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I have finished the sprites for a new freight station. Actually, most of them were already done since long ago, but now I added a few details, and prepared a coding guide.

The station will feature:

loading stages tiles. Some tiles get crowded with piling crates or parked trucks as waiting cargo increases.
2 different office buildings. One is an old japanese style building, and other a modern small office with 2 floors.
cranes and warehouses to create harbors
lanes, parkings and crossings to give the impression of trucks loading and unloading crates.
buffer stops to make end of lines
some sprites have the 2nd comany color (green) I'm not sure about how this works, however...

Could someone please code it? I'm very excited to see them released. Everything should be already baked and ready to be coded, however, if you find any doubt or inconvenient, please make me know so that I can fix it.

Whenever the file is ready, feel free to post it in this thread.

doesn't this fit right into the industrial stations set? it looks amazing.

this is bloody awsome. I'm waiting for those since months...

Hopefully someone can code them soon.

Good work. Thanks Sanchi

Well now, Well now...

Damn, I have no real excuses to avoid coding those stations now, Sanchimaru. Thank's for pinning me to the wall .

It looks very good, and I love the idea. Now, this is possibily a dumb question, but, based on the mocked-up screenshot, why not also change (override) the default dock itself to make it consistent with the other elements you are adding?

HaroldV wrote:It looks very good, and I love the idea. Now, this is possibily a dumb question, but, based on the mocked-up screenshot, why not also change (override) the default dock itself to make it consistent with the other elements you are adding?

Because that's currently not possible in TTDPatch. He could make completly new dock graphics, but nothing automagic for when its placed near the station.

Thanks everybody! I was really excited when the irregular stations became available! If I recall correctly, it was Aegir who accidentally made it posssible
since then I did a bit of research and began preparing a new version of the containers freight station and harbor sprites.

Aegir, it shall be a honor to have it coded! we await...

HaroldV, I see what you mean... but I prefer to leave it as it is (as in the fake screenshot) and wait until the day when the patch allows for better graphics customization. However, It shall not be too hard to make a new version to override the original sprites, and make it fit with this harbor set.

We'll see. However, I'm currently busy with the Spain set, and studying for an exam, so don't expect anything soon...

we should get a multiple-dock-graphic-coding-thingie then, shouldn't we? a selecting screen, like with train stations.

and ofcourse, the very same goes for airports, but then again, i thought someone was already busy brainstorming that towards reality. right?

Wow, that looks .... (no words)

Another excellent picture!

Perhaps I am wrong, but only the western track divides into two tracks on the dock while the eastern track appears to have block stops at its divisions and thus are not true tracks?

If open for suggestions from a hack artist like myself, I would dull the yellow on the crane. Being right against the shore, perhaps even salt water, there would be more rust with wear and tear among the pulley system. Since I worked in the shipping industry for a few years, very little is bright and clean, save for something brand new. And it is only a matter of time before that looses its shine.

Overall, quite impressive!

I see what you mean about the yellow color. I'll keep that in mind, thanks for the remark! A rusted look won't be hard to add.
However, I'll be doing no update unless it's errors (clipping, fitting, etyc.) not just aesthetic.

Have you got started on this yet, Aegir? I ask because I was fed up with Maths earlier, saw this and decided to have a go to see what it looked like. I've only done the warehouses so far but I think I'll probably have enough time to finish it in the next couple of days if you don't mind. If you want to code it then fair enough but I reckon I could get it done pretty soon as it's fairly simple.

Would it make sense to include it in the Industrial Stations set?

Oracle wrote:Have you got started on this yet, Aegir? I ask because I was fed up with Maths earlier, saw this and decided to have a go to see what it looked like. I've only done the warehouses so far but I think I'll probably have enough time to finish it in the next couple of days if you don't mind. If you want to code it then fair enough but I reckon I could get it done pretty soon as it's fairly simple.

Hmm? Oh, go ahead. Knock yourself out, it was going to take me a few days to start anyway, I've been distracted by Warhammer 40k miniatures (Blame Raichase, it's his fault).

krtaylor wrote:Would it make sense to include it in the Industrial Stations set?

I personally think it should be a seperate .grf, but that's outside my control now. Just have to see what Oracle comes up with.

Aegir wrote:

krtaylor wrote:Would it make sense to include it in the Industrial Stations set?

I personally think it should be a seperate .grf, but that's outside my control now. Just have to see what Oracle comes up with.

Seperate grf would be my vote too. I don't care for some of the industrial stations, mostly due to the user who did them originally.

Then it stands in your hands, Oracle. I just downloaded the last version of the US stations, the new station looks awesome! Congratulations to you and Oz the artist who drew them!

Aegir, I understand you: I began collecting the Warhammer Lord of the Rings Nazgul figures, and I could not stop it... I enjoyed a lot painting them!

I also think that it should better be 2 sepparate GRF files:
the freight / industrial stations have already a lot of options in the submenus. I think it's better to have more station types which are not so crowded of submenus.

Oh, I agree that we shouldn't cram the port station into the existing industrial submenu. It makes much more sense to have a new "Ports" class of station. I just don't like excessive proliferation of GRF files. I believe one GRF file can have several classes of station. Although, what's the limit on that?

The limit, I believe, is 16 styles per GRF file.

Sanchimaru wrote:I just downloaded the last version of the US stations, the new station looks awesome! Congratulations to you and Oz the artist who drew them!

Thank you!

Sanchimaru wrote:I also think that it should better be 2 sepparate GRF files:
the freight / industrial stations have already a lot of options in the submenus. I think it's better to have more station types which are not so crowded of submenus.

I thought about that and decided it would definitely be best to have a separate GRF because there are so many stations in this set that it counts as separate in its own right.

Anyway, a few questions that cropped up while coding:
In the guide you (very helpfully) wrote, you've only listed three large cranes, but there are six in total (two for each colour, one in each direction). Should I use six IDs for these (which I think is a bit excessive) or should I "shrink" it to just two, one pointing north and one south, so that you randomly get a colour of crane when you build (although that colour then remains constant, like random train liveries)?
If you agree with that, then do you want to make some of the warehouses share an ID - then it might be possible to put everything in one class without looking too cluttered.

Finally, which station pieces use company colours? Obviously the truck parking does, but are there any others? (In particular, where uses the second CC?)
(If there's anyone who can tell me anything about using second CC in stations, please can you do so as my current experiments don't seem to make second CC work, even if the normal company colour changes fine.)

I'm well over halfway with the coding now so it should (hopefully) be released sometime tomorrow.

About the cranes and warehouses: yes, it is not so important to have them sepparated. If you can have them just as [crane] and [warehouses] and randomly appear, that's fine.

Only that if you build a row of warehouses (for example a 4x width station), it would be better if they are the same color (there are 4 colors and 2 variations for each: 1 or 2 buildings. Then there is the broad warehouse, which takes the whole tile and has no variation) However if this is too hard to code, don't bother with it; just make them random.

The sprites that use the basic company color are:

>the truck parking in the loading stages
>warehouses (freightnotile1: 1C, 2ABCD, 3A, 5AB)
>some containers are painted in CC: the blue ones with a light blue << pattern on them (for example in freighttracks: 2BC); and some of the tankers too (for example in freighttracks: 8ABC. I can't tell now which are blue and which CC... sorry. Maybe the darker colored ones are the CC)
>office buildings, the back tile with a panel
>small japanese style office

The sprites that use both company colors are:

>the broad warehouses (roof is primary, the panel over the door and in one of the windows are secondary)
>the modern office building (area around the edge of each floor is primary, panels on walls are secondary)

By the way, now that you are at it, if it's not too much work for you; would you mind to code the JR passenger stations too? they are not so big, and the hardest feature is the overpass, which works exactly the same as Michael Blunk's do.