Coru's game mods (and questions!)

[coruscate]

Throwing together a few things... or should I say throw out? I'm sure most of the ideas here will be passed up but that's cool.

...saw the Gwizz port. Nice. Heard it's more complicated than normal, that I can believe. Would it be possible to use a house's data, jacked up higher to fulfill the function of a port or airport? I imagine there's more playroom there than trying to go the port route directly. It's a nice building mod, and I'm sure editing it would have to come outside the game but that's the one thing it needs, a port that's a port rather than an exchange point.

Like WP&P's cereal factory, I suggested modifying the cheeze stock to be a food stock, this would open up more food related industries.

This one is almost unecessary, but how about a vineyard mod? It should be able to be mocked up out of existing buildings, and would just produce alcohold directly, at a much slower rate.

Ned suggested this, a mall... could a mall be also worked out of a house with just higher requirements? A warehouse would be the right shape, overused building as it is 8p

And lastly, how about a mod on a station building for a convention center? A building whose demand strength could raise and lower with the economic strength? It would demand people, goods and "food."

[nedfumpkin]

Throwing together a few things... or should I say throw out? I'm sure most of the ideas here will be passed up but that's cool.

...saw the Gwizz port. Nice. Heard it's more complicated than normal, that I can believe. Would it be possible to use a house's data, jacked up higher to fulfill the function of a port or airport? I imagine there's more playroom there than trying to go the port route directly. It's a nice building mod, and I'm sure editing it would have to come outside the game but that's the one thing it needs, a port that's a port rather than an exchange point.

Like WP&P's cereal factory, I suggested modifying the cheeze stock to be a food stock, this would open up more food related industries.

This one is almost unecessary, but how about a vineyard mod? It should be able to be mocked up out of existing buildings, and would just produce alcohold directly, at a much slower rate.

Ned suggested this, a mall... could a mall be also worked out of a house with just higher requirements? A warehouse would be the right shape, overused building as it is 8p

And lastly, how about a mod on a station building for a convention center? A building whose demand strength could raise and lower with the economic strength? It would demand people, goods and "food."

For the most part everything there has been suggested for the Rail Mogul project, but at the same time these are things that I am trying to work out for my little project. Except the vineyard idea, and I really like it, but rather than me adding it to my list, I was going to suggest that it is something that you could do yourself and I would include it in the pack I am doing. (sending pm)

[coruscate]

Lavendar farm. A reskinned rice farm that generates one set of goods a year, and production increases if supplied with express. In the puget sound lavendar farms are a tourist attraction.
( A version 2 would run off modified stock so there's a "herb" car. I could then use it for a hemp / bio-fuel map at a later date)

Chainsaw art - A reskinned, small building that eats a log a year, consumption doubles if supplied with people.

Tourist trap - A small building that eats a clothing, goods and toys a year, consumption doubles if supplied with people.

Park office - A small building that eats people (lol). Meant for national parks and what not.

Large park - Park office cranked up to represent amusement parks and the like. It may be possible to reskin a heavy industrial park to look like a park of some sort.

Casino - Eats four alcohols a year and increases with people.

Everything above I'd like to use on the next map, some on the one I am working on.

Bio-Fuel facility - eats produce/grain what have you to make diesel. Doesn't show till modern era (now in real time)

Solar Farm - Reskin of an oil derrick to be a vertical, high tech solar farm. Cost prohibitive and produces slowly, though it's very small. Doesn't show till modern era (now in real time)

Ferry Dock - A reskin of the Gwizz port to be a ferry dock.

[coruscate]

QUESTION TIME!

Okay, so I have Hexplorer. I've got the pack of Milo and Pjay's "instructions." (which if you're new, they don't look like it @_@)

I've got WP&P's chart which does help.

I see I need to edit the BCA and probably the BTY.

Milo's coveres the BCA but not the BTY.

Or am I missing something?

[nedfumpkin]

PJay's stuff is mostly what you need at this point. BCA filespec, and BTY filepsec.

Please note, while you are working on this, keep the bca and bty out of your building types directory or else it will cause you problems loading the game until you get it all figured out.


The BCA file is what governs the industry from the most part. This is where most of the tweaking is done. The BTY file is what refers to the BCA to the image and .3dp fles etc.

Since your rubber farm and winery are pretty much equal for the BCA file, in that you'll need to just change the text for Farm Rubber to Winery, and Rubber to Alcohol.

The BTY file is going to be pretty much the same, change Farm Rubber to Winery.

But first should have your skin made as a tga file, and progessively saved smaller as a winery_A.tga (512x512), winery_B.tga (256x256) ....all the way to F at 32x32.

Then you'll need 3 2DWinery_A , b, c, files but these have to be DDS format....just use the 2dFarm Rubber files for now. You'll get a screen shot of your winery later to use for this.

[coruscate]

The image files and multiple image copies I get.

No issue there.

But I'm crashing and I can't figure out why. I think I understood the BCA file, I updated all the names, carefully read the registeries and tried not to touch anything I didn't understand. All the right files are in place.

Now the BTA I couldn't figure out for the life of me. Pjay's notes made almost no sense as the file didn't follow the majority of the conventions for it. In fact I saw mostly "Rubber farm st tt rubber t sf rubber farm" like that, and then after that great swaths of space with nothing.

(Update)

LOL, I see what happened.

For some reason I had a huuuuuuge brain fart and named all my files "winery" but proceeded right into the BCA with "vineyard."

D'OH!

[nedfumpkin]

Lavendar farm. A reskinned rice farm that generates one set of goods a year, and production increases if supplied with express. In the puget sound lavendar farms are a tourist attraction.
( A version 2 would run off modified stock so there's a "herb" car. I could then use it for a hemp / bio-fuel map at a later date)

Chainsaw art - A reskinned, small building that eats a log a year, consumption doubles if supplied with people.

Tourist trap - A small building that eats a clothing, goods and toys a year, consumption doubles if supplied with people.

Park office - A small building that eats people (lol). Meant for national parks and what not.

Large park - Park office cranked up to represent amusement parks and the like. It may be possible to reskin a heavy industrial park to look like a park of some sort.

Casino - Eats four alcohols a year and increases with people.

Everything above I'd like to use on the next map, some on the one I am working on.

Bio-Fuel facility - eats produce/grain what have you to make diesel. Doesn't show till modern era (now in real time)

Solar Farm - Reskin of an oil derrick to be a vertical, high tech solar farm. Cost prohibitive and produces slowly, though it's very small. Doesn't show till modern era (now in real time)

Ferry Dock - A reskin of the Gwizz port to be a ferry dock.

Again, some of the stuff you're mentioning I am already working on, others I am working on variations of it. Since I have some consumer industries on the go, I suggest waiting until the limit is determined to see what fits and doesn't.

The problem with electricity in RRT3 is that it seems to be hard coded into the game, and only the electric plant, nuclear power plant, and windmill are capable of producing electricity. It has taken me about 3 years to finally figure that out.

[coruscate]

Clarifying solar farm and bio fuel ideas... neither are power plants ^^;; Both produce goods.

And yes to your suggestion on waiting.

By the way, I can get the item to show up. But I can't build it on totally flat land U_U;; I can build the rubber farm at the same spot but get a ground too hight error in the editor...

[nedfumpkin]

try changing to the farm rubber .3dp file in your bty file. I also read the same thing is happening with the dye farm in 1.06...

[coruscate]

That worked ^_^ So now I try to tweak this a bit.

Before I change it, there's a value I don't recognize in WP&P's chart before fertalizer in the original mix, I assume that's what makes fertilizer boost production. If I slap passengers in there will it do the same?

[coruscate]

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

Okay, so the "skin" (if you can call it that) was just a mock up, see it in action, it's ugly ignore.

If you unzip you'll see two copies of the vineyard.bca. The one in the folder is more like the original rubber farm in that it generates two alcohols. Makes loads, works fine. I tried to turn that down, two alcohols is more than I wanted.

And I wind up with the vineyard.bca in the main directory. You notice this second copy is missing a few hundred lines of the code I cut, I'm thinking there's a formula in place due to the fertilizer thing I'm messing up. Because in the end... it generates... no loads.

In addition to doing htis the way I want it's also a half step towards the lavendar farm, as they are very tourist dependant for money. That's why I have it taking passengers instead of fertilizer.

So this isn't a "wow it's cool" this is more of a "help" post ^^;;

I know there's no further guides, but there's plenty of variables on both guides that just aren't explained... or if they are it's absolute greek to me. Too many to point out a single one at the moment, once I get the more basic ones down I'll have more questions.

[coruscate]

http://healthyinsanity.com/railroad/vin ... ta_001.rar
http://healthyinsanity.com/railroad/vnieyard.jpg

BETA!

^_^

The link to the last won't work.

It produces alcohol. It pays for passengers and passengers ups it's production rate like grain would.

What's "beta" about it is I want this to only produce one, not two loads standard a year and add onto that.

I didn't think I'd find something to make the final graphic pretty but I am happy with it.

In the graphic above, you see the passenger supplied vineyard vs. the non passenger supplied vineyard.

For anyone who needs directions, bty and bca go into data/building types and the tgas go into data/2d

[nedfumpkin]

BCA 2 entries....


00 00 80 3F Alcohol (produce 1 alcohol per year)

00 00 00 3F Alcohol (produce 1/2 load per) 1 passengers ...... 00 00 80 3F

Then down in the footer also put in a supply and demand for passengers at .5 or less.

[coruscate]

Oh jeez, and I was just about to go to sleep too.

Tested it, WORKED!

Shazammo.

So later this evening I'll work out the start date issue, price issue and put out a real beta.

What I want to look into it next is an upgrade. If the game can handle a building swap, cool.... if not... oh well. Then I have an idea to simply use two color schemes. One to represent a "out in the hills" vineyard that only produces one load. And the upgrade is a colorful, tourist version that does what the current beta does. They should be buyable and upgradable, but not buildable.

Does the game work out industry profits just based off of cargo price? I assume that's beyond our control, it's simply a matter of is it doing what it should?

[nedfumpkin]

Oh jeez, and I was just about to go to sleep too.

Tested it, WORKED!

Shazammo.

What's scary is that I wrote that straight from my head after only two coffees!

So later this evening I'll work out the start date issue, price issue and put out a real beta.

For a start date, I would suggest that you leave it at 1830 since vineyards have been around since the dawn of society. Use the event editor to limit the date for scenarios that had a later wine industry like CA, Aussie, etc.

What I want to look into it next is an upgrade. If the game can handle a building swap, cool.... if not... oh well. Then I have an idea to simply use two color schemes. One to represent a "out in the hills" vineyard that only produces one load. And the upgrade is a colorful, tourist version that does what the current beta does. They should be buyable and upgradable, but not buildable.

I haven't seen anything to suggest a building swap, but I haven't really experimented much yet.

Does the game work out industry profits just based off of cargo price? I assume that's beyond our control, it's simply a matter of is it doing what it should?

I'm still sorting the intricacies out, I'll let you know when I know more. But mostly what you said is correct. The game buys and sells at a profit or loss depending on the input cargo, labour costs, and the price it can sell it at. Labour seems to be about 1/2 as much as inputs, but for output only, I'm not sure.

[KevinL]

Tourist trap - A small building that eats a clothing, goods and toys a year, consumption doubles if supplied with people.

Large park - Park office cranked up to represent amusement parks and the like. It may be possible to reskin a heavy industrial park to look like a park of some sort.

What I was doing with my Disneyland scenerio was a warehouse that demanded 2 passengers, 1 toys, 1 clothes, and 1 meat. Then every ten years it doubled.

Unfortunately I lost the scenerio in my hard drive crash and never recreated it.

You have some really good ideas and you sound like you know what you're doing. A lot of these things should be applied to the Rail Mogul game the forum members are trying to produce.

[coruscate]

Oh jeez, and I was just about to go to sleep too.

Tested it, WORKED!

Shazammo.

What's scary is that I wrote that straight from my head after only two coffees!

You've been doing it a lot of late though...

For a start date, I would suggest that you leave it at 1830 since vineyards have been around since the dawn of society. Use the event editor to limit the date for scenarios that had a later wine industry like CA, Aussie, etc.

That was my plan. I just want to do it so I can see it working. The only other start date would be the tourist thing since that's a later day "invention."

I haven't seen anything to suggest a building swap, but I haven't really experimented much yet.

Most building upgrades swap right?

Does the game work out industry profits just based off of cargo price? I assume that's beyond our control, it's simply a matter of is it doing what it should?

I'm still sorting the intricacies out, I'll let you know when I know more. But mostly what you said is correct. The game buys and sells at a profit or loss depending on the input cargo, labour costs, and the price it can sell it at. Labour seems to be about 1/2 as much as inputs, but for output only, I'm not sure.

I figure it should also have something to do with the base price.... I'll test and see. Perhaps I'll create a second version of the vineyard and run both simultaneously to see what happens.

[coruscate]

Preview of Barona casino for the San Diego map.

As a major tourist attraction it will eat alcohol and passengers, and produce a load or two of passengers in response. It'll be buried in the mountains, so the number of loads it will take and give will be in the 4-8 range.

A more generic "Casino" will be made out of the same finished skin later, but I'll tweak the colors. I'm not totally done with the colors on this one. I figure I'll turn the columns brown to offset the overuse of teal.

[coruscate]

I've got the goods!



http://healthyinsanity.com/railroad/vineyard_v01.rar
Final beta. Click the image above for details.



http://healthyinsanity.com/railroad/casino_v01.rar
Almost final beta but should be fine. If anything I may need to scale its productivity down.

Take it away, Hawk!

[nedfumpkin]

Looks really good...I've just completed a glass factory.....

In 1830 it takes 1 logs and 1 sand, or 1 coal and 1 sand to make 1 glass. In 1860 it's only coal and sand.

In 1910 it takes .3 chemicals, .5 sand and .1 machinery to make 1 glass. In 1920 it no longer takes coal, but instead takes .5 sand, .2 aluminum and .1 machinery to make 1 glass.

In 1910 the electric plant will demand glass.


EDIT: Fixed it to 1 load coal plus 2 loads of sand equals 2 loads of glass. (was a typo in the bca)