Hello!
After some thought and reading about making open source friendly to contributions and such, I decided to start moving in that way, finally for real.
Nearly all objects have ****igned authorship. This might be seen as a bureaucratic thing, but was necessary to get right before even starting to look at the situation. If you ever wondered where did the revision numbers go when nothing in the set changed - that's why.
Once the "contacting" period is over (which is almost true), it's time to take a breath and start shoveling away the content that can't be used under the new license. Obviously there is a lot of things that will need replacement. And since brooding somewhere in corner and hoping that people come and do things will not work, here is THE list.
Currently there are three important authors who can't be contacted and their work can be considered lost:
Haru
Rmax500
Propermike
Other than this, there are several other unreachable authors whose contributions count two or three objects, maybe sometimes ten.
Note: everyone whom I managed to contact agreed. The problem is just getting to them.
Removal of all their objects, combined, will hurt the set in many different ways. Analysis...
- High speed trains like TGV or Shinkansen - almost exclusively Haru's work.
- P****enger trains, *MUs - per above.
- Ethanol chain - all made by Rmax.
- Special buildings - many made by Rmax.
- A few factories - made by Rmax.
- Locomotives - apart from the steam age covered extensively by Raven, there will be many gaps.
- Buses - doubledeckers ale solely work of single no-go author.
- Trucks - here most trailers will stay, but est. 60-80% of engines will go.
- Ships - p****enger department will be lacking a lot, even more than now. The "shipping department" even right now (before removing iünlicensed objects) lacks in all aspects.
- Trams - what is left can be only up to two cars long.
As you can see, these are all "unique" ****ets. The rest, like city houses or citycars, will suffer a loss in diversity, but not critical.
Of course there are also some positives!
Perhaps the most interesting part is that I managed to ****emble a
large (emphasis really intended) collection of rail vehicles for 19/20th century times. As long as someone can go through this ocean and sort out what is acceptable and what not, the starting date coud move as far back as 1850. The "surplus" vehicles might be used to fill the narrow gauge waytype, too.
There is a lot of houses from Raven, waiting just to replace other buildings or possibly be coded as cmpletely new objects.
Nearly all important objects (without which some aspect of game won't work) can be kept or substituted temporarily.
What must be done in order to meet the goal - get 128 to a free, releasable state?Priorities:
1) Factories
Steel mill (steel_mill)
Goods factory (cl****ical_goods_factory)
Electronics (electronics_factory)
Forest (Nutzwald)
Sandquarry
Materialswholesale
Home market (Moebelhaus)
Surface coal mine (open_coal_mine)
Gas station (modern_fuel_station)
Either the author is unknown, or unreachable. Some are of very low quality, too.
2) Game objects
Schwebebahn depot and stations.
3) Vehicles
I guess that the existing content can be spread along the timeline enough to keep the set usable. Preferred order:
Locomotives for all purposes - rail transport is the blood of all transport games!
P****enger (high speed) sets
High capacity buses (double deckers?)
Trucks - meaning these that pull trailers, the "American" kind
Ships - we'll need almost everything. Some reefers for meat & fish, something for cars, goods, and big psg. liners and small ferries.
VS, have you tried to get authors' e-mails from old forum?
Yes. The pak128 author "cheatsheet" has 84 entries, of which some 95% have email addresses. Unfortunately nothing helped.
See my comment in the "who's who" thread about using PakBritain graphics if you think they are graphically consistent. You can use any of mine, and Kieron is happy for his stuff to be released on opensource too (I'm putting everything together to upload all current sources I have to PakBritain sourceforge in the next few days)
Wouldn't be possible to use industry graphics from before-rmax's epoch? I'm sure there must be some stuff from Mhz or Napik, somewhere... :-\
No. We even have (still!) a few uglies, particularly the home market, which just sucks for crying out loud.
There are a few things that could be used as goods factory, but other than that, no.
Sorry for exercising necromancy, but I wanted to ask:
Are the opensource factories still sorely needed for pak128, and if so which ones are most critical ?
I ask, because I feel like making attempt at some buildings, and incidentally making those that are in demand would be good, wouldn't it ? :)
Of course! It's still the same:
Steel mill (steel_mill)
Goods factory (cl****ical_goods_factory)
Electronics (electronics_factory)
Forest (Nutzwald)
Sandquarry
Materialswholesale
Home market (Moebelhaus)
Surface coal mine (open_coal_mine)
Gas station (modern_fuel_station)
Dantedarkstar will need the .dat files for these existing ones, to encode the new ones, doesn't he?
Hmmmm... does he? I think the only settings needed to carry over are production settings and maybe climate. Since hte new ones will most likely have different size (?), we'll probably need the old ones for backward compatibility. Keeping it simple, let them stay under old name, so the new ones get new names anyway. Image coding is dependent on the item at hand anyway, so - there is nothing I could think of to carry over.
I'll attach them nevertheless.
http://simutrans-germany.com/files/upload/factories-dats.zip
Uhm... I "manufactured" my own dat file :)
Of course it will probably have to be tweaked before being incorporated into pak128. And the person to do the tweaking would be probably you, since you have big picture of the whole industry etc. I'm here mainly to supply graphics.
So far I learned that minimum production and production variance doesn't behave like described in simutrans-germany wiki. I get final numbers about twice as large as I expected from the values I put in.
Anyway, version 0.1 sand quarry is already done (under the name sand_quarry, feel free to change it anytime or tell me what name should I use if there's a grand scheme for that). Further versions will emerge as I gather strength to tweak it.
When I'm finished with quarry, I think I'll try tackling Steel Mill. I expect it to be a lot tougher than sand quarry. After all, I can't do worse than the current one and... well... it looks complicated :-X
So, perhaps the list should be refreshed.
Right now, these factories do not have a free replacement:
Steel mill (steel_mill)
Goods factory (cl****ical_goods_factory)
Electronics (electronics_factory)
Forest (Nutzwald)
Materialswholesale
Home market (Moebelhaus)
The rest is either substitutable by other items or not needed.
Regarding forests, Fabio was working on something here: http://forum.simutrans.com/index.php?topic=1566.0
Was it ever completed?
Fabio is always slow, behind the scenes, and surprises everyone. I guess we've got to wait for a surprise ;)
:)
actually, sudden changes in life make difficult to keep a steady working plan ;)
i promise i'll do something about it soon (i don't paint nor play since march...)
EDIT:
check out the news here (http://forum.simutrans.com/index.php?topic=1566.msg30054;topicseen#msg30054)
EDIT2: UPDATED TODAY
Any news on the market and the steel mill?? I'll start and old style goods mfg soon; Btw I also have some work on planes, where I've detected a couple of vehicles more would finish that section for a long time (posted here (http://forum.simutrans.com/index.php?topic=1470.msg32340#msg32340).
Maybe we could make a list (not only of industries, but general) and keep it updated here to see the progress... What do you think?
this might be a silly question, but even after an extensive search i couldn't find the sources of pak128. there mus't be an svn repository but i couldn't find the link to it.
pak128 is not opensource yet, so there's not open public repository to where you can get the sources. It's on the way to turn into open source, but there're some basic objects that need replacement. You can get a free version of pak128 called openPAK128 at Nightlies site, but I think it's not as playable as the original version.
i'm looking exactly for those sources of openPAk128. i'm not sure if werniman compiles the nightlies from the non-free pak128 by excluding non-free or it's own svn, git etc.
i suppose that part of the full pak128 is not under an open license doesn't neccessarily require it not to be available openly, since copyright prevents the use outside of simutrans. but i'd not be surprised if it wasn't.
As far as I know, it compiles the openPAK128 version from a private repository, but I don't know the details. On the other hand, I guess pak128 mantainers, basically VS, prefers to open the pak128 repository when everything is ready, instead of releasing it incrementally. Anyway, I guess that If you request him some free content, he'll surely provide it.
vilvoh, gracias por la respuesta.
i think completeness of a project would indicate that a version control isn't necessary anymore. but i also reckon it's likely quite some work to really branch off the open pak128.
i'm mainly asking since i just wanted to see the sources, in order to decide if i will either contribute to james petts pak128.britain port to experimental or can start some work on a port of open pak128 to experimental simutrans parameters. (that's in my oppinion the more promissing approach to some simulation aspects)
Well, the sources of pak128.Brittain are available at the official SVN (http://simutrans.svn.sourceforge.net/) >> pak128.Britain folder, so you can have a look.
Anyway, and this is my personal opinion, STExp is a completly new and independent version of Simutrans, there's no compatibility with official paksets therefore If I must decide between collaborate in a new pakset with full support for STExp from scratch or port an existing one, I would bet for the first option.
As I see it, porting an existing pakset may need to rebalance everything, in addition to add the new features, as these ones might influence in basic parameters like price, running cost, power, gear, etc.. As far as I've heard, balancing paksets is one of the most annoying task in Simutrans.
right now balance of pak128 with experimental is rather good (tested with p****engers only). it's almost impossible to make any profit, as good as impossible to make enough profit to expand. but it is possible. so it's about perfect from my point of view. actually much better than in simutrans standard, where it's extremely easy to make huge profits.
experimental's balance is not so far from standard away at the moment. i think james et al did a great job there sofar.
it is very sensible however to work on pak128 britain however. it's just, while i think it is very good, i don't love it. it's just to british, and orderly. i very much like the chaotic twist in pak128, with equipment more or less randomly picked from allover the world, some graphic inconsitencys and so on. it's my favourite pak set, and i really long for using some of the experimental features with it.
by the way: basic compatibility with experimental should be achieved very easily. i think only some weight limits of ways need to be changed. gravel road to 999t (to allow that huge bulk truck to be operated); city roads to 41t; the cheapest rails to 75t instead of 70t (all profitable train engines in the early game can't be used on slow rails atm)
ps.: sorry for straying to far from topic. (if one of the mods objects, please move it in a new thread, thanks in advance)
Well, as it stands...
Regarding "open":
- There is a great number of things that can not be released under open license simply because that can't happen without the author's consent.
- Most of the pakset works without these many things.
- But not all of it!
- I am waiting to get all the critical pieces replaced. It is SLOW
Regarding experimental:
- I do not like the possibility of breaking the community. I know this is politics and silly. Regardless; I will not make pak128 use anything that would make it incompatible with standard Simutrans.
- Nothing against features that would enhance Experimental players' games and do not break standard.
- Just give us suggestions!
thanks for your reply Vladimír,
i will answer roughly in order of your items.
it wasn't clear to me how restrictive the licence under wich the non-free content of pak128 was used is regarding the sources.
do items 2 and 3 mean that the free content's sources will only be publicly available when the missing things are completely available, or those necessary for pak128 to work are available?
the great possibility i see when pak128 becomes open is that there could be quite a lot of branches, practicaly everyone who likes (and can) modifying it for himself.
i'm not so sure what you mean with breaking the community. would you consider different forks and branches of the sourcecode as such a break? would you consider the linux community, as an example to make the question less abstract, as broken or fractured? there are thousands of different distributions, and contributers and users have free choice where to invest work or what to use. but on the other hand it does not appear to be fractured to the outside (e.g. linux vs. windows users flame wars)
i read in another thread that makeobj would ignore parameters not specified in it's build. if that's the case dat files containing parameters for experimental could be compiled for trunk without change of files.
the only problem i see immediately is the maintenance, exp. offers running costs and fixed monthly costs. they would need to be tweaked. However this could be easily solved, if james just introduces a new parameter for exp. running costs and using that.
thank you for offering to implement our suggestions to make pak128 as it is, more compatible with experimental. i'll keep my eyes open and post some. out of my head they're the ones in my previous posting.
there's another question forming in my mind:
what is the status of the .dat files of non free content? most likely was part of it written by the original author and part by someone else, balancing the pak? some parameters in it is just information (like seats in a bus) that is not copyrighted. others might be guesses, wich would be copyrighted.
sdog
You can't really compare the Linux community to Simutrans. Linux is bigger by several orders of magnitude. So it's a bit far fetched to say that branching is no (potential) problem based on the fact that it works for the Linux community. Oh yes, if we had these hundreds or thousands of people worldwide working on Simutrans... ;)
correct dirrrty dirk,
and i think i only transported what my point not was with that example. very badly phrased by me, and also suggestive. i wanted to ask more detailed if with broken he meant that it is not desired to break it up completely, or also to prevent it to be fragmented, but still cohesive to some degree. as i don't see much danger for the first case, but consider the second quite likely.
ps.: i'm not so sure if it's wise to post this reply, since i've asked more out of curiousity, and i'm reaching troll like post counts. (so just tell me nicely to stfu, and i will :-)
for instance, i think all dat entries for exp only (e.g. reversibility, comfort level, weight limits) could be put in dats. when running makeobj they will be ignored, but we could run a second time makeobj-exp and compile pak128-exp.
balancing, instead, should be made for std.
instead, way constraints (a cool feature i would really love) would probably create mess in pak128-std.
Sorry for tl;dr. You asked :P This is definitely not mandatory reading, most of this can be pieced together from my other posts.
Hah! A license? You wish! Current status is that it's all more or less based on belief that "they" won't do "bad stuff", open to any interpretation. I don't know how long have you been around, but compared to other communities, our history has been oriented rather on "closed", so it worked. Actually I would dare say rabidly closed. Pakset sources were always locked away and protected and you better not ask for access!
I will recycle a phrase I used recently: it's technically infeasible.
The root of all problems here is ultimately the fact that it's a svn repo. For some reasons we don't want parts of it visible. But it has history and all that. We can't restrict people to checkouts from only some of the folders and from some revisions onward. Well - we can, I am sure a svn hook wizard would hack something together. But it would be absolute hell and defeat the whole point of having a vcs.
Plus, the folder layout has changed a few times - I think maybe once, since it was never a radical overhaul of everything, but there were some smaller long-term changes as well. I don't even remember all the paths that would have to be protected somehow :D
The plan is - roughly - to keep this repo as a backup of what was for ages untold, and with the open version start anew. All of these factors combined together make it easier to wait - IMO.
Of course if you ask for a one-time transfer of all that is open, the needed manual sorting is not that much of a burden.
This has been my goal since ever. Actually 128.brit used 128 items as placeholders (still uses?) and... dunno, I think that's the "right thing to do". One of my reasons for going open.
Scale is the key, everything. I feel Dirk answered that one for me. Not much to add.
Breaking the community is something that does not really have to happen with forks etc. I am just... wary? It's not even that it might be inherently bad, but there is not much to break apart I fear.
Yep, that's precisely what I meant with "
Nothing against features that would enhance Experimental players' games and do not break standard."
And this is perfect example of "
I will not make pak128 use anything that would make it incompatible with standard Simutrans." Note that your suggested solution
does fix this concern.
I can't repeat exactly the words I used already somewhere, but I think there is no value in dats, nothing to copyright. It is like filling in a form. No new value created. If you want all dat files of pak128, be my guest :)
This is a whole can of worms; one could argue that the parameters can be used creatively and that DATs are in fact a declarative language, like html, which would bring up a nice question whether html files can be copyrighted, or what sets apart imperative languages, and if Turing-completeness means anything there or if Lisp or Scala or Python is better than C and God forbid what other crap. Or eventually the highly popular "where do you draw the line if it's all ones and zeros". Let's not go down there... please... :-[
More or less agreed. The way constrains are something I thought would suck mightily if implemented - ever - and as a bit array, even. But later I changed my opinion. They would instantly solve the sea/river ship problem, even if nothing else. The logic in that is powerful. (Which is why I dread it at the same time - it might also lead to unnecessary complexity for player, just because it will be possible with such system.)
Actually I dare say in five years or so, if Simutrans is still around (and it WILL be), it will converge towards experimental, or rather toward what it is/has now & in near future. The conservative "branch" (not really a branch) will be simply a subset of the possibilities, just like pakHajo.
It would be wonderful if the Blender sources were part of the repositories as well... then there could be a script to apply the Pak128 or pak128.Britain (or pak64, or pak192 or...) lighting and color schemes, and the appropriate price balancing, and make whatever sets you want. Even better if those Blender files also incorporated work done for OpenTTD's OpenGFX and other open projects, so we could really have a build-your-own-world pak creation tool. Am I dreaming or could that be done?
How about another refresher of the list? With the forest it sounds like we're down to
five missing factories. Any other holes filled in yet (either factories, or vehicles)?
A little Information about "nightly openPAK128"
The diferrent between PAK128 and openPAK128 ist not the SVN. In the generation script ist a Switch, wich could only use the "free" part of the PAK128 or all.
With this switch I geht the openPAK128, without I geht the normal PAK.
So in the source this PAKs are the same and so I could not make an anon acces to everybody to the source...
The Reason for the openPAK128 was:
When somebody whant to help to bring the PAK128 to "open", he could see wich Parts are not there .. and could draw them ...
@wlindley, you are dreaming. I reckon about 50% of the graphics work alone in pak128.Britain is getting from the blender model to a correctly aligned png file. If I didn't have to do that, then pak128.Britain would be a lot further advanced by now! Someone may come up with a clever automated solution (which would be great), but that would probably be an awful lot of work (I did try myself, but until blender introduce macros I worked out it would be quicker just to do it the manual way after wasting 2 whole evenings on it). Then there is the whole dat file writing and THEN, the moster of balancing the whole lot. You get the idea...
However, if you (or anyone else) want to play at converting blends to pngs automatically, I'd be more than happy to supply you with the blends you want from pak128.Britain, and of course dat and pngs are publicly available on SVN.
@wlindley, In addtion to what The Hood has said.
The idea sounds tempting but hard to achieve. First of all, not all objects were painted using Blender, therefore you can't produce scaled version for the different paksets. Then there's another problems. In each pakset, each kind of object has its own scale. The scale is different for trains, ships, road vehicles and buildings. In addition, pak128 scale is not the double of pak64 scale. So it's not a matter of taking the original source files, and using a script, modify the size of the object. In almost all cases you need to correct and deform the original model in order to make it not seem disproportionated. I talking about making shorter, wider, longer, taller, etc.. and many ocasions the result is not satisfactory. The object seems deformed, specially vehicles.
Would be different if we're talking about paksets of the same size (i.e. pak128 and pak128.Britain)
Furthermore, in small sizes blends needs a lot of rework and pixel pushing to work out. Raw blend files are almost unusable. (Or they usually are very bland. pak96, which is almost exclusively hand painted and pak64.german, "blended" at 512*512 size and then hand optimized show, what I mean.)
Blender has had macros for a long time - they are written in python. If you know python, open the script editor and go.
http://www.blender.org/documentation/248PythonDoc/
I bet we have a good amount of 3D models around. Several members have released add-ons generated via Blender ou Skatup (or whatsoever it's called) throughout these years... just we don't know where they are and who keep them.
Ideas to create a temporary a 3D repository for future uses?
The python scripts aren't what I would call macros - you can't record them. I did write a python script to try and automate the whole rotation thing, but for some reason the different objects rotated different ways and about different centres and I couldn't figure out why. What I meant was something where you click "record", perform a bunch of actions, click "stop" and it generates the code for you, like in visual basic in microsoft office.
nice
@IgorTekton
A svn for 3D-Models are not the Problem, ... but I think we must diskus befor we implement and nobody use it....
could we make a new threat with this?
To get back to my question, have any of the missing factories actually been finished? (Nutswald perhaps?) If so, which ones are left?
Sorry, I forgot about the updates here! The recent list of "ouchies":
- lots of rail bridges
- general (generic) goods factory
- materials wholesale - maybe call it builders' yard - concrete, planks, steel and the like
- steel mill
So as you can see, it boils down mainly to 3 industries.
this are in my TODO list (new tracks are boiling in my graphics factory for long time, now, but there's a lot of work already done... I'd claim it's my ground now ;))
Isn't this one in Raven's TODO list? It seemed already at a good stage of development.EDIT: Sorry, see VS's reply.
No, that was the home market (which isn't on this list, is it...)
Maybe some replacement graphics would do? In the worst case, just a wireframe object with a text "Help to complete pak128.open, contribute graphics" would do ;)
At least this way the long awaited step to open source pak 128 could be done.
Do you think such step would help more?
I think it could attract helpers. It will show where the problems are, and also that you really try to get things going. It's worth a try, I think.
I had the same idea than Hajo a few weeks ago. The missing buildings break a lot of industry chains. I will use openpak128 exclusively once all the industries are present, but they don't need to have their graphics finalized. I would be happy with just a red square saying "Steel Mill" for now. I am sure there would be a few others willing to accept this as well.
And as Hajo said, the more people use it, the more people will see the need for graphics. It will get more attention than what the forum would get :)
Well, let's go then!
Little Question:
Could the Script for the "openPAK128" change the grafics? Every "Problem" Faktory are 3x3 Tiles ... so there could be an automatisation ... or?
(I hope you understand me ;o) )
pak128.britain has a very serviceable steel mill, and a tolerable (but dark) builders' yard, but they have different footprints from the ones in pak128. :-( 3x4 for the steel mill instead of 4x4 and 1x2 for the builders' yard instead of 2x2. I'm half tempted to take The_Hood's steel mill from pak128.britain and add four tiles of empty space ;-)
Edit: I actually prefer the pak128.britain steel mill image to the existing one. A lot.
SInce some industries will be missed any way, just give the new steel mill a different name from the olf one and provide an entry in compat.tab to replace olf be new. In the worst case people will need an extension building but will be otherwise fine. Does the pak129.britain steel mill come in 4x3 and 3x4? Otherwise making it 4x4 would be a better choice.
Having "borrowed" so much from pak128 for use in pak128.Britain, the concept of pak128 using pak128.Britain images amuses me!
Raven did contact me about getting my blend file for the steel mill to convert it into something for pak128, but then I heard no more. If anyone else wants any of the blends for pak128.Britain things, just ask and I can let you have them. Obviously just messing around with the pngs and dats is fine under the artistic license, and you know where those files are :)
And to answer prissi's question, all pak128.Britain industries have 4 rotations (even the 2x2 ones, so that when you rotate the map it looks like you have actually just switched view and not just rotated the earth relative to the factory!). The steel mill is 3x4 (and 4x3)
I guess Raven is quite bussy right now. Anyway if pak128 maintainers need help with Blender files, I can help dealing with them, and I guess Zeno can too. Do they include the textures, The Hood?
There are textures on the models, but I suspect things like textures and lightings will be the things that need changing most to get the models into pak128 style. None of the textures were applied post-render, just cleaning up of a few stray pixels.
Guys, half the problems with industries are probably gone - Rmax500 just appeared :)
I should work on a new monument. I don't like the old one, which mostly consist of a former forum avatar of mine.
Edit: If I can overcome distraction and being lazy ...
@VS
Congratulations !!!!
This is "probably" excellent news! :)
Looks like waiting is in some cases a successful strategy ;D
Let's see how Rmax takes the "Welcome back, we have work for you." ;D
Just kidding...
Wouldn't that be "Welcome back, hand over all your stuff!" instead? ;D
Ehhh. Don't scare him away... please... :police:
Need to say sorry, I had mixed that up with another one. The one from pak128 is rather good. Big thanks to the one who draw the socket and flowerbeds! It's great, and I like it much :)
VS sent me to image, and I changed it a tiny bit into a construction engineer. Got a helm now, and a plan. Having a plan is always important ;D
Hope that will be alright. The updated image is on the way back to VS to be includes.
really?
it's wonderful! beside i really liked that guy, his work is priceless... (I really love it! I hope we didn't lose some sources when he disappeared). It makes me think of my own disappearance one year or so ago.
;D
So ... wich Part of the PAK128 ar now the problem??
* materialswholesale (2x2) - sells concrete, planks and steel
* moebelhaus (3x4) - "home market", sells furniture, books, and fertilizer (!)
* electronics factory (3x3)
And of course some (many) vehicles etc. ... but that is not fatal :)
VS, did you receive my email with the updated monument?
Yes, thanks! I added it to the set and happily forgot about it immediately.
Hehe :) Good to know that it's included already (http://forum.simutrans.com/Themes/default/images/post/thumbup.gif)
So when we make 3 "Read cuboid" for this 3 Building pakOpen128 could be playable??
yes.
done!
work in progress: http://forum.simutrans.com/index.php?topic=4087.msg39771;topicseen#msg39771
I'm afraid to say that my parking lot should go to unfree section, too, as it depends on propermike's citycars.
Citycars is really an issue, i'll see if i can take (and adapt) some from Pak128.Britain.
Also, i plan to repaint a couple of Mhz's cars, to add a bit of variety.
For those without svn access (almost everyone), I packed rev. 827 without non-free material and some useless items. A few non-free items might still persist in schwebebahn folder...
http://128.simutrans.com/download/128svn-export@827.7z
53 MB!
I guess, i'll try home market if it's not already done or in progress by somebody else.
I just need to make a Building 3x4x1 (south/north-side x west/east x height), right?
It wont be animated though.
That would be great! And if you make the graphic as big as the old one was, one problem less :)
Animation is not necessary at all.
DONE
Work in progress (Gouv)
DONE
What are the next priorities?
I'm personally trying to
1) resume the works on new tracks/bridges/tunnels
2) going on with new roads/bridges/tunnels
Great, fabio :)
I'm looking forward seeing those new tracks from you since long ago!
Btw, my next goal is to make a minimal ship replacing pakset (similar to what I did with planes), which will include a couple of ships for each category, mainly one version for first half of 20th century, and a newer version for 1950 and avobe. Once I got that I'll begin to randomly add new ships, specially newer versions for years 2000+.
PS: But all this will start on wednesday, after I present my end-of-degree project. Imagine, me an IT engineer! ;D
Wow, good luck!
On the other hand, also my time is limited (from none to half an hour, one hour per day, a bit more in weekends).
But things little by little will be done...
Perfect. Open 128 is now fully playable in terms of industry! :D Thanks a lot, you really make this happen.
In terms of "object for object" needs there is only one immediate hole: post offices - anyone know who made them? ModernPostOffice & PostOffice. Also Modern_Warehouse from leedsnut, but that is not important.
Next, four rail bridges: Plate_Girder_Bridge, SteelRail, SteelRail2, u_truss_bridge. I guess that belongs to new tracks project, eventually, and can be skipped.
I haven't taken a proper look at the missing buses and trains yet. Ships will be covered by Zeno as he says, so no problem there :) Trams have been made mostly by Raven, but the real problem are these that can be stacked to form longer (2 tile) units. These are seriously useful for things like metro (underground, subway)... 11 items in total.
PS: I got a hold of propermike, which means 95% of citycars stays.
Do we need then an "normal" PAK128 nightly??
Or it is better to make only the openPAK128-nightly then?
Bus stops HAVE mailboxes only version, but i see it's not the same thing...
To be skipped, indeed, I'm completely revising the bridges issue...
WOW, this is a GREAT piece of news!
That's another project I got in mind, a subway pakset consisting in six (maybe increasing to 8 or 9) sets of underground trains, smaller than usual trains (length is 6 IIRC).
You can take a look on a couple of them I got already done, maybe they could do the job: Series 200B (http://graphics.simutrans.com/displayimage.php?album=47&pos=18) and Series 1000 (http://graphics.simutrans.com/displayimage.php?album=47&pos=17).
Wow!!
...Zeno dances around the room...
Oh... you made them two carriages but as one vehicle?
Two vehicles. These are sets consisting in two vehicles. I've coded them with restrictive constraints, so only trains with two vehicles allowed, no variations.
Btw, on newer underground trains (from 1970 or so) were adapted to 5 vehicles, which is the formation currently used by all spanish undergrounds.
I love these trains here: http://forum.simutrans.com/index.php?topic=4005.msg42640#msg42640
Do you think we can ask the author if he wants to release them for pak128 ?
And, generally, when can we try to add material released as an addon (if the author agrees with the license)?
Well, in principle it's possible. However, I think that Raven had a really good point when he said (once on irc) that a set should be conceptually balanced and well planned. Do we have such plan for 128? By not looking at buses and trains I mean exactly this - I haven't even considered what has to be thought about, yet :P Perhaps this is as good time as any to do it...
I've contributed some vehicles these days since I finished my studies and having some free time. These vehicles are a set of undergraund trains (based on Barcelona's Metro), consisting in 9 trains, and a set of oil tank wagons, consisting of 9 different wagons filling the whole timeline (1870-2000s).
Since some days ago I've been drawing some ships to replace the current unlicensed (not-free) objects in pak. I will post some pictrues, renders and previews in this (http://forum.simutrans.com/index.php?topic=4307.msg43948#msg43948) post.
Hope you like them all :)
What is the current status so far? I think it would be good to re-write the listings after the last release (1.4.6).
I've been playing with the open pak nightly (1930 to 1980 with timeline on), and AFAICT, most critical things missing are:
- Rail bridges: I guess Fabio is working on that (part of his track&road renewal set)
- Ships: I'm currently working on a full set replacing (so that will take a while)
- P****enger trains: I miss some more p****enger trains in all eras, despite this is not as critical as ships/bridges.
Is there anything I forget about?
PS: I've been suffering some kind of
compulsive vehicle painting, so I can contribute with some extra vehicles:
- Freight trains: I have a spanish set of about 10 locos (diesel & electric). They would need a re-rendering, plus applying player colours.
- Freight trains: Just finished a set of 3 high power multi-head locos: EMD-FT, Dm3 and IORE. Dm3 may need re-aligning.
- P****enger trains: I've painted a full set of 5 or 6 french TGV that could help replacing the missing Shinkansen.
- Buses: Got a couple of re-rendered buses, for 1970 and 1980 IIRC, with player colours and urban/intercity versions.
Confirmed, I'm working on them, although I'm also working on a full set replacing and it will take a while, moreover, time in the present period is extremely limited, I hope/guess I'll have more later this Spring.
- Perhaps the thread could be renamed, "openPAK128 - what is left to do" to make it clear and consistent with naming on the Nightly download page?
- Zeno - Any chance of a "GM Fishbowl" New Look (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GM_New_Look_bus) bus, introduced 1959? It's the signature North American transit vehicle.
I'll write it down in my 'candidates notebook'. Dunno when but, someday after I draw a few more ships I could get to it :)
Aaahh... nice to hear that! Btw, don't care about the time, we will patiently wait, and the pak won't go anywhere ;)
So, just to clarify, am I correct about this:
- ALL the factories are now done? (Is the Moebelhaus /Home Market in the pak?)
- a new post office is the only important missing station?
- the only other vital missing elements are fabio's rail bridges and Zeno's ships?
- Haru is the only major author who can't be found?
Perhaps it will soon be time to switch to a new, public, 100% open source SVN repository for OpenPak128?
AFAIK he was found and autorised to release his creations under open source license.
It is planned and it will be done when is the time ;)
There's still a lot of work with tracks, roads and bridges (where fabio is working), and also with ships and some trains (where I am working). Moreover, VS (pak mantainer) is quite busy these days. So there's no need to hurry :)
It is in plan, but I don´t know when:
The nightly would only generate the open.PAK128. The generation of the "close" would be go offline.
(There will be pak128.britain on th same place ...)
Wow, so in the end very little needed to be removed.
Well, I don't want to rush anyone, but I would love to see it by next January or so. ;-)
The new road/track replacement is a really hard job, so it will take for a while... also *all* ships are about to be replaced; so it's not worthy to say a date, just when it's done :)
Btw you can play the open-pak128 nightly, which can give an idea of current status and playability.
I just want to be able to look around in the commented source code instead of having to unpack .paks, that's all. :-)
Why don't you use JimsViewer (http://forum.simutrans.com/index.php?topic=4109.0) , neroden? It's a pak file viewer..
Thanks, but "It's available only for windows 95/98/XP." I guess I could port it. :-/
Ops! I forgot you use GNU/Linux. Then, why don't you try to run it using Wine? it works with some other Simutrans tools likes Shades and Tilecutter.
I support making pak128 open. I don't know what is situation around railway stations extensions but some days ago I began work on four rotations railway station extension.
You may see and support its development here, in topic 4 rotations railway station extension (http://forum.simutrans.com/index.php?topic=5000.0). And as I wrote there, source files will be published after finishing.
all things I create are completely free. Sources will be published but if someone want them before I can send him them.
Thanks for the offer. Currently I am too busy to do much, but at worst after 8th June there should be plenty of time!
For now, I decided to look at timeline holes in greater detail... and got this. Warning - image heavy link:
http://vs.simutrans.com/remote_images/timeline/
bright red = to be removed,
weak red = no intro date,
green = no retire date,
white = no intro and retire,
gray = nothing interesting.
wow nice pictures, nice work ;)
but I don't understand why do you want to remove some vehicles :/
That is targeted against vehicles where copyrights were not gained from its author. It is the same why some buildings had to be made again - and better face was secondary affair.
the creator have been contacted ?
The problem is that the vehicles to delete are almost good ones ...
1. Responsible people have been trying to contact them - but sometimes without any result
2. Sometimes it is problem.
-->
To station extension: what level (how much p****engers and post) to set?
-->
Please, this request separate into new topic and locate it where it will fit best:
I need to know how to create source *.png file(s) for *.dat file for rotated building when I have more than one original pictures.
I have been using TileCutter 0.3d.
Their work could be made open until they appear ...
If you know that a new topic is needed, why don't you open it yourself? ;)
This is the creator's choice. Take one that matches the visible size and intended use. Of course, if they are meant as a replacement for other objects, they should match them in their parameters, too.
Have you looked into the Wiki (http://simutrans-germany.com/wiki/wiki/tiki-index.php?machine_translate_to_lang=&no_bl=y&page=en_BackImage)? That page doesn't say much about rotation, but the necessary parameters seem to be covered there.
This would compromise the free distribution of the whole pak-set. Not a good idea.
Fishing_Boat_0 is from MHz and who agreed on open sourcing, imho.
Why are all TS_Mack trailers but the bulk trailer removed? Either all or nothing, I think. And TS isn't Thomas?
And the Kagoshima tram never ever reached 100km/h in real life (but since it goes anyway ... )
But the way, does this script also exist in open source? I would like to built somthing like this for pak64 too.
... why ? I don't understand very well these copyright stuff ...
Where? I was not sure where to open it. If I had been sure I would have done it.
Of course that is creator's choice. I only thought that someone would offer it. So for the first (test) distribution I chose number 10 - after logging into SimuTranslator (I am one of translators for Czech language, so I could do it) and viewing level of VictorianStation. But I think it is high.
I read that - but it is only about stations. Solved.
gauthier: Very simple. Authors didn't say it's ok to share source -> I can't do that.
prissi: I will upload The script is in this topic (http://forum.simutrans.com/index.php?topic=1805.0). TS is Timeshock, unfortunately. He helped with most of the trailers, it seems...
You're not forced to show sources, just keep them in the pak ...
But if a player is a bit courageous he can recreate sources from the game ;) it's just very boring to do ...
By this way I made a two pieces version of the bus "aeromidi" (but just for myself :D )
Heh, but I'm going to do exactly that - make the pakset so that everyone can use the sources.
*. dat and *.png (prepared and also not prepared by TileCutter) files for new railway station extension will be available soon - may be within end of this week.
Because -- simplifying a little and leaving out the 'fair use' provisions which are different from country to country -- copyright law says "No permissions granted unless the creator explicitly says so". So unless the creator says it's OK to release them as free software, it's illegal to do so.
I don't think the current copyright laws are entirely reasonable, but you'd have to talk to your parliament or legislature about that.
These copyright issues are also interesting given the international framework of Simutrans.
Say, for example, there is a Country where copyright law says "Permissions is granted unless the creator explicitly says not": could we legally put the download as free software in a server based there?
Apart from the fact that there is no such country (only all your stuff belong to the state/company/ ... ) the main problem is that I do not sit in such a country. Neither soes SF-server sit there. In germany, you can be even sued (in principle) for such stuff, even though it was legal elsewhere - as long as you are german or your company is.
French parliament = endless war between socialists and Sarkozy's party ;D
I wrote on thursday of last week that source files would be available within end of week. So I am sorry I am delayed. They are available here, on graphics.simutrans.com (http://graphics.simutrans.com/thumbnails.php?album=102).
There are all needed files - *.dat file, TileCutter processed *.png file and also four original *.png files.
So! Today I had an explosion of activity, fixed a number of bugs and moved the pakset closer to "open"... a lot. Things left:
- rail bridges - #1 problem
- vehicles - only ships are in danger of becoming hopeless again
- just a few small things here and there
General:
--------
Total number of objects...........1981
Number of licensed objects........1725
Number of non-licensed objects.....256
Number of non-attributed objects....51
Number of "system" objects..........68Chart of contributors (http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?&cht=p&chs=600x400&chd=t:0.0625946491671,0.0550227158001,0.0257445734478,0.0247349823322,0.178697627461,0.161029782938,0.0262493690056,0.0257445734478,0.149924280666,0.290257445734&chl=Napik 6%|Propermike 6%|Vladimir Slavik 3%|Zeno 2%|Patrick 18%|MHz 16%|Fabio Gonella 3%|Haru 3%|Raven 15%|Other 29%)
edit: "moved closer to open" - my brain is making puns even on midnight autopilot ;D
Number of non-licensed objects.....256
what a magical number!
that table looks quite good!
I forgot to mention: ships are in danger but not particularly so, because Zeno is slowly working on that. Also, he made some trains and buses, and there is also a great amount of reverse-engineered material from Raven, so railways could be covered more or less.
I think a few doubledecker buses should be taken from pak128.britain. The British are the most famous doubledeckers anyway.
Does anyone have an idea which are/were the three to five most prevalent?
[Back in school a bus looking quite a lot like a Routmaster was on the cover of my secon english text book, (the first had a telepone box)]