Rail Yard Structures

[coruscate]

Hey I just wanted to check since I'm getting a handle of all these BCA files and what not, in terms of actual supply, demand, etc, the yard structures simply eat a small amount of cars, they don't just take in a spit them back out like a station, right?

[WPandP]

Hey I just wanted to check since I'm getting a handle of all these BCA files and what not, in terms of actual supply, demand, etc, the yard structures simply eat a small amount of cars, they don't just take in a spit them back out like a station, right?

Correct - they are all set to "Demand Only" like houses, and have fractional demand rates like 0.1 load per year. This is just enough to make them function as load attractors, creating "hot spots" on the cargo value map.

[coruscate]

I'll be testing your new ones in my San Diego mod map. One last question, didn't you have these set up to be treated as "restaurants?" How does that affect revenue for these?

[WPandP]

As far as I know, they just lose a small amount of money consistently; you don't make profit off of a Yard. It isn't huge, but they do run red. I don't think passenger deliveries (which affect a real Restaurant's profit) have any effect, but I haven't tested this to know for sure. I just used the building category to which Restaurant, Post Office, Hotel, and Tavern all belong, it's not like the game thinks of it as a Restaurant.

[coruscate]

Okay, you did do the new coal mine right? I like the new production, it evens out a lot of maps where coal production is... lackluster. The regularity of the roof pattern gives it a "checkerboard" appearance that stands out really fast when I'm halfway zoomed in. Doubt there's anything that can be done for that.

Haven't worked too much with the other new structures just yet.

[WPandP]

It's called a Moire pattern, and it is the result of the mismatch of scale between the undulations of the corrugated roof in the skin and the graphic resolution at which you are running the game. If you have a powerful enough graphics card, and can turn on the anti-aliasing as well as run at high resolution, then this effect can be minimized. The makers of the game chose to handle it in two ways, though: first, they create step-down versions of each skin file, where the A version is largest (say 1024x1024), B is half that (512x512), and so on down to a 64x64 or even 32x32 version of the skin, which really is just an unrecognizable blob at that point. The game only uses the A skin when you are close enough to appreciate it; as you zoom out, it trades in the B and then C versions, etc. Effectively, what you are doing is pre-rendering the anti-aliasing when you create the B, C, D, etc. skins.

However, there is still a range in which the surface patterning can produce Moire patterns, and this leads to the second method they employed. This was to exaggerate the features and patterns. Thus, the apparent distance between adjacent corrugations in their skins would probably be about twice as much as I did in my skin. Shingles would be much bigger than they would be in real life, as would bricks or individual boards on a loading dock. I run my game on a fast system with good graphics, so I tend towards making skins with finer details, to try to be a bit more realistic. But I still run into the Moire effect you describe; I live with it as a trade off for the greater realism.

Thanks for your comments on the coal mine. I like it this way too, though they tend to be too profitable now, and always a good investment to purchase. Perhaps some minor edits could correct for this. But I like that I can now locate them on the map much more readily! Another building that is hard to find is the Oil Well... perhaps, now that we know how to edit .3DP files, someone will attempt to give this a larger footprint; the simplest method would be to set the well on a broad platform, which could be skinned to look like disturbed earth, but would at least clear out the trees around and serve to highlight the structure itself.

[coruscate]

Or perhaps take a building and cluster oil wells around it on a foot print like a farm? Probably too imaginative too be feasonable but if it was feasible, it'd probably be the most likeable option. Ned would know more than I, he did some "weird" things like that.

[herocrafter]

I know its been over a year since the last post here but does anyone recall if the marshalling yard was built?

[nedfumpkin]

what's the marshalling yard? There's a whole bunch of buildings made

[Blackhawk]

I don't know if they were built or not but the list was in the first post of what WPandP intended to create, his website says they are still "coming soon."

My intention is to create the following:
Stock Yard - for Livestock
Hopper Yard - for Bauxite, Coal, Iron
Icing Platform - for Alcohol, Cheese, Meat, Milk, Produce
Grain Elevator - for Corn, Grain, Rice, Sugar
Marshalling Yard - for Logs, Lumber, Pulpwood, Oil, Diesel
Classification Yard - for most other loads

[nedfumpkin]

I'm pretty sure that all that stuff is covered. WP&P and I finished a complete set.

[AT41B]

Would it be worth the effort to add rock or gravel to the "Hopper Yard" or is that something not very easy to do? I personally don't know how that is done.

[Gumboots]

You mean as a cargo, or in the skin, or both?

[AT41B]

Just in the cargo that it is scheduled to Accumulate and store for pickup. As it is, the only cargo is Coal, Ore, and Bauxite.

[Gumboots]

The cargoes are controlled by the .bca file. PJay's notes say you can have 5 cargoes.

BCA file specs
===================
HEADER (55)
PRODUCTION ENTRIES (x*188)
FOOTER (169)


HEADER (55)
--------------
000 : 4 : int : bcaStart : F203 = 1010
004 : 30 : char : filename
034 : 4 : int : base price
038 : 2 : short : start year
040 : 2 : bytes : q0 = CCCC = {-52 -52}
042 : 4 : float : cargo loads transformation / year (demand only or supply only don't count here)
046 : 4 : bytes : q1 = CCCC CCCC = {-52 -52 -52 -52}
050 : 1 : byte : building group
051 : 4 : int : number of supply/demand/production entries (eg: 0 for ports/warehouses, 16 for houses, 4 for tool&die)
055

PRODUCTION (188)
---------------
000 : 4 : int : 1 (demand only) or 0 (rest)
004 : 4 : float : output qty. (if output only, this is loads/year ; if input=>output, this is relative output)
008 : 24 :string : output cargo name or "{demand only}"
032 : 2 : int : start date
034 : 2 : int : stop date
036 : 4 : int : q0 = 0
040 : 4 : int : q1 = 0
044 : 4 : int : number of input cargo's needed (0-5)
048 : 24 :string : input cargo 1 name
072 : 4 : float : input cargo 1 qty. (rel or loads/year)
076 : 24 :string : input cargo 2 name
100 : 4 : float : input cargo 2 qty. (rel or loads/year)
104 : 24 :string : input cargo 3 name
128 : 4 : float : input cargo 3 qty. (rel or loads/year)
132 : 24 :string : input cargo 4 name
156 : 4 : float : input cargo 4 qty. (rel or loads/year)
160 : 24 :string : input cargo 5 name
184 : 4 : float : input cargo 5 qty. (rel or loads/year)
188




FOOTER (169)
--------------
000 (-169) : 4 : int : buildable (? is a fertilizer factory not-buildable ??)
004 (-165) : 4 : int : buyable (? why hotel, post, saloon, restaurant, ... ??)
008 (-161) : 4 : int : upgrade price?
012 (-157) : 4 : float : q2 (0 or 0.5 or 1)
016 (-153) : 4 : int : upgradable ?
020 (-149) : 61 :string : building name
081 (-088) : 1 : byte : on-the-rails type
082 (-087) : 4 : int : q3 (1830)
086 (-083) : 4 : int : q3 (1850)
090 (-079) : 4 : int : q3 (1900)
094 (-075) : 4 : int : q3 (1950)
098 (-071) : 4 : int : q3 (2000)
102 (-067) : 4 : float : passengers : (commercial 0.5, house 1, hotel museum 2, church cinema deptstore 3, stadium 5)
106 (-063) : 4 : float : passengers : (commercial 0.5, house 1, hotel museum 2, church cinema deptstore 3, stadium 5)
110 (-059) : 4 : float : mail : (commercial 2, house 1)
114 (-055) : 4 : float : mail : (commercial 2, house 1)
118 (-051) : 4 : float : troops : (barracks 1)
122 (-047) : 4 : float : troops : (barracks 1)
126 (-043) : 1 : byte : is... ? restaurant(0) hotel(1) saloon(2) post(3) customs(4)
127 (-042) : 1 : byte : isPort?
128 (-041) : 1 : byte : isWarehouse?
129 (-040) : 40 : : zeros
169 (-000)



on-the-rails-type
-------------------
00 = small station
01 = med station
02 = lrg station
03 = service tower
04 = maint fac



building groups
----------------
00 House
01 "along-the-rail buildings" : Stations, Service Tower, Maintenance Facility
02 "normal industry"
03 "city buildings" : church, stadium, ...
04 "station facilities" : post, restaurant, hotel, ...
05 Dummy



62 : building name (first byte=00)
20 : 5* 000A 0000 (newlines??)
68 : trailing zeros

[RulerofRails]

Here's a Hopper Yard with a Rock demand added. I just copied the values of Coal, haven't taken any time to test if those values need tweaking. I tend to find the rail yard structures too slow to give a good demand effect to be really beneficial in the average game. Where industry building is not allowed or when there is limited track I find a good use for building them. I welcome hearing new ideas how to use them better.

I left this file with a suffix of "ROCK" to distinguish it easily. Same principle as I mentioned elsewhere, removing the space will cause the game to use the original file.

[AT41B]

Thanks, I can now stock pile rock at cities instead of sending the train all the way to a destination. I can use slow yard movers from quarries. That way the faster locos do not have to wait for a load.

[sbaros]

Actually, there seems to be no physical sense in exclusively "Hopper Yards". A marshaling yard can accommodate any wagon type and is therefore eligible to provide that "drop shipping" advantage to most non-refrigerated or otherwise sensitive cargoes.
In regard to the 5 cargo limit, I think it refers to 5 maximum ingredients FOR EACH produced item, not the overall maximum of products / production recipes. The latter must be far larger, I haven't seen any specific limit mentioned anywhere. Houses for example can consume an impressive lot of products.
So, a generic rail yard serving "drop shipping" purposes for maybe 20 different commodities could be possible.

[Gumboots]

It probably is possible, yes. I think WP&P was wanting to provide more visual interest than one generic yard would provide, and possibly also to allow not attracting cargoes you do not want to attract in a particular region (for example, if you don't want to interrupt a local production stream).

But if someone wanted a generic yard, to allow collecting a range of cargoes in a confined space, offhand I can't see any reason why it couldn't be done that way too.