Basin And Range map

Post by **Warll** » Tue May 15, 2007 12:32 am

Oh now I get it guess I saw the auto icon and just thought it meant the factory. sorry Dr. Frag.

choobacca · Post by **choobacca** » Tue May 15, 2007 2:12 am

Gold is defined as Mail class because when gold was shipped by train, it went on a passenger train in a special baggage car. So I wanted my passenger trains to be able to transport it.

Scrap Metal is produced when Autos are delivered to Cities and Metros as stormfather already said.
Basin And Range puts a heavy demand on Steel because of Autos and Arms objectives. So we added Scrap Metal as another input for Steel.

And I don't know why the Demo map no longer shows in the map list. They have different names, but the first 15 letters in the name are the same.

Post by **Warll** » Tue May 15, 2007 2:23 am

Could it have somthing to do with the fpk?

Lowell · Post by **Lowell** » Tue May 15, 2007 2:40 am

when you added the forklift...did you rename the whole model (distrabution center) or just change a part of the old one? If so the old model is still inside my custom assets from the old map...maybe there is a conflict trying to pull up two different parts for the same model?

The port is the same name and the double stacked cars...but you changed the container's skin colors...is there a conflict with that older model?

"I found this to be part of my trouble with a map I am building...turned out to be just a name conflict on my part."

EDIT// Oh...and the Gold and mail thing is very cool. I recalled hearing about Gold/Payroll Trains as soon as I read your post. How did you ever figure that out. Nice touch.

Merlin · Post by **Merlin** » Tue May 15, 2007 2:47 am

Double WOW. You guys really did a fantastic job on this!!! The detail on the engines is incrediable. My hat's off to you.

snoopy55 · Post by **snoopy55** » Tue May 15, 2007 3:16 am

choobacca - I hadn't noticed it before, but the answer is that the files of the maps are named the same, including the Scenario XML. This could cause a problem. The 'BasinAndRange' part of the names needs to be changed to 'BasinAndRangeDemo' along with the names in the Scenario, which you already know, but others may want to fix it. A new Installer with the changes may need to be made as new people in the future may not see this. It might, and I say might, also be part of the problem people are having reloading.

Big Papa · Post by **Big Papa** » Tue May 15, 2007 3:28 am

Lowell wrote:Oh...and the Gold and mail thing is very cool. I recalled hearing about Gold/Payroll Trains as soon as I read your post. How did you ever figure that out. Nice touch.

I had to do some digging, knew that the cars in the standard game we not quite correct

. Found a good story of transporting gold in Baggage and Express cars with armed clerks, called it the "Silk Train". http://www.postalmuseum.si.edu/resource ... train.html

Also ran across a picture of a dynamited express car (see picture). It's part of rail history, outlaws holding up trains for loot.

We changed the production rate of gold cause it's not like the stuff grows on trees. Gold to ore ratio is typically 1-5 parts per million.

Big Papa

edit(remove Southern Pacific reference, not sure which railroad was used for Silk Train?)

Big Papa · Post by **Big Papa** » Tue May 15, 2007 3:44 am

Merlin wrote: Double WOW. You guys really did a fantastic job on this!!! The detail on the engines is incrediable. My hat's off to you.

Thank you Merlin. The engine painting was a lot of work to correctly represent the prototypical engines. It took a lot of research to find out the dates and schemes. I feel it really gives the game a whole different feel. Still wish I had a SD-70MAC to paint the "Executive" BN scheme.

If Faraxis had any (fill in with words of your choice), they could go back and redo this game for bigger maps, more engines types, longer trains etc. Sell it at hobby shows, who wouldn't want to build their dream layout every time they play.

Big Papa

Lowell · Post by **Lowell** » Tue May 15, 2007 8:46 am

Wow...Kid Cury's gang. $80,000.00 was a fortune back in 1901. Man...what an awesome picture...just added into my vast RR picture vault.

Say I really like your new BNSF version of the double stacked car.

The old version had a v1 and v2 nif set, and the global entry referred to the first version of the car you guys made. The new bnsf version is in the fpk with the old versions v1 and v2 files. Then I noticed that in your Basin TrainCars list you did not refer to the doublestacked_car_bnsf model but yet it still pops the bnsf model on the Basin map. â€œ?â€

bl4882 · Post by **bl4882** » Tue May 15, 2007 10:49 am

A "huge project." I guess so!

I've just downloaded (BTW, it was effortless

) and am fiddling with it in train table, but I can already tell 3 things.

1. The locos are magnificent.
2. The terrain is great and seems to capture the desert in a way that "Southwest" just doesn't.
3. The design makes use of the WHOLE map and doesn't cram everything in the middle.

Fine job, and thanks.

bl4882

Dr Frag · Post by **Dr Frag** » Wed May 16, 2007 2:48 am

Lowell, I think what you are referring to is the <szCar>_bnsf</szCar> tag that is in the loco reference. I added an engine to the map and noticed it didn't create the BNSF oil cars when I created a new train with my engine but did when I used the GP-7 Billboard engine. That's when I noticed the _bnsf reference and after I added it to my engine the BNSF oil cars were created when I used my engine too.

choobacca · Post by **choobacca** » Wed May 16, 2007 4:53 pm

As Dr Frag explained perfectly, the engine determines which cars it pulls by the <szCar></szCar> tags.

You can create any car variation you want. The default game variations are _v1 and _v2 (and the _tgv for passenger cars). I created a version of almost every train car for _bnsf. I did not add a few that we didn't use in our map, but that would cause crashes in your maps. For example, if you tried shipping Fish, Wool, Textiles, or Medicine, your map would crash if you were using a _bnsf car because I didn't include _bnsf versions of these cars. I will fix this for the BasinAndRange v1.1 version I will soon upload.

So if you add a new train car variation, at a minimum you need a mynewcar_v3.kfm and mynewcar_v3_dummies.nif. The KFM file must refer to a valid NIF file, but could be for an older variation, such as _v2. So if you look at my model files, you will see _bnsf KFMs refer to _v2 NIFs. This helps to cut down on the number of files, and when dealing with DDS files, it cuts down on disk space.

I hope you are able to make sense of this.

choobacca · Post by **choobacca** » Wed May 16, 2007 4:58 pm

Merlin wrote: Double WOW. You guys really did a fantastic job on this!!! The detail on the engines is incrediable. My hat's off to you.

bl4882 wrote:A "huge project." I guess so!

I've just downloaded (BTW, it was effortless ) and am fiddling with it in train table, but I can already tell 3 things.

1. The locos are magnificent.
2. The terrain is great and seems to capture the desert in a way that "Southwest" just doesn't.
3. The design makes use of the WHOLE map and doesn't cram everything in the middle.

Fine job, and thanks.

Thanks for your comments. We knew the engine paints would be a big hit and are happy with how they turned out. And Big Papa did a great job texturing the map.

choobacca · Post by **choobacca** » Wed May 16, 2007 5:04 pm

snoopy55 wrote:choobacca - I hadn't noticed it before, but the answer is that the files of the maps are named the same, including the Scenario XML. This could cause a problem. The 'BasinAndRange' part of the names needs to be changed to 'BasinAndRangeDemo' along with the names in the Scenario, which you already know, but others may want to fix it. A new Installer with the changes may need to be made as new people in the future may not see this. It might, and I say might, also be part of the problem people are having reloading.

Thanks snoopy, I will make the changes to the Demo installer and upload.
I don't think this is the problem with reloading.
Have you tried what dwax mentioned here?

dwax wrote:I can't load a saved game either. The only way I can is to load a new game then open up the saved game then load it.

If you can't load a save from the main menu, can you start from a new map, and load the save from the in-map menu?

choobacca · Post by **choobacca** » Wed May 16, 2007 5:10 pm

Lowell wrote:when you added the forklift...did you rename the whole model (distrabution center) or just change a part of the old one? If so the old model is still inside my custom assets from the old map...maybe there is a conflict trying to pull up two different parts for the same model?

The port is the same name and the double stacked cars...but you changed the container's skin colors...is there a conflict with that older model?

"I found this to be part of my trouble with a map I am building...turned out to be just a name conflict on my part."

EDIT// Oh...and the Gold and mail thing is very cool. I recalled hearing about Gold/Payroll Trains as soon as I read your post. How did you ever figure that out. Nice touch.

The forklift is a new model separate from the distribution center. I just added this as the annex in the Depots xml file.
I used the same names on my models as I did in the Demo, but the latest version should be pulled into the game. So if I updated a model for the release (the double stack cars), the release version should take priority over the demo version.
The game looks for the latest time-stamp on the files to resolve duplicate filenames.

EDIT: The game treats the CustomAssets directory like a single, flat directory and it resolves duplicate filenames by using the one with the latest time-stamp. So map makers should supply the filenames used in their FPK files so other map makers don't step on other maps.

For example, if Lowell creates a new container car, his filenames would have to be different from mine, or my map will use his.

I will start a new topic on this to draw more attention to this problem as we will run into this more and more.