Anyone know of track that changes with the season?

C

Chris750

New member
Hi all; I tried Ultratexture US Mainline in TANE90945 which is listed as 'seasonal/full' but even in July it was snow. Everything else on my route changes with the seasons, so if I could get track that does too that would be SWEET!:cool:

**Ok, maybe I have a problem on my end, I tried Railcentre seasonal ballast (133671:23010001) and grass but they did not change when the month is changed. Do I need to DL scripts or something?**

***gluik28 seasonal ballast (541259:100453) works fine, switching from grey gravel to heavy snow***
 
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Hey John; His stuff is the small few that works on my route, I must have overlooked his track, I was searching. Will try a new search.

**Nope, lots of track, but no season changing.**
 
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TUME has done some seasonal tracks and they are built-in to T:ANE via the Season Town route (at least in the Deluxe edition).

No scripts required, but you need to understand how seasonal effects are meant to work.

In Trainz, the season "winter" is not meant to be synonymous with "snow". Unlike Canada, many parts of the world don't get snow, even in their winter months. To allow for this, snow in Trainz is treated independently of the 4 seasons. Snow is controlled not via the calendar, but through the route or session's Snowline altitude parameter. This is accessed under the Edit Environment menu.

Rather than changing the altitude of a whole route to either force snow textures to appear or prevent them, the somewhat artificial mechanism in Trainz is to simply change the Snowline value. Objects and parts of the map that are below the snowline should display only (non-snowy) seasonal changes during the yearly cycle. But if they are above the snowline, they should display only snow regardless of what month or what part of the world it is (this is essentially the definition of a snowline). The artificial aspect is that you can set the height of the snowline independently of the map's ground height.​
​

The above behavior applies to assets that have been built to conform correctly with the Trainz seasonal system. There are some assets that have been created wrongly with their winter coats being snowy. These ones get snow on a beach in the tropics at a certain time of year, which is just wrong. So be careful using these. For reasons of public order, I cannot name which creator(s) have committed this environmental crime.


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Ahhh, this is what I was wondering, if something was affecting it, thank you very much. Perhaps my Medicine Hat snow line is incorrect, I will check. Of course I got pissed and deleted all the stuff I DL'd yesterday. Thanks.
 
Ok, fixed a few things and it is working but another question arises: First my altitude was set to 0 instead of 660m while my snow was set to 2000m instead of 660m (2000ft). Also my Long/Lat are off for my world origin although it was set by transderm, I need to enter -110 Long but it will only allow me to enter 110, any ideas how to fix? I have entered instead 110 and selected W (west).
 
Chris

Remember your primary school geography? Longitude is never expressed as a negative number, it's positive either east or west of the Greenwich UK meridian. So you have done the correct thing in making it 110 degrees west for Medicine Hat, Canada. In a moment of self-doubt, I confirmed this with Google Earth.

A map altitude of 660m is correct for that location too. The mechanism behind the snowline has a height resolution of about 10m, so if you want to be certain of seeing snow on everything built to display it, set the snowline to a value that is at least 10m lower than the lowest point on your map. If you had some hills, you can play with the snowline so that only the higher ground gets snow, which is an interesting variation. But it looks pretty darned flat out there.

Curious name, Medicine Hat. What is a medicine hat?

~ Deane​
 
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I was using the long/lat as stated on the internet, such as: Medicine Hat is located at latitude 50.0392799 and longitude -110.6766129, in the northern hemisphere.

Yeah, I had taken the 660m which is 2000ft, and had put in 2000m, so of course I never got snow. My route is now 3 seasons: summer, winter with no snow but dry vegetation (snow set to above 660m), and snow covered (below 660m). I still have not found a track that changes from summer to winter though.

MEDICINE HAT: legend has it that a Cree Medicine Man was crossing the Saskatchewan river, retreating from a fight with the Black Foot when his bonnet fell off and floated away.

Thanks once again for your help on the snow thing, really helpful.
 
So perhaps it's a convention that a negative longitude means West, I don't know, but you figured it out anyway.

For an example of a seasonal track, see if you can locate <kuid2:82412:611163:2> TUME-TW-Gravel-Dusty-02. I'm sure he has others, but the fact that it's seasonal isn't apparent in the title (he probably couldn't fit it in). I'd grab a bunch of his tracks and inspect their configs. Any with a "season-selector" tag will likely have snow. Or simply lay them all out on a test baseboard in Surveyor, reduce the snowline below the map altitude, and look for the ones that go snowy.

The only issue I have with his tracks is that the snow seems to be a pale shade of beige instead of true white, so they don't exactly blend in with typical snow groundtextures etc.
 
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Well that is strange

I had tried several different tracks, including TUME, and they didn't work...BUT NOW THEY DO! Beats me, but I did have TANE freeze solid on me twice the last two days so maybe there is something with that.

Ok, I need opinions: my wife likes the dark track, but I am not sure. The dark track is procedural so it has the frogs and such, the snow track is TUME and does not. Which do you like (anyone)?

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The seasonal texture changes sometimes need a screen re-draw to kick them into action. Zooming out and back in, or jumping to another map location and back usually does it. Maybe that’s why you didn’t see the effects before, but do now.

As for the tracks, I prefer the lighter coloured ones given that the rest of the scene is blanketed in snow. They would look even better if they were whiter of course. Those black sections on the tracks look ugly and out of place. What are they?

.
 
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Tume changes with the season, but it is ugly, very low detail. I still have to try it from the cab of an SD40-2, but I think I may just stick with the prot track and go with dark.

I got rid of the grease spots, I was unsure about this, but I did keep them around the loco sheds.
 
Used sparingly (or on the dark track) the greasy track sections look good. In reality, snow would cover greasy track just as much as regular track, but it hasn't been made seasonal, so I guess that's why they looked out of place in the snowy scene. Is there no seasonal procedural track available? If not, it could be a good empty niche for some creator to fill.​
 
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No, no proc. seasonal track that I could find, I started laying out all sorts of track on a spare board and changing altitude and stuff but nothing except for the "dusty snow", not sure what dusty snow it btw.
 
Chris750 said:
No, no proc. seasonal track that I could find, I started laying out all sorts of track on a spare board and changing altitude and stuff but nothing except for the "dusty snow", not sure what dusty snow it btw.
Click to expand...

Dusty snow = the snow that folks get where it doesn't snow very often or at all. :)

It's one of those storms with the dry blowing snow that takes 2-1/2 minutes to clear off the cars, walks, steps, and driveway. I think I've seen that kind of storm once in perhaps 27 years.
 
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