New Building available! Comments welcomed

[WPandP]

I've been musing on some of the potential for new buildings in the game, but running into frustrations (with the Railway Express Agency and the concept of Yards), as reported in other threads. I decided to back up a step and do something much more readily achievable, and so here is my first actual building mod:

The "Cereal Company" is now available!

I have posted it on my website, and since it is really still a work-in-progress (I may alter the skins and the cargo recipes based on your feedback) I'm not requesting Hawk to offer it here as well. I would appreciate it if you give it a spin, and see if it works well for you. My concern is that maybe it is too good, but it is basically similar to a Steel Mill in terms of cost to build and in terms of potential profit. Essentially, it takes in various pairs of cereal crops to create goods, with a recipe that changes over time.

Download the Cereal Company here:
http://wpandp.com/RRtcoon.html

Also, I have posted an Excel file which lists some other building types I might try in upcoming weeks. Reply to this thread and let me know if any of them strike your particular fancy. You can also suggest any changes to be made to this Cereal Company.

[JayEff]

You don't really need a tannery. The livestock represents the start of a meat chain; sheep represents the start of a clothing chain. Livestock can just as easily be thanksgiving turkeys, and wool can represent hides as easily. Also you can just rename buildings and cargoes in the rt3.lng file, so I don't see the need for a lot of similar buildings.

[davey917]

Some of your ideas remind me of a suggestion I had back on the old RT3 wishlists: Seperate Industrial Goods and Consumer Goods. Your Cereal Company, Packaging Company and Cannery would fall under the Consumer Goods area. Too bad they got rid of "Food".

I think the Cannery would also be able to use Corn (or even meat).

Also The Ethonal Plant is a great idea, although I'd think a start date of 2000 - 2005 would be more appropriate, historically.

Synthetics Plant - Might I also recommend PLASTIC as an output (perhaps 1 Chemical + 1 Corn as a formula) ((a company here in blair, nebraska is making this type of product)). Trying to get Oil to a plastic company instead of a refinery or electric plant is next to impossable!
I Guess even in RT3 toys are made in a foreign country!

[wsherrick]

I have download it, but haven't put it in the game yet. I am always supportive of creative additions to RT3. Keep up the good work. :D By the way some easy to follow installation instructions would be helpful.

[Grandma Ruth]

Having a bit of a problem. Cereal Company shows up in the list of industries all right but when I try to build, error message says "OpenPIMpmapChain: unable to locate a valid DDS, JPG or TGA file for '2DCerealCompany'" - I've put the 2D files into the right folder, I'm sure. Any ideas?

[WPandP]

Having a bit of a problem. Cereal Company shows up in the list of industries all right but when I try to build, error message says "OpenPIMpmapChain: unable to locate a valid DDS, JPG or TGA file for '2DCerealCompany'" - I've put the 2D files into the right folder, I'm sure. Any ideas?

Drat!

On my own computer, I had first tried to save my 2Dcerealcompany as a DDS file, but it gave me black spots all over it. So, then I deleted that DDS and instead saved as TGA. When I went back into the game, it still loaded fine, but it still had the black spots. So, perhaps it is keeping the defective DDS somewhere unknown and ignoring or not recognizing the TGA... and of course, all you have is the TGA.

A couple of options:
1. Take a "2D" building image file from something else and copy it, rename to "2Dcerealcompany", and make do with that until I can get a file that works right. These files are in the RT3_2DDS.PK4 file, I believe (just typing that from memory, I'm at work right now).

2. Try saving the TGA file you downloaded as a JPEG, or if you have the capability, as DDS. If you try this and get a file that works, I would GREATLY appreciate it if you could get that file to me; PM me and I can give you an email address.

I'll have some time tonight to get back into this, and see if I can figure something out. Also, better install instructions are on the agenda. I mainly figured that the people who would try this out right now would be those who have attempted similar mods before, who would not require as thorough instructions.

One question I have still is, how much of this can be packed into a PK4 which resides in UserExtraContent, as opposed to raw files in that location or in the other folders?

[WPandP]

Okay, I just spent some time cleaning up the building skin TGA's to try and get rid of the ghost lines. I have also tried to save the "2Dcerealcompany.dds" file again, let's see if this does any better.

The thing is, I'm using GraphicConverter on my Macintosh at work to do this, so I will not be able to test these out until I get home tonight and get to my PC. Still, I have a revised ZIP file on my web page, so for those of you that downloaded prior to tonight (10/24/07) you may wish to grab the new file (CerealCompany2.zip) and replace the following files:

2Dcerealcompany_a.dds (I have both a TGA and a DDS version, since I can't be sure either really works until I get home) - replace the TGA in Data/2D/

cerealcompany_a.tga through cerealcompany_e.tga - replace the files in Data/UserExtraContent/

I will work on the install readme later. Hopefully this works! And maybe I'm just gonna have to get the Mac version of the game so I can test here too... but then how would I get any work done?

[bombardiere]

Sorry I don’t remember all the detail. (The buildings are not my forte) 2D picture file needs an .imb file. (Similar that BeautyShot for engines) For engines I have created this file using SkinConverter program. Pure Al managed somehow to create this file for a new building for 1.06 Patch. I feel, that I should know how he did it. But a quick old post scan didn’t revealed his technique. It is possible that he used SkinCOnverter or hexedited an existing .imb file.

[WPandP]

Just got home and... Aaargh!

All the alpha channels are somehow inverted. And, while the "2D" DDS does load, it gives me garbage in the interface. Okay, so I have some more work to do tonight. Don't bother downloading the file I just posted! It will work for game playtesting purposes, but it will look terrible.

Another thing to be aware of is that for any added building, you will have to edit a scenario in order to have it be available within that scenario. That's something I'll have to mention in the install instructions, and it would be true for any building mod I suppose, unless one was to override the built-in industries (like creating a more productive farm for instance). That gets me thinking...

[WPandP]

Okay, so now I am up to version 3 (CerealCompany3.zip), hopefully with better skin files. Basically, I just fixed the versions I posted last night, which had the invisible parts visible and vice-versa! As I toyed with it last night, I saw that I have not yet been able to fully remove the ghost lines, but I don't have any more time until next week to try to deal with it.

So, it is at least safe for you to now try out this building again! Thanks to those of you bearing with me; I'm still trying to figure out why things that should work don't, and you input is helpful.

Here is the link again:
http://wpandp.com/RRtycoon.html

[Grandma Ruth]

Success!! Very nice.

Plays well in a test game but perhaps makes a bit too much profit - $500 a year within quite a short time. As the raw materials are generally not that hard to find - unless you deliberately manipulate the scenario - it would be more realistic to have less of a profit (wouldn't it?)

[WPandP]

I agree that profit is high; my preferred cargo formula would be to set it to combine 1a + 1b = 1 goods, not 2 goods, but so far, I don't know what I need to change in the hex editor to make this happen. It would still be reliably profitable in that configuration.

[Grandma Ruth]

Have a look at the "News" section of the RT3 part - there's a link to a new file from Milo/PJay with all kinds of scary stuff in it. You might find what you're looking for there. I've had a look but it's all Greek to me!

[WPandP]

I got the info compiled by Milo and Pjay, and that is immensely helpful... but...

I still cannot get my cereal formula to be anything other than 1a + 1b = 2c. I see where I can change the numbers (from 00 00 80 3f for "1" to 00 00 00 40 for "2" etc.) for output and for required loads, and I have tried changing these to all sorts of different numbers, but all I ever get is the original formula! The building still works, the game doesn't crash, but it simply does not show the values I am inputting.

What is going on? How do I make it produce 1 goods instead of 2? I give up!

[Grandma Ruth]

Have you tried 2+2=2 ?? Maybe it can't cope with the idea of less-than-1 (I can't explain what I mean but who knows? - give it a try!)

[WPandP]

I did try all sorts of variations. The max loads per year, which is set at 4, I tried to change as well, to limit it to 3 or 2 (as a way to cut back on profit), but no matter what I changed it to, in-game it always showed max=4. Basically, all I could ever get was 1 + 1 = 2 or else a crash. Like, it would crash if I told it to require 3 inputs but only listed 2; if I told it to require 3 inputs and then listed a third input, I'd get the original formula, with the third input simply not showing in-game. I was trying to achieve 1a + 1b + 1a = 2c, as a way of getting the formula to really be 2a + 1b = 2c, but that didn't work. But 1a + 1b + 1x = 2c still didn't work, where x is some other cargo; in-game it just read 1a + 1b = 2c.

[bombardiere]

Sorry can’t help you here. I haven’t tried much of buildings. Only advice is that on Pjay’s file it says “relative output”. (Production 004) Maybe you need to put relative as 0.5. But I would be surprised that would make the game crash. :(

[WPandP]

Bombardiere -
I tried that too. It didn't crash, it just worked fine, yielding 1a + 1b = 2c. Same thing with 1.0, 2.0, etc.

[milo]

With your hex editor, change the two bytes at 3Dh from 00 40 to 80 3F. Do the same at offsets F9h and 1B5h.

[WPandP]

OKAY, grumblerumblemumblefumble...

So, here is what was going on:
I had an old version of the BCA file that I had renamed to "CerealCompanyOkay.bca", which I was keeping sort of as a backup, while I tried to tweak "CerealCompany.bca". It was in the same BuildingTypes folder. RRT3 was reading its settings from the "Okay" file... though if I introduced a flaw into the real BCA it would crash the game!

My guess is that it was reading from both files, first from the real BCA and then overriding settings based on the "okay" file. An error in the real bca would thus still cause a crash, but any acceptable changes would just get reset by the "okay" file.

Now that I know to avoid that particular pitfall, maybe I can make some progress! Lesson=Keep Your Backups In A Separate Folder. Ugh.