Ok I may be posting this in the wrong place but I'm not really sure which category it fits under since I'm going to talk about a two different but related subjects.
Ok I am at this moment contemplating making an entry to the competition currently being discussed and I did read the comments from James regarding my chances of producing something worthwhile but I'm still not convinced its worth my time, so I'm here to discuss what sorts of problems I feel prevent me from making an entry, but also relate to problems I'm experiencing with creating my own route based on Adelaide.
Ok last night I decided to have a go at giving some orders to a train to drive from Belair to Adelaide using AI driver. Firstly just gave it some a simple order to Navigate to Adelaide with no other orders in between to specify the route and that seemed to work ok, although it also proved I have no idea when it comes to signals but I'll go in to more detail on that later). I then decided to get a little more complex and gave it orders to Navigate via so I could specify exactly which tracks it used to get there, again it worked fine.
After this though things fell apart because I decided to tell it to stop at Blackwood station which has been setup with an invisible interactive station so I could see it load some passengers and then continue on to Adelaide so I added and order to Navigate to Blackwood. It stopped at the station for about 2 seconds and then moved on and not one passenger got on or off (I checked the details where I believe it shows how many people/goods are currently on board??). Since that failed I added another order to tell it to wait 30 seconds, but again nobody got on or off. I realise this isn't animated but I should still see the people appear/disappear off the platform and they don't and I know for sure the station works because when I drive the train manually its works fine.
I then saw the commands to say unload and load. The train did then stop and the people indeed disappeared from the platform and the train details showed an increase from 12 to 18, but unfortunately the journey ended there because they train never moved. I thought perhaps it was waiting for a full load of passengers from the one stop but I see no option to change that if it is the problem. I tried this a few times but no matter what I do I cannot get the train to move on from the load/unload commands. So how the heck do I tell a train to load and the continue on??
Ok signals, I've read many tutorials, I viewed some nice videos from Razorback Railway website on how they work but still I feel I have no idea what signal to use where. What signals I do have in place where I though I understood how they work end up not working.
Example last night I setup a train coming off a siding on to the main line near keswick. The line actually crosses over another line going the opposite direction and then connects to one with signals, arrows etc for the correct direction. Its signaled at both ends of this point and yet while the train is in the middle of going across this section the signals still indicate the block is clear and infact an AI train I had setup (the Redhen) didn't stop and even worse didn't crash in to me either, it just passed right through me.
I had read about problems with signals when track crosses over another track the way I had it setup so I decided to remove that section and simply have the train coming out on the track going the wrong way (hope that makes sense). SO it was just one line connecting to one line as a normal spline. To try and explain this better, at both ends of this point on the main line the signals face south (for traffic heading north), and just before the branch lines joins the main line there is a signal facing north, there are no other joining tracks, perhaps later I'll try posting a screen shot of what I'm talking about.
Ok to my surprise when I put a train within the block that these 3 signals should cover the ones facing south on the main line still say the line is clear. I don't understand why, the line clearly isn't clear as I have a train stopped right in the middle of the block.
These are just two of the things which are frustrating me atm and prove I still have a long way to go before I can produce anything that actually works. Signals have been a problem since I originally bought TRS2006 and still make no sense at all.
Next question, if I was to get to a point where I can create something worthy of entering the competition, how do I know what is Auran build in content and whats not when choosing assets? I know how to find this out in CM but once I'm in surveyor itself its rather difficult trying to remember that station1 2 track bla bla bla was made by Auran. Is there no way of filtering out all the stuff I've downloaded so I can tell whats permitted and whats not? Or do I need to delete all my downloads so I'm left with only the built in stuff left?
I know there is star ratings etc to filter on but for that to be useful I'd need to work through the entire list of content manually and change the star rating for all the non Auran content. That would possibly take me several days to a week just to complete that.
So as I said I feel I'm a long way from producing a working session or anything else for trainz since so far I cant even get simple driver orders, or signals to work and judging by posts I've seen many consider those to be fairly basic things to setup. Basic stuff I cant do as yet.
Again I'd have to say my biggest problem though is just finding the right information, and information that is still up to date. Thanks to anyone who's already assisted by pointing me to various websites with info but I still find the information doesn't really fully cover all aspects of creating content of any kind. I am slowly getting the right information but at this pace I'm years away from being able to create content. What I'd love to see is a full step by step guide on creating each and every type of content, from sessions, to routes, to get real world baseboards, to creating a loco and rolling stock etc etc. When I say full step by step guide I mean I dont want some thing that goes through simply reskining someone elses train, I want to learn to create the whole damn thing from scratch and I dont want to follow some tutorial only to find out the feature they're referring to is no where to be found probably because it was written for an older version of gmax for example which I cant obtain. If I had a dollar for the number of tutorials I've tried following only to find that what they say and what I see don't match I'd be rich. You download other peoples content off the DLS to try and learn only to find out the licensing prohibits me from touching anything and its either impossible to actually find the creator or when I do finally track them down they're unwilling to allow me to do anything (note this is not aimed at vinnybarb who has been helpful but he's the exception to the rule). Note I am not interested in stealing your content I just want to learn and I want to create my very own from scratch but in order to do that it'd be nice to have some examples. I did look at the Indian Pacific cars made by vinnybarb (please dont sue me and I honestly haven't changed a single thing) but I did try to look at how it was done. I had asked about the Overland and I figure if I was able to obtain a descent logo for it then I could possibly just replace one file (iplogo.tga) for each carriage and it should work. It wouldn't really match the real train but it'd be better than nothing and I probably have enough skills with Photoshop to do it (badly
). I wont do it though because what I'd really prefer as I said would be to create my own. Anyway enough on that.
I've not ever really been in to modding games as such but in the past have often made use of map editors and the like which ship with games, for example Heroes of Might and Magic was a favorite of mine. I mention this because I do feel in terms of creativity I have some to offer the community as I always enjoyed pushing my maps to the limit, for example in HOMM4 most people scripting was rather limited and I made a point of using to make a more dynamic and exciting map that could be played many times over with very different results.
Anyway sorry if I've broken some silly forum rule by posting this here, I've never been much good at following forum rules. Although I'm a member of quite a number of game forums these days I don't actually spend that much time of them, due to too many rules and moderators who get overly upset about mistakes, and also I just prefer playing games rather than endless amounts of talking about them.
Ok I am at this moment contemplating making an entry to the competition currently being discussed and I did read the comments from James regarding my chances of producing something worthwhile but I'm still not convinced its worth my time, so I'm here to discuss what sorts of problems I feel prevent me from making an entry, but also relate to problems I'm experiencing with creating my own route based on Adelaide.
Ok last night I decided to have a go at giving some orders to a train to drive from Belair to Adelaide using AI driver. Firstly just gave it some a simple order to Navigate to Adelaide with no other orders in between to specify the route and that seemed to work ok, although it also proved I have no idea when it comes to signals but I'll go in to more detail on that later). I then decided to get a little more complex and gave it orders to Navigate via so I could specify exactly which tracks it used to get there, again it worked fine.
After this though things fell apart because I decided to tell it to stop at Blackwood station which has been setup with an invisible interactive station so I could see it load some passengers and then continue on to Adelaide so I added and order to Navigate to Blackwood. It stopped at the station for about 2 seconds and then moved on and not one passenger got on or off (I checked the details where I believe it shows how many people/goods are currently on board??). Since that failed I added another order to tell it to wait 30 seconds, but again nobody got on or off. I realise this isn't animated but I should still see the people appear/disappear off the platform and they don't and I know for sure the station works because when I drive the train manually its works fine.
I then saw the commands to say unload and load. The train did then stop and the people indeed disappeared from the platform and the train details showed an increase from 12 to 18, but unfortunately the journey ended there because they train never moved. I thought perhaps it was waiting for a full load of passengers from the one stop but I see no option to change that if it is the problem. I tried this a few times but no matter what I do I cannot get the train to move on from the load/unload commands. So how the heck do I tell a train to load and the continue on??
Ok signals, I've read many tutorials, I viewed some nice videos from Razorback Railway website on how they work but still I feel I have no idea what signal to use where. What signals I do have in place where I though I understood how they work end up not working.
Example last night I setup a train coming off a siding on to the main line near keswick. The line actually crosses over another line going the opposite direction and then connects to one with signals, arrows etc for the correct direction. Its signaled at both ends of this point and yet while the train is in the middle of going across this section the signals still indicate the block is clear and infact an AI train I had setup (the Redhen) didn't stop and even worse didn't crash in to me either, it just passed right through me.
I had read about problems with signals when track crosses over another track the way I had it setup so I decided to remove that section and simply have the train coming out on the track going the wrong way (hope that makes sense). SO it was just one line connecting to one line as a normal spline. To try and explain this better, at both ends of this point on the main line the signals face south (for traffic heading north), and just before the branch lines joins the main line there is a signal facing north, there are no other joining tracks, perhaps later I'll try posting a screen shot of what I'm talking about.
Ok to my surprise when I put a train within the block that these 3 signals should cover the ones facing south on the main line still say the line is clear. I don't understand why, the line clearly isn't clear as I have a train stopped right in the middle of the block.
These are just two of the things which are frustrating me atm and prove I still have a long way to go before I can produce anything that actually works. Signals have been a problem since I originally bought TRS2006 and still make no sense at all.
Next question, if I was to get to a point where I can create something worthy of entering the competition, how do I know what is Auran build in content and whats not when choosing assets? I know how to find this out in CM but once I'm in surveyor itself its rather difficult trying to remember that station1 2 track bla bla bla was made by Auran. Is there no way of filtering out all the stuff I've downloaded so I can tell whats permitted and whats not? Or do I need to delete all my downloads so I'm left with only the built in stuff left?
I know there is star ratings etc to filter on but for that to be useful I'd need to work through the entire list of content manually and change the star rating for all the non Auran content. That would possibly take me several days to a week just to complete that.
So as I said I feel I'm a long way from producing a working session or anything else for trainz since so far I cant even get simple driver orders, or signals to work and judging by posts I've seen many consider those to be fairly basic things to setup. Basic stuff I cant do as yet.
Again I'd have to say my biggest problem though is just finding the right information, and information that is still up to date. Thanks to anyone who's already assisted by pointing me to various websites with info but I still find the information doesn't really fully cover all aspects of creating content of any kind. I am slowly getting the right information but at this pace I'm years away from being able to create content. What I'd love to see is a full step by step guide on creating each and every type of content, from sessions, to routes, to get real world baseboards, to creating a loco and rolling stock etc etc. When I say full step by step guide I mean I dont want some thing that goes through simply reskining someone elses train, I want to learn to create the whole damn thing from scratch and I dont want to follow some tutorial only to find out the feature they're referring to is no where to be found probably because it was written for an older version of gmax for example which I cant obtain. If I had a dollar for the number of tutorials I've tried following only to find that what they say and what I see don't match I'd be rich. You download other peoples content off the DLS to try and learn only to find out the licensing prohibits me from touching anything and its either impossible to actually find the creator or when I do finally track them down they're unwilling to allow me to do anything (note this is not aimed at vinnybarb who has been helpful but he's the exception to the rule). Note I am not interested in stealing your content I just want to learn and I want to create my very own from scratch but in order to do that it'd be nice to have some examples. I did look at the Indian Pacific cars made by vinnybarb (please dont sue me and I honestly haven't changed a single thing) but I did try to look at how it was done. I had asked about the Overland and I figure if I was able to obtain a descent logo for it then I could possibly just replace one file (iplogo.tga) for each carriage and it should work. It wouldn't really match the real train but it'd be better than nothing and I probably have enough skills with Photoshop to do it (badly
). I wont do it though because what I'd really prefer as I said would be to create my own. Anyway enough on that.I've not ever really been in to modding games as such but in the past have often made use of map editors and the like which ship with games, for example Heroes of Might and Magic was a favorite of mine. I mention this because I do feel in terms of creativity I have some to offer the community as I always enjoyed pushing my maps to the limit, for example in HOMM4 most people scripting was rather limited and I made a point of using to make a more dynamic and exciting map that could be played many times over with very different results.
Anyway sorry if I've broken some silly forum rule by posting this here, I've never been much good at following forum rules. Although I'm a member of quite a number of game forums these days I don't actually spend that much time of them, due to too many rules and moderators who get overly upset about mistakes, and also I just prefer playing games rather than endless amounts of talking about them.