Powder River Basin Progress

N5VAV

TPR Route Creator
Howdy all.
Just wanted to give an update on the Powder River Basin route.

Most work has gone into the SoCal - Southern California route and MRL, but I'm still working on all the others, including PRB.

Track is all in, and has been for a while. Lately, I've been upgrading the textures and track to TS12 standards and preparing for Multiplayer.
PRB is a pretty long route with all the mines, so several players can be operating coal trains along the route. Should be fun.

Here are some shots I took this morning of a few areas.

This is the Orin Jct area where the BNSF comes together with the UP. A little farther North is Shawnee Jct where the East/West parts of the large "Y" come together to head northward to the mines.

PRBOrin1.jpg




Below is a shot of Shawnee Jct, where the East/West lines come together to head northward to the mines. You can see the vast expanse of the Wyoming prarie with a few spotted trees. Using the scenery tiles, so Im ACTUALLY PLACING INDIVIDUAL TREES AND STRUCTURES!! :)
PRBShawnee1.jpg




Below is a shot of the famous Black Thunder Mine. No scenery yet, but you can see the trackage arrangements as they head to the mine, and toward Reno Jct. a few miles behind us. The AI in TRAINZ seems to work OK with the directional markers. Trains will actually wait for each other into and out of the mine. VERY COOL! Don't worry, that extra track is just a leveling technique I use to make sure tracks are level.. it will be deleted :)
PRBBTM1.jpg



You can see the coal flood loader in the distance. It is a great model, but the KUID comes up as RED in the game, meaning that I can't use this content for multiplayer!!
I NEED A HIGH-QUALITY FLOOD LOADER!!! Is anyone willing to construct a high-quality flood loader for use on the route? Hopefully with animation, dust, sound, etc. AND be willing to put it on the DLS? If not, will have to remove these loaders and use the built-in TRS tipples :(

More pictures later. The simple scenery and scenery tiles make it somewhat easy to decorate, so hopefully it won't be long before this route can enter public testing status.

BLACK DIAMONDS!
 
Nice to know that you are still here and working for new release.
Thank You for all that you have done so far.

Kenny
 
Not to distract away from your posts, Jeff, but does the red kuid numbers indicate non-DLS content? What do the yellow and white kuids mean then? I just "assumed" it had to do with the load on the game, where red assets had more poly's and took a higher hit on the frame rate, as compared to the "user friendly" white assets. Thanks for the insight!
 
Hi Foose.
The way I understand it, the white KUID numbers are on the DLS, the Yellow KUID's are built-in assets, and the red KUIDs mean they are neither built-in or on DLS, meaning they came from a 3rd party site or similar.
If a route is to be multiplayer, EVERYTHING has to be white or yellow.
 
Nice work so far, I always wanted to try and do a PBR Route for the game so i wish you luck and hope you continue with it.
Cheer Mick.
 
As someone who has started, scrapped, and restarted the same layout a dozen times, I am particularly impressed!! I always get too ambitious or else think of a new way to do something and it's easier to start over...

Can you tell me what that wide signal bridge is in the second picture? Thanks and great job!!
 
Thank you for all the nice comments!
YES on big power. Many many 110 car coal trains on this route at once :)

NJCurmudgeon - That is the JR (I think 3 track) signal bridge. I put one on one side of the track, and another on the other side of the track turned 180 degrees and just butted the end pieces together over the rails. BE SURE they are at the exact same height on either side of the track! Then, I just lowered them both 1 notch to get a good height. I found that by using the double, triple and quad bridges and putting them together, almost any width can be achieved.

I'm still looking for someone willing to build that coal flood loader! Please?

Working more on this route today. :)
 
Hi Foose.
The way I understand it, the white KUID numbers are on the DLS, the Yellow KUID's are built-in assets, and the red KUIDs mean they are neither built-in or on DLS, meaning they came from a 3rd party site or similar.
If a route is to be multiplayer, EVERYTHING has to be white or yellow.

White = built-in, yellow = DLS.
 
I can confirm, White numbers are assets on the DLS, Yellow numbers are built-in, and RED ones are from a third party site (Not built-in or on DLS).

As I mentioned in my SoCal thread, I've suffered a total hard drive failure and lost everything. I did recover an older version of this route with the track all in, but little scenery. As of this morning, the scenery is about where it was in these shots - only better! I've switched from the searchlight signals in the shots to the new Safetran CLight signals from Jointed Rail now on the DLS.

So, work can now continue on this route as well as my other routes. Yes it will be multiplayer too.
 
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I'm also going to try the JVC extreme performance trees on the route today (This will be the guinea-pig route) for testing the trees instead of the built-in trees. If the trees look good and perform well, I will probably replace all the trees on my Sandpatch route as the built-in speed trees slow the route down quite a bit. argh.
 
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I have a forest of JVC payware trees planted and have no frame rate hit with it at all, so those should be economical.
 
Hi Larry. What trees did you use? I just tried a few of the JVC trees and wow, the frame rates and performance went down :( The route ran better with the built in Auran speed trees. I did the same on the SoCal and Sandpatch routes and ended up going back to Auran speedtrees. I must be using the wrong trees!
 
...You can see the coal flood loader in the distance. It is a great model, but the KUID comes up as RED in the game, meaning that I can't use this content for multiplayer!!.........

That coal loader looks very much like the one by creator, Hadtowe. Coal load-unload-tower [FONT=Verdana, Arial]<KUID2:80140:28581:1>. If it is that one, I don't know why it would show as a red kuid in your Surveyor because it's on the DLS and has been since May 2012.[/FONT]
 
Bendorsey built a PBR coal loader.
Look for Wyoming_Flood_Loader. it has a number of parts.
on the DLS.
cheers,
Mike
 
Hi Larry. What trees did you use? I just tried a few of the JVC trees and wow, the frame rates and performance went down :( The route ran better with the built in Auran speed trees. I did the same on the SoCal and Sandpatch routes and ended up going back to Auran speedtrees. I must be using the wrong trees!

Hi Jeff, I so far have only used these:

TR-13 BB Broadleaf 1 kuid:328583:103174
TR-13 BB Broadleaf 2 kuid:328583:103175
TR-13 BB Pine group kuid:328583:103173
TR-13 BB Pine large 3 kuid:328583:103135
TR-13 BB Pine large 4 kuid:328583:103147

Mixed together on both sides of the main rail line. I get frame rates that hover around 50-60 fps. I do have a Quad Core system with dedicated video memory,
that might make the difference, I don't know. All I do know is Pofig trees have a bad frame rate hit on my system and it's a shame, because he has some awsome looking trees.
Maybe things will be better with T:ANE.
 
Larry,

You might want to try RMM trees which are found on the DLS. These are actually constructed very well and come in various species. JVC made some of the older billboard trees. Make sure you aren't using those and instead of the SpeedTreez. The old billboards can cause lots of chunking as they are rendered by the CPU first before being ported out to the video card for display. The SpeedTree technology makes use of the native geometry available in the video card for rendering which speeds up things considerably. Just keep in mind, however, that your video card can still make a difference depending upon the speed and whether it is an integrated variety, such as those found on a laptop.

John
 
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