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Thanks to forum pros for great inputs on route building!1) am ready to install Route Riter - does the unzip & install actually impact my MSTS existing files, or will I get menu-like driver for choosing what to do with Route Riter after the install, like decompress a specific scenery .s file or larger overall compress of existing MSTS files, which I understand it can do.2) re "altering "face/appearance" of a MSTS scenery object with Paint Shop Pro - can anyone tell me easily the file type Route Riter gives after it decompresses. My PSP several years old/don't know if I'm there yet in being able to customize "faces" of scenery objects before reinstalling them into MSTS. Already got great inputs (Snider)on how to actually do the process - my worry up front is my old PSP. Thanks
Installing Route-Riter makes no changes to your existing files. When you run the program, you can choose which Route you wish to compress, which .s file you wish to uncompress etc.2. Uncompressing a scenery file with route-riter will not help you if you are wishing to repaint(re-skin) scenery objects. What you really need here is the utility TGA Tools which allows you to grab the .ace texture files for the scenery object and send it to your paint program. PSP should do fine for this, even an old version if the object does not have alpha channels in the textures (windows etc). Once you have repainted the object in PSP, send the texture back to TGA Tools and it will make a new .ace file for you.
Thanks Mike!Re TGA Tools - are they available as a download from somewhere, "free?" and any other usage steps/advice you could easily share like what type of file does TGA decompress create for PSP - then hopefully I can better understand if I can work it based on file extension types in my PSP browser, etc. Then, after working it and "repainting - any general stepsto then get back into MSTS format. Sniper gave me threads for actually finding .s filenames and changing them, etc/may have what I need after your good inputs.Thanks again for taking the time to help me.Piano
I'm using Paint Shop Pro 5, which doesn't handle the alpha channel either! It isn't a problem, as long as you use the updated TGATool. Load any ace with an alpha. Now from the image section of the menu, send the main image to your image editor and make your changes. Save in the paint program, then in TGATool reload the image.Next, do the same with the alpha image (it will open a new copy of your image editing program) and make the changes you wish, save. Reload the changed alpha to the TGATool.Now, with both changes made and reloaded, go to Export, and save (Ace(Alpha)) your changed combined image with a new name (make sure you know where you are saving it).No alpha channel is needed in the paint program!
Nitpicking time, I D/Led the latest version, seems to have fixed all the bugs. But there's a new one (little bitty bug), altho it gets the *.bk files out of the root and \World folders, it left them in the \Tiles folders. I've been adding and trying out custom objects and textures to PO&N6 like a fiend, and tried out the latest version of route riter yesterday to see how big I've ballooned up to. 15 megabyte zipfile, as prepped by route riter, when you consider PO&N5 is only 3.5 megs that's a lot of fattening! Hacking away at it one my own, I got that down to 8 megs, and I'll hopefully get it down further before I'm ready to upload. I do a lot of cheating tho, Route Riter assumes files in seasonal folders are unique and neccessary, but I don't make snow textures, I steal them. For example, in PO&N5 I have 653kb worth of custom terrain textures, when you add \terrtex\snow that would double to 1306kb. So I delete all the files from \Terrtex\Snow, and at the bottom of installme.bat I would add:call copy .\Terrtex\coal2.ace .\terrtex\snow\coal2.ace call copy ..\usa2\Terrtex\snow\us2pinkrock.ace .\Terrtex\snow\po4rkHsc.ace call copy ..\usa2\Terrtex\snow\us2pinkrock.ace .\Terrtex\snow\po4rkQsc.ace call copy ..\usa2\Terrtex\snow\us2pinkrock.ace .\Terrtex\snow\po4rock.ace call copy ..\usa2\Terrtex\snow\us2pinkrock.ace .\Terrtex\snow\po4scQrk.ace call copy ..\usa2\Terrtex\snow\us2pinkrock.ace .\Terrtex\snow\po4scrub.ace call copy ..\usa2\Terrtex\snow\us2pinkrock.ace .\Terrtex\snow\po4sndsc.ace call copy ..\usa2\Terrtex\snow\us2pinkrock.ace .\Terrtex\snow\sand.ace call copy ..\usa2\Terrtex\snow\US2Farmland1.ace .\Terrtex\snow\amber1.ace call copy ..\usa2\Terrtex\snow\US2Farmland2.ace .\Terrtex\snow\amber2.aceI'm doing the same type of thing with a dead tree I made, I copied tree2.s, decompressed it with Route Riter, and made a new object out of it, hacked the SD file for ESD zero. Copied \Textures\Winter\Tree2.ace to \Textures\DeadTree2.ace, now I have a new dead tree in any season. Route Riter correctly finds that deadtree2.s, deadtree2.sd, and deadtree2.ace don't exist in any of the default routes, and leaves those files in place. Since deadtree2.ace is actually the exact same texture as the winter texture for tree2.ace (I didn't edit the image), I delete deadtree2.ace from \Textures, and add this line to the bottom of installme.bat: call copy ..\Europe2\Textures\Winter\tree2.ace .\Textures\deadtree2.aceBy doing that, I save 171kb in the zip for that one custom object, the .s and .sd files are a lot smaller compared to the ace file.On the same subject, one thing I found that's a good tip when prepping a route, don't click on the buttons in order. The compress ace and compress .s are great features, but it's kinda dumb to sit there and watch it compressing hundreds of files that are not gonna be included in the zip! Duh! So after watching that show for a while, I concluded it's best to skip the compression until I "write bat" to strip out all the KUJU files, that way when I go back to compress ace and compress .s I'm only compressing the custom files, and it takes a lot less time.
Hi NitPicker,Thats not a bug, its a hidden feature However your wish is my command, and it will be fixed forthwith.I agree with you regarding the snow textures, I like the snow in us2targnd.ace, I just see what terrtex files are left after running route-riter and copy us2targnd.ace to everything which is left. I suppose I could add something like that to RR, so that it was added to the batch file, I will look at it. Although you have no problem editing batch files, I do find that some of the other route authors have a few problems in that area.I see your point on the buttons, I put then on the middle line as they can be used by users who are just compressing a downloaded route, or authors who are preparing a route.The compress .ace spooked a lot of users when it opens up 11 DOS windows at once!I will try to post a new .exe on my home page this evening, I am still working on the Activity checking, which is mostly fixed, my beta tester is in New Zealand, so he is near enough the same time zone as me.
Mike even though I am not doing a route I used the newest version of RR last night on some non-RR routes and it was great, it got rid of all of the unused files in the folders. I also started looking at s files in the trainset directory and was amazed on how many uncompressed ones there WERE. For future versions do you think for compressing s files in the trainset directory that instead of going through each engine/car directory that it could be made to search for all umcompressed s files in the trainset directory? That would be a great feature. I also like the activity checker with the ability to swap consists, great feature.Kevin Arceneaux gdapia
Hi Kevin,Glad you like the utility, I will have a look at that, it should be possible to go through the Trainset folder and compress all .s files it finds which are not compressed.With the added caveat that if they no longer work, don't blame me, I have no idea what lurks in there