Blue Mountains revamp

[Gumboots]

Yep, I know about that page in the editor and was thinking of using it as one of the checks. Good point about the terrain though.

Just ran some numbers through a spreadsheet, taking straight line distances in map pixels between Sydney and a range of cities, Newcastle and a range of cities, and the same for Bathurst and for Wollongong. Distances are averaging 22% greater than the old map, with numbers varying from 0.971 (Sydney => Lithgow) to 1.764 (Bathurst => Lithgow). Some relevant ones are:

Sydney => Bathurst: 1.136
Sydney => Campbelltown: 1.266
Sydney => Liverpool: 1.120
Sydney => Newcastle: 1.333
Sydney => Orange: 1.123
Sydney => Wellington: 1.181
Sydney => Wollongong: 1.245
Sydney => Yass: 1.121 (vs Sydney => Queanbeyan, with Yass substituting for Queanbeyan on the new map)

Wollongong => Goulburn: 1.166
Wollongong => Nowra: 1.302

Newcastle => Cessnock: 1.570
Newcastle => Maitland: 1.295
Newcastle => Muswellbrook: 1.267

So it's looking like a 20% increase to track allowances will be about right. If set like that a Newcastle start will still be penalised a bit compared to the original. This is good as it tends to favour a Sydney start (historical and all that) which will offset the common advantage of Newcastle for early haulage and provide a bit more challenge. The new map has Singleton as an intermediate city between Maitland and Muswellbrook, which makes early haulage in that area easier, but I always play with a halfway station because haulage down the river is good and I know there are stations there.

With track allowances increased 20% a Sydney start might be a little too easy, given the numbers above, but that can be tweaked by not providing any track at all extending from the placed Sydney station. TBH I find it a nuisance anyway, because it's always a bit off for alignment when you want to get past the end of the Parramatta River. Better if you just get the station and can run your own track.

And definitely remove the 10% overall track cost increase. Will see how it goes with default track cost, pending testing. The 20% range increase I was thinking about earlier also seems like a definite now.

[Gumboots]

Got it set up and running, and gave it a few quick and basic tests. It'll need some tweaking, mainly for the effects of terrain. I'll see if I can smooth it a bit more without making it too blancmange. I like the terrain the way it is, so really don't want to turn it into an AI-proof blob. I think with a little bit more smoothing and some tweaking of regions and recipes it will all work. It does tend to seed too many industries, so overall building density needs to come down a tad, but apart from that it looks like it's in the ballpark.

Edit: Made some changes, and it seems to work pretty well now. Terrain height has been reduced 85% of what it was, and frankly it looks better now. The result is that farms, etc have much better chance of seeding anywhere but terrain is still fun and interesting.

Seeding is in the ballpark when compared to a range of seeds on the original map. Might make a couple more minor tweaks, but it's pretty much where it needs to be. Overall building density is down to 75%, with city densities boosted to keep the same number of houses and other buildings in cities. This gives a few more rural producers compared to the original, but more widely spaced. Factory count is up quite significantly, but operating off a similar resource base should mean they aren't problematic. If testing shows a need for a slight reduction in them, that's easily arranged.

Initial track allowance is up to 160 track units. This was necessary to allow similar starts to the original. With the original map's 100 track units you can just do Sydney => Parramatta => Penrith (or Windsor) or Sydney => Liverpool => Campbelltown, or you can do Newcastle => Maitland => Cessnock at the start. The revamp required an initial allowance of 160 units to allow the same starts as the original map. Yearly base allowance is increased to 130 units pending testing, with bonuses increased to 65 units. I was getting the feeling a 20% increase might not be enough (greater distance + more thinly seeded resources = less chance of bonuses) but if 30% is too much I'll wind it back a bit.

Locomotive oil sand and water usage has been reduced 30% as I think it will need that to make things workable with slow locomotives.
I may add an option for reduced load/unload time if you meet some specific goal, or in exchange for an increase in company overhead.

Re satellite shots: I think I can fudge it. What actually looks pretty good from a rough trial is taking a sat shot and blending it a bit with the chloropath terrain shading, along with a few tweaks to brightness/contrast/saturation. I can fudge the 19th century look by patching in green bits over current suburban bits (shouldn't be hard). I'll run a test on that later.

[Gumboots]

Haven't got much further with this. I got sidetracked into thinking what locomotives it needs. I could easily set it to standard 1.05 locos, with or without custom stats, but having got into it that doesn't feel right. So, I think I'll have to make suitable smoky critters to go with the map. Ain't nothing else for it.

Having given it some thought, I reckon what it needs is this lot:

1/ Obviously has to start with the 1 Class 0-4-2 in 1855. I need a reason to finish it anyway.

2/ The 8 Class 2-2-2WT in 1858, for early express. This is about when express in the Sydney area starts building up in the original scenario.

3/ 6N Class 4-4-0T, maybe in 1863, when it arrived in real life. For more even spacing of locos I might cheat it to 1861.
Since it's a tank I can double head it without having to jump through RT3 hoops. Set a second one as the tender. Done.
The NSWGR did double head whenever it was necessary, so it's sort of historically accurate. It will allow having something with speed and hauling power to match a Connie, but in the early 1860's. The catch is that it will cost a lot more to buy and run, so won't be suitable for use all over the place, but as a special use/bit of added interest/oh-heck-I'm-desperate-to-meet-this-year's-haulage-quota it should be worth having.

4/ 1865 brings the 14 Class 2-2-2 for express, 17 Class 0-6-0 for freight, and the 23 Class 2-4-0 for pax up hills and a bit of mixed.
Although the 23 Class came in two lumps (1865 and 1869) so I may leave it until 1869, again for more even spacing of locos.

5/ 48 Class 0-6-0, which was introduced in 1874 (perfect for the freight weight change in 1875) and was a real heavy hauler (almost as strong as a Connie, in terms of basic tractive effort rating) but slow due to being a 0-6-0 (no stability at high speeds).

6/ 79 Class 4-4-0 in 1877 for express. This is much the same unit as the 23 Class, but upgraded, so I can model and skin them together.

7/ Connie in 1879, which is when the NSWGR first got some. Bit of a last year boost, for anyone who needs it.

This would give a pretty balanced bunch, distinct and useful in their own niches. Adding more would make for some duplicates. It gives a nice balance in terms of builders and history too. Two Wilsons (8 and 6N classes), three Stephenson's (1, 17 and 48 classes), three Beyer Peacock's (14, 23 and 79 classes) and a Baldwin (Connie, of course). I'll get them roughed out and running as soon as I can.

[Gumboots]

Have been beta testing this thing and playing around with the event scripting. It's at the stage where it'll be worth putting out as a public beta soon, probably next weekend. Seems to play very nicely.

Still don't have the full range of NSWGR locomotives to go with it, but some existing ones are pretty good stand-ins for the moment.

[Gumboots]

Got something figured out about how a .gmp can get station names locked into its hex coding.
Earlier conversations about it were around these posts:
viewtopic.php?f=86&t=4216&p=45720&hilit=hex#p45720
viewtopic.php?f=86&t=4216&hilit=hex&start=90#p45707
viewtopic.php?f=86&t=4216&hilit=hex&start=80#p45695

For this latest map, for some reason the .gmp hasn't got build dates for test stations locked into the hex, unlike the Latvia map, but it does still have station names locked into the hex: Blayney New Junction and Bathurst Modern Crossing.

These two cities ended up with stacks of stations attributed to them, because early in the map building process I was placing trial stations all over it while Bathurst and Blayney were the only two actual cities on the map. These trial stations were all bulldozed before saving the WIP map as a .gmp, which seems to have wiped out the build dates (again, unlike the Latvia map) as the hex for those is clear.

Anyway, we already knew that the byte 244 places before the city name recorded if a station had previously been built in that city. I've now also figured out how it works for the byte 240 places before the city name, and the byte 228 places before the city name.

The list of station names works like this:

Code: Select all

    ;@gumbootz: Secondary station names.
    578 "Junction"
    579 "Crossing"
    580 "Depot"
    581 "Corners"
    582 "Exchange"
    583 "Point"
    584 "Center"
    585 "Township"
    
    ;@gumbootz: Secondary station prefixes (for repeats of above).
    586 "New"
    587 "Modern"
    ;@gumbootz: End secondary stations.
    ;@gumbootz: Reverts to city name for 28th station, repeats from there.

    ;@gumbootz: Next string appears to be deprecated.
    588 "Renaissance"

Bathurst has 02 at the -244 position, and 02 at the -240 position. This tallies with the list of suffixes, since the secondary name "Crossing" is #2 on its list, and the prefix "Modern" is #2 on that list. Bathurst has the building style set to Victorian, which is coded as 05 according to Milo's notes. This tallies with its byte value of 05 for the -228 position.

Blayney has 01 at the -244 position, and 01 at the -240 position. This tallies with the list of suffixes, since the secondary name "Junction" is #1 on its list, and the prefix "New" is #1 on that list. Blayney has the building style set to Clapboard, which is coded as 00 according to Milo's notes. This tallies with its byte value of 00 for the -228 position.

All the other cities on the map are set to either Clapboard or Victorian building styles, and sure enough they all have either 00 or 05 at the -228 position. None of the other cities had test stations built in them, so their hex for station names is all clear (00 byte values).

With both Bathurst and Blayney each having the same values for bytes -244 and -240 (ie: 02 and 02 for Bathurst, and 01 and 01 for Blayney) it's difficult to be sure which byte relates to the secondary names and which to the prefix, but logically I'd expect them to be in the same order as in the RT3.lng file. So 01 at -244 and 00 at -240 would mean the next station built would be **** Junction, which which tallies with what I found during testing on the Latvia map (I was getting Riga Junction, etc, but no "New" in the middle, and had only placed one or two test stations per actual city).

So I think we have this sorted now, and know how to edit the hex for station names.

[Gumboots]

RoR and I have been working on this and testing it behind the scenes (ie: lotsa PM ranting). I'd rather get it to the point where it's looking as good as it can get for scripting before I let it loose on an unsuspecting public. It's going well, and should be good enough for a public beta soon. I think I can get it sorted to that stage this week (yes, I know I have said that before ).

Will also have the beginnings of a corresponding locomotive pack to go with it: 1 Class for mixed traffic, 8 Class for express, and 6N class for freight. These only dealt with the 1855-1865 period in real life, but are actually good enough to play the whole scenario right through if you don't mind a bit of a challenge. Am on a roll with NSWGR locomotives though, so the rest of the pack shouldn't be that far away.

Alternatively it's perfectly playable with default PopTop locomotives, although not as realistic and IMO not as much fun. I'll enable the most suitable ones by default, with the NSWGR pack being optional.

[Gumboots]

Started playing around with throwing on satellite shots.

Throwing on satellite shots is easy. The tricky bit is getting the mongrels to look good around coastlines. The rest of the map is no problem at all, but coastlines always looks dodgey if they're not nearly perfect. I'm gonna try a few more tricks.

Rough_satshot_test.jpg

[Gumboots]

Ok, so I tried getting tricky. It doesn't work.

The bottom line is: get the satellite shot as good as you can in Photoshop (or GIMP or whatever), then fix the coasts with manual painting in the RT3 editor. It's the only way that really makes sense.