Friday Facts #163 - New rails & New problems

[kinnom]

While you've said you only wanted to touch the Graphics, S-Curves pretty please? I get the Rail-Grid conformance forces your hand on many decisions regarding rails, but fixed 'go one cell to the left' sprites don't leave you hanging between grid cells and would be really nice - especially for people playing with someone who just builds gigantic rails by eye, of course missing existing track by one requiring an ugly (and space intensive) fix by going to 45 degrees (looking at you, Stefan )

S-bends might actually happen at some point, no promises though!

Just do it

[Losash]

I don't know if anyone mentioned this yet, and maybe noone, because this is my personal opinion
But I read through all the blogpost pretty flawlessly, untill very last picture with the final result, which caught my eye and I've stopped, thinking.
https://eu3.factorio.com/assets/img/blo ... ending.jpg
The reason is, I though something like "damn, those rails seem like they float in the air, like, they are over a greenscreen"

Well, there is a simple answer why I thought that. Your new rails stand out a lot more than other entities in the game in aspect of revealing difference between angled projections in sprites, and perfect top-down concrete, landscape and grid textures. (At least it caught my eye more tha other entities, maybe that's just because I see them for the first time).
I know that there is literally no way to fix this. If everything was top-down, all sprites, everything, this would look worse, like, a lot. 2D games which pretend to be 3D have only 2 options - isometric grid, or top-down grid, there is no option for working dimetric-type-45deg-grid.

But this, as I think, can be fixed a little, if you remove black outline over your gravel layer, which now acts like a shadow of gravel on the concrete. Or at least make it more transparent. This will result gravel to be more "imprinted" into land. That outline acts as a separator, and we can see a straight border between gravel and concrete.

Note that I'm not a graphical designer, and ofc devs know better.

[hitzu]

S-bends might actually happen at some point, no promises though!

Just do it

There should be several additional slots on them for signals (not just on the ends), otherwise they would be almost useless.

[thetoolcrafter]

Good stuff.

If you are allready working un Rails, could you also add tunnels or bridges? It would be very nice to see as an addition to have multilayer trains.

i see what you mean lol, but that would be hard i guess, because factorio is 2D. I guess they could make underground tracks like the underground belt. I will put in a suggestion, thanks for the idea!

[hitzu]

Good stuff.

If you are allready working un Rails, could you also add tunnels or bridges? It would be very nice to see as an addition to have multilayer trains.

i see what you mean lol, but that would be hard i guess, because factorio is 2D. I guess they could make underground tracks like the underground belt. I will put in a suggestion, thanks for the idea!

There are surfaces in the game like parallel layers. Take Factorissimo as an example. The main reason at the moment that there is no mod for train tunnels yet is that because AFAIK there is no API to transfer trains between surfaces.

[aubergine18]

Would be awesome if it were possible to set categories for rail and train, to limit what sort of trains can go on what sort of rail. For example, a rail could be configured as a road and only road vehicles could be placed on it.

[Loewchen]

I don't know if anyone mentioned this yet, and maybe noone, because this is my personal opinion
But I read through all the blogpost pretty flawlessly, untill very last picture with the final result, which caught my eye and I've stopped, thinking.
https://eu3.factorio.com/assets/img/blo ... ending.jpg
The reason is, I though something like "damn, those rails seem like they float in the air, like, they are over a greenscreen"

Well, there is a simple answer why I thought that. Your new rails stand out a lot more than other entities in the game in aspect of revealing difference between angled projections in sprites, and perfect top-down concrete, landscape and grid textures.

It has had the exact same effect for me, but I could not put my finger on what caused it until now. Having concrete plates as quadrates with the seams along the tile edges destroys the immersion of perspective the rails now try to create. I really hope that underground gets changed to resemble the same point of view.

[bobingabout]

Would be awesome if it were possible to set categories for rail and train, to limit what sort of trains can go on what sort of rail. For example, a rail could be configured as a road and only road vehicles could be placed on it.

Fairly sure you can do that already. The track definitely has a track type entry, and I think the train vehicles also have the same tag.

The issue is... it is just a tag, not an array, meaning one track type per vehicle, so you can't say have, electrified rails, and normal rails, where some engines can run on both, and others just one.

[kovarex]

Would be awesome if it were possible to set categories for rail and train, to limit what sort of trains can go on what sort of rail. For example, a rail could be configured as a road and only road vehicles could be placed on it.

Fairly sure you can do that already. The track definitely has a track type entry, and I think the train vehicles also have the same tag.

The issue is... it is just a tag, not an array, meaning one track type per vehicle, so you can't say have, electrified rails, and normal rails, where some engines can run on both, and others just one.

Yes, we have rail category, but we never tested that, and I guess that several things would have to be fixed to make it actually.

[RobertTerwilliger]

Another dose of amazing graphics, however I'm a bit upset because the problem, discussed here (loops are far not circular), is still present.

[mrvn]

2) This may be impossible to implement, but where the rails cross,

tmp2.jpg

it would be nice to have some guard and wing rails like this:


Great work keep it up!

The guards I bet would require extra sprites for every type of crossing. But at least the gaps in the rails should be there. The gaps could be an extra layer that is put on top and lies next to each rail and is used as a mask on the previus top layer. If a rail crosses it creates a gap in the crossing rail. If no rail crosses they do nothing.

[Deadly-Bagel]

The other thing is the perspective of the loop is a bit odd. All the curved and horizontal rails are designed at an angle but the shape is still circular. The effect is sort of a 3D 'bent' look, as if the horizontal middle of the loop has been pulled away from the ground (the shadows and 'hover' effect aren't helping). This is unfortunately just down to that the perspective of the entities is, did you say 45 degrees? But the perspective of the grid is 90 degrees. I don't have any suggestions and it's only strange when you create a shape such as a circle with it but the old design did look more natural in that regard.

I don't use loops so it's not going to bother me anyway ^^ Great work regardless

[Dark_Lightning]

[richrich]

May I ask - how much of an impact will the rail change(s) and all other HD efforts have on play-ability of the game? Will the system requirements go up due to demand on the system?

If so, will their always be a low graphics (SD most folks call it?) option for those of us who love the game, own the game but have a spud computer?

tia

[Mengmoshu]

They've said a couple times in different places that the HD sprites will be an option and the existing resolutions will still be available. I'm glad of this, as I also play on a potato.

[hitzu]

The guards I bet would require extra sprites for every type of crossing. But at least the gaps in the rails should be there. The gaps could be an extra layer that is put on top and lies next to each rail and is used as a mask on the previus top layer. If a rail crosses it creates a gap in the crossing rail. If no rail crosses they do nothing.

Lets imagine we really want them implemented. We'll need one sprite per each crossing possible. Let's count all the pieces we have. One horizontal, one vertical, 4 diagonals, 8 curved. But due to the fact that the curved piece is large (2x5 rail squares) the crossing can happen on every square. Well, almost, there are two of ten squares where the pieces wouldn't interact so we can throw them. In total we have 1+1+4+(8*8)=70 points where pieces can interact. All we need is to make a spreadsheet of all total possible interactions where each piece intersects another one, so we multiply 70*70=4900 possible intersections. In other words we have to make 4900 individual sprites 128x128 px each.
Correct me if I'm wrong.

[Deadly-Bagel]

Near enough. A tile of a piece can't intersect with itself so actually 70 * 69. Also two opposing diagonal pieces can't interact with each other as they can only be placed on alternating tiles so that's two less. 4,728 by my count, there's probably some more non-interactions with curved rails but I don't have access to the game and the FFF doesn't show the grid.

[RobertTerwilliger]

Come on guys! This isn't super-realistic TRAIN game! If you want such tiny things to be implemented - go and carefully watch all the ridiculousness of mechanisms drawn on assemblers : )
Honestly, this game is about gameplay and features, not about graphics and realism.

[mrvn]

Or look at the steam engine. The piston turns a wheel that can' be connected to anything because the piston goes through where the axis would be.

[mrvn]

The guards I bet would require extra sprites for every type of crossing. But at least the gaps in the rails should be there. The gaps could be an extra layer that is put on top and lies next to each rail and is used as a mask on the previus top layer. If a rail crosses it creates a gap in the crossing rail. If no rail crosses they do nothing.

Lets imagine we really want them implemented. We'll need one sprite per each crossing possible. Let's count all the pieces we have. One horizontal, one vertical, 4 diagonals, 8 curved. But due to the fact that the curved piece is large (2x5 rail squares) the crossing can happen on every square. Well, almost, there are two of ten squares where the pieces wouldn't interact so we can throw them. In total we have 1+1+4+(8*8)=70 points where pieces can interact. All we need is to make a spreadsheet of all total possible interactions where each piece intersects another one, so we multiply 70*70=4900 possible intersections. In other words we have to make 4900 individual sprites 128x128 px each.
Correct me if I'm wrong.

You are wrong.

My Idea was to have 1 + 1 + 4 + 8 sprites and using where rails actually cross as mask to show/hide the gaps. Just the gaps, not complex guards. The guards are far more complex shaped.