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bewdley (25 posts)
Nov-21-01, 10:44 AM (EST) "Carspawner parameters" The Technical Document "How to Place a Car Spawner" states "If you want a certain shape to appear more frequently than another shape, give it multiple entries ..."If you look in the carspawn.dat file for any particular route, you will see lines like the following: CarSpawnerItem( "car1.s" 6 )

The first parameter is obviously the shape of a vehicle. At first, I thought that the second parameter was the indicator of relative frequency of occurrence of the stated vehicle, but it seems not. Can anyone tell me what the number is for?
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Subject Author Message Date ID RE: Carspawner parameters rgarber Nov-21-01 1 RE: Carspawner parameters bewdley Nov-21-01 2 RE: Carspawner parameters rgarber Nov-21-01 3 RE: Carspawner parameters bewdley Nov-21-01 5 RE: Carspawner parameters SilverFox Nov-21-01 4 RE: Carspawner parameters bewdley Nov-21-01 6 RE: Carspawner parameters SilverFox Nov-21-01 7 RE: Carspawner parameters bewdley Nov-21-01 8 RE: Carspawner parameters rgarber Nov-21-01 9 RE: Carspawner parameters bewdley Nov-21-01 10 RE: Carspawner parameters rgarber Nov-22-01 12 RE: Carspawner parameters bewdley Nov-22-01 15 RE: Carspawner parameters rgarber Nov-23-01 17 RE: Carspawner parameters SilverFox Nov-22-01 14 RE: Carspawner parameters bewdley Nov-23-01 16 RE: Carspawner parameters SilverFox Nov-25-01 18 RE: Carspawner parameters SilverFox Nov-22-01 11 RE: Carspawner parameters rgarber Nov-22-01 13

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rgarber (610 posts)
Nov-21-01, 12:23 PM (EST) 1. "RE: Carspawner parameters" Bewd,I don't have a quick answer for you on your question but I know it's been discussed, but it was a long time ago.I'm pretty sure Jim Stevens talked about this and if I'm not mistaken several others.What I would do is to do a search in the Route forum but go way back to the archives because it's been a long time. But I know it's been discussed.Hope this helps.Rich Garber
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bewdley (25 posts)
Nov-21-01, 02:12 PM (EST) 2. "RE: Carspawner parameters" Thanks for the prod, Rich. (Don't know why I put this question in the Activity Design section anyway.)I looked through the archives and you're right, there was a lot of discussion about carspawning back in the Dark Ages of MSTS (like June/July). Some real gems among all that stuff.Anyway, among the occasional reference to that second parameter was a suggestion from Michael Vone that it could indicate the distance between vehicles. That would make sense -- we wouldn't want our vehicles going down the road as evenly spaced as tanks rolling through Red Square (the only image that comes to mind, even if it dates me). Should be easy to test -- I'll give it a try. Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
rgarber (610 posts)
Nov-21-01, 03:11 PM (EST) 3. "RE: Carspawner parameters" There was this one post by Stevens too, where he had an array of pictures (love pictures...) with different 'things' in tow via the spawner. I think one was houses? I thought in that post he talked about the second value but I believe Vone is right. Rings a bell. Anyway, holler back what you find out. I plan on having to alter the car spawner too.Rich Garber Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
bewdley (25 posts)
Nov-21-01, 03:38 PM (EST) 5. "RE: Carspawner parameters" Hi Rich:I sent the Track Inspector out in his little Speedster to watch the traffic under various conditions. His report was a bit garbled (I wonder if he's on the bottle), but he seemed to think that the second "perimeter" had something to do with the relative speed of the vehicles.BTW, he saw things on the road that weren't in carspawn.dat (I'm sure he keeps a bottle in his cab :-}).-----------Hey, this could start a whole new trend in train-sim -- car-spotting! For all you simmers out there who are getting bored with running a train, take the Speedster out for a spin. Find a good spot to park somewhere near a busy road and watch the cars go by!-----------The only site I've been able to download a quantity of vehicles is trainsimfiles.com -- anybody know of another good source?Don't know whether anybody followed up on the moving cows! But now you can download ducks and sheep too. Gee! the possibilities are endless!
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SilverFox (47 posts)
Nov-21-01, 03:24 PM (EST) 4. "RE: Carspawner parameters" Hi,
I did some simple tests on this.
I used 2 vehicles in the car spawner and set the numbers to different values . Using 1 and 13 the vehicle with the parameter set to 13 never appeared. The other vehicle appears in groups of 1,2,3,4 and 5 closely bunched togther.
( As i was using 2 buses for my test that seemed to conform to real life!)
When the parameters are set more closely both vehicles appear in groups of 1,2,3 atc. and the vehicle with the higher number appears less frequently.
What seems to change is not the distance between the individual vehicles in the group but the separation between the groups.
If asked whether this parameter changes the frequency with which a vehicle appears in the car spawner I would say that it does but that is not all it does.
-John
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bewdley (25 posts)
Nov-21-01, 03:42 PM (EST) 6. "RE: Carspawner parameters" Thanks John:I tell ya -- this is getting real fascinating. Forget about those trains! Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
SilverFox (47 posts)
Nov-21-01, 04:04 PM (EST) 7. "RE: Carspawner parameters" >Thanks John:
>
>I tell ya -- this is
>getting real fascinating. Forget about
>those trains!I've got a better idea, lets park the cars and...
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bewdley (25 posts)
Nov-21-01, 04:12 PM (EST) 8. "RE: Carspawner parameters" You are a sly old fox, aren't you! Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
rgarber (610 posts)
Nov-21-01, 09:46 PM (EST) 9. "RE: Carspawner parameters" Foxman.. you are a man after my own heart! That explains some of the peculiarities I've seen with the spawners. On the drive up to Woodberry you get to watch cars for a long time. Same on the way up to Titan City. One thing as you pointed out was the clumps the vehicles seem to come in. I never could figure it out. Never really took the time too. But I thought it was me just seeing things. You know.. not really paying attention. But I believe you are onto something. For instance I have spawners set to produce cars occaisionally.. but when I go past.. there's four of five in a row, and then nothing... never could figure it.Plus... that link to the photographs from the 50's.. what is that link?Thanks!Rich Garber Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
bewdley (25 posts)
Nov-21-01, 10:25 PM (EST) 10. "RE: Carspawner parameters" Hi Rich & SilverFox: This is the Track Inspector.I've watched this 'clumping' happen, too, and it seemed to me that it occurs (as in real life) when faster vehicles catch up with slower ones. (Hic!) Many times, I've seen a little red car whizz along the road until it brakes behind a slow-moving van -- and there is stays, there's no lane-changing in the sim (although it it possible to have two lanes in the same directions isn't it). (Hic!)
('Bewd' back on the line again.)
This accounts for the clumping, I think, so that second parameter still remains something of a mystery. Watcha think?P.S. I consider the Hoogdam route to be a good one for car-spotting because Wouter put busy highways (i.e., lots of traffic) next to the lines in places. Bump up the carspawner (I mean add vehicles) and you've got major action out there. I've sent the TI out to look for good spots in EMRR, but the silly souse keeps running his Speedster off the rails (which is kinda fun to watch, actually).
Any suggestions?
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rgarber (610 posts)
Nov-22-01, 03:07 PM (EST) 12. "RE: Carspawner parameters" I thought the car spawners produced the same speed of car but only randomized by time, is that not true?Rich Garber
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bewdley (25 posts)
Nov-22-01, 07:57 PM (EST) 15. "RE: Carspawner parameters" You may be right, Rich. I don't know enough about the carspawner to offer an opinion. However, I have noticed cars moving at very different speeds, from funereal to downright reckless (which could lead, to the former, I suppose). I assumed (!) that a variety of speeds could be set for various pieces of roadway in the Route Editor, otherwise I don't know how to account for it. I haven't got around to looking into the RE; had enough on my hands trying to tweak trains, run and build activities, and write my MSTS Helper program. It's worse than working for a living. (Which prompts me to wonder if the Editors are so tedious to use because the guys who used them to make the original routes, etc. were getting paid to use them. You know the kind of thing: "So what if it takes me eight hours to lay a mile of track, I'm getting paid to do it!") Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
rgarber (610 posts)
Nov-23-01, 11:38 AM (EST) 17. "RE: Carspawner parameters" Programming is what I do to and I figure they used the editors to create the routes and all. Chances are somewhere along the line someone said, 'hey, why not include these too?' and wholla we got the editors. It's kinda like woodworking in a way. You create a temporary jig to help you do something else, like make a straight cut. As long as it gets the job done, it's fine, but you never really go back and spruce it up to make it look shiney and new. That's what I think happened to the editors. Really, the most I see missing from the editors is the 'idiot-proofing'. If you walk the straight and narrow using the things, they perform fine for the most part. And too, without a doubt, there is some issues that Kuju plainly decided not to get working. I believe the concept of signals was one when they finally got around to explaining them said, 'you know... it be better if we didn't... these things are too complicated.' I mean, it's easier for us to think they're broken when possibly they work fine, but how do you ever understand them? I can predict now alot of times what's wrong and how to fix it when I see them doing goofy things, but to try to explain it, I'm afraid I would sound like some goofy nutty professor! And then there are those things which just cannot be explained... Rich Garber Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
SilverFox (47 posts)
Nov-22-01, 03:25 PM (EST) 14. "RE: Carspawner parameters" Hi Bewd,
I did my car watching on the MSTS tutorial route, which I've made playable and I'm extending. There is a car spawner running close to the station where the Acela tutorial starts.
It helps in car watching if you use the camera hacks posted here a month or so ago. I use the trackside camera in full camera control mode so you can go off wandering with the camera down the highways and byways quite a way from the rail track.
All this talk about car watching reminds me of a management course where they had all these senior corporate "suits" standing in the middle of a roundabout( we have lots of these in the UK much to the consternation of foreign visitors) counting cars for a few hours,and never told them why they were doing it.
Cheers,
John
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bewdley (25 posts)
Nov-23-01, 08:59 AM (EST) 16. "RE: Carspawner parameters" Hi John:That sounds like a good way to view the traffic; I'm going to add it to my list of Good-Things-To-Do (not going to tell you how long that list is, don't even want to think about it).You mention the post of "a month or so ago" but did you notice a more recent upload to Trainsimfiles (CamHackIII was it?). Have you had a chance to try that? I haven't ... but guess where I've put the intention to try it out (yup, on my list of things to do).Do you have any conclusions from your observation of the traffic with this camera mode? Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
SilverFox (47 posts)
Nov-25-01, 09:13 AM (EST) 18. "RE: Carspawner parameters" Hi,
I'm fairly happy with the way I've got the cameras set up now so its a case of "if it ain't broke don't fixit", and I passed on camhackiii. Thanks for mentioning it tho'.
I did use the free view mode to do my original car watching , so don't have anything to add to the previous observations. I suppose I could have been more scientific about the whole thing. One thing i should have done was to watch what happens at the beginning of a car spawner, rather than the middle of a long stretch.
Cheers,
John Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
SilverFox (47 posts)
Nov-22-01, 01:50 PM (EST) 11. "RE: Carspawner parameters" Hi Rich,
I have been a fan of O Winston Link's night photos for some time and this seemed like a good opportunity to show one here.The links ( no pun intended) can be found at
http://www.greatmodernpictures.com/plink.htm
http://carolinaarts.com/winstonlink.htmlHow about adding a drive-in movie theatre to your EMRR route or a swimming hole!
Regards
John
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rgarber (610 posts)
Nov-22-01, 03:12 PM (EST) 13. "RE: Carspawner parameters" Ahh.. good stuff SF.. check out these pictures.. read'em and weep! http://pages.prodigy.com/altoonaarchives/dntn.htm Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top

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