Transport Tycoon Forums

WOW WOW WOW

i get back into my university (industrial design degree) so i don't come here for a few months.

and i come back to find that TTD has gone open source (well a similar one he he he)

I am in the Blender comunity, i use the GIMP, i use Open Office, and nearly every other open source thing you can imagine (except its all on windows LOL)

now the thing is GRAPHICS.

since i am a designer, and professional artist etc... i am definatly wanting to get into doing some graphics in my spare time.

the only thing that was stopping me with the old TTD grpahics was the lack of any real "freedom"

we had tiny squares with limited colours available to work with and basicly this turned me off.


now what i am proposing is a laying down of the foundation graphics sizes etc... for future use in the Open source version. thsi way both coders and artists can be heading towards the same goals.


Firstly these are my suggestions and my reasons for the suggestions

-----------Graphics/object file format------------------------

this should be either a TAR or ZIP file but with a renamed thing like .TTG(transport tycoon graphics) or somthing. within the file should be a numebr of files
firstly is the vehicle/object information this would probably be a txt file or something along the same lines (which can be human editable).

the second type of file would be a file telling the computer what the grpahics were for, another txt file or similar i guess, saying which frame is used for what event

the third type of file is the Graphics themselves, they would be labled 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9 or a1-a2-a3-b1-b2 whatever is decided. but basicly they are the different angles of the sprite, as well as the possibility for a different grpahics set for different companys, e.g. all files with A then a number are company 1. B with a number company 2 etc... then there should be a Graphic for an exploded version or somthing (basicly any number of grpahics for any number of reasons could be added and the configuration file would say what they did)




--------------graphics sizes and technical details---------

i would propose that every Graphic be "made" and designed in 1024x1024 size or multiples of that. if the game were designed robustly enough all grpahics sized less than that would be scaled up in resolution to the playing resolution, and all graphics larger would be scaled down (assuming they were in the 2x2 4x4 8x8 etc... format) so you could play a game with 32x32 tiles as well as highly detailed 1024x1024 tiles without needed to replace the old ones, this would mean new grpahics could be added without interuption

if the early game only runs on lowere resolution tiles then the graphics designer can always scale down in size from their 1024 ones, but it does save work rather than re-doing everything if you do it smaller to start with.

i also propose using a format with alpha, most likely TGA files or somthing that is lossless.









basicly i would hope that a zip file renamed to .TTG would include (somthing like this)


then i would hope the graphics configuration file would be somthing like this

basicly you could add as many graphics to the file as you would want. e.g. one for every degree the camera rotates. however the game engine at the time might only understand rotations of 45 degrees, so it would ignore the ones it didn't understand.

also things like "action one" would be looked for at places like a train station where its an understood thing in the gmae engine (to look for action one for example)

in this particular file example any file name with a 1 in it would be angle 000, any file with an "a" in it would be the Blue company (assuming the game had a blue company)

any file name with a "crash" in it would be a crashed one, you might have a single set of crash images, or might do one for every single colour/company it wouldn't matter the computer will work it out.



basicly the file format would need to be unbreakable and use a markup language like XML or somthing similar. it needs to be able to run on any older version of the game (e.g. you could have more or less info in it than was needed and it wouldn't complain it would deal with it)

and it needs to be unzipable, or untarable by anyone without any proprietry software. e.g. someone running the GIMP, and Gzip could sort out everything they needed.

the bigger the GFX i say the better, as future computers are only gonna get faster so 5000x8000 computer screens are not unimaginable, think of how much my 1920x1440 screen is larger than the 640x480 screen that TTD runs on.

i just think we need to sort it out before changing things in the code (since i know it will be changed)


Alltaken

You mean scaling down as in scaling down?? You know that means quality loss... (if I am understanding you correctly, that is)

@Alltaken: 1024x1024 is way to big! Don't forget that graphics need to be stored, and that takes space, much space in 1024x1024. And most computer monitors still have 1024x768, nearly nobody has a screen like your 1920x1440 screen. I'd suggest, if even, only a bit bigger graphics, double the size of the original or such. It's still a game, and not a graphic demonstration thingy ...

Ha ha ha. Time for 2048x1536 mode!

my monitor owns you all

Wath the hell do you need sutch a big monitor for?

(And my dads can do that too)

I don't need that big resolution, except when people post really HUGE images. I never knew my monitor was capable of that, and it's... 8 years old by now? LOL.

BobXP wrote:I don't need that big resolution, except when people post really HUGE images. I never knew my monitor was capable of that, and it's... 8 years old by now? LOL.

Join the club. My old monitor could handle 1600x1200, but I never set it to more than 1152x870. Othervise, the pixels became too small to see and I could not read filenames.

1024x1024 is BIG
But I think it is a good idea to enlarge the sprites, but only by a factor of 2 or 3. After alle, who uses 640x480 today

this should be either a TAR or ZIP file but with a renamed thing like .TTG(transport tycoon graphics) or somthing.

How about 7z? 7z is open source, and it offers very good compression, on par with - and even better than in most cases - RAR.

i would propose that every Graphic be "made" and designed in 1024x1024 size or multiples of that.

A single tile being full screen?

OK, we should allow for any tile size , but I don't think we should make the tiles this large right now.

i also propose using a format with alpha, most likely TGA files or somthing that is lossless.

I vote PNG.

and it needs to be unzipable, or untarable by anyone without any proprietry software.

Agreed. The program to unzip the 7z format I suggested is open source and freely available.

Heh, I'm running 800x600, BTW. 1024x768 is possible with my monitor, but it flickers too much - getting a new monitor is on my wish list.

as for file type .. for sure PNG ... much more can have alpha layer, transparency, no quality loss at all, smaller than other non-lossing quality types

...And can even be created in Paint

Latest versions of Paint support PNG? Heh, I still remember when Paint only supported bitmaps. It's too bad that's pretty much the only improvement made to Paint. It's still pretty much the same Paint that came with Windows 3.

Alltaken: I don't suppose we could see a sample of your work ?

CobraA1 wrote:Latest versions of Paint support PNG? Heh, I still remember when Paint only supported bitmaps.

Paint has never only supported bitmaps (assuming you mean the specific BMP format). It has supported RLE files for some time, and MSP files some time ago too (the Microsoft Paint format for Windows 2.0, which was different to the 1.0 format - Windows 2.0 included a converter for 1.0 files).

ok guys


PNG is a good choise, it was another format that i was thinking of and would be happy to use.

7z well i ave never heard of it, but whatever compression is used i don't mind as long as its non-proprietry. i thought of ZIP because Linux, Mac, and Windows all have native suport for ZIP files currently. but 7z would probably be fine, or even Black Hole or somthing.



as for Graphics sizes, the thing is this.

if i want to zoom in on a train if the train is say 48x48 pixels well it will look crap on the screen. if i zoom in on a train that is 1024x1024 then i can get it almost full screen, but i can zom out as much as i want.

however the size of graphics is not important, i mearly stated 1024x1024 because i can foresee the future monitors etc... using this sized graphics, and i like to work on all my projects at least 2x the end resolution.


but i agree the game should eb able to not care what size the graphics are, however they should be multiples of say 16

so 16x16, 32x32, 512x512, or even 32x64 sized graphics should be able to work.

for example if i have a train graphic that is 512x512, and the carridge graphic is 256x256 i could zoom in, but the train grpahic would just look nicer once zoomed in.


also within the file format it might be possible to have another tag in the image file names like.

a-high-1.PNG
a-low-1.PNG

or

a-512-1.PNG
a-64-1.PNG

either a quality based tag or a sized based tag.



but i am a fan of including perhaps the 1024x1024 images in the file wether the game uses them or not, (just so that people can alter them) perhaps in the future these resolutions will be suported who knows.

but i agree in early stages i think 512x512 graphics sizes in the game would be fine, (256 is the lowest i would ever go LOL)


PNG is a good format i am happy to have that used.

Alltaken: I don't suppose we could see a sample of your work ?

http://doug.mud-puddle.co.nz/gallery
http://www.mud-puddle.co.nz

some of my work, by all means not all of it.

BTW the bottom gallery in my galelry is not my work its other people, i let others use my webspace and stuff.

back to doing homework though

Alltaken

Zetor2003 wrote:Wath the hell do you need sutch a big monitor for?

(And my dads can do that too)

Hmmmmm well for one i work with some images that are about 15000 pixels wide by about 2000 high.

i have a single image that if printed at 300 DPI would be 3.5 meters long.

i still actually feel taht my monitor is not big enough.


Alltaken

7z well i ave never heard of it, but whatever compression is used i don't mind as long as its non-proprietry.

Not surprised. It's relatively new, and not very popular yet.

but i am a fan of including perhaps the 1024x1024 images in the file wether the game uses them or not, (just so that people can alter them) perhaps in the future these resolutions will be suported who knows.

As far as graphics go, you can make them as big as you want, so you can get in all the details, but we'll probably scale them down for the final product.

High detail is always nice to have handy, though. Background images, ads, splash screens, etc. I'd say make them as big as you want. We can always scale them down.

I measured the tile size in Sim City 3000, btw - each tile is 64x128 zoomed in all the way, 32x64 for the buildings.

I measured the tile size in Sim City 3000, btw - each tile is 64x128 zoomed in all the way, 32x64 for the buildings.

ok so sim city is 64x128 so since this game is newer than that we will want to do at least one better.

so say 256x512 would be nice


oh and since its open source, if people release their graphics open source as well, then the files they used to create the grpahics (wether 3d files or what) could be stuck in the 7z file too.

i dunno if people would want to remove them because of bandwidth issues, but anything i would create i would certianly include all the stuff

this is exciting

Alltaken


-------------edit----------

ok i just looked at the 7z stuff, its impressive and would be a good thing to use. since its open source TTDopen could be coded to understand it easily.

so the files would be 7z files, that are renamed to ".ttg" or even perhaps "graphicname.7z.ttg"


Alltaken

Heh, maybe we could offer different "graphics packs" so people can select how much they want to download?

How much of the graphics are you planning to do, BTW?

well currently i am unable to do any graphics untill perhaps july where i have 1 month off. then the next available time i have is about november LOL

i am in a full time course currently which is about 70 hours a week work :S so naturally i have little time right now.

but i am mainly interested in doing airport graphics. i would like to produce about 7 or more distinct airport designs (of buildings) as well as a number of different radar, and helicopter landing pad designs. e.g. everything around the airport.

i am limited by time mainly, but i can get a lot of people to contribute (i know a lot of people that would)

i am just trying to create some form of standard to design towards, one that everyone can understand in a way.


i would also be interested in potentially doing ground sprite graphics, like slopes of hills and and such (do them curved rathern than just triangular, there are ways )

that would involve an entire set that fitted together in every direction.

basicly thats my interest in it, i am not to fond of designing vehicles, unless of course i am designing futureistic vehicles (which i feel i could do well)

and yeah graphics packs could have a small version which is basicly the version that is the size of the current capabilitys of the gmae without anything extra. and inside the pack could be a file with a link to or name of the development version of those graphics

Alltaken

Zip files? No way. Using FAR archives is a much better idea.

Anyway, what I suggest is to use a heirachy (sp?) at the start of the archive, like this:
The ###s are numbers referring to the number of that file in the archive.

Sizes of the graphics should be twice that of TTD's.
And all graphics should be saved as PNG files.

[EDIT]

The names of the files should be "<nameofgraphicpack>.ttg.far".
All graphics files should be placed in a /graphics/ folder.
There should be a file called graphics.cfg listing what order the files are loaded in, and whether they are loaded at all.

BobXP

your method has all the graphics in one file.

my method has a single objects graphics in one file.

so it would be like this


train1.TTG
train2.TTG
building1.TTG


they are all seperate files, like a grf has a seperate file for each building etc...


now inside these files it would be
where the info file tells the statistics of the object
the config file tells TTD what each image does

and the image files are included.

in this case, s-1 through s-4 would be the four sides/angles of the buildings

and B-1 through B-4 would be the same while the building is in construction.


this method means that someone can just delete the TTG files they don't like for any building or object they don't like and TTD will just remove it from the game.

it also means that all graphics are stored in seperate files, rather than a monstorous file like you sugest

i agree there would be a heirachey. however your method limits all future developments of the format, mine allows for any file or combination of files to be stored in each grpahic, including copyright info, more angles than needed, more company graphics and so on.

if you could prove that your methid is more flexible then i would listen to it. but currently i disagree with limiting things to only 4 rotations. i also think the grpahics should be able to have whatever name they like, and the configuration file would dictate how they are used, rather than the file name dictating what happens with it.


but i do see that your heiracy up to the individual graphics would be applied to this system.

BTW 2x the size of TTD is unacceptable. i mean seriously. TTD was designed for 640x480 montiors. 2x that size would be a 1280x960 monitor, we already ahev far superior montiors to that, we need to keep up to the times and hopefully 2 years further. so at least 4 x TTD would be 2560x1940 monitor, which would only just bring us up to the graphics capabilitys of current computers. 4x ttd graphics size is only jsut acceptable IMO. 8x TTD graphics size IMO would be the safest size both for future development, and scalability down to current screen sizes.

if you do it 2x TTD sizes you are just designing for the past. think to the future and save yourself a whole s*** load of work

Alltaken