Session Development Help

[BillDinAZ]

I have been studying Session creation and the Rules used to create them for a couple of weeks now. I have some experience with computer programming (mainly Basic and VB), so the concepts are not foreign to me. One thing I see as crucial to good session development is to be able to display instructions in HTML at critical points during the session. I know how to write HTML. Using existing sessions and rules that deal with HTML as examples, I've found that the files referenced in some of the rules (especially for sessions built into TS2010 developed by Auran) are not in the TS2010 folder (using a search for all .HTML files). When I do manage to find some of these files, they are links and variables ($1, $2, etc.). Not helpful! So, does anyone know of a tutorial, thread, or anywhere that I can find answers as to how to set up HTML Assets that will show up on the list in the Display HTML rule?
Thanks,
Bill

 

[Dap]

Take a look ate the session for ECML Kings Cross York and session #1 for the Downtown Traction Company.

In Content Mananger, you can do a sort for the HTML assets. One way to do the HTML windows is to use a standard template that looks to the config.txt file for the text. The other way for us less sophisicated programmers is to simply put the text in the HTML asset.

http://forums.auran.com/trainz/showthread.php?t=63852

There are some more discussions here. And a tutorial that gives both good and bad advise. The bad advise, do not put all your text into a jpg and then use HTML to display the jpg. Auran frowns on this technique.

Good luck.

 

[BillDinAZ]

Thanks, Dap. I have done the sort for HTML Assets and looked at many of them. I'm still unsure how to create the Asset in the 1st place or is this done automatically as part of the Route/Session Creation somewhere?
Bill

 

[Dap]

I just cloned a built-in asset and modified it as needed.

David

 

[RacerTodd]

I created my first HTML Asset for my first session this way:

Start Content Manager, then select File|New Asset. This creates a new asset and opens Content Creator Plus.

Once in Content Creator Plus, choose "html-asset" as the type of asset, then click the "New" button. You can then select the category region, era and class. Save it and exit Content Creator Plus.

Now you have created a HTML Asset.

Select the new asset in the "My Content" tab, right-click and select Edit|Edit in Explorer. Once the asset is opened in Explorer you can copy html files to the asset. If you're using string tables in config.txt you can add those to the existing config.txt file. Once that is all done commit the changes (ctrl-m).

Now you're ready to use the various HTML rules in your session.

Also, note that the Trainz mini-browser doesn't support every html tag. I found this page useful in understand what tags you can and can't use.
http://online.ts2009.com/mediaWiki/index.php5/MiniBrowser

If you download my session, "Run For The Money" (kuid 299076:1003) and it's associated HTML-Asset (299076:1006) you can see my work. I used both the Display HTML Pages/Set HTML Pages rules with string tables in the config.txt file and standalone HTML pages using the Display HTML rule.

Todd

 

[BillDinAZ]

Thanks to both of you. I'll work on it more tomorrow.
Bill