Subways
Posted: 26 Feb 2009 22:24
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:
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:
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.
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
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:
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:
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.
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