Simutrans Iron Bite Files

Introduction
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Simutrans Iron Bite is a fork from Simutrans Standard 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.

This release has seen a bigger amount of code cleanup and internal changes again, while few of the functions really changed. It ran well in my tests, but due to the big amount of changes in the code it seems unlikely that this version will be as stable as the last one. But maybe it'll be a positive surprise. The only new function is tool found under "special construction tools" which allows to place decorative map elements of different sorts. At the moment this is only available in pak64.Crisp.

From r48 on Simutrans Iron Bite 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. Simutrans Iron Bite 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)
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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 Iron Bite 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 display 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) Decoration placement tool.

Installation
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Windows
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1) Download simutrans_iron_bite_r055.zip
2) Unzip it. 

It will create a new folder "simutrans_iron_bite_r055" with an executable, "sim_iron.exe" which you can run. There are adapted versions of pak64.Crisp, pak96.Comic and pak48.Excentrique included.

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

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

1) Download simutrans_iron_bite_r055.zip
2) Unzip it. 
3) Get the source code.
4) Compile it.
5) Copy the "sim_iron" binary into the "simutrans_iron_bite_r055" folder which was created in step 2.

Known Problems
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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) Simutrans Iron Bite can't read newer pak files than created by MakeObj v0.53. Simutrans Standards uses MakeObj v0.55 meanwhile.

Version Details
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Simutrans Iron Bite r055 is based on Simutrans SVN revision 5584. This should match the stable Simutrans release 111.2.2.

Contact
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varkaleas@users.sourceforge.net