German East Africa - new Version 1.2

[karsten]

This was going to be a SMR mod replicating some of RRT3's tactical and strategical richness. I found out the hard way that the programs are simply too different to replicate scenarios.

So here is a fresh East Africa scenario, inspired by RRT3 German East Africa and by Thomas Vincente's Spain.

I hope you like it! Money is tight only in the first era, after that, the main challenge is getting the logistics right. I have completed it sucessfully in the easy Investor and Financier modes, but perhaps someone can do better? Up to 3 AI players can be added for some mayhem, but be careful not to neglect the main goals when buying up the competition.

Credits:

• EMD SD40-2 Soo by Rodea
• Inspired by RRT3 German East Africa and by Thomas Vincente's Spain
• New event art based on local Makonde sculptures

*** This is the new version 1.2 ***
Version 1.2 has improved victory conditions, better scenery and tunnels, and Independence celebrations for Juba, capital of new country Southern Sudan in 2011. More screenshots in posts below.

The two Version 1.2 files which need to be uncompressed and copied to SMR UserMaps (Uganda and Uganda Assets) are provided here in this post just below

[efast]

for successful emulation, you have to make a big map, at least 15x15 or much bigger. Trains in RRT3 travel distance, trains in SMR travel the distance a few times longer than the actual train, and ruins the realism.

[karsten]

I agree, map size is an important consideration. The original scenario maps are just so tiny.

Currently, I have the map at size 21x21, with that, it takes an average train about 3 minutes to travel from south to north (Dodoma to Juba), at average display speed setting. In RRT3, it takes a good 4 minutes, but that is with the frequent water and engine stops that are necessary. So there should be some distance feeling, I hope.

This is the view from the top:

[Jancsika]

I remember reading it here somewhere that the design of this game started out as a RRT-4, hence the RRT in the XML files.
Sometimes at that point Sid visited that great model railroad place in Hamburg Germany and he changed the concept to a model railroad type that you can build in your basement.
The problem is that they did not have enough time to develop the concept.
For example: it was a great idea to have special station tracks and platform, but there is no way that a player can control the station track length.
With the arrival of custom designed locomotives and traincars a train can easily block both ends of a station.
The solution would be to spread out the stations so that there is ample room between them.
That leaves us to limit the number of cities and resurces.
Fortunately the progress in more powerful computers helps to overcome this. (We will be building even larger maps)
Anyhow I am looking forward to see your new map.
Jancsika

[Warll]

Unfortuatly because SMR is a 32 bit program we do have a hard limit of RAM at 4GiB. We're not at the limit yet but are at least half way there already.

Worse part is that 4GiB is a very hard max, we have to design maps which NEVER go over this, even in late game.

[karsten]

These are the two files of version 1.1 of scenario German East Africa, downloaded quite often, apparently. But improved version 1.2 has now been posted in the first post of this thread. Check it out!

I hope you like it! Money is tight only in the first era, after that, the main challenge is getting the logistics right. I have completed it sucessfully in the easy Investor and Financier modes, but perhaps someone can do better? Up to 3 AI players can be added for some mayhem, but be careful not to neglect the main goals while buying up the competition.

[karsten]

I have posted a new version in the first post of this thread!

Version 1.2 has improved victory conditions, better scenery and tunnels, and Independence celebrations for Juba, capital of new country Southern Sudan in 2011. More screenshots and credits in posts above.

[Warll]

Would it be possible for you to post an overview of the map again? The last one was "unfinished", and I do not have the tools to convert the image format

I ask because I'm trying to post the map on the map database.

[karsten]

Here is the version 1.2 overview of the map. Comments very welcome, as always.

By the way, the .jpg version is 1/6 in size of the .png version, so I posted the former.

[polarhki]

Hi,

I downloaded your version 1.2 files, and uncompressed the two directories "Uganda" and "Uganda Assets" to the "User Maps" directory. However, when I try to load the map, the loading screen appears but then the game crashes.

Is there anything else one needs to do playing this map, in addition to copying the folders as described above?

[karsten]

That should be fine. Uncompress the two files separately to the standard UserMaps file (one word), as shown in the screenshot below. The two zip files can be deleted afterwards, or copied elsewhere.

Make sure the CustomAssets folder is empty. This is a large <MapSize>21, so if you do not have 3GB enabled, you may be out of luck.

I downloaded the two files just now, unzipped them, started the game and the map ran.

If you have been modifying the original game files, you may have to reinstall. Installations from Steam seem to be more troublesome than others. Good luck.

[polarhki]

Thank you for your reply. Well, I did the same as you did, but without success. Two possible reasons:

- "Make sure the CustomAssets folder is empty."?
There are a number of train engines installed in my CustomAssets folder, mainly downloaded from this forum. Does this mean that your map is incompatible with those engines being installed to the game?

- "if you do not have 3GB enabled, you may be out of luck."
You refer to the boot.ini switch /3GB? That switch is useful for some very large applications (IF they are programmed that way that they can make use of the 3GB address space - are you sure that this is the case with Railroads?), but it may decrease overall system performance otherwise. So are you saying this setting is needed to run your map?

[karsten]

Just ticking the boxes that might explain why you crash out on load.

- In this case, I am pretty confident that increasing the memory available to the SMR program will do the trick, assuming you have enough physical memory on your machine. Check out the full instructions here:
http://smrsimple.com/category/tipstricks/. The cool thing is, once you have succeeded in enabling the 3GB for SMR, all maps run more smoothly.

- an incompatible file could be hiding out in Custom Assets. Probably not, but it is worth keeping those train engines away from the SMR folder when installing a new map, just to be safe. Plus, by not forcing the program to load those engines, which are not used in the map anyway, you free up even more RAM!

[polarhki]

Thank you for your reply.

Well, I tried the 3GB switch, but unfortunately it didn't solve the problem for me. Even though the 3GB Windows configuration works, and also Railroads starts up as it should, during the game when moving the map first some flickering of the screen appears, and after some time of playing the game may crash to a minimal graphics desktop (640*480 or so). So it appears that the 3GB Windows configuration conflicts with the address space used by my graphics card.

Keeping the Custom Assets folder clean when starting some new map is of course possible, but on the other hand often I like to play with these additional engines that are installed, so this would mean steady copying and/or renaming of folders before starting a game. Not the most attractive thought, to be honest... So for the moment being, I rather try to avoid huge maps.

[polarhki]

One more question, is there any advantage or disadvantage to play with the 3G-enabled EXE if Windows XP is loaded without the /3G switch?