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sniper297 (311 posts)
Jul-11-01, 11:08 PM (EST) "Tips from the Editor Guru" Ok, I'm Not really a guru. But I got you to look at this anyway. Just a collection of tips, tricks, and my favorite mistakes. Some of these I got from other guys on the forum, but I'm repeating them here because I recently downloaded a couple of engines and was surprised to find that they didn't have some of the fixes in them.
First off, use wordpad instead of notepad to open files that need to be fixed, as notepad saves in the wrong format. If you are using a joystick and are experiencing that "touchiness" problem where you bump it forward and it jumps three notches, here's a fix another guy came up with. The original .eng file (This is from GP38.eng) has a section like this:EngineVariables( 3600 )

EngineControllers (
Throttle ( 0 1 0.125 0 0.
NumNotches ( 9
Notch ( 0 0 Dummy )
Notch ( 0.125 0 Dummy )
Notch ( 0.25 0 Dummy )
Notch ( 0.375 0 Dummy )
Notch ( 0.5 0 Dummy )
Notch ( 0.625 0 Dummy )
Notch ( 0.75 0 Dummy )
Notch ( 0.875 0 Dummy )
Notch ( 1 0 Dummy )in the "throttle" line there was a coding mistake on the original, with an extra zero tossed in which makes the program ignore all the "notch" settings that come after. to fix it, delete one of the two end zeros so it looks like this:
EngineVariables( 3600 )

EngineControllers (
Throttle ( 0 1 0.125 0.
NumNotches ( 9
Notch ( 0 0 Dummy )
Notch ( 0.125 0 Dummy )
Notch ( 0.25 0 Dummy )
Notch ( 0.375 0 Dummy )
Notch ( 0.5 0 Dummy )
Notch ( 0.625 0 Dummy )
Notch ( 0.75 0 Dummy )
Notch ( 0.875 0 Dummy )
Notch ( 1 0 Dummy )
Then it will work properly. Second, the guy who came up with the physics fix included a head out view for the diesels, and again I was surprised that the new ones I downloaded didn't include the head out view.
Quick fix for that, find the section (again, in the whatever.eng file) that reads: CabView ( gp38.cvf )
MaxDieselLevel ( 3600gal )
DieselUsedPerHourAtMaxPower ( 60gal )
DieselUsedPerHourAtIdle ( 10gal ) Now insert a line after "cabview" so it looks like this:
CabView ( gp38.cvf )
HeadOut (1.8 3.7 5.1 )
MaxDieselLevel ( 3600gal )
DieselUsedPerHourAtMaxPower ( 60gal )
DieselUsedPerHourAtIdle ( 10gal )This will give you a head out view with the up and down arrow keys.Lastly, I love switching operations and way freights, and got real tired of the way these things were so touchy about coupling, especially on curves and grades. A lot of real industry spurs are on steep grades - I once watched a C&NW geep spinning his wheels trying to pull a single empty hopper out of a plastic bag factory. Real freight cars, especially when empty, get banged around quite a bit. This dumb program would have you believe that hitting a car at 5 mph will knock it right off the tracks, and if you're trying to couple on a grade or a tight curve even 2 mph will do it. The setting for this is in the .eng and .wag files, "DerailBufferForce", and is set at 400kN (whatever "kN" is, don't matter) for freight cars, and varies according to the type of engine. For the Geep it's 200Kn, which I thought was really silly when you consider the weight of the engine. Anyway, I hacked the files thusly:original: (from GP38 again) Adheasion ( 0.25 0.5 2 0 )
DerailRailHeight ( 4cm )
DerailRailForce ( 2.5*113.4t )
DerailBufferForce ( 200kN )
NumWheels ( 8 )hacked version: Adheasion ( 0.25 0.5 2 0 )
DerailRailHeight ( 4cm )
DerailRailForce ( 2.5*113.4t )
DerailBufferForce ( 800kN )
NumWheels ( 8 )I assigned 800kN to all the freight cars too but this can be adjusted for preference.
With 800 I get the following performance on straight, level track (hard to get figures on curves and grades, because there are so many variables, suffice to say that they'll derail there at lower impacts):one to six mph - succesful coupling.
seven to eight mph - bumps the car, and moves it a short ways if single, no coupling, but no derailment either. You get to try again.
nine mph or over derails the train and ends the game.
Be advised if you hit an unmodified car at 5mph it will still derail.Editors
Tons of confusion here, hell of a learning curve.
First thing is the way the goofy thing uses memory. If you follow all the steps in the help file exactly to create a route in the geography extractor, then immediately go to the route editor to edit your new route, it won't be there. That's because when you first open up the launcher, it loads a whole bunch of stuff it doesn't need yet into memory, including the names of all the routes in the directory. You have to exit the launcher all the way, then restart it, to get it to read the directory again. When creating activities, I give the same name to the activity and the path, to make it easier to delete both when I need to. If you create an activity, then change the route, you may wind up with a broken path which will cause the route editor to crash. If this happens usually the only way to save the route is to go to explorer and delete the .act and .pat files. Somehow all this stuff is interconnected - I had the route editor complaining about an error, so I deleted the activity, only to find later that the stupid thing was looking for a picture of a freight car I had added, and I had to delete the freight car AND all references to it in the \trains\consist directory before I could even start the launcher!
I still haven't figured out why the terrain tool in the route editor jumps around loke a monkey on meth, but following another tip I go to the geography extractor, load the route and the quad tree, then edit, set height offset, and do 20 meters or so instead of the default zero. Then I set the values in the terrain editing window at 85, 12, 85, start my track downhill into the ground, and when I hit y I get a steep narrow canyon. Then I place shinjuku tunnel station over that to make a roof. Instant coalmine, subway, whatever. OEbridge6 works well as a doubletracked entrance.
Forget the screwing around in the geography extractor with the texture reference. Go to the explorer again, into your new route directory, and into \Terrtex. Delete the file called terrain.ace. Now copy from some other route's Terrtex directory whatever you want to use for most of your tiles, and paste it into your terrtex. Rename the file terrain.ace, and when you open up your route this will be the default texture. And you still have all the originals in the same places.
Consist editor.
Weird. Drag the thumbnail picture down to add a car or engine. Right click on it to reverse direction. If you want to delete it, left click on the car and holding the button down drag the cursor to the "couplings" icon. (???!!!)Activity editor. Again, use the same name for services and paths, and be aware that the route editor and the game will both blow fuses if something in the activity is screwed up, so it needs to be made easy to find in explorer. (You know, tools, find, type in the name*.*, and it gives you a list of all the files that start with that.) My favorite mistake is creating a bunch of AI traffic, assigning starting tomes to all of them, then forgetting to change the SPEED of the AI trains from the default zero mph. Appears on schedule, doesn't move. Hell of a way to run a railroad. Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
Table of Contents

Subject Author Message Date ID RE: Tips from the Editor Guru ValmetSM1 Jul-12-01 1 RE: Tips from the Editor Guru davidbeach Jul-12-01 2 RE: Tips from the Editor Guru sniper297 Jul-17-01 3 RE: Tips from the Editor Guru Hawk Aug-31-01 7 RE: Tips from the Editor Guru johninchicago Jul-17-01 4 RE: Tips from the Editor Guru sniper297 Jul-20-01 5 RE: Tips from the Editor Guru sniper297 Jul-21-01 6

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ValmetSM1 (9 posts)
Jul-12-01, 02:15 AM (EST) 1. "RE: Tips from the Editor Guru" Thank you for great tips!BTW. "kN" stands for kilo-Newton. Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
davidbeach (63 posts)
Jul-12-01, 04:22 PM (EST) 2. "RE: Tips from the Editor Guru" The values used for the HeadOut line will need to be modified for each different type of locomotive. I did mine - GP38 and Dash9 - (which are at home, but I'm not) by trial and error and have them fairly nicely setup. They have been posted in the main MSTS forum if you want to search for them. The x value is the distance to the right of the locomotive center line, the y value is the height of the view, and the z value is the distance forward of the center of the locomotive. The center values are, I believe, center of gravity and may not correspond to the physical center of the locomotive. Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
sniper297 (311 posts)
Jul-17-01, 00:23 AM (EST) 3. "RE: Tips from the Editor Guru" Thought I would add to this, and anyone else feel free to do the same - Maybe collectively we can come up with our own manual. Odd thing I noticed about parallel tracks - if you lay down, for instance, a 10d left switch, add two 10 meter straight sections to the straight part of the switch, and one of those A1endpt10d right curve sections to the turnout, it looks about right for adding one of the A2 sections. Do that, and one of the tracks is out of line. delete the right curve, spin your view around so that you're looking at the switch from the doubletrack section, and insert a left curve. Fits perfectly. Shouldn't make a difference, but it does. So nowadays I lay a switch, two 10mstraights on the straight part, attach the doubletrack section to that, and connect the curve from the other end. Fixes all the problems with passing sidings - when I first started goofing around with this thing I was using dynamic track to make the ends match up every time I made a passing siding. You live and learn.
Other thing that became more apparent when I started working on my own routes was some of the hesitation on the supplied routes when the game was loading something - I didn't know what, but my system is an 800mhz AMD Thunderbird, Asus A7v mobo, 128mb pc133 ram, Creative Annihilator 2 (Nvidia2, not the mmx) 64mb AGP, WD 30gig ultra 100hd - and the slowdown is real obvious when it's loading something into memory, in spite of all the caches and having the system peaked for flightsim games. While I was working on replacing all the switches for my son on the Settle & Carlisle route, I noticed there was a deer hazard at all the places where the game made that hesitation. So I started brutally eliminating all the "cute" features like that, including the sound regions with the chirping birds, spotter hazards, ETC.- and no more slowdown. All that stuff is nice, I suppose, but even on a fast machine it eats up too many clock cycles. Even if the deer don't show up it still runs through the calculations. I also eliminated all the signals while I was at it - until they get the ^#@&*!!! things working correctly I'll just do without.
Laying curves-too broad, too tight. AS (Artificial Stupidity) trains are not programmed to increase throttle if the drag on the curves slows them down, so I had traffic on my route that would stall on long curves if it was going slower than 40mph. The endpnt 10s are too tight, and the 5s are too broad - so I used an old trick from an American Flyer snap track planning book. Alternate curve and straight to increase the overall radius of the curve. Even two curve-one 10m straight shallows out the curve enough that a long freight can get around 90 degrees without stalling. Other thing I noticed about the traffic - if you approach the trailing points of a switch, it don't matter if it's set for you or against you, you go through anyway like it was spring loaded. but if an AS train comes to a switch that is set against it, it will just stop until you run around ahead of it to change the switch. Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
Hawk (84 posts)
Aug-31-01, 07:41 PM (EST) 7. "RE: Tips from the Editor Guru" "Thought I would add to this, and anyone else feel free to do the same - Maybe collectively we can come up with our own manual. Odd thing I noticed about parallel tracks - if you lay down, for instance, a 10d left switch, add two 10 meter straight sections to the straight part of the switch, and one of those A1endpt10d right curve sections to the turnout, it looks about right for adding one of the A2 sections. Do that, and one of the tracks is out of line. delete the right curve, spin your view around so that you're looking at the switch from the doubletrack section, and insert a left curve. Fits perfectly. Shouldn't make a difference, but it does. So nowadays I lay a switch, two 10mstraights on the straight part, attach the doubletrack section to that, and connect the curve from the other end. Fixes all the problems with passing sidings - when I first started goofing around with this thing I was using dynamic track to make the ends match up every time I made a passing siding. You live and learn"Another way of doing that, I found out, is lay your 10dleft switch, add the 2 10 meter straight sections, then add the A1endpt10d left curve, and hit the "T" key. It reverses the direction of the curve and everything still lines up perfect.
Hawk Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
johninchicago (41 posts)
Jul-17-01, 01:46 PM (EST) 4. "RE: Tips from the Editor Guru" How do you change the default speed of AI trains?Thanks for the tips. Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
sniper297 (311 posts)
Jul-20-01, 00:18 AM (EST) 5. "RE: Tips from the Editor Guru" Didn't know there was a default speed, unless you're talking about the activities that came with the game. In the activity editor, in the lower right corner, is the "traffic" editing section. Follow the popups to edit the "services", and one of the screens will give you start speed and end speed. I dunno which does what, I just set them both the same, since the train appears out of thin air at its starting point at the time you set (the default on THAT is 00 00 00, and your path defaults to 12 00 00, so if you don't change the starting time for the AI traffic it will already be gone 12 hours when you come into the game. Weird.)It also comes to a stop at the endpoint, and then vanishes back into the twilight zone. I haven't played around with getting them to stop at stations yet. Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
sniper297 (311 posts)
Jul-21-01, 11:40 PM (EST) 6. "RE: Tips from the Editor Guru" LAST EDITED ON Jul-21-01 AT 11:41 PM (EST)ANOTHER addendum? Who's dis guy tink he is? Actually, I have problems and stuff I can't figure out like everybody else, and the nice thing about this type of forum is we will ALL eventually be as smart as all of us combined. Again, we need to work on compiling our own manual for this thing, because the jerks in redmond ain't never gonna get around to it. (yeah, I know, they take no responsibility for the editor, but they got their name prominently splashed on it, and no mention of kuju. And the help file is about as helpful as all the microsoft help files I've waded thru since windows 3.0.) My problem right now is trying to figure out the object properties editor - the help file says:"To edit an object's properties1. Select the object with the Object Selection tool so that it is shown in wireframe.2. Click the Object Properties tool.The selected object's properties dialog box opens."Thanks, that really clears it up. I'm working on the Island of Sodor (Sir Topham Hatt's railway, for those of you who don't have kids), because I've become fairly proficient with the route and activity editors, but I'm gonna have to wait for people like the guy who did gordon to do the engines and cars, cuz I don't have a 3D studio, and the most sophisticated graphics program I have is Corel 4.0, which don't seem to be able to save TGA's with the transparency's intact. Anyway, Cykko, I think his name is, the guy from Memphis working on the lake street el, took the bold step of making a crossover by the simple expedient of just laying track across track, (ticking me off royally - I had just created a work of art involving a double-double crossover with interchange tracks, and now I find out I don't need to go thru all that) so this route will have no signals, plenty of crossing traffic for spectacular collisions, and real high bridges for trains to fall off of. ( Again, if you're not familiar with Thomas the Tank Engine, borrow a video from a neighbor's kid. Every episode something that starts out on the rails is gonna end up off the rails.) In one episode, Thomas runs off the spur into the Station Master's house, and in another Duck runs thru the wall of a Barber Shop. I'm trying to recreate those potentials using the "collision" properties of objects, building the house out of fences and sleeper clutter and whatnot, but when I turn on the collision properties of an object it doesn't work right in the sim. I've tried setting the object to "buffer" or "immovable" and it starts out with Collision type "bounding box collision" but then changes to "no collision data" next time you load it. The word "collision" doesn't even appear in the help index, and "animate" leads only to the cab editor. I'd really like to know what the hell all this undocumented stuff does, because there's a bunch of menus that don't seem to do anything. Bridges and Tunnels. Istill see some people posting "I'm going nuts" stuff about tunnels, and as Slick Willie would say, "I feel your pain." I can DO it the way it's been described, but the transfer sections are a PITA (acronym for "Pain In The #@$%&!!). Place marker-right click-type in size-slide-rotate-look-right click again-adjust size-rotate again-slide sideways-oops too much-finally. I quit using those things when I found out about the cut and past thingie. If you place an object, rotate it to the orientation you want it, then place another one, you're going to have to rotate that one also. Makes laying multiple bridge sections kind of tedious. But if you place, rotate, and hit CTRL C (windows copy command, remember?), when you hit CTRL V to paste a copy, the copy is oriented in the direction of the original, rather than the default direction. Works great for bridges, but also for multiple tunnel entrances. I have made a few tunnels with no tunnel sections at all, just track in a canyon with tunnel sections over the top. For the most part tho, if you want mountains, you still need the transparent section (for those that missed it, select terrain heght tool, put the little white circle where you want to make your hole, then hit the "V" key.), but instead of trying to cover the edges of the holes with transfers, I adjust the terrain so that I have "approach cuts", embankments on both sides of the track leading to the tunnel mouth, then a fairly steep wall about 10 to 20 meters back from the entrance. I lay the track first, and if I don't get the sixe and shape hole I want on the first try, I'll replace track with tunnel or vice versa to adjust the starting position of the tunnel, or fool arund with the height tool to adjust the size of the hole. This leaves about 10 to 20 meters of exposed tunnel section sticking out, and I just cover that up with one or two, or sometimes three, tunnel entrances. In the following example, I had a reverse loop in and out of tunnels, and the connection had a skew section and dynamic track in a canyon, going into a tunnel. As I said, usually I put in or take out tunnel sections so I don't get that hole in the ground outside the entrance where it's difficult to cover up, but in this case the tunnel entrance location would have been a PITA to relocate. So I use a tunnel entrance under the ground as a floor.
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