Looks like the suggestions here have generally been implemented. One problem, though, is that under the new system, coverage in the early days is problematic.
In 1750 for example we have staging posts and staging inns; because both are listed as handling goods, their collection radius is a single tile. Perhaps the staging post should simply not handle goods?
You can click on the "arrows" in title bar, click one time left and then right and depot is shown.
This fails when there is only one depot of that type, but you cannot remember where on the map it is. A way to view the actual depot, like the "right-arrow" in the city lists of a line schedule, would be very nice.
Perhaps the "bulk goods loading tower" could have parameters that increase goods revenue and/or reduce loading time by, say, 20% (these would be cumulative; five of them would reduce loading time to .8^5 = 33%, not zero).
And correspondingly the maintenance cost would be, say, double?
Post offices the same way for mail, and if we had hotels/restaurants they could multiply p****enger revenue and decrease loading time similarly. And again cumulatively, if a restaurant increases p****enger revenue by 20%, then five of them would give you 1.2^5 = 2.5 times the revenue.
Probably the game should ignore more than five of one type of such Platform Improvement.
Mail hoops and bags thrown from moving trains persisted until the end of USA Railway Post Office (RPO) service circa 1968.
Through the wonders of modern automation, instead of your morning letter being hung trackside, picked by the next train, and delivered that same afternoon -- we now have centralized computerized sorting which delivers your letter four days later. Let's hear it for progress.
Right, in the Real World, railway engineers ignore a signal facing the other way.
Contrariwise, in the game, if 'a' is a one-way signal facing 'west' (left), a train will not permitted to travel east through that square at all; one-way signals act as if there were a Do Not Enter street-sign facing the alternate direction.
I have written a little Perl script to p**** the .dat files, to show flow and introduction dates; here is what it says about goods and industries for pak64:
I had drawn some earlier crossings (without the automatic gates) but these are not in r310 ... In the 1850s there are no available crossings, which makes gameplay rather annoying.
Code should only need to change from "income += income_from_this_vehicle" to "income[vehicle_type] += income_from_this_vehicle" and likewise for expenses ... that should take just about zero time... no?
Agree with Hajo. A variety makes the game interesting. On the same idea, having the higher speed ways cost *much* more to maintain, forces choices to make efficient networks.
It sure would be nice if the higher speed roads, could be effectively Toll Roads, drawing income from each Citycar that traversed a square.
Grammar note: You do not have "one infrastructure, two infrastructures." You have one piece of infrastructure, two pieces of infrastructure. It's a collective noun like "clothing," "hardware," and "software." You don't have two clothings or two softwares!
Canals were prevalent even toward the end of George Washington's life (he was a founder of the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal Company later C&O Railway), and shipping was certainly around before then. I am hopeful of a timeline similar to pak128.Britain's.
Excellent work! I am still working (slowly) on ****embling a from-the-ground-up pak build directory for USA, but there is no reason to wait for me -- keep on with the graphics!
How about a high-speed road, with white dashed lines, and a high maintenance cost, (and ideally available as an elevated way) which can be used to build expressways starting around 1960? Two of these would look like a superhighway even if Simutrans does not yet fully have the concept of both lanes going in the same direction.
White center lines were typical in the United States before the early 1970s; yellow center lines followed later. Dashed or double (and dashed-plus-solid) variants were only standardized about 1971.
[2] "The 1971 edition of the MUTCD included several significant standards; it required all center lines to be painted on roads in yellow (instead of white), and required that all highway guide signs (not just those on Interstate Highways) contain white text on a green background. Most of the repainting to the 1971 standard was done between 1971 and 1974, with a deadline of 1978 for the changeover of both the markings and signage." -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manual_on_Uniform_Traffic_Control_Devices
you can set the minimap to show the boundaries, but I haven't really seen anything for displaying the bounds on the main view.
It would be nice if there were another mode of 'v' (show station areas) that would show city boundaries with grey shading. At some point I am going to have to suss how to make mods like this, hmm..
Without a pakset de-compiler, these old .pak's are useless to build a new pak128.USA ... even if we had a de-compiler, the would would only be beginning.
Inspecting goods-128.dat (as part of trying to jumpstart pak128.USA) reveals, the Britain pak already has goods type canned_food, which could be used, presumably without affecting existing saved games. The awaited Supermarket chain would accept canned_food.
I am thinking, canned_food could be produced by canneries that would accept (fish+steel), (meat+steel), (vegetables+steel), (fruit+steel)... although I do not see a way for an industry to accept "good-1 OR good-2" only "good-1 AND good2" ? Perhaps there would have to be a few types of canneries.
Here is a suggested revised .dat and .png for the crossing (this zip includes the pak as well). Before 1900, cobblestone road with out gates. 1750 and 1850 era tracks, in addition to the circa-1900 version.
Drop the .pak into your pak128.britain/ directory and you can build crossings again, yay!
p.s., Anyone with suggestions on appropriate signs for those early eras? Or thoughts how we might add a little shack alongside...
With Nightly-290 build (this installs into pak128.britain -- all lowercase) I cannot build level crossings until 1900. With v1.07 (installs into pak128.Britain -- capitalized) I can build level crossings in all years, on same save games and likewise on 'default' game. Applies to at least the most recent half dozen standard nightly builds.
Is it me or do most windows in standard nightly no longer close when you hit Esc ...? Example, open game, click Settings; Esc does not close the dialog.
Perhaps the city generation could be modified to include old buildings along with current ones; there would be some modification required to the chance calculation.
TheHood: If you could email me the updated HQ png with the player-color doors, I have a couple other additions for that. (Would be nice if we had private msgs turned back on sometime.)
In the final days of "real" (private) American p****enger trains, there arose a truly Byzantine set of rules, with a myriad timetable footnotes as: "g. Handles p****engers only for St. Louis or beyond or from Albuquerque or beyond; checked baggage only for Kansas City or beyond or from Winslow or beyond, except Sundays" which effectively became a way of driving away, or at least extorting high ticket prices from almost all local travelers. Thank the ICC and over-regulation for helping spell the end of most p****enger service in the USA!
I like. The only case not covered is for trains on double-track lines, on which you need to define a stop for each platform location, but with the way choose signals work now, even that might not be a problem anymore (so long as each station on a 'replicate backwards' route has a choose signal in the 'reverse' direction... yes?
Here's just a pak with 1950 and 1970 supermarkets, the large 1970 one being impossibly bland and needing much graphics work. The single-tile 1950s one is a high-street version. Just for you to add to your pak directory to try...
Could we add generic "perhisable food" (cooled goods) and "boxed food" categories? In the postwar era, as supermarkets are introduced, for example:
bakeries would convert flour to boxed food, carried to supermarkets
dairies would convert milk to perishable food, carried to supermarkets and petrol stations
there could be various canneries that convert meat+veg+flour, or fish+steel, into boxed food
Independent of above, would it work to define Restaurants that accepted low quantities of meat, flour, fish, fruit, and veg? Could be several variations of which goods are used (fish-n-chip shop, etc.). And because of low use levels, would it be proper to give high probability?
