[New release] Simutrans-Experimental 3.1

Topic: [New release] Simutrans-Experimental 3.1 (Read 8734 times) previous topic - next topic

[New release] Simutrans-Experimental 3.1

May 01, 2009, 11:03:24 pm

Thanks to all the avid beta testers for Simutrans-Experimental 3.0, a goodly number of bugs have been rounded up and sent to the firing squad. I have also made a small change to the UI, as appears below. See here for how to get the latest version. There is also a small update to the configuration files.

Changes

FIX: Traffic is no longer generated when the car ownership is at 0%
FIX: Total number of goods/p****engers on convoys or at stations now shown
FIX: Could not load games saved with Simutrans-Experimental version 2.x
FIX: Speed bonus would always show as 0 whenever the speed bonus multiplier factor was < 100
FIX: Crashes on loading and unloading when the speed bonus multiplier factor was < 100
FIX: Crashes relating to the GUI for showing goods/p****engers on vehicles or at stations
FIX: Minor optimisation of the routing code (Knightly)
CHANGE: "No route" colour is now a lighter blue to make it easier to read the text, "no route"

Testing and feedback

The above bugs could not have been found as quickly and efficiently as they were without our existing testers, to whom I am most grateful. I should be equally grateful for any further testing and feedback on this version, including bug fixes, and any insight into gameplay balance and any change of strategy required, as well as general feedback as to how Simutrans-Experimental plays compared to Simutrans-Standard. Happy experimenting!

Re: [New release] Simutrans-Experimental 3.1

Reply #1 – May 02, 2009, 04:08:48 am

Hi James,

With v3.1, whenever I try to open the Details window of a convoy, the game crashes immediately.

Please kindly look into the problem, thanks!

Another thing : I don't know whether this is specific to ST EXP, but no rivers are created upon map initialization, even if I set the number of rivers to 32 with river length between 32 and 512. I use a 256 x 256 map with only 1 city, 1 industry chain and 1 tourist attraction, and there should be more than enough free space for creating rivers. Edit : I have checked ST STD r2440 and rivers are created as usual, so I guess the problem is exclusive to ST EXP.

May I know why the speeds are all zeroes in the List of Goods Window? Intended? Please see the 1st image attached.

The cities don't seem to grow. Please see the 2nd image attached. I have set up an intra-city bus line covering every corner of this city, and there are bus lines for travelling between this city and 2 neighbouring cities too. With ST STD, there should be growth. Is this problem related to power demand of the city?

Incidentally, regarding power demand of a city, I would suggest showing data in the format : "Power : 25MW / 50MW". That is, the amount of power supplied over the amount of power demanded. In that way, players know exactly if there is deficiency in power supply.

With regard the following portion of code in calc_growth() :

Code: [Select]

  const uint8 p****enger_proportion = 40;
  const uint8 electricity_proportion = get_electricity_consumption(welt->get_timeline_year_month()) * 20;
  const uint8 goods_proportion = (100 - (p****enger_proportion + electricity_proportion) * 0.4);
  const uint8 mail_proportion = 100 - (p****enger_proportion + electricity_proportion + goods_proportion);

While it is understandable that electricity plays a greater importance in the later years, I think it is fairer to goods and mail transport to vary p****enger proportion as well, according to electricity proportion; otherwise, the importance of goods and mail transport will be downplayed too much, and the relative importance among pax, goods and mail will be changed.

Besides, if I don't get you wrong, probably the 3rd line quoted should instead be

const uint8 goods_proportion = (100 - (p****enger_proportion + electricity_proportion)) * 0.6;

with the last closing bracket placed before the * operator and have 0.6 after it instead of 0.4, right?

Re: [New release] Simutrans-Experimental 3.1

Reply #2 – May 02, 2009, 01:08:51 pm

I am getting Segmentation faults every time I try to put a signal on a way-type.

I have tried various combinations of signal and way-type so far, none work.

Offtopic: Should we be putting bug reports under the [New release] $Version_number thread that the bug is for, or should we open up a new thread for each bug?

~Michael

Re: [New release] Simutrans-Experimental 3.1

Reply #3 – May 02, 2009, 07:09:54 pm

MWoodburn,

thank you for your bug report :-) That bug is fixed in version 3.2.

Knightly,

thank you for all of your feedback - I do appreciate your continuing detailed input into Simutrans-Experimental. I shall deal with each of your topics individually.

1. Thank you for the bug report: that is now fixed in version 3.2.

2. This is also fixed with the latest release: the problem was in the configuration files, not the executable.

3. I cannot reproduce this bug as of 3.1/3.2 - this was a known issue in 3.0, however. Can you try it with 3.2? Do make sure that you use the new configuration files.

4. Thank you for your report on this - this has also been reported elsewhere, and is fixed in version 3.2.

5. The power demand of a city is shown on a graph next to "power supply"; it also fluctuates quickly. Also, if I added it to the end of the "Power demand:" string, it would be too long, and overlap into the map, so I shall keep this as it is for now. Thank you for the suggestion, though :-)

6. Thank you for pointing that out - that is most helpful. I did intend 0.4 rather than 0.6 (the updated default values can be seen in the new code comments), but the brackets were indeed, as you suggest, in the wrong place. As to the proportion of p****engers, that is a more difficult question. It does seem sensible to me that the proportion of p****engers needed to grow a city would be constant with time, whereas the proportion of goods or mail would not be as the economy becomes more sophisticated and more relies on telecommunications and services over manufacturing, but I should be interested in others' views on this one.

In any event, do let me know how you get on with 3.2 :-)

Edit:

It might be easier to have one topic per bug, actually (in response to MWoodburn81's question).

Re: [New release] Simutrans-Experimental 3.1

Reply #4 – May 03, 2009, 02:10:42 am

Hi James,

Thanks for your patient replies

Quote from: jamespetts – on May 02, 2009, 07:09:54 pm

5. The power demand of a city is shown on a graph next to "power supply"; it also fluctuates quickly. Also, if I added it to the end of the "Power demand:" string, it would be too long, and overlap into the map, so I shall keep this as it is for now. Thank you for the suggestion, though :-)

That's why I suggest to use "Power :" instead of "Power Demand :"

Or you may even use "Power (MW) : SS / DD" and drop the units from the 2 ensuing figures. IMHO, there should be a way to give players a feedback on how much power is in lack, and it is always a good idea to make the mechanism behind transparent to them. If I connect a power plant to a city, how do I know if the power supplied by that plant alone is sufficient? If the dialog box is not wide enough, why not make it larger, instead of confining yourself to its limited space?

Quote from: jamespetts – on May 02, 2009, 07:09:54 pm

2. This is also fixed with the latest release: the problem was in the configuration files, not the executable.

It seems that you haven't included simuconf.tab in your config zip file -- I guess that is necessary to fix the river problem? Off-topic : it helps to mention in the "Latest Release" paragraph of the stickied thread ("How to Get Simutrans Experimental") if there is any update to the batch of config files.

3)

Quote from: jamespetts – on May 02, 2009, 07:09:54 pm

3. I cannot reproduce this bug as of 3.1/3.2 - this was a known issue in 3.0, however. Can you try it with 3.2? Do make sure that you use the new configuration files.

~~The problem of zero speeds persists in v3.3. Please see attached image.~~ OK, I see now that a v3.0 save game with v3.3 game engine still exhibits the zero speed problem as well as crash upon opening a convoy's details window, but these problems no longer exist with new games. That means I have to abandon my save game again ...

Quote from: jamespetts – on May 02, 2009, 07:09:54 pm

6. Thank you for pointing that out - that is most helpful. I did intend 0.4 rather than 0.6 (the updated default values can be seen in the new code comments), but the brackets were indeed, as you suggest, in the wrong place.

Code: [Select]

  /* four parts contribute to town growth:
   * p****enger transport 40%, mail 16%, goods 24%, and electricity 20% (by default: varies)
   *
   * Congestion detracts from growth, but towns can now grow as a result of private car
   * transport as well as public transport: if private car ownership is high enough.
   * (@author: jamespetts)
   */
  
  const uint8 p****enger_proportion = 40;
  const uint8 electricity_proportion = get_electricity_consumption(welt->get_timeline_year_month()) * 20;
  const uint8 goods_proportion = (100 - (p****enger_proportion + electricity_proportion)) * 0.4;
  const uint8 mail_proportion = 100 - (p****enger_proportion + electricity_proportion + goods_proportion);

You state in the comment that the proportion of goods is 24% and that of mail is 16%. But with your code, ****uming default electricity proportion of 20%, goods proportion is 16% and mail proportion is 24% :
goods_proportion
= (100 - (p****enger_proportion + electricity_proportion)) * 0.4
= (100 - (40 + 20)) * 0.4
= (100 - 60) * 0.4
= 40 * 0.4
= 16

5)

Quote from: jamespetts – on May 02, 2009, 07:09:54 pm

As to the proportion of p****engers, that is a more difficult question. It does seem sensible to me that the proportion of p****engers needed to grow a city would be constant with time, whereas the proportion of goods or mail would not be as the economy becomes more sophisticated and more relies on telecommunications and services over manufacturing, but I should be interested in others' views on this one.

I don't think that as time progresses, the importance of goods diminishes. In fact, it should be the reverse. We demand a lot more consumer goods nowadays than decades ago. What were considered luxury goods in the past may now be treated as daily necessities. A good indicator is the huge volume of wastes which cities produce on a daily basis. It's true that we demand more services now, but that doesn't mean that we demand less consumer goods.

As for mail, we now have emails, forums, instant messaging, etc., and in this respect, I agree that it is reasonable to downplay its impact on city growth.

6)

Quote from: jamespetts – on May 02, 2009, 07:09:54 pm

It might be easier to have one topic per bug, actually (in response to MWoodburn81's question).

Sure, no problem. Maybe we can precede the message topic with [Bug vX.X] to differentiate bug reports for different versions?

Re: [New release] Simutrans-Experimental 3.1

Reply #5 – May 03, 2009, 10:13:28 am

Knightly,

thank you again for your contribution :-)

1. As for a way of showing easily the amount of electricity consumed relative to the amount of electricity produced, I think that you might have overlooked the "power needed" and "power supplied" graphs. If these are both turned on at once, there is a clear display of whether there is any shortfall.

2. Oops - sorry about that. A new version has now been uploaded containing the file. I have also added, as requested, a note on the "How to get Simutrans-Experimental" page about when the configuration files were last updated.

3. The reason that the problem recurs in saved games is that the problem originated with an incorrect interpretation of the speed bonus multiplier percent in the simuconf.tab file, such that anything below 100 gave a percentage of 0 rather than a fractional amount. Because all the speed bonus speeds are being multiplied by zero, they all turn out at zero. That setting is saved with the game, which is why saved games are still affected. I am not sure why you are still getting crashes on opening the convoy window, though: I tested that fault with a saved game from Simutrans-Standard, and that is not dependant on saved game settings. The crash related to the zero speed bonus ratings are different, and is based on a division by zero error, which I thought that I had trapped in any event.

4. Oops - I think that I had misread the debugger output. You are right: it should indeed by * 0.6. That will be corrected in the next release.

5. That is indeed a tricky subject - I should like a variety of views on the point, and have opened a poll on the topic, here.

6. That would indeed be helpful :-)

Re: [New release] Simutrans-Experimental 3.1

Reply #6 – May 03, 2009, 10:52:21 am

Quote from: jamespetts – on May 03, 2009, 10:13:28 am

1. As for a way of showing easily the amount of electricity consumed relative to the amount of electricity produced, I think that you might have overlooked the "power needed" and "power supplied" graphs. If these are both turned on at once, there is a clear display of whether there is any shortfall.

Oops, sorry, I must be blind!

<= Blind man with sungl****es

Quote from: jamespetts – on May 03, 2009, 10:13:28 am

3. ...... I am not sure why you are still getting crashes on opening the convoy window, though: I tested that fault with a saved game from Simutrans-Standard, and that is not dependant on saved game settings. The crash related to the zero speed bonus ratings are different, and is based on a division by zero error, which I thought that I had trapped in any event.

I have no idea why, but it surely did happen with the old v3.0 save game. Unfortunately, upon realizing that v3.0 save games are now useless, I have deleted them right away, otherwise I can post one here for you to try out. But you may try creating a v3.0 save game yourself (probably you have a backup of previous versions, haven't you?) and see if you also encounter the same crashes with v3.3

Re: [New release] Simutrans-Experimental 3.1

Reply #7 – May 03, 2009, 12:21:22 pm

Hi!

First of all, accept my praises for Simutrans experimental! ;-)
Lots of really good ideas and concepts! Your work encouraged me to register here!

Crashes are reproducable here (Simutrans Nightly 2325 under Debian GNU/Linux). Just starting sim-exp 3.1, choosing _any_ pakset, opening a car depot and drawing the mouse (without clicking!) around the vehicles causes the crash. Choosing "show all" will increase the speed of crashing.

Two problems, which might be connected to the bug:

1. All vehicles are displayed with power and speed of "0".

2. Obviously the space to activate the display of informations about the vehicles is not fitting the space of the images. The top half of the images is not activating the info display, the lower does. Under the images the info display is triggered as well.

Even by avoiding to use cars the game crashed after some 5 - 20 minutes, but I wasn't able to isolate the reasons or reproduce it.

Happy debugging! ;-)

Re: [New release] Simutrans-Experimental 3.1

Reply #8 – May 03, 2009, 12:48:33 pm

Rainer,

thank you very much for your feedback. I am glad that you like the features of Simutrans-Experimental. The issue with the crashing when opening depot windows is related to incompatible translation texts: since, in your introductory post, you said that you were from Germany, I am ****uming that you have your operating system configured to use German, in which case, the German translation text would be used. Because there is no compatible translation text in German, the crash that you describe can occur.

In the next version that I will be releasing shortly, the way in which the translation texts for the depot window are implemented will be changed, such that there will no longer be a possibility of incompatible texts from Simutrans-Standard causing crashes. Thank you for pointing out that bug!

I am not sure what is causing the game to crash after 5 - 20 minutes; however, version 3.1 is a few versions old. The current version is 3.3, and I am about to release 3.4. The Linux builds may be slightly delayed because they are done automatically once a day, so you might not be able to access the latest build until to-morrow, unless you compile it yourself from sources. There have been a number of bug fixes in these versions, and it might well be that version 3.4 does not have the same problem that caused your crash.

Incidentally, are you interested in helping to produce German translation texts for Simutrans-Experimental? There are, as you will know, comprehensive German translation texts for Simutrans-Standard, but Simutrans-Experimental introduces a good number of new texts that need translating. There is a new version of en.tab for Simutrans-Experimental, but no new version of de.tab. Since Simutrans has an especially large following of German speakers, it would be very helpful to have somebody to produce a Simutrans-Experimental de.tab. Would you be interested in that function? :-)

Re: [New release] Simutrans-Experimental 3.1

Reply #9 – May 03, 2009, 01:20:11 pm

jamespeets,

Thank you for your kind reply!

> I am ****uming that you have your operating system
> configured to use German

Well, it depends. ;-)
Debian itself has surely the normal english behaviour, the window manager (IceWM) uses German, where available. But for consistency I switched Simutrans to "english" before producing the crashes. So I am not sure whether your ****umption might be correct.

> it would be very helpful to have somebody to produce
> a Simutrans-Experimental de.tab.

I had a look on it. Most texts seem very common to me, so I presume a translation is already existing. Is a query of the part available which has to be translated?

Re: [New release] Simutrans-Experimental 3.1

Reply #10 – May 03, 2009, 01:37:38 pm

Rainer,

thank you for your reply :-) Ahh, you weren't using German? The problem can also arise from not using the special version of en.tab designed to go with Simutrans-Experimental, although that problem is also eliminated in the upcoming version 3.4.

Thank you for volunteering to take al look at the translation texts :-) What I suggest that you do is switch your language back to German, then run Simutrans-Experimental, and see which texts show up in English rather than German. Once you have found a non-translated text, you will need to add a translation for it. To do that, open de.tab, and add two lines of text at the bottom of the file: the first line, the text in English exactly as it appears in the game, and the second, the German translation. Where you see symbols such as %i or %s in the English text, make sure that these are replicated in an equivalent position (and in any event, in the same sequence) in the German text, or else there will be crashes of the sort that you described above.

I am also in the process of producing updated versions of the help texts, and, if you are willing, it would be extremely useful to have those translated into German, too (there are existing German versions of the help texts, but, like the existing English versions that I am updating, they are out of date even for Simutrans-Standard, and do not correctly relate to features in Simutrans-Experimental).

Re: [New release] Simutrans-Experimental 3.1

Reply #11 – May 03, 2009, 01:51:49 pm

Just downloaded 3.3. No changes so far.

Re: [New release] Simutrans-Experimental 3.1

Reply #12 – May 03, 2009, 02:29:05 pm

It still crashes after 5 - 20 minutes without doing anything in particular? Have you tried it with the Simutrans-Experimental specific configuration files?

Re: [New release] Simutrans-Experimental 3.1

Reply #13 – May 04, 2009, 08:03:07 pm

> It still crashes after 5 - 20 minutes without doing anything in particular?

I just downloaded the next version (Sorry, no version no mentioned). I will test it.

> Have you tried it with the Simutrans-Experimental specific configuration files?

Yep. With almost no changes foir the values.

BTW: Many thanks for the really nice chat and your help yesterday in IRC!

Re: [New release] Simutrans-Experimental 3.1

Reply #14 – May 04, 2009, 09:16:49 pm

I shall look forward to your test results :-) And you're most welcome - it was a most interesting conversation.