Epic History of Railroad in Utah (updated)

[universum]

Utah Scenario: 1840-2002
I won't spoil any surprises by telling you more about this scenario, go find out for yourself.

Installation: create folder called 'Utah' in 'UserMaps' directory and unzip the archive there. If you do everything right, you should see regular XML files in there but also 'Assets' subdirectory containing many files (most of them with .dds extension). In order to play it, run _ENABLE_UTAH_SCENARIO.bat before launching the game. If you want to play any other scenario, run _RESTORE_REGULAR_GAME.bat first.
I am taking no responsibility for installer by Atani so if you have any problems playing this scenario and you have used the installer to install it, direct all questions at Atani.

Scenario is tested by me and Karsten and is playable on any difficulty. Scenario has 5 starting locations: Logan, Ogden, Wells, Green River WY and Evanston. Robber Baron difficulty was only tested with Logan and Ogden start so if you succeed on Robber Baron from other three places, you will be first so let us know about your achievement.

Important information:
1) because of the map size, it uses more than 1GB of memory to run and I have no idea how it behaves on computers with less than 2GB, it should work but I don't know for sure.

2) for some reason, scenario goals don't show in the scenario selection screen but in the game, everything works just fine so just ignore this. This is probably caused by number of eras or goals.

3) you may experience usual "freezing" later in the game when laying tracks, don't worry, this is only temporary and game will continue once it finishes calculations it is doing.

Thanks to Karsten for testing and help. Thanks to all contributors of this website for wealth of information.

Enjoy!

A little comment on why the .BAT files are required and how they work:
Reason for this is very unfortunate design decision by designers in Firaxis; the game looks for global files in several places and if it finds multiple copies of the file, it loads the latest. That is the reason for problems people are having when playing custom scenarios because which file will be picked depends on its timestamp and not on its location. Timestamp could depend on many things in general on the order of installation in particular. To modify certain aspects of the game, modifying global files is the only way (known at this time). In order to play the scenario, global files in its folder must be "latest" which is achieved by creating them from source files (files with 'xml_' extension). In order to make sure that regular scenarios are not affected, the _RESTORE...bat deletes all the global files and also the scenario file to make sure you won't try to play it without its required files.

Sorry for this inconvenience but this is most I can do about it.

Utah_SAM2.7z

Added Sept 26,2010.
Provided by STEP Inc.

(5.97 MiB) Downloaded 774 times

[snoopy55]

universum - just a couple of quick questions. Is there a reason that RRT_Goods does not use the map name? Also, you have an RRT_Events XML, but the first event is not usable and there is only 1 other. Any reason?
Do you plan on editing this for a version that can be left in the map selection?
It looks like it will be a good one, but at 3:30 in the morning, it's to late (or is it early ) for me to find out.

[stormfather]

Came home from work and saw this up, and despite the fact it was 3:00 am I figured I'd give it a shot. So far it's great, I particularly love the look of the western desert (around Wells) and the way you've got the bridges and tunnels configured; building those coal railroads in the late 1800's was a good challenge. I also like the fact that you've slowed down production a bit, I've been toying with that on my latest map because I've noticed (as you obviously did as well) that slower production facilitates longer hauls across the map (Such as bringing goods to Grand Junction). The slower city progression (via more stages of growth) is a welcome change, I hate the fact that on a standard map, every city becomes a metropolis by 1880. The photos for the newspapers were also a nice touch.

I think some people are going to have trouble getting this to work (or getting their other scenarios to work after playing this one). Arizona Gold 2.2 came with a tiny program that would change the save date of the tunnels file, effectively turning expensive tunnels on and off. If you could modify that to toggle your tunnels and difficulties XMLs, and integrated 'visitors' into goods and used a standard 'RRT_Goods_Utah,' it would save a lot of people some headaches down the road.

All in all, a great map and a welcome challenge!

[K-class]

Hello universum

Back to the drawing board on this one Im afraid.

CTD on startup wont load.

Plus you need to find a way to build this map that does not conflict with the globals and the other maps. Sorry I dont want to seem harsh but reason being it was cause issue going forward.

We need maps that have a standard build and play well with others.

Maybe before launching a new map you need some beta testers that can test this on different pc's than your own and checks all files are where they should be.

[snoopy55]

stormfather - how did you run this, GLOBAL or by itself?

Anyone else running it and having it work or not, same question.

K-class - I stayed away untill ~3:45 and couldn't wait. CTD. 2 hours later I found it had something to do with the 2 Museums. Another half hour, Visitors. If you want to run it and you use GLOBALS, you need to go into RRT_Goods in the map (I renamed mine RRT_Goods_Utah.xml in the map and the Scenario XML) and copy the full Visitors section and paste it into your GLOBAL RRT_Goods.xml.

As to Global version, Difficulty and Tunnels would have to come out. The Difficulty changes could be incorperated into the original, and I'll do it if someone wants to give a name to them. The new levels could be used in any map then.

As to all the Eras not showing, if it has to do with the number of them, the map time could be slowed down and the map broken into 3 or 4 time sections, with the completed goals from one section reflected in the next section.

While I was trying to figure out the problem I had the nasty flood plain and invisable track problems. I have my graphics set low, but I'm also running 3 screen at once, so I'll make some adjustments and see what happens.

There are a few other things that don't make sense, but then this whole game is like that......

[stormfather]

I made a RRT_Goods_Utah.xml based off the RRT_traincars_utah.xml and copied visitors into my globals. I was getting a CTD on loadup before that, but it was because Utah's goods file was last modified on Thursday, May 3. If you've tampered with your (global) RRT_goods.mls since Thursday, May 3, this map will not load. Also, if you've used one of atani's installers since Thursday the 3rd, it will not load, because those installers modify your globals in order to get the scenarios to run. You have to open (utah's) RRT_goods.xml with notepad and save it, since the game loads the newest instance of any file. I'm sure many of you know this already but if you're getting a CTD, it's not a problem with the XMLs, it's just a problem with your timestamps. (I'm the one who releases maps that don't work )

[atani]

Attached is a GLOBAL based installer for this map.

I ran it to the end of the first era with no problems, loaded Visitors from the Ely Gold Museum and delivered to Ely without problems!

The installer gives the option to install the expensive tunnels or to retain the default values (whatever you have already).

------
2007-05-08 @ 20:40
Updated installer to version 1.1, included RRT_Difficulty updates (adds entries with "(more money)" in the title)

2007-05-10 @ 15:05
Updated installer to fix the RRT_Difficulty.xml entries, remove CustomAssets\XML\RRT_Difficult.xml before installing this new version.

Mike

[K-class]

Thanks Mike

Now plays ok.

I was going down the path of renaming and moving things as well but it was late and wanted sleep, now off to work.

Nice looking map. Will have to play more to see whats different in the map.

[karsten]

The Copper Mine Museum Train is my personal favourite ...

[snoopy55]

Stormfather, if your're interested, I redid the Copper Mine Museum so there is no dust, and it has a depot to load/unload the tourists instead of the ore loader. I uped the size of both. It does have mail bags showing at the depot, so either someone will have to figure out how to remove them, we'll just have to put up with it, you can ship tourist mail from there or it just isn't used.

I think it would be cool to remove the loader from the Armery and get a train engine or 2 outside it.

[universum]

I have added the batch files to enable propper global files for the scenario and also to restore regular game settings. It is essentially the same as the one to turn on/off the tunnels in Arizona Gold but it handles 3 global files (Goods, Difficulty and Tunnels) and also scenario file (to prevent people from attempting to run this without correct global files).

Snoopy, it would be best if you could update the installer to include the batch files and do not provide option to selectively install (or not) some files because these are there for a reason. I hope the installer provides correct RRT_Difficulty.xml file because the standard one makes it much harder to complete the goals on easy difficulties and impossible on harder difficulties. Also the prices for some goods have been tweaked a little bit so if you insist on merging the RRT_Goods.xml into your global one, make sure you provide local file with overrides for those (it was definitely Paper and most likely also Food).

I would like to see some custom models for my "industries" so if anyone wants to try their luck on hotel & casino, ski resort or transfer station, I will gladly include them in some future version (provided I like them).

Thanks

[universum]

The Copper Mine Museum Train is my personal favourite ...

No wonder since Copper Mine was really your idea .

[K-class]

universum Epic History of Railroad in Utah what a understatement!

More like the star wars trilogy.

This map seems to have just about everything and would take me days to complete. As you said laying tracks two thirds of the way in is a crawl but once the track is laid still plays ok. Prob requiring some thinking early on with track layout I think.

Great job, excellent scenery, what's the white stuff snow - oh that's the Salt lakes. Have not got to the new traincar yet or other goodies.

Wish logan grain etc produces more grain at one time. Perhaps add nitrates to it or alter production ratio, shipping the food was the hardest goal.

Again great map and you may have ODed on the scenario goals but some people will appreciate the challenge and the length of this map.

[universum]

Hi K-class, glad you like my scenario.

That white stuff is supposed to be salt, it is dry lake bed of ancient lake Bonneville which filled between 32 to 14 thousand years ago much bigger area than current Great Salt Lake (http://geology.utah.gov/online/PI-39/)

Few playing tips: [SPOILER: highlight following text to read]
- passenger transport is real money maker, connect Salt Lake City soon and make sure your destination has terminal (100% delivery bonus), make sure your passenger trains wait as little as possible to get speed bonus
- make sure your trains are working efficiently, in case of a Logan, single train can easily serve to all three nearby industries
- buy industries to improve your cashflow
- buy patents, especially one which halves the maintenance (keep some cash for that, sell the tracks if you have to)
- don't wait for era start to work on its goals
- avoid long bridges and tunnels at the beginning (they are costly)
- buy cheapest engine which could do the work, upgrade as needed
- you need to plan Salt Lake City track layout a bit

Good luck

[Slappy Da Clown]

Installed with the installer. Got the following screen. Never had this kind of crash before. Will try again when atani updates the installer. Sounds good & looks good on here though. I cant wait to try it.


EDIT 5/14/07
Well I know im gonna take flack for this, but clowns are pretty tuff. I did use the installer so universium if you dont wanna comment thats ok. This map has a huge memory leak. There is absolutly no reason that it should slow down to unplayable with only 2 cities & 3 annexs. After several trys with different game settings still the same. And I know Im gonna hear I need more memory but sorry thats just bunk. My machine is more than enough to handle this game & no other map ( & I have them all installed ) does this. While testing I was watching various things & while there was absolutely no cpu usage going on the memory usage was almost 100,000k. The map using this kind of memory is not a reason for me to get more memory but for you to fix whatever mistake in the coding that is causing it. I would like to play the map but I guess Ill just have to pass although its looks nice with a gr8 looking scenario.