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.
Gumboots wrote:RulerofRails wrote: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%.
"We have no patience with other people's vanity because it is offensive to our own."
-- François de La Rochefoucauld. Réflexions ou sentences et maximes morales. 1665.