, for starters)

There was a veeery buggy patch for underground tracks once, what about finishing that instead of making hacky solutions?

[audigex]

That would also be an option - but I thought the idea was to avoid LARGE amounts of coding. Helicopters would only require a change to the placement of heliports.

That isn't its problem though