Some Words of Advise for Scenery/Route Developers

When creating new projects, use caution when choosing object and texture names. If you have run stuffit or ezstuff on your route, there are hundreds of shape and texture files to contend with. When you pick a name for a texture file, check your textures directory to make sure there is not another texture file with the same name. The same applies to shape files. When TSM creates a TS object in your route, it apparently doesn't check for conflicts and blindly overwrites any existing files. You may not notice it right away. However someday your train will pull into town and that office building over there, yonder, that used to be shiny bright steel, suddenly has wood planking on it!One possible way to avoid conflicts is to put a two-letter prefix in front of the object name. This prefix could be your initials, or anything that uniquely identifies this file as yours without wiping out something else.
Cal Rasmussen
Beaverton, ORColumbia Gorge Route -- 20%

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RE: Some Words of Advise for Scenery/Route Developers, PHOENIX_to the WORLD, Sep-26-02, 12:31 PM, (1) RE: Some Words of Advise for Scenery/Route Developers, DKlemm, Sep-26-02, 03:38 PM, (2) RE: Some Words of Advise for Scenery/Route Developers, beluga, Sep-26-02, 04:02 PM, (3) RE: Some Words of Advise for Scenery/Route Developers, MikeSimpson, Sep-26-02, 06:06 PM, (4) RE: Some Words of Advise for Scenery/Route Developers, CGW409, Sep-26-02, 06:49 PM, (5) RE: Some Words of Advise for Scenery/Route Developers, calr, Sep-26-02, 07:15 PM, (7) RE: Some Words of Advise for Scenery/Route Developers, DKlemm, Sep-26-02, 08:00 PM, (10) RE: Some Words of Advise for Scenery/Route Developers, patm41, Sep-26-02, 07:02 PM, (6) RE: Some Words of Advise for Scenery/Route Developers, rpicardi1, Sep-26-02, 07:31 PM, (8) RE: Some Words of Advise for Scenery/Route Developers, calr, Sep-26-02, 07:45 PM, (9) RE: Some Words of Advise for Scenery/Route Developers, griffinmt, Sep-27-02, 00:24 AM, (11) RE: Some Words of Advise for Scenery/Route Developers, atsfdude, Sep-27-02, 10:16 AM, (12) RE: Some Words of Advise for Scenery/Route Developers, calr, Sep-27-02, 12:07 PM, (13) RE: Some Words of Advise for Scenery/Route Developers, enocell, Sep-27-02, 12:08 PM, (14)

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You could put a country code on it. You could put initials, initials and country code. You could put a railway code on it.Thanks for the heads up, as I had never thought about that. I may very well start coding my objects.

CLYDE, home to the BULLDOGS
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For objects Trouble and I came up with IC*** with the asterik being numbers we have blocked out for each other. That way we can find our stuff quicker.

David Klemm
Illinos & St Louis Divisions
IC Version .9 uploaded

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Great point.

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That is a good point Cal, another thing which should be avoided is the use of non alphanumeric characters in filenames apart from _While testing Route-Riter, I discovered that MSTS utilities, especially ffeditc_unicode.exe does not work in the uncompress mode with filenames containing the ampersand sign '&' or some foreign letters.You will also find that filenames with braces in them like 'J39(LNER).eng' cause problems with some of the activity checking programs.

Mike

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Cal
Unfortunately I find myself guilty of this as I noticed after I UL'd the 20's bridge that I just named the texture file concrete as well.
I'll be more careful in the future.

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I think that makes at least three concrete.ace files out there. I think USA1 has one also.
Cal Rasmussen
Beaverton, ORColumbia Gorge Route -- 20%

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I have one as well

David Klemm
Illinos & St Louis Divisions
IC Version .9 uploaded

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I have made over a hundred ground textures and i started to give them names like tex2.ace or tex94.ace my system works for me
i have a chart with thunbnail pics on them for quick reference..
With TSM files i use the same type system only with a name to go with the part TSMBridgeGirder1 ect ect... Patm41

Maglev Route Designer
Casino Express

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Realizing that overwriting an existing .ace file could be a diaster, my solution has been to use the prefex SRV_ on all my texture files. (One exception was Bridge4s because of a limitation in remapping textures in TSModeler.) Example, to avoid the problem with concrete, all of my shapes that require concrete use SRV_Concrete.aceAnd, I always including a warning about overwriting texture files although if you overwrite one of mine with a newer version of mine, you should be ok. The older SRV_Bridge2.ace should be replaced with the newer one or some bridges will display with a white lattace instead of a black shadow one.SRV Ron

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There are two files in the Old McDonald's I uploaded that may conflict with existing files of the same name. concrete.ace has already been mentioned. The other is signs.ace. I have already uploaded one correction. I'm not sure whether to upload the whole package again or wait for reports of problems.
Cal Rasmussen
Beaverton, ORColumbia Gorge Route -- 20%

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LAST EDITED ON Sep-27-02 AT 00:24 AM (EDT)

Not to mention the infamous blank.ace that seems to be referenced a whole lot of places.So far, it has always been the same content, but how long will that last!I don't even know why it exists or is used - haven't seen any evidence of it to my eyes, just references.Martyn T. Griffin
griffinmt@mindspring.com

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Blank.ace is created by TSM. If you do not apply a texture to a polygon in TSM it creates the file (when you export to MSTS). It is a solid dark blue texture. Sometimes when folks are creating things in TSM they do not apply textures to surfaces that are not visible (The bottom of a building comes to mind)
-- John Tackett --

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I generally delete any polygons that are completely hidden inside the object. I have considered deleting bottom polygons but I think if I did that and the object is raised up from the ground in RE, intentionally or not, it would disappear since the back of polygons is transparent.
Cal Rasmussen
Beaverton, ORColumbia Gorge Route -- 20%

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I have put '7' to nearly all of my models/textures. I used that years ago with Monster truck madness models. Other's models had some other numbers, so I picked the 7. For some reason I forgot to use that with the billboards in my route.

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