Roundtrip in the mountains: Test Case (mountains, no bridges

gforce · Post by **gforce** » Thu Feb 01, 2007 10:04 pm

MAP WITH VERY HIGH PRICES FOR BRIDGES SO NON USED...

(i'm focusing on new scenario's for single player, how this works or what should still be adapted for this or multiplayer etc... that's still a question)
(this is to open up new ideas and motivate other people to keep up the work on new maps and scenarios etc....)

Reference: A bridge too far...
(message in Railroads! Mods - Talk)

summary:
someone asked: no use of bridges
=> i'm playing with some settings
=> set <nCost> to a high value in the file Bridges
+ also for tunnels

To test this out:
i used ('m using) a test case map

.

There's a zip file to download (some files are even not used, but hÃ©, i'm just playing and testing around)

Put the folder Try2 in
\My Games\Sid Meier's Railroads!\UserMaps\

+ also a saved game is included:
roundtrip in the mountains.SMRailroadsSavedGame
(place this one in
\My Games\Sid Meier's Railroads!\Saves

PS: This is just a test-case-map with one example,
don't expect a fine tuned map...
maybe first have a look at the saved game, to get the idea...

PS: some other settings are changed as well
for example: output for grain is set to 0.4 (another test case, which gave me already alot of fun because of other routing, this should be test with another map, i used HVR money special for that)

Anyway, for those who want to try something different, please do...
I hope to get some people motivated to design better maps, better settings and scenario...

Hope 2 hear from you...

****
PS2: it can't hurt to test the map so please do so.... it won't change any settings on your other scenarios....
****
I WAS WRONG
****

PS3: No crashes so far, i've installed Railroads, patch 1.1 + (hollidayscenario = not needed)

GForce...

*** SORRY NO MORE FILE TO DOWNLOAD ***

it seems the price of the bridges where having an effect on the other scenarios.
If already downloaded, don't put in the Railroads-game-dirs

Big Papa · Post by **Big Papa** » Fri Feb 02, 2007 2:02 am

gforce,

I agree that tunnels & bridges in Railroads are way to cheap to build. Have you ever seen the old time right of ways that cling to the side of the mountain, like up in Butte Montana? The first time you played the southwest map you probably thought it would take a lot of money and fineness to connect to Flagstaff, right. Wrong! Wham-bing, a 20 mile tunnel!!!!! This is B.S. and need to be addressed! Route finding is non-existent.

Iâ€™ve been through the Moffat Tunnel in Colorado on the California Zephyr (way cool), but this 6 mile hole wasnâ€™t build till 1927, & at a cost of $18 million. I do like their slogan though â€œThru the Rockies, not around themâ€

snoopy55 · Post by **snoopy55** » Fri Feb 02, 2007 4:41 am

Big Papa - I agree with you there, run your track to the landscape. I like to make the track flow with the edges of the rivers. It costs more than ripping thru and takes longer( I can't get that gold from Denver

) but I like it.

karsten · Post by **karsten** » Fri Feb 02, 2007 6:53 pm

gforce,
great idea! I am testing a 10x-20x cost increase in my next scenario (Liverpool to Manchester) to reward more prototypical track building. Am looking forward to further test results from you.

gforce · Post by **gforce** » Fri Feb 02, 2007 9:09 pm

I've changed the map so the AI players won't get into too much stupid behaviour. I just flatten-out the region at the start station...
---
I'll post some new try-outs later or even some-more-tuned-up-map.
I just love it to try out and tweak a little bit or even too much, just to see what happens... I didn't even had a look at a XML file in my life before yesterday...
---
today i've played the Super-Bowl-Xpress of chochoobba and bifg daddy
great fun...
check it out...
---
i can't run the scenario manager and don't have the genuine version of windows xp... is the scenario manager used by everyone making new maps and scenarios or are we coding xml? and using terain editor?
---
I've downloaded autopatcher to get around that genuine-thing, is it a good idea to do? to get dotNet started...

karsten · Post by **karsten** » Fri Feb 02, 2007 10:12 pm

I hack the XML ...

dr3noodle · Post by **dr3noodle** » Sat Feb 03, 2007 1:26 am

Thanks for the upload. I opened the savegame and just watched the trains run. It opened my eyes to a new way of laying track, connecting factories to resources and connecting the cities to exchange passengers, mail and finished goods. Using the info gleaned from your savegame, I've played 3 different maps without so much as a single crash.

Thanks a lot for the upload. Your savegame showed me a totally new angle to playing the game.

gforce · Post by **gforce** » Sat Feb 03, 2007 6:10 pm

Thanx for some possitive input there.
Don't forget to play it yourself.
Even though there's alot of mess, there are alot of new things to play with, small farm, big farms (by output generation), routing etc...

i've got to get a better map there, but i was playing again the super-bowl-xpress

universum · Post by **universum** » Sun Feb 04, 2007 11:36 am

Hi gforce

I have noticed interesting problem with your map Try2. When I have Try2 folder in my UserMaps folder, tunnels suddenly cost MUCH more than usuall even when I play other map. I have observed it when playing Super Bowl Express, at first, I though it was part of that scenario but then I also tried regular Southwest scenario and the cost of even the shortest tunnel was well over $1,000,000.

It is a mystery but it looks like the program reads settings from UserMaps\Try2 even though I am not playing this map...

. Not sure if anything can be done about it but thought I will let you and everybody else know because it sure is puzzling. I would think that anything in UserMaps cannot possibly affect anything else than the map but surprise, it does (at least on my computer, can proove it if requested by posting screenshot).

Otherwise I really like the idea of making tunnels and bridges more expensive and making the terrain actually mean something => making route finding fun again. I like the map too, if only there was some scenario...

Dr Frag · Post by **Dr Frag** » Sun Feb 04, 2007 3:34 pm

I totally dig this concept since it's what I always try to do when playing the game. I was getting a little annoyed in one map when it kept trying to tunnel when I didn't want one.

gforce · Post by **gforce** » Tue Feb 06, 2007 12:03 am

*** SORRY NO MORE FILE TO DOWNLOAD ***

it seems the price of the bridges where having an effect on the other scenarios.
If already downloaded, don't put in the Railroads-game-dirs

OK, i'll check out what i can do...
But it will not be easily to find what's causing this...

Maybe for the best, i will take away the download-file...
It's already enough complicated to get a scenario running without additional problems...

I hope one day, it will all be more stable...
this day is far away...

Dr Frag · Post by **Dr Frag** » Tue Feb 06, 2007 2:35 am

Yeah, I've been getting the feeling from reading a bunch of other posts that if you change some of the gameplay in one scenario it will effect other scenarios as well. If this is true then I think this would be a bug because I feel all aspects of a scenario should be seperate from the others.

I wonder if the game is saving scenario information in a default folder somewhere whenever you exit a scenario and then reading it when you load a new game even if it's not the same scenario. Sorta doesn't make sense but something strange is going on. We need a directory monitoring program that records what files are read and written during gameplay.

DF

CeeBee51 · Post by **CeeBee51** » Tue Feb 06, 2007 12:39 pm

The Santa map definitely affects some other maps and I'm wondering of it doesn't put something in the registry that stays when you uninstall it. On Sunday I installed the Santa map and loaded the scrooge map(both against my better judgment) and not only would they not run but neither would quite a few custom maps. I uninstalled the Santa map and the scrooge map but the custom maps which were affected would still not run. Yesterday I got fed up and did a restore point to Saturday which didn't remove the santa or scrooge folders but did go to a pre-Santa registry. Now when I manually removed the Santa and scrooge folders my custom maps are working. I'm really thinking that something maybe in the registry was the cause of the problems because I can't see any other reason.