To TRS19 developers

Of all the changes introduced in TRS19, most of them significant improvements on previous versions, I think that the 'Zombie drivers control panel' is by far the worst for several reasons.

1: It takes up a huge amount of screen space compared with other controls and compared with the previous implementation. Management of screen 'real estate' is vry important when operating the control system.
2: The images of the so-called drivers are well described as 'Zombies', and are much less interesting than the images provided previously. No useful purpose is served by having the images so large. The relationship between the face and the 'name' which appears under it has been broken and is purely arbitrary, and no doubt disappointing to those many people who supplied their images as drivers.
Personally I replace the driver names when I produce the driver schedules in Surveyor, with loco or train descriptors when I create a session - much more useful than the individual loco model instance descriptor, but there is now not enough space to display this and now mouseover functionality to display it in full.
3: The loco image is unnecessarily large as it only indicates general type rather than a unique vehicle in the session.
4: There is not enough space for the full description of the locomotive to be displayed - if there are several of the same type, the full name needs to be displayed as the distinguishing information is the last character: 1, 2, 3 etc.. The full Loco description should display on mouseover.
5. The same comment applies to the description of the schedule command which the loco is currently performing. The previous practice of displaying the Driver Command icon was more intuitive and the full description was displayed on mouseover.
6: The descriptions of the effect of the five 'button' icons is not clear:
- What happens when the driver is removed from the session? Does her/his train simply stop or disappear?
- What happens if the driver 'Gets off the train'?
- What is the functional difference between 'Move to Destination (eg. Locomotive)' and 'Focus on Driver'? The seem to do the same thing.

The size of this control panel in previous versions of Trainz and its unambiguous and helpful mouseover functionality were very effective. Perhaps an implementation similar to the previous version but with a fly-out panel on mouseover to display any additional information would be a much better implementation, but the descriptors of additional functionality need to be clear.

I agree with you!!
 
i will, but it’s more complicated due to different behaviour in game. I’m experimenting with ground textures but the results are not satisfying me yet.

Hi Samplaire. I agree with what CJ187 says. Thank you very much for your efforts, which are very appreciated!

Best regards
 
And as always, I try to make a user’s life easier. If you wish to find the new tracks in surveyor or CM just type ‚sam proc’ and you’ll find them AND the corresponding levers found in trackside tab �� and the levers are TANE compatible!

Thank you very much Samplaire! I've been waiting for a long time to find your new tracks that suit TANE and TRS19. It is a joy to see this news!

Best regards
 
Hi Ringarooma,

You raise some good points, and they probably deserve more attention than just a quick forum post, so I'll keep my response to the ones that I can provide direct answers to:

- What happens when the driver is removed from the session? Does her/his train simply stop or disappear?

Whenever a driver is removed from a train, their schedule is cancelled and the train should gracefully stop if it was moving.


- What happens if the driver 'Gets off the train'?

The driver is removed from their train, but not immediately reassigned to another train.


- What is the functional difference between 'Move to Destination (eg. Locomotive)' and 'Focus on Driver'?

* "Move to Destination" allows you to move the Driver to a different locomotive (or other drivable object).
* "Focus on Driver" causes your viewpoint to become focused on the Driver's current location object.


kind regards,

chris
 
Originally Posted by samplaire And as always, I try to make a user’s life easier. If you wish to find the new tracks in surveyor or CM just type ‚sam proc’ and you’ll find them AND the corresponding levers found in trackside tab �� and the levers are TANE compatible!




Thank you very much Samplaire! I've been waiting for a long time to find your new tracks that suit TANE and TRS19. It is a joy to see this news!

Best regards

Hi, Samplaire. I was looking for your new tracks through the CM of TRS2019-Early Access and I did not find them. You are working on them and that is why they are not available?
 
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The names of the tracks start with 'SAM Trk -' and have a trainz-build of 4.6 .

Peter

Hi Peter. Thank you very much for the clarification that you give me.
I like your creations, so I take the opportunity to ask you if you are preparing something new for TRS2019?
 
Dear KleinArt,
Probably the tags are available only inside CM, not when you search dls for my track, I don’t know. Anyway my tracks are on the DLS (still beta, but they are). If you go to dls and choose my nick plenty of tracks and dependencies will pop up. Perhaps if you filter CM with my username and build 4.6 you will find the tracks too. There are also dedicated levers but they are 3.5 build or so. Search for ‚sam lever’
 
Dear Samplaire, thank you very much for your response. Happily I was able to download all your new tracks and levers from the DLS. That for me is a huge joy!
Now, a small suggestion: the checkrails (compared to the frog) are not something short?
Again, I thank you very much and I send you a big hug!
Best regards.
 
i will, but it’s more complicated due to different behaviour in game. I’m experimenting with ground textures but the results are not satisfying me yet.

What you say that does not satisfy you, has something to do with the behavior of the new TRS19 textures with the tracks?

I ask you this because I was observing an overlap on the texture of the floor above the track. In addition, in certain sectors the image of that texture appears sectioned. And all that happens with the new tracks and textures offered by TRS2019 Early Access.

Maybe this is useful to guide you better and see that the problem is not in your creation, but in the new that TRS 2019 Early Access presents.

Kind regards
 
The problem of the groundtextures you mentioned is reported as a bug and I know they take care of it (I had a detailed e-mail exchange with the team). As for the ground tex- I was not satisfied (and still am) with he light over it. Probably it is due to my little knowledge about the technology. Anyway I have now prepaired 4 ground textures which are compatible with my 4 kinds of track ballast. As for the checkrails - how long are they when you lay a junction? 3 sleepers or 4? It is intended (and in the newest version is) to be stretched over 4 sleepers but I don't know which version is on your machine (I did so many changes from the date of last publishing...). I don't understand the tag checkrail-body-length -for me it is not the length but rather a ratio or something... There are so many factors which you have to watch out that it is very likely to make a mistake during the development process...
 
Back to the main topic. I've altered the images in the Junction Overlays asset and I think they are reasonable now. As I'm not the original author I can't upload it to DLS There is no license in the file, either. And I can't create my own asset and point the original in the obsolete-table because it won't work. I bet the bug team is enough busy to disturb them but... Perhaps I should report it as a bug asking to exchange the file in the new builds of TANE and TRS19? How do you think?

 
The problem of the groundtextures you mentioned is reported as a bug and I know they take care of it (I had a detailed e-mail exchange with the team). As for the ground tex- I was not satisfied (and still am) with he light over it. Probably it is due to my little knowledge about the technology. Anyway I have now prepaired 4 ground textures which are compatible with my 4 kinds of track ballast. As for the checkrails - how long are they when you lay a junction? 3 sleepers or 4? It is intended (and in the newest version is) to be stretched over 4 sleepers but I don't know which version is on your machine (I did so many changes from the date of last publishing...). I don't understand the tag checkrail-body-length -for me it is not the length but rather a ratio or something... There are so many factors which you have to watch out that it is very likely to make a mistake during the development process...


The Build Version of these tracks is 4.6 and the levers is 3.7. In the image you can see how I build the detours: there are 60 meters between the spline points - between the junction and the beginning of the straight line of the detour. For very high speed trains, I give it an even greater distance (up to 80 or 90 meters or more):

checkrails%202_zpsnlad4xcm.jpg



Here it turns out that checkrails cover only 2 sleepers:

checkrails%201_zpsvtvi3zcg.jpg




I also uploaded a photo showing the failure of the soil textures of TRS2019:

Fail%20textures_zpsjdeunzhn.jpg



I hope you can easily find the solution soon. And that the N3VGames team will want to be in agreement with you, because the tracks that you have created are as they are in Europe and they look fantastic!

Best regards
 
Ok, so you have an old version. It now behaves like this (I mean checkrail)



As for the groundtexture - I know it, they at N3V, too. it is present for whatever track and whatever groundtexture, no matter it is for TRS19 or Trainz 1.
 
Back to the main topic. I've altered the images in the Junction Overlays asset and I think they are reasonable now. As I'm not the original author I can't upload it to DLS There is no license in the file, either. And I can't create my own asset and point the original in the obsolete-table because it won't work. I bet the bug team is enough busy to disturb them but... Perhaps I should report it as a bug asking to exchange the file in the new builds of TANE and TRS19? How do you think?



I think that reporting this issue as a bug would be a good idea because they would treat it as one more issue than they have to face. And this is an issue that interests many users.

Those arrows look very good and are not so annoying.

Regards
 
not yet. Initially I uploaded many things without first checking if they are bug free. Now before uploading I will check everything (well, at least I'll try). Now there are 30 versions of tracks, 4 ground textures. I should do 10 versions of tracks yet, mainly rusty versions.
 
The tracks and groundtextures are successfuly uploaded to DLS. They will soon be available (i guess evening CET). I will also upload them to my site soon.
 
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