Looking for Railroad Tycoon 2 Demand Fix

[Everstill]

Hello there.

 

I have the Platinum Edition of Railroad Tycoon 2 with the latest patch (1.56) and the updated maps. But the game have a minor issue with the demand of certain cargos. Things like Milk and Cofee, even from ports demand, don't regenerate, you make a deliver and they stay 0 forever, making them useless.

 

I tried to find a fix, but with no sucess. Someone have a fix to this bug?

 

Thanks for the help in advice!

[jeffryfisher]

Demand at ports is bugged. There's no known fix, although there's a theory that hacking an individual map file could repair port demand on that map.

 

Also, except at steel mills, the second input into each 2-input factory suffers similar one-time demand collapse. For example, the cannery uses produce + steel (or produce + aluminum) to make food. If you use a cannery to make some food, demand for one of the two inputs will recover, but the other never will.

 

Unlike the ports, the two-input factories can be repaired by using a hexadecimal editor to hack the industry conversions table inside the game's EXE file. I vaguely recall doing so back when I was fixing problems in my own copy of the game. If you have v1.56 (the last patch of the CD version of the game), then you can use my patched version of the EXE (back up your working EXE and LNG files first). My latest EXE and language files are in the zip for my US History map.

[Everstill]

Thanks, I will try replacing the EXE and definitely try your US History Map once I finish the Second Century Campaign and some Scenarios.

 

But I have to ask, replacing the EXE will change something other than the Demands? I don't want Cargos, Locomotives and stuff to be changed before I finish the Campaign.

 

Thanks again!

[jeffryfisher]

But I have to ask, replacing the EXE will change something other than the Demands? I don't want Cargos, Locomotives and stuff to be changed before I finish the Campaign.

Unfortunately, using my EXE patch will change lots of things. I haven't heard many complaints, but some noteworthy features (like the vastly over-powered F9) have been "fixed". In my patch, the F9 is just another diesel. I also "borrowed" the strong and reliable GP18 and turned it into an even more powerful and reliable 21st C diesel, but it doesn't become available until 2005. My rationale is that the game is now 16 years old, and that's enough time for a newer engine to appear (yes, the game is so old that history has expanded underneath it). Then there's the fact that I chose the 6000hp JT56ACe, one of the most powerful diesel locomotives ever sold :O

And I changed some industries and cargoes too. Military loads/cars/buildings/conversions activate in time for the US Civil War. I added some conversions. Noteworthy:

oil to rubber at chem plants beginning 1940, representing plastic

rubber to goods at tool&die beginning 1950, representing plastic goods

Individual houses also demand a tiny amount of goods, but not enough for the demand to recover. This represents the mail-order catalog business to rural areas.

[MaglevForever]

Demand at ports is bugged. There's no known fix, although there's a theory that hacking an individual map file could repair port demand on that map.

I am curious about this. Did someone actually do it? If there is somewhere explaining (for beginners like me) how to do this I would be interested to learn how it is done. I can think of several maps where it could help diversify strategy. Or is it super difficult to do?

 

I like your patch. The changes were well thought out. I would say that there are some strategic advantages when using it, so for the full challenge of the original maps I recommend the original version especially for the campaigns. When playing for fun, it definitely improves gameplay.

[jeffryfisher]

Did someone actually do it? If there is somewhere explaining (for beginners like me) how to do this I would be interested to learn how it is done.

Do a search on ports and modding and demand. It was brought up by another modder. I vaguely recall that he had located the port data within a map data file.

The data would be structured the same as the industry conversion table in the EXE file, so the fix would be the same as fixing demand for 2-input industries. I don't have the exact details in front of me, but it had two parts: The demand recovery number needed to be moved from one column to another, and the number needed to be at least 1.0 (because 0.5 was too small to ever do anything).

The drawback is that every time a map is edited, the editor is likely to overwrite the port data, requiring the fix to be re-applied.

 

I can think of several maps where it could help diversify strategy. Or is it super difficult to do?

Not difficult to do, but it's very difficult to explain. That's because we're talking about byte positions within large binary files, and they don't translate well into words. Once you open up one of those binary files with a raw-data editor (usually called a hexidecimal editor, although the bytes can be displayed as decimal values), you can see some areas with repeating patterns. Those are fixed-length data records, which one can call a "data table". If you start to analyze the numbers, you'll begin to recognize some of the values, such as engine introduction dates, appearing every so many bytes.

If you have my "EXE Data.ods" file (an open-office spread sheet), then you have the locations and layouts for the known data tables in RR Tycoon Platinum (CD version) patched to v1.56. Even if you have a different version, that spreadsheet should give you a big head start. You'd just need to locate the tables in your version of the game (locations shift lightly whenever the size of the program changes).

The spreadsheet is included in my US History zip. There was a modding thread (with good discussion in it), but I can't find it anymore, so I haven't updated the file there in a long time.

I've never opened a map file before, but there must be a four-record set of industrial production/conversions for the port. Those records probably have the same length and structure as the industry table records in the EXE file (so that a port will operate just like a factory in the game).

 

I like your patch. The changes were well thought out. I would say that there are some strategic advantages when using it, so for the full challenge of the original maps I recommend the original version especially for the campaigns. When playing for fun, it definitely improves gameplay.

Thanks!

[jeffryfisher]

Found it: JCCO dove into a map file and posted his findings back in Dec 2012. Unfortunately that thread is now archived, so we can't develop it further (and I can't even warn people that the files there have been superseded).

 

Since US History is fairly stable now (updates more than a year apart), I'll give the port-fix a try and upload it to the US History thread.

[jeffryfisher]

I've patched US History and added a new upload to post #1 in that thread. What I found was that the port's first industrial action had a proper demand-recovery value. The omissions were on actions 2, 3 & 4. If anyone is feeling energetic enough to test it, see if port demand recovers for an export in top-most slot but not the other slots.

 

If this patch works as intended, then I may play with some of the other factors later. It should be possible to mod the port to boost an import's production rate based on delivery of some export (the way farms are boosted by fertilizer). I should also be able to change activation and expiration dates for each of my port's actions. Then the port could start the game doing one action, then add three other actions over a period of decades, and eventually deactivate the original action.

 

In case anyone's interested, the port data appears to start near byte 0x08700 in a map file (platinum edition). The exact address may vary slightly from map to map.

[MaglevForever]

Thanks for the prompt replies! I didn't read that thread on modding as when I was reading through lots of the forum even simple modding seemed out of my league. Now that I understand more about what is involved with tweaking I am much more interested. Very interesting stuff in that thread! JCCO did a great job with deciphering some of that stuff. Reading through his posts reminded me of my two main wishes to fix current, bad RTII strategy weak spots: fix the exponential value of long distance passengers and mail and also reduce the cornering penalty, maybe half or less of the current affect. I didn't read everything very closely nor have I opened up your spreadsheet for a while, so maybe these things can be at least improved with what information is already available thanks to the efforts of you and the others in that and other threads. My time is limited at the moment, but I will check it out when possible. Will try to play US History too, at least long enough to test the ports.

[jeffryfisher]

The revenue formula and the cornering penalty are almost certainly beyond our reach. We can only edit values, and then only those that we can find. A formula is right out, and finding the lonely '2' representing the cornering penalty would be virtually impossible.

[CrownVic95]

Hello there.

 

I have the Platinum Edition of Railroad Tycoon 2 with the latest patch (1.56) and the updated maps. But the game have a minor issue with the demand of certain cargos. Things like Milk and Cofee, even from ports demand, don't regenerate, you make a deliver and they stay 0 forever, making them useless.

 

I tried to find a fix, but with no sucess. Someone have a fix to this bug?

 

Thanks for the help in advice!

But keep in mind that zero demand does not mean "useless". It's still a lot better than no demand at all.

 

A "0" demand is really a 50% demand, with a 50% revenue multiplier....as compared to a "5" demand, which is a 100% revenue multiplier. 6,7,8, and 9 each go up by 10%, making a 9 demand a 140% multiplier.

 

A bit less disheartening when you look at it that way. But yes, that bug has made us all scratch our heads for lots of years.

[MaglevForever]

A "0" demand is really a 50% demand, with a 50% revenue multiplier....

 

While this is true, of more importance is the way the distance factor is applied after this calculation. I have found that at a "0" (50% of base price) demand level there is very little gain in revenue as distance increases. As revenue mostly comes from hauling at a distance, this comparative loss blows the potential lost revenue way out. I can't say I understand it all, but JCCO's research was very interesting in this regard. Will try to understand and experiment with it more when I get time. I noticed while reading it that Passengers and Mail have the highest values for distance, so that naturally leads me to wonder is the exponential increase I wish to avoid due to this number being too high. This is what I will try to experiment with. If this effect is hard coded that would be too bad.

[Arafurian]

Individual houses also demand a tiny amount of goods, but not enough for the demand to recover. This represents the mail-order catalog business to rural areas.

I'd be thinking that from about now (i.e. 2012 onwards) maybe individual houses should be demanding even more goods, to represent the rise of Internet purchasing. From what I can gather, online purchases account for between 10% and 25% of domestic discretionary spending (i.e. income minus savings, housing and utilities), with the variation depending on the product types - e.g. food, clothing, appliances. Furthermore, and immediately relevant, according to http://www.wwwmetrics.com/shopping.htm, this activity is currently growing at about 10% annually, translating into an equivalent increase in parcel traffic.

[jeffryfisher]

Internet commerce would only be raising demand if it is new commerce, but I think it is replacing "brick & mortar" store commerce. What was special about the advent of the first catalog businesses was that they reached rural customers who'd been largely unserved before, and the rails paid a critical role in carrying both the mail (catalogs and orders) and the goods.

That's why my goods demand is in the form of a booster. My houses increase mail production by 50% when they receive goods. What's interesting is that when goods are soaked up by town and city demand, mail isn't affected. The boost only comes from individual house delivery. When you view goods demand, I think you can see which houses are currently supplied.