Cargo & Industry fixes for 1.06

[Stoker]

I agree about the Caboose weight issue. The diner car is the same way. In reality the Caboose would be even lighter than your average Passenger car, and the Diner car about the same as a Passenger car. Making them both the same weight as a Boxcar full of bricks is nonsense. I think making both be the same as the Passenger car for each era will be about right. I can add these to my to-do list. This is a quick thing to do. I have already changed the Duke NA availability and upping the Passenger Appeal of the American to replace it's use.

[Gumboots]

Yup, same weight as an express car for caboose and diner makes sense to me.

[Lama]

This is an exciting project! I am glad that there is now a critical mass of competent programmers with game design and 3D modeling competence to take this on. Remarkable, for a game this old.

I especially like the project of replacing some of the warehouses with nicer models. How about replacing the actual warehouses with smaller models, with a lesser footprint? That would be an aesthetical improvement. It would also make life easier for map makers. The warehouse is extremely unforgiving as a building to be auto-placed by the game, via city recipe, because it will not fit on the map in many cases.

I took a look at my notes on the 1.06 production chains. Here is what I noticed:

a) Crystals are produced from 1800, but not demanded until 1950
b) Ingots are produced from 1800, but not demanded until 1860
c) Machine Shop is available from 1800, but cannot produce anything until 1860
d) Quarry cannot sensibly be used until 1950, when all its output will find a demand
e) Ore Mine cannot sensibly be used before 1860, or else it lacks input or demand; but is available from 1800

It seems that these may all have been addressed by you, but I listed all this just to make sure.

I much prefer "sand" to "silica". It just goes better with the sound of the other goods in the game. It is also versatile. Consider having oil wells demand it (after 1960?), as fracking sand, to boost output.

I have a long list of wishes and suggestions that I am working on. I disliked many of the design choices that went into 1.06. This major revamp might be a good chance to revisit some of the goods and industries included, some of which don't add anything to the game. I'll post my suggestions, if you'd at all consider changes that would jeopardize backward compatibility.

[Gumboots]

Critical mass? So far there's only two of us.

The plan this time around is to avoid breaking backwards compat. IOW, to basically just fix bugs in 1.06 without changing it into something that is not 1.06. IF we have enough energy, time and enthusiasm to keep going after this patch is sorted, assuming we even manage to get that far before our sanity gives out, then we'd be quite keen to do something that didn't worry so much about backwards compat.

The idea of using smaller models for some of the industries that are currently using the warehouse model is one that has already been thought of, and it's a good one. Shouldn't be too hard to arrange.

[Stoker]

I am glad you are enthused about this project, Lama, and I welcome any input that you have. Having just re-read a lot of the threads made during the 1.06 development process I know that you had made some sensible suggestions regarding some of the issues that are now trying to be fixed that were for the most part brushed aside, or slated to be addressed in a later update, which never came. This project is not a true 1.06 update, but more like a patch to ride on top of the existing 1.06 install, but many of the primary issues and loose ends left with the unfinished 1.06 release can and will be addressed. Gumboots is correct in that this team consists of two people. He is taking care of all of the loco issues and I am doing all of the cargo and building fixes. I think this is about right for a project of this scope, but help with getting some of the different tasks done is welcome, and input from the community is simply essential. I am not actually a programmer, but I am competent when it comes to modifying and creating assets for RT3. I had not done anything relating to RT3 for ~4 years or so, and the past couple weeks have been spent gathering the tools and resources I need to get things done. Now I am feeling like I am "In the Zone", as when I look at the Hex coding I can remember what is what, rather than it looking like a giant mass of meaningless random #'s. With a bit of a tailwind (weather permitting- rain= more RT3 time) I might actually have the proposed new industries put together this weekend.

I have good news regarding this :

I especially like the project of replacing some of the warehouses with nicer models. How about replacing the actual warehouses with smaller models, with a lesser footprint? That would be an aesthetical improvement. It would also make life easier for map makers. The warehouse is extremely unforgiving as a building to be auto-placed by the game, via city recipe, because it will not fit on the map in many cases.

I have a bit of a head start in regards to this issue, as I had already made a fix for this some (5!?!?) years back. I never "advertised" it though, and never had Hawk post it in the downloads section, so it has gone unnoticed by most everyone. Click here to download the "Bandaid" I created that swaps out the Warehouse placemarkers for new buildings in 1.06.

The following buildings' models are changed with this fix:

Concrete Plant : Fertilizer Factory
Construction Firm : Small Commercial Building
Electronics Plant : Plastics Factory
Hospital : Medium Commercial Building
Machine Shop : Munitions Factory
Pharmaceutical Plant : Textile Mill
Warehouse : Brewery

I guess that can be considered a bit of a teaser for what is to come. You can see that I swapped out the existing Warehouse for a brick building with a smaller footprint in the Bandaid too. I used the Brewery for this, as it looks like the classic brick warehouses you would see along any railyard prior to the modern era. For those that want to retain the corrugated steel Warehouse building for the Warehouse, you simply do not add that file when placing these files in your RT3 Cargo Types folder. All of that is explained in the thread I linked, and in the Read Me text included in the zip.

Now, to address the other points you bring up, which are all spot-on. Please let us know what you think of the proposed remedies.

a) Crystals are produced from 1800, but not demanded until 1950

This issue is being addressed by changing the name of this cargo from the obscure "Crystals" to Sand (I agree about Sand being better than Silica, so consider that one a done deal). A new industry, the Glassworks, will be available from start with recipe: Sand+Coal=Goods. I am considering having a later recipe of Sand+Oil=Goods, this will be explored.

b) Ingots are produced from 1800, but not demanded until 1860

At this time, three new industries are proposed to address this . All will be available from start. First, a new "Machinery Foundry" using recipe Iron Ore+Ingots+Coal=Machinery. Second: a Jeweler, with a small footprint and output, having the recipe: Ingots=Luxuries or perhaps Ingots+Goods=Luxuries (Luxuries are the Toy cargo, renamed and made available from start) , and Third: the Mint, recipe Ingots=Luxuries (large footprint and output)

c) Machine Shop is available from 1800, but cannot produce anything until 1860

This one I am still thinking about.Originally I had considered the fix of making Oil available from start, but this will monkey up some existing scenarios. I may simply incorporate the Iron Ore+Ingots+Coal=Machinery recipe from the proposed Machinery Foundry into this industry and make the Machinery Foundry something else. Ideas are welcome.

d) Quarry cannot sensibly be used until 1950, when all its output will find a demand

I think you are referring to the use of Crystals (now Sand) in the Electronics Plant recipe. This is one I am not real familiar with, as I almost always play early period scenarios. I thought the recipe using Sand(Crystals) started earlier than that. I need to look into this, and any input is welcome. At any rate, the new Glassworks mentioned above gives a use for Sand beginning at the start. I think the Concrete Plant begins in 1850. I am open to ideas about this issue. In my opinion, the Concrete production chain is the most bonkered up. It bugs me the most anyways. It might have something to do with the fact that I have laid many acres of concrete over the years. As suggested earlier in this thread, Lime could be introduced to replace Concrete as a cargo. That initial discussion revolved around changing the Crystals cargo to "Limestone", being used to create "Cement" (Concrete). I nixed that idea in lieu of renaming Crystals to Sand and leaving the Crystals>Electronics and Concrete production chains intact. I am open to exploring changing the name of Concrete to Lime at this point. If this were done and the Cement Plant were made available at start, making lime in this time period makes sense. The idea of Ceramics somehow being turned into Lime is pretty weird though, as is the idea of the existing 1.06 idea of using Ceramics to create Concrete (Do Tycoonauts crush Bricks to use in Concrete??) Thank God that the original idea of including Steel in the Concrete recipe was tossed out. That one was even more bonkers. I would really like to fix this production chain, but thus far all of the ideas I have to make something that is actually plausible will have adverse effects to some existing scenarios. All ideas about this are welcome. Something that is already being proposed to address the Rock usage is the Kiln, recipe: Rock+Coal=2 Ceramics, and perhaps Rock+2 Pulpwood=2 Ceramics.

e) Ore Mine cannot sensibly be used before 1860, or else it lacks input or demand; but is available from 1800

This is being addressed with the introduction of the new Smelter industry, with the recipe: Ore+Coal=Ingots. The existing Furnace will remain intact, so as to not break any existing scenarios.

The actual recipe for the new industries will have to be tested for profitability and such, along with building costs, Demand only inputs , .etc.

Keep the input coming folks, things are starting to gel! If you know of some issue not being discussed or some industry you have always wanted to see in RT3, now is the time to speak up.

[AdmiralHalsey]

Well all this talk has made me decide something. I'm not going to work on the industrial placement of my scenario until you guys get the patch/update finished.(Got a lot of ways that it could help make it more interesting in my head.)

[Stoker]

@ AH: Right now we have "End of the year" penciled in as the finish goal. Knowing what I know about these game forums, it is probable that more than half of the people who are currently active here will not be here by then. I may have the new industries ready for testing in a few weeks, but this is just the end of the beginning of the process.

[AdmiralHalsey]

@ AH: Right now we have "End of the year" penciled in as the finish goal. Knowing what I know about these game forums, it is probable that more than half of the people who are currently active here will not be here by then. I may have the new industries ready for testing in a few weeks, but this is just the end of the beginning of the process.

Don'y worry all that much. I've still got a lot of the bombing campaign to test first. Plus I was saving industry for last(When pretty much every city in the entire map has a chance of getting bombed it's bound to take awhile.)

[Stoker]

@ AH: Suit yourself. I just wanted to make sure that you know that this will not be ready for actual use for a long time, and taking historical participation in this forum into account, it is quite likely that you will have lost interest and drifted off long before this project is completed. My worth of advice is to finish your scenario.

[AdmiralHalsey]

@ AH: Suit yourself. I just wanted to make sure that you know that this will not be ready for actual use for a long time, and taking historical participation in this forum into account, it is quite likely that you will have lost interest and drifted off long before this project is completed. My worth of advice is to finish your scenario.

Might as well make two versions of it then. One i'll complete using 1.06 and another that i'll do once the patch comes out.

[Gumboots]

This is an exciting project! I am glad that there is now a critical mass of competent programmers with game design and 3D modeling competence to take this on.

Like Stoker, I should point out that I'm not really a programmer either. I'm just someone who got interested in RT3 locomotive modelling, and consequently managed to figure out all the important bits that weren't already documented. None of them are rocket science, and quite honestly I'm rather surprised that nobody seems to have figured them all out before. Drivetrains, for instance, seem to have long been regarded as unfixable, and turn out to be quite simple. Anyone can do it.

I echo Stoker's appeal for any help on this patch. If anyone thinks they can make a useful contribution in any way, we'd certainly like them to.

[Wolverine@MSU]

I echo Stoker's appeal for any help on this patch. If anyone thinks they can make a useful contribution in any way, we'd certainly like them to.

Unfortunately I don't have a lot of extra time for the next couple of months so I can't contribute to the gruntwork, but I would be willing to proofread/edit any documents associated with the project. In reference to the comment elswhere about the difficulty in coming to grips with the convoluted hex coding/editing, I'm wondering whether a more "user friendly" interface could be developed to allow editing in a more intuitive GUI that would then convert the info back to the original format. I'm thinking in terms of the .lco and .car files, where various parameters would be spelled out in table form and could be edited with regular numbers, which could then be rewritten back to a new file in the correct order. Just a pipe dream at the present though.

[Stoker]

I decided to work on modifying some building skins. I have used GIMP in the past and it correctly saved in the correct .dds format, but this time around it is not.I am pretty sure no compression is correct. Choosing Default Format makes a skin that crashes the game. I tried the first two options in the list so far, and they will open, but produce bizarre color splotches. What is the correct combination of settings I need here?



Also: In the past I had tried using PhotoShop, and had similar issues, requiring a change to .TGA or something of that sort. Has the .DDS format issue been resolved for PS?

Update: Some little hint of a memory tickled me when I looked at the Compression options, and BC2/DXT3 looked familiar. I gave it a try with Default Format and it works! Problem solved. For future reference, you have to go to the Gimp site and download the .DDS plugin before you try editing .dds RT3 skins in GIMP (that part I remembered). Download the .zip file and it has a .txt explaining which folder to put it in. I have no idea why they don;t include all of the available plug-ins with the program- they are really tiny files.

[nedfumpkin]

If you want to save time, you are free to use the buildings that were created for Trainmaster, or any of the stuff that was created for TM since everything that is being described was pretty much done in TM.

[Stoker]

Thank you Ned, that would be a huge time and aggravation saver. As you are well aware, changing the hex descriptor files for buildings and such does not take all that long, testing and graphics changes are what eats up gobs of time. It has been years since I played TM, I will have to grab a copy and take a look at the building selection. We are not trying to make a "competitor" to TM, of course. Just trying to take care of the loose ends left with the slightly premature 1.06 launch.

[Gumboots]

Yes you want DXT3 compression. If using PS, you also want the nVidia DDS plugin for PS. This is all covered in posts I wrote about skinning here and here. We really should get all this into stickied documentation.

[Gumboots]

In reference to the comment elswhere about the difficulty in coming to grips with the convoluted hex coding/editing, I'm wondering whether a more "user friendly" interface could be developed to allow editing in a more intuitive GUI that would then convert the info back to the original format. I'm thinking in terms of the .lco and .car files, where various parameters would be spelled out in table form and could be edited with regular numbers, which could then be rewritten back to a new file in the correct order. Just a pipe dream at the present though.

TBH I don't think .lco and .car files are the problem since they're so simple anyway. It's things like locomotive body files that are the problem.

[Stoker]

Ya, those are not so bad. The BCA files are a bit more complicated. It would have nice if they had put all of the "standard" descriptor information all in the header, instead of having both a header and footer, with a variable amount of production information between them.

[Gumboots]

You just need an editor that gives you real bookmarking ability. If I load the BR39 body file it looks like a pile of garbage. As soon as I load the bookmarks, it all makes sense.

[Stoker]

I do have Hex Neo installed . It is probably better than Tiny Hexer, but I am real familiar with TH so I am sticking with it. The bookmarks and such work fine.