Epic History of Railroad in Utah (updated)

snoopy55 · Post by **snoopy55** » Tue Mar 04, 2008 12:15 am

Lowell - before you make a post stating that SMRI is the reason for a crash, you need to find the "Why" and let people know. To have people deleting the "Sid Meier's Railroads" folder, which is pretty much what a 'clean install' is, leads to thoughts of "Why should I mess with this map if I have to do a 'clean install' to play it?". If you find the SMRI version crashing, watch where it crashes and let us know so it can be fixed. Does the Installer version crash?

Lowell wrote:It is all that custom content you loaded with SMRI that is causing your crash-outs.

If you think there is something in SMRI causing these crashes, delet the custom items one at a time and let us know what they are. Also, with your large system, all of that custom stuff cannot be causing crashes, unless it is a specific item.

I'm not sure what your problem is with SMRI, but let's not condemn it as it and Installers, both from Atani, have been a great help to this game and the people playing it.

snoopy55 · Post by **snoopy55** » Tue Mar 04, 2008 12:33 am

Has anyone noticed that all the Villages seem to need Wood for no reason at all? 10 months and we all seemed to miss it..........

karsten · Post by **karsten** » Tue Mar 04, 2008 12:37 am

Yes, this is a important design feature, so please don't tamper with it.

snoopy55 · Post by **snoopy55** » Tue Mar 04, 2008 1:34 am

OK, Can you give me the What and Why of it? It was not mentioned anywhere in the thread.....

karsten · Post by **karsten** » Tue Mar 04, 2008 1:57 am

Sure, maybe we should have a thread on map design.

The wood is a primary resource need, that starts all villages off on the same footing and provides initial income. A similar idea is used in Rags to Riches. A variation can be seen in Amerigonia, where wood is the only resource that does not need labour input, because it essentially grows for free.

The better map creators seem to put a lot of deliberate structure into their maps, and that is an element of their success.

CeeBee51 · Post by **CeeBee51** » Tue Mar 04, 2008 2:27 am

Wood makes sense because the early steam engines were wood burners and the RRoads had to stockpile wood at every little whislte stop so they could refuel and water up. Makes sense to me anyway

snoopy55 · Post by **snoopy55** » Tue Mar 04, 2008 2:40 am

OK, I see the point now. Another way to do it could be Lumber Companies in a few towns, which do Wood -> Lumber, which is shipped in Box Cars to the Villages. I guess a Lumber Company would be a new thing to look into.....

No, I have no plans on changing the map, at least not what is posted. My own changes on my own copy............

Tijer · Post by **Tijer** » Tue Mar 04, 2008 3:28 pm

It really is a simple anology. At least in North America, most villages where build with wood. As the villages grew, some building started to be made of stone and bricks. Even today most homes are built of wood. Where I live, in South Florida, the primary building material is Concrete and CBS block. This became the standard after WW2. Prior to that everything was primarily built of wood. When local sources of wood became scarce they switched to concrete and tile. Let me also say that hurricanes also played a factor in that choice. However, less then 150 miles away the primary building material is still wood, even though hurricanes do effect those regions also. As well as the entire east coast and gulf coast. In the case of Katrina and New Orleans, most of the houses floated off thier foundations, because they where made of wood.

snoopy55 · Post by **snoopy55** » Tue Mar 04, 2008 9:31 pm

Lowell - I decided to try the map using a 'clean install' since I needed one for my photo shots. No-go. As you can see in the screen shots, Utah has no shortage of water, and the railroads are saving money by not laying track.

Also, I checked out the Visitors Car from Ely to the Copper Mine Museum and they do work as is. Remember, the Copper Mine museum does produce Visitors from the Visitors received, so they would be going both ways. Also, the names of the files in your download are changed, so in order to use them any map now using them would have to be edited. Not good.

Lowell · Post by **Lowell** » Wed Mar 05, 2008 4:49 pm

Sorry...I have no idea what you are refering to...but you need a new graphics card for sure. What res is that? 800x600?

snoopy55 · Post by **snoopy55** » Wed Mar 05, 2008 11:12 pm

That's an X800, 256 meg. And it's a 1024 x 786 setting in the game. I can also run at 1280 x 1024 and 1600 x 1200, so the graphics card is not the problem. The problem has to do with what has been discussed about large maps for some time, low MoBo memory = no large maps. When I had my 4Gb of memory in there, I had no problems. But we all cannot afford a 4Gb system and an expensive gamers video card or cards. While I can, and will have, these things, I tend to look at those that can not when thinking about building a map. I think if more people posted their system specs we would be able to see more of the whys as to the problems they are having. And the option settings for SMR are also another thing that has to be looked into. If I have Autosave set, some maps crash when it is saved, depending on how far I'm into the map. Shut it off, no crash. The Autosave sucks up memory to do it's job too. Utah is a 20 x 20, and while I like it alot, at this time I can't run it. When Newegg gets my memory back to me, I'll be able to. But I'll still look to those with small systems. Been there, done that...and it sucks.

And if you want to know what I was refering to, read your posts on this thread.

Lowell · Post by **Lowell** » Thu Mar 06, 2008 1:22 am

Oh...didn't know what you were refering to. The game is a full graphics game. That cannot be helped. All new games are worse! Better get used to Vista and big machines with stuffed out memory. Remember Ram is super cheap these days. I can buy 2gig of 800mhz memory for $80.00 U.S. now. The new 8800 GT is $250 now instead of $400. Now is the time to build a new machine and get ready for the next phase of games coming out.

People with 2gig or less can still run size 17 maps on down with no trouble. I have a machine that has 2gig and it just ran my 20x20 sized map all the way through with not a single crash. Their game had to be clean with no new content loaded into it. This map can run the same way as I have done it with his first set of zipped files and follow his install instructions as is. The SMRI version even in a 4gig machine will crash out...the stand alone version will not crash at all.

I hope I explained myself correctly as I have tested this with several machines/maps...please try this test yourself and you will see the results. Start with a clean game...no smri, and I'm not saying anything bad about the smri content, just use a default game with nothing global added and everything will run fine. Maps that crash out and have save game troubles have bad script issues...

Edit// remember, on this game you must set your shaders to medium or you will tear the landscape. This was first found on the Basin and Range Demo landscape map. Your pictures look awful. No trees and the landscape looks stripped. Even the track didn't render. Turn up those graphics settings and you will see a new game there...

Tazz · Post by **Tazz** » Sun Aug 17, 2008 7:05 am

Added Installer and SAM version to first post.

NZee · Post by **NZee** » Sat Sep 25, 2010 8:19 pm

Sorry for the huge dig but maybe someone's still around who can help me.

Before this map I played the Arizona one and really liked the huge open spaces so I decided to look for a similar map and that's how I found this one. And it looks really nice. However I'm running into a few problems:

1. With the SAM version of the map you don't get the extra money at the start so it's basically impossible to win the map on Robber Baron even if you start at Ogden and connect to Salt Lake City right away. I downloaded the older version from the opening post though and there this is all fine.

2. Apart from the very first locomotive tenders don't show up for any other of the steam locos. Is there a way to fix it? I tried loading the tender mod together with the map files, no success. Anyhow it's weird as tender cars are defined in RRT_TrainCars_Utah.xml already so I guess they should show up by default.

Any help is much appreciated.

Jancsika · Post by **Jancsika** » Sat Sep 25, 2010 9:18 pm

You can call this map the grand-daddy of all map modifications that were developed based in this map.
As I remember it correctly the original map was developed even before the SAM (Stand Alone Maps) were invented.
The original map came with an installer by Atani and it had a provision to select different difficulty levels. If you go back somewhere to the top of this thread you will still find it. I am sure it will still work. If you are looking for a challenging map I suggest that you try it.
The SAM version does not allow multiple choices, and I think it (I might be wrong here) was dummed down to the easiest version of the game.

Since the makers of the SAM version are still esteemed members of this forum I am sure they will look into it.

Smr Simple!

Epic History of Railroad in Utah (updated)

Wood 101

Re: Epic History of Railroad in Utah (updated)

Re: Epic History of Railroad in Utah (updated)

Re: Epic History of Railroad in Utah (updated)