A suggestion for "platforms"
Posted: 05 May 2021 02:46
Hello,
It's not the first time an OpenTTD player asks for stations on bridges, or for stations in tunnels... or multiple terrain levels. These are among the most common and requested suggestions I saw in the OpenTTD community.
But there are multiple problems about these suggestions that makes their development very complicated. For the first two suggestions, the interior of tunnels and bridge decks are considered as "void" by the game (I don't think I am explaining this correctly at all. I hope some people understand what I am talking about.
) - and it is linked to the second problem : loading old savegames. This is also a problem for the third suggestion, in addition to the two first suggestions. It "modifies" existing features of the game and is, thus, subject to caveats while loading savegames.
This is why I thought about a feature that could partially solve this problem. It consists in adding a new feature, instead of modifying the existant features.
It would be called "platforms" - it should be exactly like a bridge, except it would occupy a full tile, and behave like a regular tile on top of it. As I didn't think about how they would act in these cases or because it would make the development of this feature complex, you wouldn't be able to stack them or have sloped platforms (platforms placed on a slope would be flat, and at the height of the high end of the slope). This means one could place roads, stations, and buildings could be built on top of it. This would also mean a new setting to enable transparency of platforms would be added.
As such features for bridges have already been developed and planned to be included into trunk, stations or objects could be placed under platforms.
So. Although I don't have an extensive knowledge about OpenTTD coding. Does anybody think this could be the easiest way to satisfy the greatest number of players, while being one of the easiest ways to code these requested features ?
It's not the first time an OpenTTD player asks for stations on bridges, or for stations in tunnels... or multiple terrain levels. These are among the most common and requested suggestions I saw in the OpenTTD community.
But there are multiple problems about these suggestions that makes their development very complicated. For the first two suggestions, the interior of tunnels and bridge decks are considered as "void" by the game (I don't think I am explaining this correctly at all. I hope some people understand what I am talking about.
) - and it is linked to the second problem : loading old savegames. This is also a problem for the third suggestion, in addition to the two first suggestions. It "modifies" existing features of the game and is, thus, subject to caveats while loading savegames.This is why I thought about a feature that could partially solve this problem. It consists in adding a new feature, instead of modifying the existant features.
It would be called "platforms" - it should be exactly like a bridge, except it would occupy a full tile, and behave like a regular tile on top of it. As I didn't think about how they would act in these cases or because it would make the development of this feature complex, you wouldn't be able to stack them or have sloped platforms (platforms placed on a slope would be flat, and at the height of the high end of the slope). This means one could place roads, stations, and buildings could be built on top of it. This would also mean a new setting to enable transparency of platforms would be added.
As such features for bridges have already been developed and planned to be included into trunk, stations or objects could be placed under platforms.
So. Although I don't have an extensive knowledge about OpenTTD coding. Does anybody think this could be the easiest way to satisfy the greatest number of players, while being one of the easiest ways to code these requested features ?