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My inland navigation project

Are there any smaller ships usable for rivers and channels for 128packs, as add-on or whatever? ;)
Something like this post-boats just for p****engers would be nice or the 320pax steamship without the sails,
they just should p**** below the bridges and don't look like a monster p****ing through the land.

Currently I am using this steamship, beside of the for rivers unusual sails they are at least better than going up the river with an ocean liner and I also need something from 100 to 400 p****engers, not 2000  :o

If you could provide me the sources for postboats and steamship I would try to make something out of that.  :)

Re: My inland navigation project

Reply #1 –
Ok, I found the openpak sources in an old topic from january here and tried around ;D
 

Re: My inland navigation project

Reply #2 –
I started working on some smaller ships for rivers and channels,
as I am not a graphic artist this work is based on other ships from the pack I modified and copied together stuff.

What I want to create are some p****enger boats (200-400 pax) and 3 pulling ships based on the european rivers
1850-1890 steamship with side paddle wheels
1890-1930 steamship with propeller (this one is almost complete, see screenshot)
1930-1960 diesel powered

and cargo boats for gravel, agriculture products, wood (something important missing?)

I thought about allowing to pull up to 3 boats, however the game requieres some kind of placeholder (imagine the rope) in between to avoid that the next boat is eating up the previous one  ;D
That would mean 7 slots (pulling ship + placeholder + boat + ...) and the game (or pakset?) only allows 4,
I have the next boat marked greeen in the deposit but when clicking on it nothing happens - no error in console.
See the screenshot to see what I mean, behind the ship is the rope/placeholder and the first boat fits perfectly - next boat connected without placeholder ends up half sized; any idea how to fix that or to change this limit?   ???

Re: My inland navigation project

Reply #3 –
Can't you just make the cargo boats smaller and include the "placeholder" in their graphics (by leaving some room at the front of the boat)?

Otherwise you'd have to download the source code, change some value (I have no clue which one) there from 4 to 7 and compile it - but that would only work for you, nobody else could use your boats then, as these changes will probably not be made in the official versions.
  
***** PAK128 Dev Team - semi-retired*****

Re: My inland navigation project

Reply #4 –
Ok, I think I have a solution for that...
first: two cargo boats should be enough, in reality they used often 8 and up to 10 but this convoy has to enter somehow into the harbour
and we don't have the space in simutrans, especially in the often hill-surrounded rivers ;)

so I will try:
pulling ship + placeholder + front cargo boat + rear cargo boat

cutting the boats a bit (but not to half size as it would be necessary) and make the rest with different offsets
for front and rear boats to get some space between them  :-*

If there are some graphic experts interested in this project, any help would be highly apreciated, especially for drawing the side paddle wheeler (I can provide images of real ships from this type and templates for alignement of the graphics)

Re: My inland navigation project

Reply #5 –
If you take the first barge and give it some length, then it should "push" the following barge further. Default (not written) is length=8.

Rope can be part of the barge graphic, as Dirk says. If you run out of space in tile, take a look at planes (****uming the source you got includes the new ones?) and learn how to use bigger tilesizes with offsets to defeat this restriction.

My projects... Tools for messing with Simutrans graphics. Graphic archive - templates and some other stuff for painters. Development logs for most recent information on what is going on. And of course pak128!

Re: My inland navigation project

Reply #6 –
Well, the result of my try+error testing is that in the ship-convoy a fixed space for each unit is reserved,
does not matter what is the graphic size. My now invisible rope is reserving the same space as the boats...

I now included the rope into the ship (is added automatically) and made the two cargo boats with different offsets,
so far working perfectly - it is just limited to two pulled boats.
However I encountered just another kind of problem  :D

The convoy is loading correctly the goods (oil in this case) but the unloading at the destination seems to fail,
I still see it full going the way back (another oil transporter serving the same route works correctly).
Am I missing something in the boats dat-file?
Code: [Select]
obj=vehicle
name=Oelschute1
copyright=paco_m
waytype=water
engine_type=none
freight=Oel
payload=120
speed=24
power=0
weight=90
cost=782042
runningcost=320
intro_year=1890
intro_month=3
(image and constraint stuff skipped)

EDIT: Seems that defining a payload for the pulling ship with Freight=None was not a good combination,
now it is loading/unloading correctly  ;D

Re: My inland navigation project

Reply #7 –
Of course space is not reserved based on graphic :) That's what length=? in dat file is for. See http://www.simutrans-germany.com/wiki/wiki/en_VehicleDef#length

My projects... Tools for messing with Simutrans graphics. Graphic archive - templates and some other stuff for painters. Development logs for most recent information on what is going on. And of course pak128!

Re: My inland navigation project

Reply #8 –
Quote from: paco_m – on
Well, the result of my try+error testing is that in the ship-convoy a fixed space for each unit is reserved,
does not matter what is the graphic size. My now invisible rope is reserving the same space as the boats...

As VS said: have you tried different length settings in the .dat files? That alone defines the fixed space for each unit, not the size of the drawn graphics.
Edit: VS was faster there


And freight=None should work... at least it should not behave like you describe it...
  
***** PAK128 Dev Team - semi-retired*****

Re: My inland navigation project

Reply #9 –
Thanks, VS that was it  ;D

@Dirk: The problem was the combination of freight=None with a payload, without the payload definition everything is fine  ;)

Now as it should be (with length 24 for the ship and 16 for the boats):

Re: My inland navigation project

Reply #10 –
Nice! :D

As to freight=None... it isn't 100% special value, but is usually ****umed to be. Perhaps no programmer anticipated a vehicle with None+capacity and some logic check fails...

My projects... Tools for messing with Simutrans graphics. Graphic archive - templates and some other stuff for painters. Development logs for most recent information on what is going on. And of course pak128!

Re: My inland navigation project

Reply #11 –
The first test-version is available  ;)
http://uruk-online.net/simutrans/river_pulling_ship_set.pak

This is mainly to get feedback for the buy/running-cost definition,
my idea was to make it nearly equal per km and ton as the transport with the MHz push-tug (the next vehicle in the timeline to replace mine).
The benefit of the push-tug and motivation to upgrade is the higher speed...

And here we go, this push-tug has a running cost of 0,30c/km (yes, the engine-ship)  :o
Something wrong here, I guess.

Some words about the motor-settings and capacities:
I orientated the capacity of the full convoy (3 cargo boats) by long freight trains, this is also a realistic value..
the main limit of the ship is its speed (fully loaded it will keep below 20 km/h) and the low gear value,
so it takes quite a while after starting with heavy loads until it reaches the normal speed - avoid too much stops.  ;)

If you use the river/channel cargo-station from the pak take care to make it long enough for the convoy or it will not load...

and consider: this is just for testing, cargo boats have still some graphical glitches etc.

Re: My inland navigation project

Reply #12 –
Hey, that looks nice! Maybe you could check my ship set posts, as long as it is thought to be released somewhen within the main pak. Maybe it could help you to take some ideas :)

Btw, I like the idea, and that thug looks very nice!

Edit: If you need help with the dat and/or economy, feel free to ask.

Re: My inland navigation project

Reply #13 –
Well, if it will be included in the pak depends on the maintainers and if most players want to have it in -
I am adding things that I miss personally in the pak and share the results, also to get feedback and hints (like the "length" option).

Btw, great project, Zeno :award:
However I am not going to make 3D models of real ships for my river pulling ships,
I prefer fast results with the necessary amount of work (even the cable spool is copied from a rail steel wagon) ;D

Referring to the economy:
I made a comparison-tab with the current small (river) cargo-ships - the push-tug is in my opinion overpowered (a suggestion to change its values is included)

EDIT: New version with the values from the table available (same download-link, just replaced the old one^^)

Re: My inland navigation project

Reply #14 –
Quote from: paco_m – on
The convoy is loading correctly the goods (oil in this case) but the unloading at the destination seems to fail.
[...]
Seems that defining a payload for the pulling ship with Freight=None was not a good combination,
now it is loading/unloading correctly 
I found nothing in the code that would support this observation ??? Might it be that in your first test the ship convoy was too long for the halt on a canal/river? And in your second test, you accidentally had a station that is long enough to hold your convoy? On canals / rivers the length restrictions apply to boats too.
Parsley, sage, rosemary, and maggikraut.

Re: My inland navigation project

Reply #15 –
Quote from: Dwachs – on
I found nothing in the code that would support this observation ??? Might it be that in your first test the ship convoy was too long for the halt on a canal/river?
Remembering the situation I think that it was so, I was a bit confused with the ocean-harbour that works also with just one tile for every kind of ship/convoy ;)

Re: My inland navigation project

Reply #16 –
Returning to my strange idea with the offsets and without using the length-parameter;
well this was not really my own invention as the current MHz Push tug ship and its cargo-boats as well as the wood and coal barge
are designed in that way.

On the other hand I am not happy with the push-tugs values so a decided to make a new version of this ships with length definitions and
values that correspond to the other existing ships, here are the first results:

Re: My inland navigation project

Reply #17 –
By the way: I am surprised a length=24 works at all (even 16 could give problems on a lot of other way than water).