Transport Tycoon Forums

The track grade for railroadtracks is usually not very steep, only 2%-4%.
http://modeltrains.about.com/od/layoutc ... grades.htm
This is one reason why it's so difficult to play with landscape in games, even in 3D.
I wouldn't mind to play with a flat landscape similar to Industry Giant2, but it should be possible to build bridges and tunnels for road and railroad crossings.

Multiple height levels are imo always a nice feature, mainly because it allows building one kind of infrastructure bellow/above another and not only with bridges/tunnels. But I can see how this could be a problem to properly display in a straight top-down view game

Maybe an approach similar to Dwarf Fortress would work?

Instead of a realistic top-down view you always only see the one z-level you're currently building on. So instead of seeing the "top" of a mountain, you actually see inside and can comfortably build tunnels and whatnot (those "triangles" mark slopes). For z-levels below I'd properly cover them in some light "fog" effect or something. You wouldn't really need to worry about shading or anything and could use all terrain types on one z-level and (if this is desired) you could for example allow building one z-level "above" just as on the ground, with roads/rails automatically being 'converted' to bridges ...
As for transitions; well, maybe some predefined "slope up" "slope down" track pieces with a certain length or something.

Not sure how this would turn out in game like this, of course. Works fine for DFII, but then again this is a different type of game

robo wrote:The track grade for railroadtracks is usually not very steep, only 2%-4%.

I am currently planning track slopes of 1/6 (increase height by one block while moving over 6 tiles). This is still much too steep but will look much more realistic than transport tycoon slopes.

robo wrote:it should be possible to build bridges and tunnels for road and railroad crossings.

both will be possible.

Pyoro wrote:Instead of a realistic top-down view you always only see the one z-level you're currently building on. So instead of seeing the "top" of a mountain, you actually see inside and can comfortably build tunnels and whatnot (those "triangles" mark slopes). For z-levels below I'd properly cover them in some light "fog" effect or something.

a "just show z-level x" option will be implemented. levels below the selected z level will be drawn with a foggy effect.

since i want to code the 2d version like the isometric version i will change the terrain height logic. (currently the tile heights are saved; in future the tile corner heights are saved)

I changed the ground style. Now the borders are slopes:
(for zoomed out version see www.p1sim.org)

(larger version attached)

Nice mountains! The shallow water to deep water transition is a little abrupt though, I think the water would work really well if it became darker the deeper it was, as Loconoob suggested.

Looks greats Snow sort of reminds me of chalk stone mountains - but that's probably just me and not something to worry about. ^^

Hazzard wrote:The shallow water to deep water transition is a little abrupt though

This problem is known and being discussed [img=http://slick.javaunlimited.net/viewtopi ... 505d231362]here[/img].

Hazzard wrote:I think the water would work really well if it became darker the deeper it was, as Loconoob suggested.

Yeah. That would look cool. I will implement this height-dependend brightness feature for the water tiles.

Pyoro wrote:Snow sort of reminds me of chalk stone mountains

Good point. Here is a new suggestion for the snow level: (larger version attached)

dynamic shading of the height levels is something that costs performance. perhaps i just switch off the corner shadows of deep water and deepest water level like show in the picture.
(larger version attached)

... which brings us to a mini map view like this: (larger version attached)

The shallow water still looks out of place, perhaps use a brighter shade of the blue the rest of the sea is colored, and/or reduce the contrast between the different levels.

oberhümer wrote:The shallow water still looks out of place, perhaps use a brighter shade of the blue the rest of the sea is colored, and/or reduce the contrast between the different levels.

(larger version attached)

satisfied?

That's definitely better.

bringing us to this minimap view:
(larger version attached)

That's quite nice.

I added a less contrast shadow style for water tiles, since in reality its quite hard to see the underwater terrain. But I would like to view it since its quite helpful when building bridges and routing your ships.

Note: Bridge pillars can only be built on water tiles with a max depth of 1 block. Big ships need a depth of min. 2 blocks. Small ships need a depth of min. 1 block.
Click for full view

But you can always raise earth underwater (if your bank account lets you )?

LocoMH wrote:But you can always raise earth underwater (if your bank account lets you )?

Yes, you can. But its not the bank account that limits you. In P1SIM all terrain modifications are associated with construction vehicles that drive to the tile that has to be changed and start digging and moving earth masses. Thus you need to have a certain number of construction vehicles available at the moment. The more you send to the construction site, the faster the earth works go on.

Underwater digging is more complicated than normal earth-works: (image source: http://www.sterk-spezialtiefbau.de/leis ... ushub.html)

Looking at the picture it is easily understandable, that you can dig from 0 (beach) to -1 (shallow water) and from -1 to -2 (deep water). But you won't get deeper with this method. Fortunately in P1SIM there is no reason to dig deeper than -2 since the biggest ships are "happy" with -2