Graphics

[Born Acorn]

Will they be improved? I like the look of it now, but I'd like to see lighting effects and/or more colours added

[Hajo]

Will they be improved? I like the look of it now, but I'd like to see lighting effects and/or more colours added

The painters work on a all-new image set with larger, more detailed images. We call it the 128x128 set, because of the new tile size of 128x128 pixels (the old set had a tile size of 64x64, similar to TTD).

The current image set got some minor upgrades lately, but because of the upcoming new set, the old 64x64 set will go out of maintence at some point.

Simutrans' graphics engine uses a 16 bit high-color visual, that means 65536 possible colors. Most images only use a fraction of those, so there is room for improvements. I think the new 128x128 image set makes better use of the capabilities of the graphics engine.

Lighting is and will be very limited in Simutrans. All we can do is to let some colors 'glow' during nights, i.e. to make windows lit and such. It allows some nice effect, but it will be very limited.

AFAIK most players don't use the day&night mode at all, so I didn't put emphasis on this feature so far.

[Born Acorn]

nice

I prefer the TTD graphics right now but I will love it when the grpahics are updated.

[Hajo]

Edit:

A mystery: I answered a question when powerlines will be introduced, but now the message with the question is gone, but my answer is here?!

I'll leave the answer here, just wanted to say that I'm confused to have answered a message that seems not to exist ...

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The powerlines should work mostly. Except for the images (uphill/downhill, crossings with rails, roads and some more) and the fact that they do not yet increase productivity of factories and growth of towns. But so far basic transport of power should work, and you should get paid if you supply industries with electrical power.

I can't really tell when they will be done 100%. The last weeks I was mostly fixing bugs and working on extension requests that had been rated 'urgent'. If more serious bugs get reported, the powerlines will have to wait again.

This is my progress log since end of August:

19-Oct-03
FIX: good 'None' no longer shown in goods statistics
NEW: Included updated czech translation by Ondrej Machulda
NEW: improved two more building images

18-0ct-03
FIX: factories that don't produce anything now again
consume input (got broken during of the changes
for multiple products)
FIX: plastics ship is available again (seems it was lost
since the change to the pak file based configuration)
CHANGE: updated keyboard help

16-Oct-03
NEW: statistics window, so far only displays transport fees
and speed bonus for goods. (Press 'G' to open)
NEW: speed bonus for fast transport of certain goods (see
goods statistics window for details);

15-Oct-03
NEW: new locomotives: MJHN Deltic, MJHN Avocet, Light Br 5-7
CHANGE: improved window resizing

14-Oct-03
NEW: new city building
new vehicle: Colin Motor Bus
NEW: relief map is no draggable with right mouse button

13-Oct-03
CHANGE: improved a few building images
CHANGE: included a new residental city building

12-Oct-03
NEW: new factory: Pharmaceuticals
new shop: Chemist
new good: Chemicals
new good: Medicine
CHANGE: further changes to factory code to distribute
multiple products properly to all destinations
CHANGE: adjusted income for some goods

11-Oct-03
NEW: researched how to version nodes in pak files. First
tests implemented for factory pak files
NEW: prepared factory code to support multiple products
per factory
NEW: new good: printers ink (produced by refinery)
CHANGE: removed umlauts from pak file names -> this means
old games cannot be continued because the names
of factories and goods do no longer match

10-Oct-03
NEW: convoi info window now displays current destination
FIX: buttons now ignore window resize events (made them
flicker between pressed and unpressed state)
CHANGE: improved a few building images
CHANGE: included a new industrial city building
CHANGE: reordered a few building images

09-Oct-03
CHANGE: implemented the faster movement code for private
cars, too.
CHANGE: lowered coal consumption of the power plants
NEW: included better power plant image
CHANGE: improved a few building images
CHANGE: reordered a few building images

08-Oct-03
FIX: got a saved game with stuck vehicles. Changed vehicle
movement code so that vehicles can drive again.
-> side effect: new code is slightly faster than before
and saves 4 bytes of memory per convoi
CHANGE: continued work on new powerlines
CHANGE: started to prepare better debugging support

03-Oct-03
CHANGE: continued work on new powerlines, fixed some bugs

17-Sep-03
FIX: ships can be started from depots again
FIX: maintenance costs lowered and moved to simuconf.tab
FIX: removed unneccesary waiting time for vehicles that
wait for XY% full but already reached XY%

16-Sep-03
CHANGE: continued work on new powerlines

14-Sep-03
CHANGE: included updated italian, portuguese and dutch
translations
CHANGE: added two more high level commercial buildings images
CHANGE: removed one low quality commercial building image
CHANGE: improved a few building images
CHANGE: changed configuration of some engines and waggons

11-Sep-03
CHANGE: improved AI station building ability
CHANGE: AI can now transport gasoline too - better said, it
can now transport any good except mail an passengers

09-Sep-03
CHANGE: changed configuration of some trucks and trailers
CHANGE: introduced new members of the tigress vehicles class

06-Sep-03
FIX: fixed a bug in heightfield loading code that sometimes
created lines of land at the right and bottom map borders
even if there was supposed to be sea there.
CHANGE: Some config files now get closed immediatley after
reading - former Simutrans versions kept them open
until the program ended.
CHANGE: Adapted weight, prices and running costs of some
waggons
CHANGE: Changed some english and german translations entries

04-Sep-03
FIX: Another fix to load saved games with convois without
vehicles but a schedule which are sometimes created by
Volkers new depot code.
CHANGE: risen height value range for heightfields from
from -5...1 to -14...10
CHANGE: changed city building code to keep up with high
growth factors. It was reported that the old code
had problems with factory above +4, the new code
should work well with higher factors, too

03-Sep-03
FIX: Fixed a type/range problem in getting heights from the
map datastructure. This bug caused various height-related
problems, including a crash if land was risen above 7

02-Sep-03
FIX: Fixed a bug in Volkers new depot code that allowed
to remove depots which had vehicles stored in them.

01-Sep-03
CHANGE: Waggons and trailers now have speed limits, too
NEW: High speed passenger and mail cars suitable for the
Tigress I engine

31-Aug-03
CHANGE: new maps now can have cities up to size 3300
(was 1000 before)

30-Aug-03
CHANGE: separated coordinate and cstring classes again (Volker
had tightly linked them) to get cleaner interfaces.