European Union

[Gumboots]

The copy/paste is really handy. I use it for formatting briefings too. You can't really edit briefings in the game editor unless they are really short. Multiple page briefings are just too twitchy in the editor.

The centre-aligned text in briefings and dialogues can get really choppy to read. It needs to be laid out with the right number of words per line to give it some visual coherence and make it scan well. I check them live in the game, and make adjustments in a .txt file, until it all works visually and in terms of grammar and information.

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Electrification
That’s an idea – maybe force the Baltics to get with the programme! It would also make the game a bit more of a challenge. In the real world there’s nowhere in Europe using electric locomotives exclusively – the highest percentage is less than 70%. In the Baltics they only use diesel, and we’ve only just got electric trains last year in the North of England ☹

You could also include things like carbon targets as incentives for electrification. And, although I know little about it, there's apparently a Rail Baltica program underway or in planning. Juriko (who made the first Latvia map) had wanted to do a scenario based on Rail Baltica at some point.

The editor will count electric track units as well as non-electric, and 1.06 allows doing maths with variables, so you could even check for percentage of electric track in any territory, with a sliding scale of whatever bonus as percentage of electric track increases.

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I had a look at Wikipedia and already got some ideas for a WW2 scenario, maybe.

At one stage I was playing with ideas for a Southern Railway scenario, covering the period from grouping to the advent of BR. What stopped me was I had it in my head that I'd need to emulate the cross-Channel pax traffic (which was a big thing for SR) and I couldn't come up with a sane way of doing that.

I did come with with an insane way of doing it, but it has too many minor issues to be a really usable option.

[RulerofRails]

I made some screenshots to show the steps I used to make the 2nd page of the ledger work.

I take an event and make frequency anything but status, then I select type: Newspaper

Enter some text in the second field.

Now save the game.

Switch frequency to "status."


Result:

Please note that I did a special setup to make this show up at the start of a game (CV4 set to 10). Obviously with the default setup this event wont show in the ledger at all till Bronze is achieved.



In this game we are approximating reality a little. If 70% of engines are electric, this is enough in my opinion to justify a game where you use only or mainly electric. The same with the tourist sites you mentioned. At most there are a couple cities in a country. I would just up production in the whole country.

PS. About the hex editor. This is to make a 1.06 map show up in a 1.05 install. I can give you a screenshot "guide" if you like. But it's not something that is often useful. Mainly 1.06 maps should stay in 1.06. If you need/want it done just ask. I mentioned it because I realized that your update to Alternate USA can easily be made 1.05-compatible.

[Gumboots]

Hey I had an idea about cross-Channel pax. I still think the steam ferries aren't really practical, but you could make a Chunnel or two. It would require sinking a few squares of ground to a suitable depth on both sides (just deep enough for a tunnel to pull through while still being covered) and running trains through that. I've built tunnels below zero altitude before, so it should work.

Edit: Hey here's a dastardly plot. Grab the Kyoto Station (won't be using it in the UK or Europe anyway). Remodel it so that it looks like a dock, with the seaward bits projecting past the building footprint, and with the visible building set above the track at a suitable height.

You'd set your few squares of terrain down to tunnel depth, pull the tunnel through, with a few units of clear track each end, then build your "stations" on that track. If done correctly this should enable hiding all the "ferries" under the "station", so they can just do their own thing without bothering anyone else. From above it would just look more or less like a standard dock, but the hidden trains would be doing the business for you.

[Grandma Ruth]

Moved the dgvoodoo discussion to the Installation forum: viewtopic.php?f=82&t=4307

[Grandma Ruth]

I made some screenshots to show the steps I used to make the 2nd page of the ledger work.

Thank you That is going to be so useful, I don't know why I couldn't seem to get the hang of it at first - I used to be able to do it years ago, but then I could do all sorts years ago that I can't do now!

[Grandma Ruth]

Hey I had an idea about cross-Channel pax. I still think the steam ferries aren't really practical, but you could make a Chunnel or two. It would require sinking a few squares of ground to a suitable depth on both sides (just deep enough for a tunnel to pull through while still being covered) and running trains through that. I've built tunnels below zero altitude before, so it should work.

Edit: Hey here's a dastardly plot. Grab the Kyoto Station (won't be using it in the UK or Europe anyway). Remodel it so that it looks like a dock, with the seaward bits projecting past the building footprint, and with the visible building set above the track at a suitable height.

You'd set your few squares of terrain down to tunnel depth, pull the tunnel through, with a few units of clear track each end, then build your "stations" on that track. If done correctly this should enable hiding all the "ferries" under the "station", so they can just do their own thing without bothering anyone else. From above it would just look more or less like a standard dock, but the hidden trains would be doing the business for you.

That is such an excellent idea and deals with my frustration at having to have a bridge where there isn't a bridge in real life and not being able to have a tunnel where there is a tunnel in real life. But can you do it in the Editor, like placing buildings and ports etc, or does it have to be done by a company as such? I'll give it a go and see what happens. I've never done any remodelling, I might have to learn how, it sounds fun!

Edit: I couldn't make the tunnel work but I did do a differently strange thing here:

I did find out that you can set up a company in the Editor, build what you like and then liquidate the company so it doesn't interfere with the finished game.

[Gumboots]

That shot of yours looks like what I did with the prototypes ferries: set a strip of ocean to land, lay track, then set it back to ocean. It works, but obviously it doesn't look good, and if you have a bridge crossing the ocean track, the track will be cut (ie: one or two track units will vanish).

I did get the tunnels to work. You can't lay them through ocean. You have to set a strip of ocean back to land, then run the tunnel through, then set the strip back to ocean. That works. Also, to pull the tunnel through the entrance and exit track have to be set approximately 180 height units below land surface. That's quite deep, but any shallower than that and the track just stops rather than boring a tunnel.

Nothing can cross the tunnel either, or it will pull it to the surface with a massive gradient on one track unit. All ground above the tunnel has to be kept clear of other track, and you can't run any bridges above it either.

I've attached a basic map tile with ocean and tunnel. You can reduce the base of the recess to 5x1 map pixels, but it needs to be larger initially for the station to drop into place. It wants to sit 2 pixels away from the tunnel portal, and it needs to be 2 pixels wide initially, but if the track is run along the side of one row of pixels there is enough left to convince the station to stay put when you pull the other row back up to land height. So after the station is place the recess can be reduced to 5x1 at the base and 7x3 at the surface.

This would require quite a large custom building to cover it. Much larger in ground area than any default buildings, but still doable. It's just area you can't build anything else on, and would take a sizable chunk out of a standard RT3 city region.

If you wanted to run track down to that depth from the surface you'd need to give it a long run, or the gradient would be pretty horrendous, so that won't be practical a lot of the time. It should be workable as a separate subterranean/undersea system though.

I did find out that you can set up a company in the Editor, build what you like and then liquidate the company so it doesn't interfere with the finished game.

Ha. There's a bug with that. If you have multiple companies in the scenario and mergers are allowed, the liquidated company will show up in the list of companies that can be merged. You can't merge it though. It just sits there to confuse things. You can't see it anywhere except in the merger drop menu either. It's just a ghost that haunts the merger process when you want to do a merger.

[Grandma Ruth]

Well, I've successfully built my Chunnel, but there's another glitch - although the "ghost" company doesn't appear to be there, you still have to pay for using its track.

[RulerofRails]

I'm thinking about this limitation of 180 units for tunnels, can there be a trick where you raise the land before building the tunnel, then afterwards lower it/return it to ocean? It might be a bit fiddly to get the entrances right, but might be worth a try.

The problem with liquidated companies is mainly evident on Arop's maps. He used an event to liquidate the company at scenario start. If you do it within the editor, I think you wont see this particular error. I'm not really a fan of scrapping companies in the editor though. Mainly because Company ID #s will no longer make sense. If you scrap one company during build, the 1st company you start in-game will be Company ID #2. It's ok to do, but don't just do it for fun. Most things can be done without it.

In the case of the Chunnel, why not leave the company operating. Maybe it owns some ports as well. Then you will later get the chance to takeover operations of the chunnel (use confiscate events). Then deactivate the company.

The reason you have to pay for using your "chunnel" is because you don't own the tracks. You need to use a confiscate event which will take the tracks in a particular territory that covers all the tunnel tracks. It can be a hidden territory.

There are some maps that use the track through the waves "shipping system." For example, "Of Men or Seals" or "British Miracle."

[Gumboots]

I'm thinking about this limitation of 180 units for tunnels, can there be a trick where you raise the land before building the tunnel, then afterwards lower it/return it to ocean? It might be a bit fiddly to get the entrances right, but might be worth a try.

Probably worth messing around with, but my instincts are telling me it will misbehave. Anyway, you'd have the same problem with grades into and out of the tunnel. To get the tunnel to pull through you would have to raise the ocean 180 units above your ground level, so when you lower it again you will need entrance and exit ramps long enough to give a reasonable grade over a height of 180.

The problem with liquidated companies is mainly evident on Arop's maps. He used an event to liquidate the company at scenario start. If you do it within the editor, I think you wont see this particular error.

Ha. How do you think I found it? I used a liquidation event in the editor, on the Latvia map.

[RulerofRails]

The problem with liquidated companies is mainly evident on Arop's maps. He used an event to liquidate the company at scenario start. If you do it within the editor, I think you wont see this particular error.

Ha. How do you think I found it? I used a liquidation event in the editor, on the Latvia map.

What I did was to liquidate the company with the company option in the editor for the chunnel test. Then I saved the game and started as a scenario. Then I hit "attempt merger" and it said "no companies to merge with."

However, just now I tried it a bit more and if there is a "legitimate" company to merge with (aka there must be 2 or more), then the liquidated company also shows up.

I then did a further test, to liquidate a company with no assets. In this test the liquidated company doesn't show up for merger in a game where there are at least 2 companies.

From this we could draw the conclusion that any assets (tracks/stations, maybe other things count also, idk) need to be owned. Even if the company is liquidated the asset ownership is still recorded by the game.

To put it simply: I don't think the game allows an un-owned asset (for example piece of track). If we can figure out a way around that, I feel the liquidation problem will take care of itself.

[Gumboots]

That makes a certain amount of sense. When I liquidated the test company for the Latvia map I bulldozed all assets first, but it's possible I may have missed something trivial. That company certainly had a pile of assets while I was testing, so maybe it permanently records any company that has owned assets, even if they have been dealt with before liquidation.

[Grandma Ruth]

@Gumboots - I downloaded your ship testing gmp but it won't load - it's missing < HbauxC_Body.3dp > whilst loading the car database. Is this part of your files - have you still got it? or is this something completely different? I assumed it was a 1.05 map - is that right?
BTW, I just left the "ghost" company to be some random rip-off EU company making a packet out of us poor Brits, as BoJo would have it!

[Gumboots]

Lol @BoJo.

That old ship testing map was made when I was running WP&P's cargo cars. I haven't used those for ages. If you're curious, I can set up a copy of that map to use standard cargo cars and locos.

[Grandma Ruth]

I'm thinking about the Schools class scenario - they did have a cross-Channel train that was very important but on a ferry, as you know. Too early for a tunnel and even now we still haven't got a bridge! But maybe it doesn't have to look like a tunnel, maybe it can be hidden as a port as you said earlier.
Thank you so much for sorting out the dgVoodoo, everything looks so much better. But now I've started again with a new map as I really didn't like the way the old one was looking. Should be easier now I know I can copy-and-paste! I'm attaching the new map which is at a very early stage but I wanted to do the tunnel first so I could build the track and stations before putting any cities in. Just so you don't get that annoying "London Junction" business when you build your first station.
The Chunnel terminals have devastated the landscape, as you can see. But so they did in real life!
The other map is an attempt at a ferry - what do you think?

[Gumboots]

This seems to be good for an undersea tunnel. It's just deep enough that it will always be hidden in the game window, even when zoomed out. This works out to be about 92 height units below zero.

The tunnels go in nicely with no lumps if:

1/ the base of the recess is set to -92 with the lake tool, and then
2/ the four map pixels on the ocean side of the tunnel entrance are raised to roughly +240 above ground level (lake tool again), then
3/ the vertices at the bottom of the recess, against the base of the steep face, are dropped two clicks each (ie: so the last pixels before the steep face slope from -92 on the land side down to -102 on the ocean side). This gives a better result when pulling the tunnel through than a totally flat base.

Done this way the tunnel pulls through nicely, but still with slight lumping at the portals. Then drop the four raised pixels back down to match the rest of the coast, and use the lake tool to reset those sloped pixels to level with the rest of the recess. Grades at the entrance and exit will now be near enough to perfect.

The 3% ramp down to -92 on one side was done with individual clicks with the up and down tools (not the combined up/down) and with grid view enabled (G key). Didn't take long. Surprisingly easy now that I've done it once.

[Grandma Ruth]

Excellent! We cross-posted - have another look at the post before. I've done a test for a ferry. But now in England it's time for Tipping Point - do you get that over there?

[Gumboots]

Yes I'll take a look in the morning, I'm about to flake out for the night.

I'm thinking about the Schools class scenario - they did have a cross-Channel train that was very important but on a ferry, as you know.

The first train ferry came in 1934. Didn't take the locos, of course. Only sleeping cars, etc. Before 1934 they only took passengers.

I think hiding the tunnel thingy as a port would be coolest. It could still have a ferry sitting at the port, with smoke coming out of the funnel.

[Gumboots]

No, never heard of Tipping Point. Will look it up tomorrow.

Edit: Took a quick look at "693" and "Ferry". Basic idea is right, but they can easily be made a lot slicker. You don't need to lump the ocean up, and you can get much easier grades on the entrance and exit track. Take a look at _Chunnel_test_92.

[Gumboots]

Looking around 693, I'm not sure what you are trying to achieve. The ocean is at 314 above zero, so must have been made using a lake tool. I'm not sure how you generated the terrain, but the terrain painting gives the impression the sea level has been lowered dramatically from its present day level, with large areas of continental shelf being exposed and small islands joining together into larger landmasses. If you want an accurate heightmap they're not hard to make with MicroDEM. Can be made for any area and to any scale. Happy to do it for you if you know what you want but are not familiar with MicroDEM (they can be done with raised or lowered sea levels too, with raised being easier).

At the scale of "693" I would be inclined to forget about disguising tunnels as ports, simply because the scale of the map is so small that they will look vastly oversized compared to other infrastructure. It's a large geographical area in a small map, so you can't do much in the way of detail and space is at a premium. This one would probably be better suited to just running track across the ocean and putting up with it. You could still disguise the track to some extent (although not completely) and you could still use a default port model to replace the Kyoto station if you wanted to do that.