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"Tall Trees & Boardwalk RR - Tourist Village"

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railtester (291 posts)
Jul-27-01, 11:20 PM (EST) "Tall Trees & Boardwalk RR - Tourist Village" I spent the day working on the little tourist village. The actual business is called Roaring Camp and features a narrow gauge Shay and Hiesler as well as full size converted F7 that makes several round trips into Santa Cruz each day during the summer tourist season and some weekends the rest of the year. I have taken gross liberties with both the village and the small loop of track the Shay and Hiesler use to ascend and descend the mountain. Those familiar with Roaring Camp will burn me in effigy no doubt but MSTS only allows 6% grades and I believe the little line uses 8% at least so I was unable to follow the exact route up the mountain. Those unfamiliar with the area will notice no inconsistencies.I'm afraid that I am probably putting too much detail into the route and it will produce low frame rates. I am building this on my PII 450, 128megs and ATI Rage Pro with 8megs. going through the heavily forested areas the frame rate drops into the low teens or even to 9 or 10. So this may all be wasted effort on my part since none of the 'faithful' will want to run anything that is this slow. But I slog on and since this is really being built for my grandchildren in the east ( so they can see where grandma and grandpa live! ), I'll do it my way and frame rate be damned. Besides if I post it eventually, those who wish can edit the route to improve performance. I'll worry about it all later!'All Aboard!' David Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
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Subject Author Message Date ID RE: Tall Trees & Boardwalk RR - Tou... JMSteven_W98 Jul-28-01 1 RE: Tall Trees & Boardwalk RR - Tou... White_Dragon Jul-28-01 2 RE: Tall Trees & Boardwalk RR - Tou... railtester Jul-28-01 3 RE: Tall Trees & Boardwalk RR - Tou... JMSteven_W98 Jul-28-01 4 RE: Tall Trees & Boardwalk RR - Tou... railtester Jul-28-01 5 RE: Tall Trees & Boardwalk RR - Tou... JohnCS Jul-28-01 6 RE: Tall Trees & Boardwalk RR - Tou... White_Dragon Jul-28-01 7 RE: Tall Trees & Boardwalk RR - Tou... railtester Jul-28-01 9 RE: Tall Trees & Boardwalk RR - Tou... samschul Jul-28-01 8 RE: Tall Trees & Boardwalk RR - Tou... JohnCS Jul-28-01 10 RE: Tall Trees & Boardwalk RR - Tou... JohnCS Jul-29-01 11 RE: Tall Trees & Boardwalk RR - Tou... railtester Jul-29-01 12

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JMSteven_W98 (329 posts)
Jul-28-01, 02:12 AM (EST) 1. "RE: Tall Trees & Boardwalk RR - Tourist Village" I used to ride that engine every summer as a kid. I remember the Shay and bought an H-O Shay kit shortly afterward and I built this really neat "step ladder" layout using 8 or 10 percent grades. The engine took one car from floor level to eye level by following a series of forward, backup, forward, etc.Used redwood collected from the area too.
Have you tried using Forest objects to improve frame rates?Edit FORESTS.DAT and include the ACE filename for the tree type to use. The other parameters in the file are the red bounding box points.With a forest object, the system calculates the X/Y/Z and lighting for one tree in the pivot point of the image. This data is replicated for all other trees in the shape, so instead of calculating 200 or more objects you calculate one.The forest object has three green boxes. Two are width and length settings. The middle one moves and tilts the shape. It is also the only one that links to the FOREST property tab where you set the "tree density" for the region.Use billboard trees such as the four "USFir" shapes in the distance. Place the forests near the tracks and use a combination of single trees and very thinly populated forest objects as trees nearer the train.I generally test my designs on a Pentium II system to check route performance. (I test C++ Windows applications I write on that system too. It greatly improved my code efficiency)Jim Steven, MCSE
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White_Dragon (93 posts)
Jul-28-01, 06:51 AM (EST) 2. "RE: Tall Trees & Boardwalk RR - Tourist Village" looking beautiful, very beautiful. I would love to play around with your routes, and please don't touch the trees and forests. Well only if you can get them to look that damn good and raise frame rates.Whats happening with your other route "Tall Trees" route, it looks amazing. Or is this tourist railroad and the Tall Trees route all in one download? Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
railtester (291 posts)
Jul-28-01, 10:05 AM (EST) 3. "RE: Tall Trees & Boardwalk RR - Tourist Village" LAST EDITED ON Jul-28-01 AT 10:14 AM (EST)Hi Jim, I am very grateful for all your contributions to our 'knowledge base'. You have helped me greatly in my efforts. I already use the forestmaker and it does help a lot. My problem is that I come from a model RR background so 'every inch' of the line has to be detailed. I am trying to break myself of that so that thing will move faster ( both the building of the line and the trains in the game). I used your carspawner.dat to improve the roads. All I had was little red cars before you set it up right. I am going to work with the rest of the files you just loaded and see what's up with them too. Thanks for all your hard work.Jim I have a problem you may be able to help me with. The little tourist line goes up the hill at an angle of +3. At each rail joining point I get a little 'mount' that sticks up above the track level. See pix. What can I do about this . I think it has to do with the steep angle but whatever the reason it's pain in a__! I can treat each joint separately and fix it but I wonder if there is a fix that would work as I'm lay track so I don't have to go back later and spend just as much time fixing it as laying it. Any ideas Jim?
Thanks, David
White_Dragon, don't worry the tourist RR is part of the Tall Trees & Boardwalk RR route and is a vital part of the whole line. Thanks. David Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
JMSteven_W98 (329 posts)
Jul-28-01, 12:17 PM (EST) 4. "RE: Tall Trees & Boardwalk RR - Tourist Village" My model railroading background must be behind my detailing too. I make every route section a "major project" but that's the fun of this stuff.The triangle overlap issue isn't too easy to fix, and what we really need are three new track pieces: Bend up, transition from slope to flat, and bend down. (The animation would be smoother too).Have you tried doing any manual triangle editing? Turn on Wire Frame mode, zoom in reasonably close to the area, use the terrain adjustment tool to highlight a wire frame intersection and use the up/down arrows on the individual triangles.You might also want to set the tile square's "Error Bias" to zero so you gain additional detail in the smaller triangles.For some reason, wire frame mode is more flexible than the texture mode.Another item that helps is using a small value in the "Terrain Detail Scaling Factor" but it also increases file sizes. The default in the Route Geography Creator/Extractor is 1.0 so you work at 1:1.I set mine to 0.0625, so I get sixteen to one improvements in Z-axis control and a much nicer terrain. If it's already at 0.5 for a 2 to 1 then the only thing that may work is the manual triangle editing.That route looks really nice and I'm already missing Felton even though I live among redwoods in the Oakland hills.BTW - I found additional objects last night, so the Combined Ref file set I posted will grow again today. Found another Train Shed and a level crossing named US2WhiCro.s that is some type of three light sign and a wooden "Crossing" piece.Also have 160+ buildings in that list.Jim Steven, MCSE
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railtester (291 posts)
Jul-28-01, 12:54 PM (EST) 5. "RE: Tall Trees & Boardwalk RR - Tourist Village" Thanks Jim, I'll give it all a try right now. This issue is really bugging me and is holding up my whole project. You know how that goes. If one thing isn't right and the other 200 are, you still concentrate on that one bad thing.David Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
JohnCS (281 posts)
Jul-28-01, 05:15 PM (EST) 6. "RE: Tall Trees & Boardwalk RR - Tourist Village" One thing I've found fixes 90% of the 'hump' problem is to adjust terrain down hill. IE start at the highest track section then adjust working down the grade. Works with roads too, though 10deg grades can give them hassles.Note you don't have to build that way, just go back and level the terrain afterwards. Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
White_Dragon (93 posts)
Jul-28-01, 05:31 PM (EST) 7. "RE: Tall Trees & Boardwalk RR - Tourist Village" I can't wait for it. Its looking brilliant. Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
railtester (291 posts)
Jul-28-01, 08:51 PM (EST) 9. "RE: Tall Trees & Boardwalk RR - Tourist Village" Yes John, you're right, I thought of that too and 'highest to lowest' helps a lot, that's logical isn't it. Now I'm going to go back 'up the ladder' and lower the humps that remain by taking a 'reading' downhill from the hump and lowering the hump to that altitude. I really want this part of the route to work, but it must at least meet a 'minimum standard' as far as the trackwork is concerned.Thanks John, I'll post the results - David Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
samschul (63 posts)
Jul-28-01, 08:35 PM (EST) 8. "RE: Tall Trees & Boardwalk RR - Tourist Village" David;Roaring camp is shure looking good. Did you solve the 6deg grade issue, John mentions 10deg grades.Sam Schulenburg Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
JohnCS (281 posts)
Jul-28-01, 09:06 PM (EST) 10. "RE: Tall Trees & Boardwalk RR - Tourist Village" It may be that any grade is possible, at least in theory. I've certainly noticed that at certain times the grade dial gets 'reset', where it shows 0 degrees when the track is at 3, ant then adjustment varies based upon the prior reading. This has caused me several grade transitions where I hadn't intended any. I haven't been able to determine the exact process to replicate this however.You can also theoretically edit the .w file in the tile directory. There is a separate .w file for each msts tile. Each track section in the tile has an entry as shown below: TrackObj (
UiD ( 1 )
SectionIdx ( 2 )
Elevation ( -0.0523598 )
CollideFlags ( 15 )
FileName ( A1t100mstrt.s )
StaticFlags ( 00200180 )
Position ( -156.175 1408.63 184.274 )
QDirection ( 0.061769 0 0 0.999657 )
VDbId ( 4294967294 )
)Note the line 'QDirection': the first number on this line is the grade of the track, I'd assume in radians but I haven't checked. Changing this number to 0.461769, saving the file and reloading resulted in this: So in theory you could do the grade there by placing a piece of track. Saving the route. Open the .w file (I think the entrys are listed oldest to most recent, but I haven't confirmed), edit the grade & save the .w, load the route, add a new piece of track, ad infinitum.Course only a fool who wanted their route to crash in flame would consider editing any route data files. You are warned.Now where are those shays? Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
JohnCS (281 posts)
Jul-29-01, 03:34 AM (EST) 11. "RE: Tall Trees & Boardwalk RR - Tourist Village" There's more to the rotation matrix in the world file than just changing the first value, you have to adjust the other parameters also depending upon the orientation of the track. This is easilly predictable if you track runs due north/south, but otherwise would need some further research.To show its possible though, can Acela make the grade?

Dont you love topic drift?
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railtester (291 posts)
Jul-29-01, 09:44 AM (EST) 12. "RE: Tall Trees & Boardwalk RR - Tourist Village" We're talkin' Modern Art here!DAvid Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top

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