Making 1.06.1: any interest?

[Gumboots]

Thought maybe it was about time to float this idea.

I'm not thinking of a 1.07 as such. For those who aren't into software, 1.07 would indicate a major release, whereas 1.06.1 (or 1.06.01) would be the usual way of indicating an update that has more or less minor bug fixes.

Currently I'm mainly thinking of the 1.06 locomotives. Let's be honest here: they're pretty crappy. Fair enough that the people who did them had various constraints on what they could do, but it's quite possible to improve them. Two very obvious points are the 512x512 A skins and the totally borked alpha channel that most of them have. Those aren't difficult things to change. We don't have to put up with them. We can fairly easily get proper 1024 A skins and no glow in the dark. There's also the possibility of improving the model meshes for some of them, without getting into rebuilding all of them from scratch, as well as improving skin gfx in general.

This can all be done, if people want it to happen. It is a fair amount of work though, so if people want it to happen it would be good to split the load. Anyone interested?

[AdmiralHalsey]

HELL YES!!!! I've got a brother who is learning to code so I might be able to get him to help even.

[Blackhawk]

Unfortunately I'd likely be unable to help with anything as my skills in this area are rather lacking.

A question I would have for a 1.06.1 would be will it just include the updated gfx of the locomotives? So all the 1.06 scenarios would run as intended just with better skins. Or would it include other changes as a couple months ago people were talking about making changes to several locomotives' stats in an effort to re-balance them as well as including different locomotives?

[Gumboots]

Well that'd be up for discussion, and IMO should come down to community consensus.

As far as the "rebalancing" goes, those who have tried it in (probably limited) live testing generally seem to think that Lirio's effort was pretty good, and seemed to make existing scenarios better rather than worse.

[AdmiralHalsey]

Well that'd be up for discussion, and IMO should come down to community consensus.

As far as the "rebalancing" goes, those who have tried it in (probably limited) live testing generally seem to think that Lirio's effort was pretty good, and seemed to make existing scenarios better rather than worse.

I agree. While not perfect it did make me use more then the standard 5 or so types of loco's I would always use. I seemed to use an average of 30 different types locos depending on the scenario.

[Gumboots]

Just thinking some more. I don't have any knowledge whatsoever of .exe's and how to compile them. So although I can change meshes and gfx for existing locomotives from any installation, I would not be able to package any changes into a new .exe download.

Assuming that the people who do have such knowledge aren't likely to return immediately and start jumping at the chance to do this, it might be best to think of this as largely a 1.06 Loco Bugfix pack, which can be applied to any existing or future 1.06 installation. Since all the new locos for 1.06 are in PopTopExtraContent, swapping PK4's for them is pretty straightforward. Ditto for .lco and .car files in EngineTypes.

Next thing to consider is default PopTop locos, which have their files distributed in several massive PK4's that may be a bit daunting for some people. I've already extracted those for my own purposes anyway. Repackaging them as PK4 isn't that big a deal (just needs a suitable .lst file) and once repacked they could be swapped like any other PK4 in any other directory. So, it would be quite possible for any update/bugfix pack to deal with at least some of the default PopTop locos too. It becomes a question of where do you stop.

[Stoker]

Fixing the industry/cargo issues would be on the top of my list for 1.06. My King Coal mod was meant to do exactly this, with an emphasis on the steam era, but alas it was ~95% done and then languished for some time and died with an HDD crash.

[Blackhawk]

Well good luck in the venture and hopefully it will occur as it is always nice seeing improvements and developments built for the game since we'll never see a RT4. (Unless we can find old programmers and start a kickstarter attempt for the game).

Hopefully people who volunteer for this will be able to follow through with the project and not disappear mid-project. An attempt at a 1.07 occurred once before which I believe turned into an attempt at an entirely new game but time constraints and worries of vista etc derailed that project. Unfortunately Lirio hasn't been around since the end of last year to see if she had more work she was going to put into rebalancing.

As for a .exe or less desirable msi installation that shouldn't stop you from designing it how you want and worrying about that later. For a long time Trainmaster had to be installed by copying and pasting files all over the place following detailed instructions. Reto over on molse's old German RT3 site decided to make a MSI for it which made it easier to install, but some people still preferred the manual way of doing it. So if something as complicated as TM can be installed manually, I'm sure a 1.06.1 could be done that way as well. While it might not be the easiest way to update it is certainly doable.

[Gumboots]

I think the key will be to nail down what is both desirable and doable, given the people we have available (assuming any) and the time and energy they have available (if any). If we try and make this the most awesome thing since sliced bread it'll never happen. It'd be just too much to deal with. If the improvements aimed for are modest but highly desirable, we may just get there.

Oh and Lirio is not a he.

[Altoona+BeachCreek]

Naturally I approve! Haven't had time to do any testing of my own unfortunately. Be glad to help out with testing though.

[Blackhawk]

Thx. Forgot about that. I edited to correct that.

Stoker that's a shame that the King Coal mod was lost in a hard drive failure. I had kept my eye on that thread during part of it's development and was curious to see what the final outcome would be.

During my read of a post in "Stoker's Corner" one thing that I am reminded of that might be desirable on a 1.06.1 patch would be improving the building models for some industries. Ex. Make it so a concrete plant doesn't look like just another warehouse.

[RulerofRails]

Unfortunately, my knowledge of programming/coding is virtually 0 and I don't have enough quality time to make a go of learning it. Sure, I would welcome visually improved locos and more uses for the new cargoes in 1.06.

Maybe it is a small bug in the maps themselves, but the lack of color gradients on price maps (the whole map appears yellow with small bits of green) that seems to happen in some 1.06 maps would be nice to see fixed.

BTW, I noticed that the Ten Wheeler (in Lirio's pack at least) has particularly bad glow in the dark. Always appreciate things done to improve the game. Thank-you for your efforts.

[Stoker]

The mod I had in mind (King Coal) did not involve any programming, unless you consider hex coding buildings and such as programming, which I do not. It was meant solely as a patch to ride on top of 1.06 and tie up all the loose ends, and expand the industry and cargo capabilities for the steam era. I personally do not think a full blown .exe tweak going beyond what 1.06 did is worth the effort. If you do, you may want to take a look at this thread, where milo was talking about exactly this. Keep in mind this was before he had even finished 1.06, which ended up never being 100% finished.

[Gumboots]

So exactly what did this King Coal idea involve?

[Blackhawk]

Check out the thread Stoker's Corner for some info on King Coal: viewtopic.php?f=5&t=1549

One post in particular has a screen shot of some of the industries: viewtopic.php?f=5&t=1549&start=75#p23236

Of course it might just be quicker to wait for a response from Stoker than sort through all the pages of that thread.

[Gumboots]

Yeah I was feeling lazy.

[Stoker]

The basic idea behind King Coal was that all industry required fuel to produce a product. Coal was the best and produced the best product, but many industries could substitute pulpwood as fuel, with a slightly smaller end profit. I had balanced out coal (and pulpwood) production and price so that the economics worked out real well. In addition to this, I changed some of the cargoes to represent things relating to the steam era, and some just changed in general to provide a cargo chain that made more sense to me- Cheese for instance I changed to "Packaged Food" and made a variety of industries that would take different raw supplies and produce Packaged Food. Another one of the main things I was aiming for was resolving the wonky new cargoes that were introduced with 1.06 like "Crystals" (WTx is that supposed to be?) , changing "Dye" to Hides, fixing the Maching Shop and the Furnace, etc. I was literally at about 90% complete with this, having done all the cargo and building changes and was jst filling in the last of the icons and such when I set it aside, and as I said it has gone to electron heaven since then, although there is a small possibility that a copy is still on one of my old laptops.

Here is a relatively early development shot I posted showing maybe half of the industries that I had made for King Coal that gives the general idea of what I was aiming for:

[Gumboots]

K, sounds interesting. TBH I had the same reaction to "crystals". If they were thinking of electronics "silicon" or something would make more sense.

[Gumboots]

Hey just had an awesome industry idea. How about a strip club that demands 100 passengers and 500 alcohol? I know how to make purple lights now, so we could really skin it up.

[Stoker]

I had experimented with adding alcohol demand to Taverns (duh) , Restaurants, and Hotels, along with some other things.

A bit off topic here but I have a funny "purple strip club" anecdote. Maybe ten years ago I had to go downtown (Phoenix) to take care of some building permits and was coming back and saw a big purple nightclub on a corner (can't recall the name atm, something elephant??) , which I assumed was a strip club, and it had a sign saying that they had a free buffet, so I figured I would stop in and cool off and have a brew. It was one of those crazy hot days here in the desert where everything is shimmering in heat distortion and looks like it is kind of melting, and there was of course loud disco type music pumping as I went in the entryway. As I entered the main bar and my eyes were adjusting to the dark I saw maybe a dozen mondo-biker-queer types with the leather hats and chains and such all look towards me from the bar. I swear the valley's most famous Mondo-biker-queer , Rob Halford, might have been one of them. The gears began spinning and I figured out in about .00001 seconds that I had in fact just walked into a gaybar! I instantly froze and literally walked backwards out of that place and ran to my truck and peeled out of there!