Name Modified Size InfoDownloads / Week
Parent folder
readme.txt 2013-11-13 7.2 kB
the_iron_way_r071.zip 2013-11-13 12.6 MB
ironsimu-code-277-ironbite-trunk.zip 2013-11-13 1.6 MB
Totals: 3 Items   14.3 MB 0
Introduction
------------

The Iron Way is a fork from Simutrans in which I want to try my own ideas about a better UI for the game, and some more features. It's work in progress, some releases have been quite stable and others quite buggy, due to ongoing changes to the codebase.

Starting with release 066c the project will be renamed from "Simutrans Iron Bite" to "The Iron Way". It will take time to change all occurences of the label, but a start is made in r066c.

Starting with r066 "The Iron Way" got experimental support for bitmap fonts with 255 brightness levels, which support anti-aliasing as well as more advanced font coloring and spacing effects. It is planned to migrate all text display routines to the new font system, but it will take a while and during the transition phase the UI will show slight inconsitencies between the places that already use the new system and the old code.

From r048 on The Iron Way is planned to develop into a simpler, more sandbox-like game, without economic pressure on the player. In a first step, many money and finance related aspects have been removed from the game. Also, goods transport is possible between all factories, and there is no chronology anymore, so that all vehicles, buildings and goods are available throughout the game. Games now start in year 1, because it makes no sense to have a "realistic" year number if nothing in the game depends on the number anymore.

I might have overlooked references to money, chronology and factory connections, but the above paragraph sketches the plan for this and the next releases. The Iron Way will focus on the transport of goods and passengers, and building transport networks without constraints or pressure.


Changes from Simutrans Standard 111.2.2 (in chronological order)
---------------------------------------------------------------------

1) A new game splash screen with a backdrop image.
2) A new "New Map" dialog with a more relaxed layout of elements.
3) An extended skinning system with support for dialog title bar skins. 
4) A new "Game Options" dialog.
5) A new "Player Color" dialog.
6) "New Map" from the options menu directly opens the "New Map" dialog
   instead of the banner screen.
7) Experimental support for bigger buttons in some edialogs.
8) Optional window drop shadows.
9) Experimental support for UI transparency effects. 
10) Optional transparent news ticker.
11) A new configuration file "iron_bite.ini" for The Iron Way specific
    settings.
12) A new factory list layout and design.
13) A new goods list design.
14) New layouts for tourist attractions and city lists.
15) Optional "zebra" two color list backgrounds.
16) A new pak set selector screen.
17) Configurable zebra colors for lists.
18) Leaner station and vehicle lists, saving 44 pixels horizontally.
19) Ticker line now 75% opaque instead of 50%
20) Toolbar icons got a brighter highlight color.
21) The savegame dialog got a slightly different layout.
22) "Box" type buttons got a new design.
23) Configurable choice between player colored title bars and player 
    colored title texts only.
24) News messages now open in the bottom right corner.
25) News messages got a differently colored dialog body.
26) A reworked factory info window.
27) Slightly improved progress bar.
28) Too long filenames will now be shown truncated in the selector boxes.
29) Minor changes to the city info dialog and schedule dialogs.
30) Experiemental new depot dialog.
31) Improved help dialog.
32) New station/town labels.
33) Station list now got goto location buttons.
34) Vehicle list also got goto location buttons.
35) Added optional, more lightweight font.
36) Dialogs can be displayed over the main toolbar, too.
37) Leaner station detail info dialog, saving 100 pixels horizontally.
38) Configurable table and chart background colors.
39) Improved object and way info dialogs.
40) Pak selector screen got pak set previews.
41) New, larger fonts.
42) Pollution related data, makes trees die earlier.
43) Buildings in polluted areas produce less passengers.
44) Optional transparent dialog bodies.
45) Removed finance dialog and many monetary aspects from the game.
46) Removed monetary values from vehicle statistics.
47) Removed monetary values from vehicle detail dialog.
48) Removed monetary values from vehicle depot dialog.
49) Saved games no longer compatible with Simutrans Standard, 
    got .sib extension. 
50) Removed monetary values from line management dialog.
51) Once again, layout improvements for the depot dialog.
52) New decoration placement tool.
53) Experimental map creation mode which turns every map into an
    island (active by default since r056)
54) Directory cache files are now named ib_file_cache.xml
55) Preview of island maps in new world dialog.
56) Pollution effect strength halved compared to versions r059 and older.
57) New industry and tourist attraction placement options.
58) New full-screen/full-window zoom feature (try magnify-x2.bat)
59) Support for bitmap fonts with 255 brightness levels.
60) Ticker line integrated in status line.
61) City names shown in different style than station names.
62) Relief map window now opens top-right aligned.
63) Once more, improved file selector layout.


Installation
------------

Windows
-------

1) Download simutrans_iron_bite_r071.zip
2) Unzip it. 

It will create a new folder "the_iron_way_r071". In this folder you'll find a start.bar file which will start The Iron Way, and a debug.bat file which will start in debug mode, so that the application writes a log to track errors.

There are adapted versions of pak64.Crisp, pak96.Comic and pak48.Excentrique included. 

The supplied start.bat file will run The Iron Way in portable mode, so that it won't read or write any files outside the installation folder. This is useful to run it from USB sticks and other portable storage devices. To change this, edit start.bat and remove the -singleuser option.

Other Systems
-------------

At the moment I can only produce Windows binaries regularly. The source code should compile on more platforms, though:

http://ironsimu.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/ironsimu/

1) Download simutrans_iron_bite_r071.zip
2) Unzip it. 
3) Get the source code.
4) Compile it.
5) Copy the "sim_iron" binary into the "the_iron_way_r071/the_iron_way" folder which was created in step 2. This should be the same folder where you can find the "the_iron_way.exe" for windows.

Known Problems
--------------

1) The new depot dialog might not work well with pak sizes of 128 and larger. I didn't test this though.
2) The new, bigger fonts might not fit well in all dialogs.
3) The Iron Way currently has problems with some menuconf.tab features from Simutrans, so that some Simutrans pak sets refuse to start.
4) It is only compatible to MakeObj versions from before May 2013.

Branch History
---------------

The Iron Way r071 was branched from Simutrans SVN revision 5584. This should match the stable Simutrans release 111.2.2.

Contact
-------

varkaleas@users.sourceforge.net
Source: readme.txt, updated 2013-11-13