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CSXALine (528 posts)
Apr-13-02, 04:03 PM (EST) "New SCL/CSX A Line Screenshots" Ok All the track is laid - now i am working on the scenery, i will offer it soon - i am just picky I need 2 people 1 who is good at packaging routes (Sniper's Help would be cool) ans # 2 a signal expert to assist me with a problemI will put a beta up as soon as i have these issues resolvedhere are some new screenshots - :O)http://www.calmstorm.com/scl-csx/screenshots/scl_1/page_01.htm
Jason Webb
The Seaboard Coast Line/CSX A Line from Tampa Florida to Jacksonville, FL
http://sclcsxaline.cjb.net/
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Subject Author Message Date ID RE: New SCL/CSX A Line Screenshots Motley24Crue2 Apr-13-02 1 RE: New SCL/CSX A Line Screenshots CSXALine Apr-14-02 2 RE: New SCL/CSX A Line Screenshots SD80MAC Apr-14-02 3 RE: New SCL/CSX A Line Screenshots CSXALine Apr-14-02 4 RE: New SCL/CSX A Line Screenshots sniper297 Apr-14-02 5 RE: New SCL/CSX A Line Screenshots CSXALine Apr-14-02 6 RE: New SCL/CSX A Line Screenshots flarrfan Apr-15-02 7 RE: New SCL/CSX A Line Screenshots sniper297 Apr-15-02 8

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Motley24Crue2 (570 posts)
Apr-13-02, 05:07 PM (EST) 1. "RE: New SCL/CSX A Line Screenshots" hmm interesting line you have thereBob
Philadelphia, Pa Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
CSXALine (528 posts)
Apr-14-02, 09:46 AM (EST) 2. "RE: New SCL/CSX A Line Screenshots" Sniper I have a question for ya if you have timejwebb4@cfl.rr.com
Jason Webb
The Seaboard Coast Line/CSX A Line from Tampa Florida to Jacksonville, FL
http://sclcsxaline.cjb.net/
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SD80MAC (917 posts)
Apr-14-02, 02:19 PM (EST) 3. "RE: New SCL/CSX A Line Screenshots" Jason...Nice screen shots!!!I've been waiting for your route to near completion...looks pretty darn near finished.Quite impessive i must say!,Love that colored"ballast". Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
CSXALine (528 posts)
Apr-14-02, 06:16 PM (EST) 4. "RE: New SCL/CSX A Line Screenshots" The Ballast is Original by Dereck van Dijk. Repainted by William Koltz.i have alot of 3rd party objects that i modified and will make sure to give the proper credit to as wellI do need some good building modelers to assist me in some projects - e-mail me @ jwebb4@cfl.rr.comJason Webb
The Seaboard Coast Line/CSX A Line from Tampa Florida to Jacksonville, FL
http://sclcsxaline.cjb.net/
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sniper297 (1996 posts)
Apr-14-02, 09:49 PM (EST) 5. "RE: New SCL/CSX A Line Screenshots" Hey, I got an answer for ya. You might not like it, but it'll be an answer!
Seriously, the first thing is click on the little envelope icon next to the posters name, that gets you the email address.http://www.train-sim.com/dcforum/DCForumID6/4455.html#What you could do for me is try out the NAcustom.bat and repack.bat from that package, see how well it does at sorting your custom objects from the default files, and gimmee some feedback on it. I got DSL, but my mailbox only holds 10 megs at a time, so if your route zips to bigger than 10 megs you'd have to send it to me in chunks. First thing is to get rid of the chaff, Windows Explorer, tools, find, files or folders named *.bk *e.raw *n.raw, select all delete all. It seems to me that the simplest way to break up a mongo route would be to make a world.zip, checking the boxes for "save full path" and "include subfolders", zip up only the \world folder, then delete it from the route. Next make a tiles.zip, zip up only the \tiles folder, delete it from the route. Now run NAcustom.bat, delete \envfiles, \shapes, \sound, \terrtex, and \textures, and zip up what's left of the route folder. If you aren't using custom textures with the same name as default textures designed to replace them, you could run repack.bat and delete the \custom folder before zipping, leaving the newly recreated folder tree with only the custom files in \shapes \textures \whatever-else-you-got when you zip it. A lot of this depends on what exactly you have, an extremely large route with 800 tiles and miles of track, but only a few custom objects, would have most of the bulk in \tiles and \world. The \TD, activity files, and root files really don't take up much space. A smaller route with a lot of custom objects you could zip the \custom folder as a seperate zip, and the rest of the route, including the \tiles and \world, would all fit into another zip. If you do like Sir Richard the Lionhearted did with the last version of number 10 route (or was it number 11? Well, East Metro Deluxe, anyway.), and include a monster PDF file with huge maps and pictures, you'll probably want to make a \readme folder in the route, zip that up seperately and delete it from the route folder before zipping the rest.One thing to take a look at when you have a huge route is the latest version of Flatlands, he broke the route up kind of wierd so it takes a little work to put it together again, but he uploaded one zip file that was a full version for us DSL guys who can download 25 megabytes in less than 5 minutes, and three other smaller zip files for the 56k dial-up guys. That would be the way to do it, one zip for the biggest folder, one for the second biggest folder, one for the third biggest folder plus all the rest of the route files. And one zip that includes everything for us guys that get 5 or 6 megs per minute, ha-ha!
Sorry. I've had the DSL line for several months now, and I still get excited about it.You need help editing the batch file so it don't copy 126 megs of unnecessary \terrtex files, send me a text file along with the route that lists all the terrain textures you used so I don't have to hunt for them.Last thing, if I remember you were the palm tree guy, I couldn't get some of those ace files with the alpha channels any smaller, you may want to think about making stuff like tree-tropical-03.ace 256x256 pixels instead of 512x512, I tried that and screwed it up somehow;
But if we can figure out how to shrink the ones with the alpha channel it would help, a 256x256 object with alpha is only 355kb as opposed to 1,413kb. Using a 1 bit alpha (save with "-trans") instead of the full 8 bit alpha is no good for the palm trees, it makes cruddy white edge lines on the leaves. Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
CSXALine (528 posts)
Apr-14-02, 11:47 PM (EST) 6. "RE: New SCL/CSX A Line Screenshots" I am going to try this out this week
here are some more shotshttp://www.calmstorm.com/scl-csx/screenshots/CSX_Shots/page_01.htmJason Webb
The Seaboard Coast Line/CSX A Line from Tampa Florida to Jacksonville, FL
http://sclcsxaline.cjb.net/
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flarrfan (556 posts)
Apr-15-02, 06:24 AM (EST) 7. "RE: New SCL/CSX A Line Screenshots" Sniper. what do you think of Jak's Remover program? I used it on my partial route and ended up with a zip file of less than 25 mb from a route folder of over 700 mb. And I'm still trying to figure what you did for the High Spped Rail route that resulted in a download of less than 2 mb. Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
sniper297 (1996 posts)
Apr-15-02, 04:50 PM (EST) 8. "RE: New SCL/CSX A Line Screenshots" Jak's remover program? First I've heard of it. There's a "route optimizer" in the file library that don't work correctly as near as I can tell, but if you're talking about something new from the how-in-the-world-famous Jak Fearon, I guess I gotta hunt it up and check it out!
I've been doing it manually, since the "deltree" command is difficult to get working reliably from a batch file in 98SE, and from what I hear it no longer exists in Win XP. As for how I do it, I follow my own readme instructions for what you need to include and what you don't need to include. How did I find that out? Trial and error, Watson! Zip the little beggar up, delete it from the \routes folder, unzip and install, look at the error messages, restore from backup, delete-zip-delete-install again! That's pretty much how I came up with this:*****************************************************************
ROUTE FOLDER STRUCTURE
\Activities
The info for each activity, contained in the .act files. Contains paths, services, traffic, and the location of each loose consist. Also has all the dope on action events and schedules.\Envfiles
Sky and water textures.\Lo_tiles
Low-resolution terrain textures for distant viewing, rarely used.\Paths
The actual path each train takes over the route. These .pat files are what gets outdated by alterations to the track in the route editor, causing "broken path" errors since the path no longer matches the track configuration.\Services
Trains with engines that move on the route. This includes the player train and any AI traffic trains. Each .srv file contains the info on the consist and the path file for that service.\Shapes
Contains the .s and .sd files for the 3D objects. The object.s file has the shape data and the name of the .ace file it gets textured with. The matching object.sd file is the extended shape data, which contains info on alternative texture for night, snow covered, or seasonal.\Sound
Do I really need to explain that one?\TD
The actual "quad tree", geographical location and tile boundaries for the route.\Terrtex
The terrain texture files. This is the "painting" on the ground, when you apply a tile texture to the little black bordered square on the ground it comes from here. The subfolder \snow needs to have the corresponding ace file for each texture actually used on the route, otherwise there will be missing file errors when driving in winter.\Textures
The skins for all the 3D objects in the \Shapes folder. Contains subfolders \Autumn, \AUTUMNSNOW, \Night, \Snow, \Spring, \SPRINGSNOW, \Winter, and \WINTERSNOW. Vegetation frequently has 8 different textures, showing up in the base \textures folder, plus all the other folders except night. Some objects have only the base texture, others have snow textures, and if it lights up at night it will also have a night texture. This folder contains all the ace files except environment (\Envfiles, sky and water) and ground textures (\Terrtex).\Tiles
Either the .t, or y.raw, or both, contain the terrain elevation information, hills and valleys and so forth, plus the information on which \terrtex\ ground texture is applied to each tile. The f.raw files are generated when siding and platform markers are placed. The e.raw and n.raw are "lighting and geometry", and are automatically generated by the sim if they are missing, which is why it takes longer to load a newly installed route, as these are usually deleted to save space in the zip file.\Traffic
Just what it sounds like, the .trf files contain the services and starting times for AI traffic trains.\Tutor
Generated in add-on routes from the template folder, the only route that actually has anything in here is the tutorial route. I usually forget to delete this folder.\world
All the info on location and viewing angles for all the placed objects are in the .w files, and the .ws files have all the placed sound sources. If a .w file is missing, the terrain texture and elevations are still visible, but all objects including the track textures are gone. The train can still be driven on the invisible track, the invisible signals still work, and the invisible switches can still be thrown. The track database is generated from the location references in the .w files, along with the tsection.dat file in the root of the route which addresses dynamic track.
ROOT FILESdeer.haz, spotter.haz. The "hazards", critters that jump in front of moving trains.Details.ace, load.ace, routename.ace. Pictures that load in various screens for the route.The .dat files give access to interactive and other special non-static objects, adding entries for these to the ref file disables most of them. Copying the shapes and textures for Japanese signals into your route won't work unless the proper sigscr.dat and sigcfg.dat files are in the root.carspawn.dat. All the different cars that will appear moving out of a carspawn. Adding entries for different cars to this file cures the "nothing but red cars moving" syndrome, but the matching shape and texture files must also be in the route.forests.dat. All the forest regions available in the route. Again, the matching textures for each tree type must be in the route.sigcfg.dat, sigscr.dat. Data for the signal types.Speedpost.dat. Speedposts, obviously.ssource.dat. Access to the static sound regions in the \sound folder.telepole.dat. For telephone poles, which I've had some problems with. Theoretically you place a telephone pole at one end, another at the other end, and the ones between are filled in along with the connecting wires. Makes it hard to delete them once placed.tsection.dat. Contains the info for all the dynamic track in the route. The tsection.dat file in the \global folder has all the "snap track" sections in it.ttype.dat. All the track sounds.routename.mkr, routename.ref. Used only for the route editor, the ref file accesses static objects, the mkr is the markers.routename.rdb. Similar to the track database, this is the road database.routename.rit. Carspawners and level crossings.routename.tdb. The track database. This tells the sim where the trains can drive.routename.tit. Like the rit, except for track instead of roads. Platform and siding markers, signals, speedposts, hazards, track sound regions, level crossing trips.routename.trk. All the filename info that makes that route unique from other routes. Contains the references to the environment (skies) and the properties like speed limits, electrified/wire height, etc. This is the file that has to be hacked to "clone" a route, since the activity editor, for example, doesn't pay any attention to the route folder name, and saves the activity into the first folder it finds with the .trk file matching the activity.*************************************************************I coulda sworn I posted that somewhere, but I'm getting senile from the trauma of expecting my 14th grandchild this year, so maybe I didn't.One of the reasons I'm constantly blathering about the "Windows for Dummies" series is for just this sort of thing, Windows has a whole bunch of features that most people don't even know they exist, let alone how to use them. I came from this:
That's the original Windows 3.1 File Manager, an easier to use tool than the old DOS command line "DIR /S /P", and with some better features to it. Altho you could organize files according to dates, you could only search for whole or partial names and extensions, it didn't have all the advanced features of Windows Explorer:
Here I can search for all files with a certain date, or between a range of dates, and since all the MSTS files are from May of 2001, it's easy to sort which are default and which are not. The EUcustom.bat and NAcustom.bat are designed to automate that process while ignoring the root files with the usual 5/7/01 date. Well, I gotta head over to www.howintheworld.com now, to see if I can find the thingie you're talking about, might be even easier to use. Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top

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