Hi all,

I have decided to share an idea I had with you all here. To show what might be possible and to inspire artists and coders to help, either with my set of bridge-objects, or to develop their own set.

The development and discussion regarding my set will for the moment only be here in Simuscape. This because my set probably will need an elaborate manual for it to work. It is very user unfriendly at the moment. And it is easier to discuss this with people that have some experience with drawing/coding and the percentage of those people is pretty high over here

So, I will try to explain my idea:
- The base is an actual working bridge, that only has road/rail-graphics and a simple bridgehead. So no pillars or any other "eyecandy". Currently I use an altered version of Wallywebs most excellent bridge (@Wally, I will contact you about possibly making a version of your bridge, that could be used for public release in combination with these objects.), as this bridge doesnt conflict with other major bridgesets (like TBRS) and that is exactly what I need!! This is an example of how that "empty" bridge looks:

There is a train on it and a road with vehicles underneath it to show that these bridges can actually be used.

- Now we need some graphics. I have made a very simple bridge and cut it up like this:


- I have coded the different parts as objects (4 seperate 2-tile objects are needed to complete the bridge per direction) and when you place these objects that empty bridge looks like this:


And thats it!! You have a custom and unique bridge in your game!!

Now the problems.....
-1, You need a lot of space... For this example bridge you need 8 empty tiles next to the actual bridge. Might be a problem in congested games with a lot of buildings.
-2, These tiles need some nice graphics to keep it interesting and pretty. So a lot of work for the graphic artists And those graphics have to be smartly cut up into seperate parts.
-3, This is a set that consists of seperate buildingblocks, that (only when placed in the correct places) will give you a bridge. This is the user unfriendly part. Somehow I need to figure out a way to simply explain how one should use the different buildingblocks. As far as I know, it is not possible to make a large single object that leaves room for a road(or rail/waterway) and bridge running through it. So, we might need a manual for users that have not followed or read the development of this set.
-4, some small parts may graphically glitch in game, as some parts are out of the regular bounding boxes. But I see this as a minor problem with regard to the advantages these objects can give to make games even more graphically interesting.

So thats it... Hope you all like this idea... Any ideas/suggestions/remarks, whatever are very welcome!!

Quite interesting since I'm considering the very same concept, although both bridges and tunnels... But I haven't moved further yet as I'm rather busy with an upcoming release as well as other graphics work in progress... However, since I'm also jumping around between different projects, I might get there faster than I imagine at this point...

Anyway, a first reflection, depending on where the bridge is supposed to be built, it should be possible to decrease the number of objects/sizes needed, for instance if creating a water based bridge...

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Regarding railtunnels, look into a project i did a long time ago:
http://www.tt-forums.net/viewtopic.php?f=26&t=57266#p1063353


Sadly not if you want shipping to be able to pass under that bridge...

Indeed, if you wouldn't mind blocking traffic passing under the bridge, you could do it with fewer objects. But I do want traffic to be able to pass under the bridge.

So let us make every sprite empty and use objects everywhere.

Your contribution in adding variety in OTTD has been great and deserves a big thank you. I wish it would prompt developers to put down some new code...

I think you misunderstand me, I'm talking about making use of the water around a bridge with waterbased objects to provide a bridge... I'm busy with some other stuff at the moment, but I'll try to illustrate this later...

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Wouldn´t is be more clean and user-friendly to "simply" increase the number of bridge IDs?

And, o/c, eventually come up with a proper action scheme for bridges? Well, these are questions to OTTD developers, so ...


Personally, I don´t like those "hacks". It´s a pity that newGRF developers are being "forced" to even think about it.

regards
Michael

I completely agree! That would be the optimal solution, and it wouldn't even be a problem to provide graphics for it...

I am most certainly willing to contribute...

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You are absolutely right!! And not only more bridge-IDs, but for example also multiple roadtypes in one game (like multiple railtypes).
That would be a dream come true....

And yeah, these are hacks. Thats why I am struggeling and really thinking about if I should even turn this idea into a public GRF.... This hack is too elaborate and may confuse "normal" users. But the thing is, that I am not able to draw very goodlooking bridges. I will have to team up with better graphics artists than me. And I wonder if they are interested in drawing stuff, just for their and my games. Furthermore, I like sharing my "creations" with the community. Most of my work is based or inspired by publicly released work of others. I view my work as a thank you to their efforts. That also makes it difficult for me to keep a thing like this "private". Pffffff..... decisions, decisions...
However, I do keep hope that my "hacks" will inspire the developers to make changes to the game so that the hacks will not be needed anymore. But I dont know if that works... For example a long time ago, with my ISR/DWE-objects GRF, I ran into the problem of the maximum number of object-IDs in a single game. There has been some discussion about that, but I dont know if these numbers have been increased (like with station-IDs), does anyone know?

Nice to have this discussion!

In all honesty I'm not sure what the OpenTTD devs are doing at the moment, or what their focus is on, but it appears that most ongoing work concerning features seems to be executed by other members such as Cirdan's New map Features for instance... And by alls means, there doesn't seem to be much graphics work going on over at TT-forums either - unless we count that 32bpp thing - which I personally dislike more than anything... But it's a matter of taste in the end... As for traditional graphics work it seems this place, TT-MS HQ and the polish site are the most active...

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INFRA - Chose Your Destination;
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