EDIT
Following posts went off topic from relevant topic and were split to a new topic.
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Aye ... but the flood has made it easy for budding pixel artists to hone their skills. But, without a doubt, newobjects are like food ... some of it is five star good and some is only fit for feeding the dumpster in the alleyway behind the restaurant. Which reminds me ... Is breakfast ready yet?

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Depends on how the player uses them.
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BTW from the screenshot you posted it is evident that on each tile there exists enough space to fit 3 rails.

Why? Otherwise there would be an inflation of stations...
At least objects are in another menu and if you dont like them, dont use them... (so dont load the GRF)
The good thing about objects to expand for example industrial areas is that if you accidentally demolish a tile you dont destroy everything (I had that happen to me a lot of times when airport expansions were only available as stationtiles, I like huge airports, one misclick and boooom a days worth of work gone in a click...)
I personally applaud every addition to the game, ugly or not. I will still be able to decide if I use it or not.

Ontopic, I love those dual tracks!!! A great idea!!!

Honestly, if I had my way, I would have done about 95% of these objects years ago. I spend so much time driving for work and most of that time is spent thinking about objects that I don't actually have time to draw and code.

Hehe.

Well, "objects" have no direct, or even indirect, relevance in game. IMO, they´re even counterproductive - because they´re blocking the way for further developing the game as is, e.g. implementing action0123 for bus/truck and ships (harbours) "stations". Or for different land use for different types of farms, by newgrf (aka "newfields"), or "newroads", etc. pp.

And o/c, it´s a lot easier to throw up a few "objects" on the market, than to include "missing" features in a proper house set. Although the majority of them (stadiums, campsites, ...) would exactly belong inside such a set. Instead, the game turns more and more into a kind of "simcity style".

And yes, I don´t think anyone needs power lines without "power" as a game feature.

regards
Michael

I'm sure a lot of that will change when NML catches up and allows you to build stations.

When eis-os and I originally developed newobjects, the concept was to introduce objects not available or producable within ttdpatch and yet would contribute graphically to a scenario.

We may have a beginning here. Cirdan has introduced several new features such as accessing the maximum bridge IDs (16) and introducing ttdpatch features such as custom bridgeheads, docking bouys and multiple docks per station.

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Maybe it is good to state first how I look at OpenTTD and how I "play" the game. For me the actual gameplay (so earning money to expand transportlines) is not at all important. I look at it from another point. As a kid (but also as an adult now) I was very much into miniatures (trains, aircraft, etc). But lack of money and space stopped that hobby. Then I stumbled into OpenTTD (I knew of the excistence of the original Transport Tycoon and even played it back then, am old enough for that ) and discovered a whole new miniature world with reallife stuff in it (for example the Dutch Train Set), for free!! This is now able to fill my desire to make miniature worlds, except not in an attic fiddeling with stinky glue and paint, but on a PC. This is why the actual gameplay is not at all important for me and I mainly focus on the eyecandy possibilities (and yes, I moneycheat me through every game ). And yes, that does mean that I like that (to quote you) the game turns more and more into a kind of "simcity style". And I do believe that this development results into the game still being played by new people and that new things keep being developed.
Ok, that brings us back to the discussion...


Well, yes and no.... As I see it, adding the option of objects to the game was done by developers who have understanding of the core programming of the game (I dont have that, so I can only guess how difficult that is). After that (probably very hard) work is done it is up to GRF-developers to make content for that feature. So the core programmers can focus on new features. However lately not many new revolutionary things (like excellent stuff being developed by Cirdan and others) have been added to trunk. Dont know why, are the core programmers tired of doing that hard work (which I can imagine by the way)? Are they not open to new features developed by others (like, do they feel they are an exclusive club that doesnt want intrusions from "outsiders")? Or, do they also feel that the game is being overdeveloped and that the main gameplay is being lost and therefor are kind of resistant to adding too much new features?
I dont know...
Most GRF-developers are very open with the work they are doing, most show work in progress and people can follow that development and also make suggestions or even contributions. I dont see that happening with most core programmers (with Cirdan being a good exception). This lack of transparancy results in people not knowing what the core developers are working on (or what they are interested in developing) and drives a sort of wedge between GRF-developers and core developers. Dont know why there is that kind of difference...

EDIT:
I just learned that the devs are actually very open with their discussions, they just do it on another platform than the forums, where they are able to speak more in their "programming language". This is sometimes very hard to understand for non-programmers (like me). Efforts are planned to also make some more general accessable and understandable discussions on the forum. I applaud that, it may lead to more mutual understanding and also hopefully to more people helping the devs out.


With that I do agree. Objects are indeed just useless eyecandy, doing nothing than just being pretty (but to be honest, I personally dont really have a problem with that). I will probably in the future look into the coding of houses as a lot of stuff I have been making lately (and have seen others been making) are perfect for a house-set. But that will probably come after I have been playing the actual game again (which I have not done for a while, been too busy with development). For me, playing the game shows me what I miss, or what things can be made more useful (for example an entire city block filled with pretty objects is nice, but may be stopping the city growth). Necessity is the mother of development


With that we can agree to disagree Need is maybe a big word, but lets say I play an early era game, set in the Old West. Then I would like to see wired telegraph poles next to my raillines, even though they dont earn me money... It completes the picture I have in my head of such raillines and makes me happy when I play the game. And shouldnt that be the essential idea behind a game?...

But I see I am typing too much again, being too much off-topic.... Sorry...
However I do want to end with this: I think that Objects are now the easiest way to get into drawing and coding for this game. Hopefully it will then lead up to those people also getting into developing features that have an actual use....

I agree with this and the following sentiment a lot.

I looked at the objects as useless gimmick first, but the more I played, the more I wanted to add small but important details to the game to make it more interesting, to make it more enjoyable.

Of course I would like to have some of the objects as actual functional entities in the game, like the buildings, but with some, like power lines, I would like to have a freedom to make my own decision if I would use them functionally inside the game or not. But with most of them I would just like to have them to personalize my games.

To conclude it, I have started to look at the game more as a form of art, and this has led me to start using more objects in the game and finally to making the graphics of my own.

Without objects we wouldn't have all that nice artwork created.

So download WIRES or Wired and bada-bing!

Actually, I think it would be nice to have a small track set that included rail-and-wire and wire-only options to transport power using invisible, fast vehicles. This would allow power lines to transverse roads and rails, although you have to do a little work to make sure the power doesn't wreck an oncoming vehicle.

Topic newobjects newstations.

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Good discussion, but indeed very off topic. Maybe a moderator can cut it out and paste it in another thread?
EDIT
This is the last derailed post that was split.
Feel free to continue your discussion.
/EDIT

I'm actually quite impressed by how much work GarryG is pushing out. He's new and still learning a lot about the art, but the fact that he's learning it and putting in the work is just incredible. We need more people with that much zeal! (Probably helps that he's retired! )

Retired simply means that folks like GaryG and myself have a new set of tires.

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Thnx for the split!

Indeed, objects are one of the easiest ways to get drawing and coding for the game and to get a general understanding about the game-mechanics. And as I see now, they are also a good stepping stone for creating industry-sets, so that the graphics are not just pretty, but also useful.
And there may be a flood right now regarding objects, but that flood is also done by a lot of new artists/coders! Hopefully a couple of them will also try to draw and code more useful stuff and maybe even get into development of the core-game-mechanics (like multiple roadsets, oh please yes, multiple roadsets... ) That way the game will keep on going even after we old(er) foxes arent able to draw a pixel anymore without wetting the seat we are sitting on

Just make sure that Bits 3 and 10 of your Action0 Property 10 are not set and nobody will notice.

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Hahahaha!

Very wet .