New house & station themes?

[Just Crazy Jim]

In my experience, Changing the 3D model and reloading a GMP is the Tokyo Bullet Train to the Bong of Doom.

It will usually work as long as no names are changed. Changing the name of anything is instant Bong of Doom, since the game relies on the usual names to call assets.

So you should, IIRC, be able to swap .3dp and .dds files as much as you like, providing everything all the way down uses exactly the same naming as the default files. The only exception would be changing style names in RT3.lng, since that doesn't usually bork anything.

I've chewed on this a couple of weeks now and (I think) I've settled on doing things as you recommended. Now I have to decide on what the replacements should be and what they should be called.

So far, I have 3 styles in mind:

1. Arts and Crafts, keeping the name "Victorian";
2. A brick and mortar design that is more or less Georgian/Neo-classical revival, naming it "Colonial";
3. A brick, glass and steel modern design, naming it "Modern".

Past that, I go limp. I considered a "future" sort of style, but that's a loaded gun. Having 19th century rails and a space age station just doesn't sit well with me, sort of like when I play the Mars maps and I'm running 20th century locomotives with the fuel type name changed in the RT3.lng file. That may have to be a mod of its own, because the rail bed texture and the locomotives need to be in line with the "future" too. But that can easily go off the rails, because one man's future is "Mad Max", another's is "Zombie Apocalypse", while mine is more like the old PC game Outpost (Sierra, 1994) - which I still play on a laptop that runs Windows 3.11... yes, I am that old.

[Just Crazy Jim]

After some time playing with building models, I keep returning to this idea of having more control on the way the maps look. Seeing American-style clapboard churches on European and Asian maps has always struck me as being wrong. TBH, they're a bit out of place even on American maps depending on the region. So I made some churches and set the architectural styles to specific themes. They worked. That started me thinking about this again.

I approached the idea of new architectural themes from one direction. It didn't work. Coming at it from a different direction, replacing the architectural style models completely, will work. Certainly that gives more options, but doesn't expand the options, merely replaces them, and it doesn't resolve the problems of 20th century look and feel commercial and industrial buildings appearing in a 19th century setting. Granted, some buildings wouldn't change greatly in appearance between 1829 and 1950, but others very certainly would.

Since there's no way to replace a building model once it has been plopped onto the map, Era sets like we see in consists won't work. I tried. It was a lot of work for nothing. However, knowing that architectural themes do work and having seen the success of doing it with churches, I tried making additional versions of the Commercial buildings that were keyed for specific architectural themes. This worked as well as the churches. I then tried retail, with similar success.

This is where the layer cake started getting too tall for reasonable use. Each instance of a new theme-locked building was regarded by the game as a different building/industry. The industry list in the map editor became tediously long. Knowing that the game has choke points for locomotives, company logos, and cargoes, and fearing that I was approaching a similar threshold for civic buildings, I backed away from this idea.

It now appears to me that over-ride files would be the only way to get more control on the look and feel of buildings without risking something important being dropped off the list of buildings seeded to the map.

[Gumboots]

Several people have thought about the similar problem with regard to locomotives and cargo cars. IMO the best way to handle it would be to unpack the huge PK4's that live in the game's 3D directory, and break them down into more useful chunks. This would enable quick and easy replacement of the relevant chunks, depending on what you were playing at the time, because you wouldn't need stacks of loose override files. You'd just swap a few PK4's.

[Just Crazy Jim]

Several people have thought about the similar problem with regard to locomotives and cargo cars. IMO the best way to handle it would be to unpack the huge PK4's that live in the game's 3D directory, and break them down into more useful chunks. This would enable quick and easy replacement of the relevant chunks, depending on what you were playing at the time, because you wouldn't need stacks of loose override files. You'd just swap a few PK4's.

A sound idea. I was half-way there in my thinking. I made it as far as thinking to "repack the PK4s" but it was still vague. I know that is pretty much what was done with Trainmaster and, to a degree, also in 1.06.

Certainly a "modular" approach is more sound. the downside is that the files involved will probably mass as much or more than the existing game files. But by placing all the files associated with houses in a single PK4, all the files associated with locos in a single PK4, and so in like manner for all categories, the component parts could be made more reasonable in file size.

Thinking out loud, my supposition would be that the categories of the new PK4s would need to have a 2D PK4, a 3D PK4, and such loose files as are needed for the other Data folders (e.g., CAR, LCO, etc). Even if nothing else were to come of it, multiple items of completely novel content, like a great wadge of custom locos, could easily be added using this method.

Taking it one step further, with each industry in its own PK4 and each loco in its own PK4, might not pass the choke point, but it would complicate the matter. So, division by category is probably the best way to go. The game can be a bit fickle when it comes to folder hierarchy, but otherwise appears to use a read order based on alphabetical sequence. At least, based on how it populates custom locos and logos to the user interface it appears to be alphabetical based on the name of the file type associated with each category. With locos there is a sequence based on date available and alphabetical by LCO file name. Based on what I have seen, I would guess that the name of the BTY file determines where the building is populated into the building list. And the same is likely true of cargoes and CTY files. It would be useful to know which things are going to be problematic before going further.

The one thing I have learned to rely on is that the RT3 EXE does not always react well to change.

[Gumboots]

Certainly a "modular" approach is more sound. the downside is that the files involved will probably mass as much or more than the existing game files. But by placing all the files associated with houses in a single PK4, all the files associated with locos in a single PK4, and so in like manner for all categories, the component parts could be made more reasonable in file size.

Thinking out loud, my supposition would be that the categories of the new PK4s would need to have a 2D PK4, a 3D PK4, and such loose files as are needed for the other Data folders (e.g., CAR, LCO, etc). Even if nothing else were to come of it, multiple items of completely novel content, like a great wadge of custom locos, could easily be added using this method.

I was hoping to replace default files, not duplicate them. My preference would be to have a separate PK4 for each loco, because if you put them all into one you will have a huge mass of files if you ever need to unpack it to work on one. Take the Connie as an example. It's a prime candidate for the tweaks I applied to the Mogul. I can do those easily enough, but the only ways of using the result are:

a/ split it into all the relevant categories of file (.imb, .3dp, .dds, etc) and then repack several massive PK4's in the 2D and 3D directories to include the revamped Connie files, which is not at all user-friendly for the average RT3 fan since they would have to do it themselves (think about it, and you'll see it's not amenable to pre-packing for download from the archives), or

b/ throw all the revamped Connie's loose files into PopTopExtraContent, thereby creating a huge and unwieldy morass if you get into doing this stuff for a bunch of locos.

I was further hoping that the default locos didn't actually need to be in 3D, and that custom assets could be in one or more PK4's in 3D. IOW, maximum flexibility for placement. Things that would never (or hardly ever) need to be worked on could stay in 3D, and the rest could be in the ****ExtraContent folders.

[Gumboots]

Just looking into this some more. The PopTop CtC Expansion files are split into 2D and 3D like the rest of the assets, but differ in that all the 2D Expansion and 3D Expansion files are in one PK4 in each category.

The earlier, pre-expansion, files are split into a 2D PK4 for .dds files (profile icons and beauty shots) and another 2D .PK4 for .imb files, and a 3D .PK4 for .3dp files (meshes) and another 3D .PK4 for .dds files (skins).

This implies (needs testing) that the game may not care how things are packed in the 2D and 3D folders, as long as they are packed somehow into PK4's. Which would be great if it's true. For example, it may (hopefully) be possible to pack all building files (mesh .3dp, beauty shot.dds, model skin .dds, profile.imb, etc, etc) into one PK4 for each building or group of buildings, and do the same for each loco, so all assets were effectively packaged as if they were individual custom assets, and then re-purpose the 2D and 3D folders to make one the buildings folder and the other the locos folder.

[Just Crazy Jim]

A kit of sorts could be made to facilitate the change for the inexperienced players.

Something to the tune of a bat file + the PK4 unpacker for the first stage;
then a bat file, a set of prefab LST files, and the necessary files for packing the PK4s.

Work flow would go something like:

1 - move the PK4s from the 2D folder to a temp folder
2 - unpack all with the bat
3 - move the PopTop PK4s to a storage location
4 - pack the new PK4s with the 2nd bat file
5 - move the new 2D PK4s to the Data\2D folder
6-10 rinse repeat for 3D PK4s

You could call all the LST files needed with a single bat file. It would probably take quite a while to repack everything, so the bat file would probably need to have some bells and whistles thrown in to keep the user informed that it hasn't locked up.

[Just Crazy Jim]

Just looking into this some more. The PopTop CtC Expansion files are split into 2D and 3D like the rest of the assets, but differ in that all the 2D Expansion and 3D Expansion files are in one PK4 in each category.

The earlier, pre-expansion, files are split into a 2D PK4 for .dds files (profile icons and beauty shots) and another 2D .PK4 for .imb files, and a 3D .PK4 for .3dp files (meshes) and another 3D .PK4 for .dds files (skins).

This implies (needs testing) that the game may not care how things are packed in the 2D and 3D folders, as long as they are packed somehow into PK4's. Which would be great if it's true. For example, it may (hopefully) be possible to pack all building files (mesh .3dp, beauty shot.dds, model skin .dds, profile.imb, etc, etc) into one PK4 for each building or group of buildings, and do the same for each loco, so all assets were effectively packaged as if they were individual custom assets, and then re-purpose the 2D and 3D folders to make one the buildings folder and the other the locos folder.

Oh, on that, I can tell you with some confidence that it is mostly true that the EXE doesn't care how stuff is arranged in the 2D and 3D folders. I ran the game for a week with all the files loose and no PK4s, other than some laggy performance, it worked just fine. BUT, and this may be important, it was a vanilla install with no mods at all. If I had added stuff, there may have been issues arise that I did not experience.

Clarification: All the PK4s in the 2D folder unpacked there and all the PK4s in the 3D folder unpacked there. I didn't mish mash the two.

[RulerofRails]

However, knowing that architectural themes do work and having seen the success of doing it with churches, I tried making additional versions of the Commercial buildings that were keyed for specific architectural themes. This worked as well as the churches. I then tried retail, with similar success.

So the game was seeding the civic buildings according to "Architecture Style" for that City/Region? This is good news.

I am assuming that each building got a new bty for each extra theme?

Each instance of a new theme-locked building was regarded by the game as a different building/industry. The industry list in the map editor became tediously long.

Nobody has explored the limits, but I believe that there is no harm from increasing this list. The problems may occur if there are too many bca files in use, but if you didn't use any more of those you should be good (at least until you find out otherwise).

The lists to watch when adding new industries (bca files) are the Place Buildings list in the editor effects. Trainmaster definitely exceeds this limit, at the expense of not being able to place all buildings, but it works! I believe the Place Buildings list is what is referred to as the limit by milo and others, but obviously it can be exceeded without a game crash. Granted, I never tested if seeding was working correctly for TM buildings right at the bottom of this list.

[Gumboots]

Oh, on that, I can tell you with some confidence that it is mostly true that the EXE doesn't care how stuff is arranged in the 2D and 3D folders. I ran the game for a week with all the files loose and no PK4s, other than some laggy performance, it worked just fine. BUT, and this may be important, it was a vanilla install with no mods at all. If I had added stuff, there may have been issues arise that I did not experience.

Clarification: All the PK4s in the 2D folder unpacked there and all the PK4s in the 3D folder unpacked there. I didn't mish mash the two.

That's weird, because when I tried a loose .dds in the 2D folder it caused CTD. My installation insisted all files in that folder had to be packed into PK4's.

I didn't get around to trying a range of custom PK4's, but assume they would probably work.

[Just Crazy Jim]

However, knowing that architectural themes do work and having seen the success of doing it with churches, I tried making additional versions of the Commercial buildings that were keyed for specific architectural themes. This worked as well as the churches. I then tried retail, with similar success.

So the game was seeding the civic buildings according to "Architecture Style" for that City/Region? This is good news.

I am assuming that each building got a new bty for each extra theme?

Yes, sir. I made new BTY files for each theme-locked building, linking each new BTY to its appropriate BCA archetype. And yes, the base all-styles church would still show up from time to time, but there was - from what I saw - a slight preference during seeding to add the theme-locked church. The same was true of the other civic building types I experimented with. There is a quirk of the Place Buildings list that causes new BTY files to be listed by the file name rather than the archetype name, but that is easily fixed by changing the BTY file name to an adjective last format (ex., from "Notre Dame" to "church Tudor") to get the new theme-locked buildings to group with the original - or could be exploited to list the theme-locked buildings near the similar stations and houses by using an adjective first format (ex., "Victorian church").

Each instance of a new theme-locked building was regarded by the game as a different building/industry. The industry list in the map editor became tediously long.

Nobody has explored the limits, but I believe that there is no harm from increasing this list. The problems may occur if there are too many bca files in use, but if you didn't use any more of those you should be good (at least until you find out otherwise).

The lists to watch when adding new industries (bca files) are the Place Buildings list in the editor effects. Trainmaster definitely exceeds this limit, at the expense of not being able to place all buildings, but it works! I believe the Place Buildings list is what is referred to as the limit by milo and others, but obviously it can be exceeded without a game crash. Granted, I never tested if seeding was working correctly for TM buildings right at the bottom of this list.

In 1.05 and Trainmaster, the Place Buildings list being the only place in-game to see retail, churches, commercial and other civic building types, I would assume that would be what Milo was referring to. The industries list inside the scenario editor is still something of a mystery to me. My small experiments in adding novel industries (ex., cannery, auto dealership) list there without issue and seed to the maps without issue, but having read the warnings about limits and seen the truncated Building List in Trainmaster, I was very hesitant to push the envelope.

My gut says that there is a choke point for number of BTY files, as well as a choke point for BCA files, very likely linked to some hard-coded memory limit in the EXE. Based on what we see in the BuildingTypes folder, I would conjecture that there is a larger memory allocation for the number of BTY files than for the BCA files. But this may be a mistaken supposition since the EXE has a number of inroads for throttling memory usage (IMB files, hard-coded limits in the EXE, etc).

Regarding the maps themselves, they are an overly complicated mishmash of layers. Roughly speaking, the layers fall into three broad categories: The heightmap, the texture, and objects floated onto the map above the heightmap and the texture, each category having its own sub-layer. Tracks "hug" the heightmap, but do not deform it. Track-side building lock onto a track segment, but may or may not deform the terrain. We know that the footprint of the building is used to deform the heightmap and and may or may not be placed depending on the degree of inclination of some particular part of the map. This rule is less rigidly enforced with track-side buildings, but even track-side buildings have limitations. Other build types do not lock to the track, but they generally will not overlap or collide with the track model. Railway stations are a notable exception to the anti-collision rule. Trees are on a separate layer from buildings. Feature labels and city markers are on another layer. All of this must have memory allocations assigned to it and some these allocations may impact the overall allotment for buildings in some manner.

I have seen that on 1024x1024 maps, the seeding of buildings to the map is more sluggish than on smaller maps. This is likely due to the seeding code scanning the map for a "flat enough" piece of terrain within the area to be seeded. I would suppose that before that scan takes place, the seeding code already has a building chosen, much like the place building effect in events. It also follows that the building type chosen is chosen by a random number generated held against the percentages set in the zone by the map creator and such values set in the BTY/BCA for architectural style, frequency by era, etc. On a very large map, these calculations could exceed some hard-coded memory allotment in the EXE and thus be as much a problem to placement of buildings as having too many BCA files.

So, in my estimation, there are more problems facing us with adding new buildings than a choke point on the number of BCAs. There is probably a lot of wiggle room, but when it breaks, we have no way of knowing which part of this steam-powered mess of gears is the part that actually broke.

[Just Crazy Jim]

Oh, on that, I can tell you with some confidence that it is mostly true that the EXE doesn't care how stuff is arranged in the 2D and 3D folders. I ran the game for a week with all the files loose and no PK4s, other than some laggy performance, it worked just fine. BUT, and this may be important, it was a vanilla install with no mods at all. If I had added stuff, there may have been issues arise that I did not experience.

Clarification: All the PK4s in the 2D folder unpacked there and all the PK4s in the 3D folder unpacked there. I didn't mish mash the two.

That's weird, because when I tried a loose .dds in the 2D folder it caused CTD. My installation insisted all files in that folder had to be packed into PK4's.

I didn't get around to trying a range of custom PK4's, but assume they would probably work.

I approached my experiment like this:

1 - The EXE scans game files according to a predetermined hierarchy;
2 - Based on what is known of the PK4 format, the PK4s do not behave as subfolders;
3 - Since it is an established rule of hard drive formatting architecture that it is not permitted to have two identically named files in a folder, duplicates are not allowed, therefore replacement (duplicate) files must be placed in a folder outside the 2D folder;
4 - Ergo, a duplicate file in the 2D folder will result in a fatal error;
5 - If you unpack every PK4 in the 2D folder into the 2D folder, you must delete the PK4s from the 2D folder.

AFAIK, the PopTopExtraContent and UserExtraContent were later additions with new, added code specifically written to permit "override" behavior. SO the rules that are rigidly enforced in the original folders (2D, 3D, etc) are not enforced on the PopTopExtraContent and UserExtraContent folders.

[Gumboots]

Aha. That may have been it. I can't actually remember if I deleted the original file from inside the PK4, but I probably didn't. Which would, as you say, bork the sacred architecture.

This is good, because it means we have more flexibility than I thought we did. Things is looking up.

[RulerofRails]

Sorry, poor terminology on my part. It was confusing to call it a "list", I meant this: Add Building Effect in Editor. This list is affected by bca files.

As far as I can tell, there is no problem with the Industry Weightings list for each City/Region in TM. That's found in the editor in Control Panel under "Cities/Regions". For normal seeding this is probably the most important one. This one references bca files of course. IIRC, this list can hold about 77 buildings.

In TM, Ned managed to place all commercial buildings (houses, retail, shopping mall, etc.) off this list. 1.06 has sliders for commercial buildings, but those don't do anything*, instead their seeding must be controlled via hex in the footer of the bca file (draw-back is that it can't be done on a per scenario basis by the map maker). Perhaps this is a side-effect of the patching. Little things like this don't affect my opinion that 1.06 > 1.05. Stronger events that open up all sorts of possibilities easily win me over.

There is a third "list" in the editor. Control Panel -> "Industry (Overall)" page. This controls the buildings available for the player to build while playing the game (please note this also affects the buildings that you can Build manually in the editor as well). Oilcan was referencing both this and the previous list in the first link* in my previous paragraph. This is where he saw the number "94".

The list I believe you are referring to is accessed from the game view of the Editor, with a "Build station" -> "Place a non-station building" choice. (So shouldn't have used the word "Place" when referring to "Add Building Effect in the Editor" ). As far as I can tell, this is the only one of the 4 in-editor "lists" that will show the themed buildings (bty files only). I took a quick peek in Trainmaster, at a glance I can't see anything missing from this list.

PS.
After saying all that, if as you say it's a random mix of themes, I can understand if you don't pursue it.

[Gumboots]

1.06 has sliders for commercial buildings, but those don't do anything*, instead their seeding must be controlled via hex in the footer of the bca file (draw-back is that it can't be done on a per scenario basis by the map maker). Perhaps this is a side-effect of the patching.

Has anyone checked that the sliders even work in 1.05?

And you could change things on a per scenario basis, as long as the author was prepared to do a little bit of hex editing, and as long as players were prepared to swap a few files around.

[Just Crazy Jim]

I've been awake for 18 hours and my brain is about flat-lined, so this may drift a bit.

With certainty, in 1.05, the "Control Panel" -> "Industry (Overall)" page reads and controls the availability of BCAs (with an industry specification) in the scenario. All other aspects inherit their industry lists from this portion of the Control Panel. In 1.06, this is somewhat different, more on that below. For the the "Control Panel" -> "Industry (Overall)" page as represented in the GMP, Milo's notes on GMP files gives this:

Code: Select all

67 industry records @ 34 bytes each

This is important, because it establishes a "known good" for the number of BCAs the game can support without prolapse. Using the PopTop Industries Chart from my 1.0 box, I only count 46 actual industries, however there are a number of ports and warehouses at the end of the "Build station" -> "Place a non-station building" that may account for some of the difference, but that still leaves a number linked to no "industry" I know of. However, if we include the spectrum of civic buildings, this may account for all 67 fields.

I have seen various numbers fielded on the forum for possible industries ranging from 67 to ~100, but I do not know if they refer to unique industries with unique cargoes or BCA/BTY combinations that simply recycle existing cargoes in a new fashion. We know with certainty that the game can support more than 67 buildings, but industries? In exploring that, we begin to approach the cargoes choke point and that limit is different in 1.05, 1.06 and Trainmaster. It's likely that these numbers could all be rendered meaningless by changing the right bytes in the EXE to allow the EXE access to memory ranges above the current used range. In all truth, since the EXE is a 32-bit app, it would be pointless to open ranges above 2 GB, but using just 2 GB of RAM would provide us with a much broader palette.

In 1.05, the Cities & Regions sliders use the inherited settings from the "Control Panel" -> "Industry (Overall)" page for purposes of industries, but disregards all control for buildings marked as civic or company (e.g., hotel, etc). It is in this part of the Control Panel that architectural style is set. So far as I know, this is identical in 1.06 and Trainmaster. And as you say, the sliders for civic buildings in 1.06 do nothing. It is this screen that will become truncated past a certain number of BCA files, this problem is likely linked to the limitations of the GMP file format.

...their seeding must be controlled via hex in the footer of the bca file (draw-back is that it can't be done on a per scenario basis by the map maker).

Here, you strike upon a truth and a deep mystery. The seeding code uses a number of variables to paint buildings to the map, but with civic buildings these values in the footer of the BCA are all important since no portion of the Control Panel causes an effect on their seeding excepting architectural style. What then triggers a seeding cycle in a city for civic buildings?

My own experiments indicate that supplying a city with a diversity of cargoes and fulfilling the demands of the little houses has a direct connection to the speed with which civic buildings are populated. I have watched population-only cities start on the map as 3 or more stars and then slowly wither to nothing if I neglect to supply them. I have also seen population-only cities thrive and rise to 5 stars simply by feeding those fractional demands.

In all versions, the list we see in the "Build station" -> "Place a non-station building" has two states: Normal game mode and Editor mode. What one sees in that list in Normal mode varies by availability based on current game year and is throttled by the settings in the Control Panel -> "Industry (Overall)" page. What one sees in that list in Editor mode disregards current game year, but otherwise respects the settings in the Control Panel -> "Industry (Overall)" page. This list, in 1.05, is sorted by BTY file name, but uses a label derived from the BCA. Knowing that the EXE suffers memory prolapse with cargoes, locomotives, etc, it is a reasonable assumption that this element of the EXE will also suffer memory prolapse if the number of BTY files exceeds an as yet unknown limit.

Then, lastly, there is the "Control Panel" -> "Special Conditions" page to consider. Here company buildings can be redacted from the "Build station" -> "Place a non-station building" list. So there is one more layer on this cake to consider if I went to the extremity of making hotels, taverns, restaurants and post offices that were locked to architectural styles.

I have no idea what manner of black magic was done in 1.06 to achieve the "Build station" -> "Place a non-station building" list I see there, but of paramount importance is that civic buildings can be redacted from this list in 1.06, but not 1.05. I suspect that a byte or bytes in the EXE were altered to exclude buildings tagged as civic from the list, because I see nothing in the BCA or BTY files that leaps out as a causal agent for this change. I believe that 1.06 exploits certain parts of the debugging code buried in the EXE and it is possible that Ned did the same, but went about it differently. Without more complete documentation, it is all guesswork.

I will not say that 1.05 or 1.06 or Trainmaster are better or worse than one another. To do so, IMO, would be to be comparing apple and oranges and pineapples. Each has its strengths and weaknesses. I find Trainmaster to be somewhat incomprehensible and I don't get the Chimpanzee thing at all. And with all due respect, I find 1.06 to be a half-finished work of genius. I haven't the skills to remedy the flaws I find, but with time I may get those skills. But, first and last, we will each of us see certain things as flaws and gloss over others without a care, simply because each of us approaches the game with different expectations. My schtick is more about the cosmetic than yours. If the calendar says 1829, I want it to look 1829. If the setting is Mars, I want it to look like Mars, complete with buildings and locomotives that are appropriate to that setting. I will eventually succeed or fail trying to achieve that.

1.06 has sliders for commercial buildings, but those don't do anything*, instead their seeding must be controlled via hex in the footer of the bca file (draw-back is that it can't be done on a per scenario basis by the map maker). Perhaps this is a side-effect of the patching.

Has anyone checked that the sliders even work in 1.05?

And you could change things on a per scenario basis, as long as the author was prepared to do a little bit of hex editing, and as long as players were prepared to swap a few files around.

Indeed, sir, they do work, but there is a widgety part that relates to dates in the footer of the BCAs that may have an overriding effect or maybe even the date available plays a role here as well. It is not easy to say with confidence how much effect the sliders have in 1.05, but they do have a pronounced, discernible effect if set to 100% or 1%.

[RulerofRails]

Has anyone checked that the sliders even work in 1.05?

Since I started this thought I better figure it out. And the info was right there all along, right under my nose.

Or were these non-industry 'support buildings' added to 1.06 industry list so that one can enable them and later fine tune their building density?

This explains everything. A quick little fact check agrees. These buildings aren't visible in either the allow/deny or seeding density industry lists in 1.05. Something in the 1.06 patch made them visible (probably buildable warehouses), but these entries are in-active. This was Oilcan's point that I clearly missed. At least 1.06 didn't mess up something that was working in 1.05.

Hex editing the bca footer is the only way to change the seeding density for support buildings no matter the game version. Obviously, City/Region Building Density and Map-wide Building Density can affect the number of support buildings you see on the map, but the ratio compared to Houses should be more or less the same for all settings.

Honestly, I think I was sub-consciously recognizing the re-haul "bug" caused by removal of price islands in 1.06 some time ago (easy fix here thanks to Cash on Wheels). I misunderstood Oilcan's information to mean that there was more likely to be houses in the countryside in 1.06 which I correlated with the re-hauling "bug" since more houses in the countryside could possibly increase the likelihood of erratic flows for consumer products. A mystery no longer, sorry for the mis-direction.

---

(Jim replied in the meantime)
Well, what I believe is my unmodified 1.05 install has 190 bty files versus 67 bca files. So it's obvious that the limit for bty files is higher, but since you are proceeding into un-chartered waters with this project no one really thought to run a test for a limit. Trainmaster uses 121 bca files, but the bty files only rise an additional three to 247 (I know the Hospital uses two bty files, so that's one of them).

What then triggers a seeding cycle in a city for civic buildings?

Same things that triggers house growth especially Building Density Growth.

"Build station" -> "Place a non-station building" has two states: Normal game mode and Editor mode. . . . . This list, in 1.05, is sorted by BTY file name, but uses a label derived from the BCA.

I noticed in my trawl that the labels in 1.06 are unique for Houses. In 1.05 it's just House, House, House ... for all the different sizes and themes. In 1.06 we get the BTY file name so TudorHouse104, TudorHouse11, etc.. But for "Commercial Building" and "Retail" we still get a label from the BCA file, so all are called the same.

PS.
On the main site, there's a "Trainmaster - No Apes" download that gets rid of the apes from TM. Try that next time you get curious about TM. I understand that it takes a finer art to run industry successfully in TM.

[sbaros]

Mixing architecture styles

I was going through the BTYs and IMBs editing like a madman, when it occured to me that I wasn't seeing a label for architectural style, so I scoped the RT3.lng file and saw this:

Code: Select all

;The next 6 are architecture styles
	2667 "Clapboard" <- architectural style 1 per PJay
	2668 "Kyoto" <- architectural style 2 per PJay
	2669 "Persian" <- architectural style 4 per PJay
	2670 "Southwest" <- architectural style 8 per PJay
	2671 "Tudor" <- architectural style 16 per PJay
	2672 "Victorian" <- architectural style 32 per PJay
	2673 "Atrocious" <--locomotive rating stuff starts here
	2674 "Extremely Poor"
	2675 "Very Poor"
	...

So the names for the architectural styles seems to be hard-coded to some degree. Looking from here, I'm not sure what string will be called for architectural style 64, 128, 256, etc. Or if there is even support for adding additional string support without hacking the EXE. So, I think I now understand what PJay meant by:

Code: Select all

sums are possible (eg: 63 = for all styles)

I figure that setting the houses of a new set to architectural style zero would be safe and probably add them to the mix of houses in the seeding for an eclectic mix, or using sums to "span" styles" might work, but that's just theory at this point. I have no idea how it will propagate to the building list in the editor. As far as stations, I think I'll have to keep moving forward to see how it works. It will be a little galling to have a custom architectural style identified as "Atrocious" in the UI, but it is what it is.

Actually, using sums to "span" styles" DOES work. 63 is the sum of all 6 styles. It is a traditional programming technique to assign to each entry in a list a code-number that is a power of 2. So, every intermediate code-number you might assign to that specific architecture-definition byte address will uniquely represent a specific combination of styles. For example, assigning an architectural style of "27" to a building's BTY, makes this building appear in territories of Tudor, So-West, Kyoto or Clapboard style (16+8+2+1). I just completed an experiment redefining the style assignments of several houses and I achieved cities of mixed style, a pleasant deviation from the depressingly monotonous default look!

the names for the architectural styles seems to be hard-coded to some degree. Looking from here, I'm not sure what string will be called for architectural style 64, 128, 256, etc.

I am not sure the names have to be hard-coded. The issue might not be necessarily in the EXE, but only in the structure of the .lng language file. My guess is that the programmers would want to leave eventual style slots available for a future upgraded edition, comprising a modified RT3.lng file structure.
About architectural styles 256, 512, 1024, etc. I am not sure. If just 2-digit slots are reserved, in the hexadecimal system it means that we can have only up to 8 styles, and of course their 256 combinations. Given the problem with the RT3.lng file , we may be able to create the remaining 2 additional styles, but perhaps be unable to name them. The style selector dropdown menu might show another 2 vacant, nameless options (which is not so bad if we know what they correspond to).
Just 6 or even 8 styles may sound inadequate for the whole world, but they seem sufficient for reasonably dimensioned scenarios. The basic thing is that default styles irrelevant to a given scenario might just retain their names for compatibility purposes, but have their appearance completely altered. For example, in European scenarios we might utilise the exotic "Kyoto" and "Persian" slots for additional domestic ones (e.g. "Bauhaus", "Baroque", whatever...) which of course would have to be designed from scratch. Similarly, there could be a set of 6 Asian styles, 6 Latin American ones etc. This is an additional reason, along with the rolling stock, that dictates separate installations of the Tycoon for the various continents.

[Gumboots]

Nice work. This would also mean we could have a range of municipal building styles, if anyone wanted to do that.

[sbaros]

I am making an effort to diversify somewhat the multitude of industries represented with the same "Warehouse" shell.
One building model that has been less utilised is the "port". If its structure is placed away from the shore, it may create a totally different scenic effect, without of course being mistaken as a genuine port. After some thought, I decided to try and use it in place of the "Warehouse" shell for the "Construction Company" due to its looks.
From some perspectives it does look like a construction site, doesn't it? What do other members think?