Modifying an existing Sam or CIC

[mikeyc]

With all the SAMs being released thanks to Snoopy and his nameless helper this has presented an opportunity to re-visit maps that have not been played for some time because of constant crashes. I sincerely thank them for their efforts.

While playing these maps the mind wanders with a 'what if' idea, to change and evolve some of the maps by adding a different balance of engines or changing the way an industry works or adding another town with an industry that will take the over-production of another.

This idea now leads to the questions that I cant find, or dont understand the answers for:
1.From a clean install loaded Florida G and enabled the editor, the plan being to add another town up the top of the map to take grain and corn late in the game to make cornflakes and cup cakes as food seems to be an issue as the game goes on. Problem; Cant figure out how to load the FG map into the editor and if I do can I add another town?
2.Chic to the Rockies. Heaps of pig production into meat. Would like to change the output of the stockyard to meat and pigskin which would then go to a tannery and then onto a manufacturer for footballs or a furniture manufacturer or whatever. Can it be done?
3. Can you have an industry in a city having more than one input and output?
4. Is it possible to have a distribution centre away from, and separate to a town. Reason is that as the town grows it takes most of the product delivered to the DC and to my way of thinking tends to defeat the purpose of a DC. As an alternative can we set the growth of a town to zero and let the DC grow.
4. Can we speed up the animation of the annexes to get a faster throughput of product. If you have three eight carriage trains loading and unloading at once it takes a long time and you end up with under-utilisation of all aspects of the production chain.

I have been working on a map of NSW (a state of Australia) for some time and wanted to put into the map some different stuff but didn't feel knowledgeable enough. Now with the BB's it could work. Stuff like;
Sheep Farm
Input is grain and workers.
Output is sheep and fat lambs.
Fat Lambs go to an export stockyard which produces food and hides. Hides go to a tannery to produce leather which goes to a furniture manufacturer.
Sheep output.
Sheep go to a ordinary stockyard and are converted into wool and domestic hides.
Wool goes to a Worsted mill which produces cloth which goes to a clothing manufacturer.
Domestic hides go to a tannery which converts them into nitrates and leather which goes to a leatherwear maker.
So its all a big long chain which would stretch from one side of the map to the other.
So essentially, I would like to be able to add industries to a map in simple steps.
Help and advice on 'how to' would be appreciated.

[snoopy55]

2) This is one of the good things about BB. Go into Industries and add Pigskin to the output. Open the Cowhide BB and do a bit of renaming and edit icon_cowhide_64.tga to give it a pinkish pigskin color. Create the 32 and 16 from that. Open the C4_CISV.tga and paste the edited pigskin 16 icon in it and save it as the next available P, which is P2_CISV.tga. You have your Pigskin. You then edit the Tannery to accept Pigskin and ship it out from there. A special Good could be made of the Pigskins from another Good, or a Tanned_Pigskin, T3_CISV.tga.

3)As I have not messed with this, I'm guessing that it has been looked into and can be done...don't quote me, search for it...then start a new section in Wiki of "Cans and Can'ts".

4) Yes, a way was worked out by me and discussed in another thread. Tijer and I have messed with it and plan on using it in our maps.

4) (#2) The numbers have been tossed around in Wiki, but changing it has not been done. You can run three tracks to the same Industry and unload/load them all three at once.

On you NSW map....

Your lambs can also supply wool along with the food and hides. Edit the color of the Cowhide, make the TGAs, use H1_CISV.tga. Domestic Hides are Cowhides edit to another color and given D3_CISV.tga as car ID. Leather could be a black Cowhide and use the ID L2_CISV.tga. Any of the skins and the leather can be edited a bit to look a bit different. For the Cloth, take a snip from the 'report_industry_textile_mill.dds' to get a cloth, turn it into a 64 x 64 icon, create the 32 and 16 from that and make a C9_CISV.tga for it. Once you get the Goods, the rest is either special car, edited from existing cars, or Boxcars with maybe a little editing. Then edit some Industries to make a few more BBs and the ins and outs of your Industries and you have it.

Most of the editing is color change and file name change.

As to adding things, start with 1 Industry and an original Good. I use coal. Check that it works, then go on to add the required Good. Set it to go to all your cities and check it out. Go on down your chain, adding as little at a time as possible, using that original Good when needed and changing the name of the Good in the cities. This is how I am building my map. As I once pointed out to GForce, if you add everything at once, or a large number of things, if the map fails, which it probably will at some point, what caused the failure? Something you just added is easier to check out than the last dozen things you just added. Also, set your first Era to something like 1835 to 1940. Then after you are sure the v1 car works, you can change the start date to 1920 and check out the v2 car.

Also, if you need help, don't do like we had several do and post..."My map I am making crashed. Can anyone help me?" And that was the full post.......

[snoopy55]

mikeyc - did you ever get anywhere with this?

[mikeyc]

Snoopy, I have been far too busy to do anything with maps. Seems I only have enough time to look in here of a night to see whats happening and thats all. Havent even played a map for a couple of weeks... but I'll get there.

Your reply to my post created more questions than it answered so I guess I have to learn more background stuff.
Cheers

[Lowell]

Ahh...to expand/alter the Florida Gold files you may need a little help. There are several industries you may have to remove to add others as the tracks going to the distribution centers are pretty full already. The new update for that map is almost complete and will be even harder to mod, as the NASA cars can only be pulled by certian NASA trains now. The gold train is the same. Several new events will be added as well, so as you mold the maps industries, you will need to edit the events file as well. My CIC maps will also have global files built-in, those will need edited.
The "easiest" way might be to make a new scenario off of the F/G map in the game editor. This way you get to rename it to a new projects name of your choice. Always rename maps like that, as I and others, always come back and improve on my Florida Gold and other projects. Don't name it F/G revised or anything like that either, as that just confuses both projects...never know your scenario version might be better than mine.
I would be happy to help you start your own version if you like, great way to learn. It wouldn't take me much to alter any files needed, then you can place the industries on the map and cities in the editor yourself, then build your own scenario goals version as well. It might help you get started, then after you see how this one is torn appart, you will be ready to build anything.
EDit//I have several blank sizes of that Florida landscape as well.

[Jancsika]

There is one major problem with modding your maps. It is the size and location of the “Assets” file.
Because of the size of the file, 50 MB in Zipped format, it is not located on this board but on your private server.
Which is quite all right, it is not a problem to download it.
But if and when some new modder wants to upload it he will not be able to use this board. I know there are several free upload sites, (Rodea is using one) but they are limited as of the time etc.
Since this is the only active and prominent Railroads! site it would be nice and also appropriate to have all the relevant data on this site.
That would require breaking up the 50 MB Zip file into approximately 8 separate packet. I know that it is not an attractive solution, but is there a better one??
The Firaxis people have their FPK-s separated Trains.FPK, TrainCars.FPK etc……
How about it?
Jancsika

[Lowell]

I'm talking about someone making a Blank map of the Florida map and making their "own" set of files, industries and scenario.
Also this is not the only railroads site either. The CIV forums have a section for railroads. I am looking into having the proper threads placed on that forum so maps and more can be published there. At that site, the company would see the mods made for railroads. They could even host mod competitions like they do for CIV. That site handles larger file sizes. That forum is better moderated as well...no double posts allowed and proper forum rules are imposed.

Also, all my mod projects are hosted off of my art site. That goes for all games I mod. If you build the Florida map with the games default industries and stuff, this is not an issue.

So you bumped my post...I hope he still reads the important information I posted for him above...