New version of TPPP released. See
this post for changes and download. I also uploaded a screenshot: Extra-large maps with smallmap zoom looks incredibly good.
Timmaex: Thank you. I hope you enjoy the patch pack.
SirXavius: There's a brief summary of every patch at the readme now, thanks for your suggestion. If something is not clear, please tell me and I'll try to specify a bit more. As I said, I check every patch that is published (and some old patches). About the subject of suggestions, dihedral got to the point of my introduction. I will read every suggestion and answer it, but since I know that is not very probable that I add patches I felt that the introduction was needed so people don't get their hopes too up. Of course I'm not trying to forbid suggestions: I'm just trying to not give anyone the impression that I will fulfill all of their patching needs.
2007Alain2007: I would prefer that every suggestion is posted here instead of by PM. I do keep track of the versions of every patch I use, I just don't post the versions, revisions, etc here. Assume that every patch included is on its last version, unless I note it specifically. Since I added a summary of each patch, I don't think that TPPP needs a user book. About the patches:
- Disable Random Closing and Opening of Industries: This patch was in my PP for some time. As the devs stated (and I suffered), that patch can't work correctly due to OpenTTD's economical model nature. The industries would just drop to production 0, and it was impossible to remove them or raise their production.
- Buy area of land: It can be used for blocking. Also, I don't buy land that much.
- Minimum distance: As some developer said, the distance between industries can and should be stated by GRF. Also, the way the patch is implemented is not very efficient: try to raise the distances a lot and you will see that map generation consume way more time looking for a suitable place for towns and / or industries.
- Maximum Subsidy Distance: As I stated in the patch's thread, in very big maps you get subsidies between towns / industries that are too far away. The probability of a subsidy should be decreased with its distance to make it playable. Since there was no interest, I forgot about that patch and went with other projects.
- Limited city size: I never had problems with city size.
- Tracking viewport: I would not use the tracking viewport at all: I'm too used to build without it and, even if helpful, I would just keep building as I have always done.
- The station build gui was a staple of my patch packs. But right now the GUI is undergoing big changes in trunk, so I'm not even trying to include patches that rely heavily on changes in GUI code. The same applies to the NewGRF GUI patch, and is already giving me problems with the Shade windows patch.
- Filter Sign List: Another staple of my PP's. Currently it doesn't work with trunk and the updates needed weren't trivial, so it will have to wait until the patch is updated.
- Improved breakdowns: As I said in the introduction, big patchs that change a lot of code are too hard to mantain into a patch pack. Things would get even more complicated with this patch since I already have patches that alter vehicle behaviour (not that they should affect the Improved breakdowns, but you never know).
- Exclusive news: I play with Buy town rights disabled.
- Waypoint whistle and Diesel smoke: I'm not a big fan of patches that just change the way the game looks, but I'll give their sources a look.
EDIT: The waypoint whistle code executes at the TrainController code. This means that, in games with a lot of trains, there would be *a lot* of checks for waypoint whistles each second. I'm not saying that the performance hit would be noticeable, when the TrainController already has a lot of checks, but it doesn't need more checks either. The Diesel smoke code is small and understandable, so I'm going to give it a try. Expect it in TPPP's next release.
- Timelapse: I never had the need to make movies. I'm sure that anyone with enough knowledge to make movies will not have problems downloading the diff and adding this patch to it.
- Longer history of finances: I only use the finance window to check my current status, I never had the need to look back. I think that the operating profit graph is enough for that.