Coru's game mods (and questions!)

[coruscate]

Shipyard preview, I'm still working on the transformations and stuff. If I can use a house.bca file I'll make a full run of everything this thing would naturally demand and see what I can do to make it profitable in the normal or my "waste revamp."

[coruscate]

http://healthyinsanity.com/railroad/churches.rar

The Church has now been PK4ed to save hard drive space. I didn't bother with a beauty shot...

[coruscate]

Alright, I've chosen my "extra" 10 cargos for the moment.

I'm taking machinery, electronics, rock (concrete) and medicine from 1.6, I just couldn't get by without those. I could be all anal and try to call them another name but... why?

I'm adding: Luxury goods (Which will represent everything from TVs to gambling machines), parts, heavy industry (military, aircraft parts, booms, cranes), print (magazines, newspapers, advertisements) and food (everything from specialty foods to canned foods and bread) and drink (soda, sobe, energy drinks, etc.)

"Goods" will still be treated like goods but as well as like the name says "Tool & Die." So "goods" will also double as a low end industrial requirement. "Cheese" may double as "premium food" due to the fact it won't be used outside of dairy inclined maps.

Still thinking but at least I have something I cna toy with now.

[WPandP]

I notice what appears to be a lot of overlap in the roles of these cargoes: machinery, parts, and goods. Your Luxury Goods category covers merchandise, and both Machinery and Parts covers the Tool&Die output, so it seems to me like you've eliminated the need for "Goods" as a cargo. More precisely, you've repurposed Goods to be Luxury Goods only, and shifted the machine shop aspect of it into new cargo types. What is the reason for having both Machinery and Parts, and then why keep "Goods" at all?

[coruscate]

Well not completely repurposing. For instance, Craftsman. Tool and die. It's goods. Sold through a department store, Sears. Demanded in households. VERSUS, A luxury good would be a playstation, a hi definition TV. "Goods" is something simple, put together and probably utilitarian. Luxuries would require mid level inputs and low level in puts and represent something that's not going to be put to use in a shipyard, whereas some goods could show up there, but as an extremely limited quantity. If you stop and think about it the low level, dirt cheap throw away items of today were the goods back then.

That much I like.

You're right on parts though.

Machinery though, I'm fine with. You'd need tools to build the machinery. With those and other materials you can make luxury goods, autos all the way up to heavy industry which is required to satisfy the military, shipyard, airport, etc.

I'm still thinking about things, because there's the issue of doing things totally disconnected from one another... making different versions of one map is one thing but say... taking 20 custom buildings and making X# of versions in each just so people can swap is a LOT OF WORK. Plus with all this modular talk coming out of Ned I can just build over... well I won't know until I see it... the end of the year. Perhaps Santa will stuff it into my inbox? *cough* So basically I can't come up with a new version for each and every building for each and every cargo mod I might think up....

Anyway, I think my focus on things at the moment is more urban / metro... there's a more "industrial flavor" to 1.6 and Ned has his own vision for cargo.

That leaves me with an emtpy spot, I'm pretty sure I can focus any military and shipyard type stuff through just receiving heavy industry and other mid level products (producing waste to cover the cost)... dunno.

....bio fuel?

Perhaps, with my heavy focus on recycling and waste management history being included in the game it would be logical.

The last option would be to leave it a true "blank" cargo with a monetary value of 150k or something mid-level like that so I could repurpose at will scenario by scenario. But that might be stupid.

Dunno, still thinking, any suggestions are fine and thank you.

[KevinL]

(nothing to upload, Hawk)

Updates for tonight:
1) Shipyard beta is now available for download. Skin have moved along a bit.
2) Hospital skin is 90% done.
3) Updated the casino BCA file to demand, in addition to everything else mentioned, paper and coffee.

If you have tried any of these, let me know what you think.

I wanted to use your hospital skin to replace the warehouse skin used in 1.06, but your website isnt working right now.

Which file do I want to replace to use just the skin?

Also, could you make a skin to use for the Construction Yard instead of the warehouse in 1.06, please?

[coruscate]

The website is rarely down and when it is, it's usually back up in a good time. My host is a very good one (Dreamhost).

If I am not mistaken, you will need to use the BTY file and the TGA files need to go into 2d. As long as they used the full name "hostpital" it should work without a hitch. That's one I'll be fleshing out the skin for very soon. My focus over the next few days is going to be more on the skins and less on the BCA files while I figure out exactly what I'm doing with the cargos.

Some that I considered:
- Borrowing Ned's gold. Great idea, and it would work well as a counter balance to using waste to make "demand only" buildings profitable. I can easily see the casino or attraction generating gold simply because they just rake in the cash... but I don't want to grab this one. He's got more of a supply chain thing going on with it, although I could feed it into the elctronics factory and mall (yes by the way Ned, it'd be a good idea to have the mall demand gold to represent the pressence of a jewelry store).
- Hemp. Ditto.
- Dye & paint. The Chemical plant seems to represent the process of getting all the chemicals together AND packaging them for use, so the chemical plant is almost a one stop shop for production.
- Military. Ultimately it's too narrow, that's why I chose "Heavy Industry." Ultimately anyone supplying actualy "heavy industry" is also likely to be tied up with military as well as smaller civil building. I can imagine scenarios where the two units being supplied by the same actual cargo may provide some overlap, but not enough to make playing the game bad at all, it should make it more fun.
- "Disposables," consider it a cargo item representing stuff worth even less than "goods," "disposable" items that have almost no worth but are chewed through.

I think that last idea might be a better idea than trying to make a bio-fuel cargo.

I can use coffee to represent chocolate and flavor additive. I can consider rice to be "foreign food."

[KevinL]

Oh, I also forgot to mention that you say your amusement part would make Walt Disney proud, but it looks like Sea World, not Disneyland.

[coruscate]

It was built for the San Diego map, but when I researched the difference between attractions and theme parks, Walt is the one who pioneered the new blood with that format.

If I did make a Disneyland, I'd make it out of the toy factory but I had trouble skinning that. Every time I did for some odd reason the game would build the building below the dirt every time.

[coruscate]

Stage two revision: Old stuff repurposed and repriced up top, new stuff at bottom.

The only reprice at the moment is waste to 250 (so I can turn large, expensive parts into waste without flooding the map with waste cars), though I will probably wind up repricing bauxite and uranium so they can better represent general ores instead of the specific ones they do, more likely uranium because I'm not so sure I want to nix the bauxite - aluminum chaing.

BUT... by doing it all like this I think I can pull in most of the 1.6 ideas and expand my own on top of it.

Alcohol 100 & adult drinks
Aluminum 85
Ammunition 160 & fireworks
Automobiles 200 & engines as a component as well
Bauxite 30 & ore
Cheese 235 & specialty, expensive foods
Chemicals 30 now requires earth & agriculture
Clothing 95 & all fabric, tannery goods
Coal 30
Coffee 45 & specialty latin foods / ingredients
Corn 25
Cotton 30
Diesel 100
Fertilizer 80
Furniture 220
Goods 170 - simple goods, parts & tools
(carts, screws, screwdrivers)
Grain 30
Iron 30
Livestock 90
Logs 30
Lumber 85 - All minor building materials including concrete & ceramic
Mail 80
Meat 195
Milk 110
Oil 40
Paper 85 - blank and stationary
Passengers 85
Plastic 85
Produce 45
Pulpwood 30
Rice 30 & specialty asian
Rubber 30 & other specialty ingredients
Steel 85
Sugar 35
Tires 85 & all rubber goods
Toys 175
Troops 50
Uranium 200 - Specialty earth
Waste 200
Weapons 235
Wool 30


5000 goods2
- 255 Complex goods, parts & tools
- (mechanized tools, premium parts, & specialty goods (cell phones))
5100 earth
- 30 - Rock, cement component, earth component (to go with fertilizer) & dye (in making)
5200 print
- 179 - Magazines, packing boxes, newspaper
5300 agriculture
- 30 - Flowers, pre-medicine components & other local agriculture not normally represented
5400 food
- 117 - Simple foods like bread, stuff that is made but isn't premium
5500 drink
- 105 - Simple and mildy complex general drinks Soda, sobe, apple juice, etc.
5600 goods3
- 340 - Machinery, electronics (industrial only demands & rich people goods (go-carts, personal merry go-rounds))
5700 parts
- 525 - As in heavy parts, airplane frames, large sheets of metal, coil, I-beams
5800 compounds
- 60 - Medicine, second tier stage chemicals & dye (in use)
5900 military
- 525 - military

[KevinL]

Your website's back up, and your hospital looks great!

I'm a nitpicker, so forgive me, but you constantly refer to the versions as 1.5 and 1.6, when in reality they're 1.05 and 1.06.

[coruscate]

Ah it's okay, at least we're all on the same page 8P

I should be releasing non-graphical updates for the test cargo system so people can just play around with it as I'm building.

[coruscate]

11 cargos are possible, I pushed it as far as I could, but 6100 crashed it every time.

I'll probably shorten the names to just ~Name instead of ~####number name. The tilde alone should keep it from messing up anything previous to all of this from what I can see of the programming "behavior."

As far as the last addition I'm thinking ceramics because it would cover bricks, pottery, glass and the other random ceramic applications that come up now and again.

[WPandP]

Take a look at how the 1.06 cargoes are done - the filenames are all still "~4000 Name" but they show up with an in-game name that is just regular text. There is a section in the file which is the "in-game name", I think all you need to do is edit that. Of course, I haven't yet done any cargo mods, so I'm not speaking from direct experience. But, as I recall, there was talk of alternate "skins" for cargoes which would basically just rename a cargo, presumably by just changing this in-game name.

EDIT: Your "Drink" icon is Pepsi?!? Losing interest over here... [said as I sip my Cherry Coke]

[Stoker]

A small suggestion concerning cargos: Rename "Deisel" to "Fuel" this makes more sense as it would cover everything from home heating oil to gasoline and kerosene, and of course Deisel fuel.

[coruscate]

Well I wanted a pop can, but they didn't look recognizeable reduced, and I needed something that looked familiar and embodied what the idea of "drink" is.

I did get "~Organics," "~Earth" and "~Compound" working this morning with buildings, prices, and the cargos moved like they should have.

Stoker: That's how I treat diesel. If what WP&P says can be done I may do that...

[Stoker]

Gotcha- I do the same- but it just dont sound right as "Deisel"

[nedfumpkin]

Just want to let you know that this is how I got started in making Trainmaster. Initially I just wanted to add some cargo, now look where I am.

Something you must consider is life cycle of any given commodity. It is produced, then consumed. If you are adding new cargo, then you also have to think about its consumption. If all your cargo are going to an industry to be transformed into a new commodity, then that's okay, but if your commodity is a finished product, then you'll need a municipal building to consume it.

Also be careful about how you fit it into the cargo that is in the game since it can affect pricing and profitability of other industries, etc.

Part of the reason I decided to do Trainmaster was because I didn't like the tilde cargo naming system. In your case you could get away with removing the numbers and prefixing with just a tilde. Also, I decided it was easier to just do an entire new version than try to fit new cargo into what was there. It ballooned from there.

The one thing you do want to be careful of is that new cargo can't go into 1.06 nor what I am doing. So this will be limited to 1.05, and you most definitely don't want to mess up peoples' games. Nor do you want it so that they have to change cargo files all the time.

[coruscate]

Something you must consider is life cycle of any given commodity. It is produced, then consumed. If you are adding new cargo, then you also have to think about its consumption. If all your cargo are going to an industry to be transformed into a new commodity, then that's okay, but if your commodity is a finished product, then you'll need a municipal building to consume it.

I have it fairly clear in my head already, but thank you.

I'll be updating the house bca to adapt to new "top tier" products and I will re-direct lower tier demand through municipal buildings. Most of the new products are transformed by or transported to all the new buildings I've built. The rest are simply pulling the basic idea from 1.06 and migrating it over here.

The one thing you do want to be careful of is that new cargo can't go into 1.06 nor what I am doing. So this will be limited to 1.05, and you most definitely don't want to mess up peoples' games. Nor do you want it so that they have to change cargo files all the time.

That's why I've decided to do one big 1.05 add on, and just have my buildings come in two forms: Unflavored 1.05, since those can be plugged into 1.06... and Coru's 1.5 add on version, which will be making the current system more complex with stuff I want in it.

If I'm still full of ideas... and I'm not totally happy with mine or yours... THEN I'd be looking at a full overhaul of the system.

Other than that I'd just hope to get rich and invest in making my own rail game.

Now that I see what rt3 is capable of I can't help but thinking PopTop was a little lazy about this last one....

[coruscate]

Is anyone chomping at the bit so hard as to cooperate with some VERY early betas for this?

As in, I will have all the cargos completely priced in the new system, all with buildings that transform and take them, TONIGHT. They buildings may not transform profitably right off the bat, and won't be as complex as I want to get right away, but the point is within the next day or so I'm going to have something beta enough to be played with.

You'll really need to know what you're doing and pay attention to where you install the files, this will be a "big mod" for 1.5, not for 1.6, not for Ned's. Most of the original data (except waste and the first appearance of some cargos) will be unmodified, and I'll be making existing buildings a little more complicated and be introducing lots of new stuff. The old games should play mostly fine, but I'd be thinking about creating new games, not about just playing the old ones.