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Topic: Weight/Road Capacity Issues (Read 5816 times) previous topic - next topic

Weight/Road Capacity Issues

I just started using Simutrans Experimental, and am still getting used to dealing with way capacities. While connecting an industry chain, I selected a vehicle which, when loaded, was too heavy for some sections of the road it had to take.

Note in the following screenshot:
us (site down, do not visit) ]/image/show/2kMJjkSsiv/weight-inconsistency.png]

Truck 26 m****es 11 t, but is traversing a cobblestone road that is only rated at 8kg. Perhaps this is because the start point/loading bay is built on a cobblestone road? (Oh, d'oh! That's why it's only going 4km/h! Must be a feature rather than a bug.)

OK... I think that part's solved.  :P  But that still doesn't explain the second part:

Truck 25 is empty (I think it just dropped off a load, but it might have arrived at its current resting place empty) and m****es at only 7 t. It wants to head back to the back bay of the Wells Pharmaceuticals Factory stop, but while the city streets and cobblestone should support it, the vehicle "can't find a route."

Hmm... That's weird... I just traced along the route with the Macadam road tool, to make sure I didn't have any pieces of road that got mysteriously disconnected, then brought up and closed the schedule. Truck 25 (was renumbered to 2 when I loaded the save file) headed out, then another vehicle that was right behind it came in, dropped of its load and got stuck in the same place.

Sure... I need to find lighter vehicles or create alternate routes anyway (or I might just throw out this game as a false start), but this behavior still seems kind of buggy.


I'm using the Linux build of 7.1 (32 bit because I'm getting the seg-fault problem with the 64-bit version, though that's probably not too relevant because this looks like a game logic issue).

Save file (using pak128.Britain-Ex) at:
http://files.[ simutrans [dot] us (site down, do not visit) ]/files/get/Hi1Jfh0Yue/weight-inconsistency.sve

Re: Weight/Road Capacity Issues

Reply #1 –
Bersken,

welcome to the forums and thank you very much for your feedback. I am having some trouble, however, in loading your saved game. May I ask - which version of Pak128.Britain are you using? Unfortunately, there is an issue (which is present in Simutrans-Standard, too) in which a saved game cannot be loaded where the pakset has been modified to increase the number of different types of goods compared to when it was saved, and there has, in Pak128.Britain, recently been the addition of the "live fish" chain of goods, which has that effect on a number of saved games.
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Re: Weight/Road Capacity Issues

Reply #2 –
Quote from: jamespetts – on
I am having some trouble, however, in loading your saved game. May I ask - which version of Pak128.Britain are you using?

Good question... The Pak128.Britain-Ex was downloaded from http://experimental.[ simutrans [dot] us (site down, do not visit) ]/Pak128.Britain-Ex.zip Thursday, and the latest date on the files in the archive is 19 Dec 2009, so it should be the latest (0.4?).

The base Simutrans install is simulinux-complete-102-2-1.
 

Re: Weight/Road Capacity Issues

Reply #3 –
I'd suggest to enhance the message "can't find a route." in cases there actually *is* a route, but constraints avoid using it.
The message then could be:
"can't find a route for vehicles above 8 tons total weight." or
"can't find a route for vehicles requiring overhead power." ...
The journey is the reward!

Re: Weight/Road Capacity Issues

Reply #4 –
Berksen,

apologies for not having replied sooner - there is currently a problem with loading previous versions of saved games in the new (as yet unreleased: work in progress) versions of Pak128.Britain-Ex and Simutrans-Experimental. This does indeed look like a bug (although it's not behaviour that I've noticed before). I have been working hard for a while to try to get out version 7.2, which brings Simutrans-Experimental back into line with the latest version of Simutrans-Standard, including some major changes in the internal architecture in preparation for network multiplayer gaming, but it is taking a long time to integrate those changes, which is why updates have not been forthcoming of late. The plan is to release 7.2 with all of the changes integrated, and possibly an interim updated version of Pak128.Britain-Ex to go along with it, and then work on fixing bugs found in 7.2 in 7.3 (there is no guaruntee that bugs identified in 7.1 will be present in 7.2, as there have been a large number of code changes).

In the meantime, had you tried simply opening and closing the schedule window on the vehicles whenever they get stuck? If that fixes things, that might at least narrow down where matters are going wrong.

Bernd,

are you volunteering? ;-)
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Re: Weight/Road Capacity Issues

Reply #5 –
James,

how can I help?  8)
The journey is the reward!

Re: Weight/Road Capacity Issues

Reply #6 –
Quote from: Bernd Gabriel – on
James,

how can I help?  8)

You'd suggested a new system to show why, in certain cases, the vehicles can't route - you could always program it :-) I'd suggest doing it by replacing the bool return values of the various methods used to check whether a route can be traversed with uint8 enum values: the simplest system, I think, is one that shows as the error message the first encountered reason why a convoy cannot route. A generic "no route" will still be needed when there are no connected ways. Specific reasons that can be used include:

* lack of electrification;
* lack of way constraint; and
* exceeding weight limit.

I am still tied up with trying to make the GUI convoy replacer work with the new networking code, but any such ****istance as described would be greatly appreciated. I daresay that it would make the user experience rather more user-friendly.
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Re: Weight/Road Capacity Issues

Reply #7 –
started  :)
The journey is the reward!

Re: Weight/Road Capacity Issues

Reply #8 –
Thank you very much!
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Re: Weight/Road Capacity Issues

Reply #9 –
@Bersken

Now that we can load your savegame at last, it shows, that Thorncroft Wagons for piece goods are too weak for their load.
That's why they creep at 4 km/h. 11.5 tons is too heavy to start. It can move at most 10.623 tons.
The constructors should enhance them with a gear of about 1.2.


(Zoom image)
The journey is the reward!

Re: Weight/Road Capacity Issues

Reply #10 –
Instead of changing the gear, perhaps, which is always confusing, the power may well simply be enhanced. Because there are no reliable figures available for the power of most road vehicles, most values are guesses.
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Re: Weight/Road Capacity Issues

Reply #11 –
(I'm going to have to double check my forum settings and try to figure out if I can get E-mail notifications for my subscribed threads. Edit: Oops... There they were... Got caught in the Spam filter.)

Quote from: Bernd Gabriel – on
@Bersken

Now that we can load your savegame at last, it shows, that Thorncroft Wagons for piece goods are too weak for their load.
That's why they creep at 4 km/h. 11.5 tons is too heavy to start. It can move at most 10.623 tons.
The constructors should enhance them with a gear of about 1.2.


Aah... That makes sense.

That makes me wonder how difficult it would be to (eventually) provide content creators with an option of specifying both a unit limit (e.g. 5 crates) and a weight limit (e.g. 3.0 tonnes) to determine what a full load is (unless there is such a mechanism and the creator just didn't use it) .

Of course, then users would be flocking to the board, asking why their vehicles are leaving the station with only three crates when they're supposed to carry five.

Also, things could could really get complicated with multiple item types going between the same two stations... It would be a bit of a coding challenge, but I don't think it would be prohibitively difficult if a person had the time and the inclination to attempt such a challenge, and if splicing the code into the current vehicle loading algorithms wouldn't be prohibitively difficult.

I'm tempted to D/L the source (both main line and Ex) and have a look at it myself... Though I'm quite novice at programming and my code tends to wind up looking like this ;):

(Somewhat off-topic illustration has nothing to do with any current version of Simutrans, let alone Simutrans-Experimental.)


Re: Giving reasons *why* a route can't be found:
That's great! I'd love to see that one or two stops (er... releases...) down the line.