Scoring, am I blind?

So, like a lot of people recently, I bit the bullet, my tongue and bought TRS19. Sssh lol

So my question as a dumby to this version is, where is the scoring? I don't see it onscreen and only at the end. So is there a rule that needs to be added to the session to show it that I haven't seen?

The other question which doesn't require an answer is, why are all the roads floating half a metre above ground? I've noticed it in the built in routes (old splines I suspect) and a route I imported suddenly is doing it as well. You can look right under them to the other side, and it looks damn silly. :hehe:

Alikiwi said:

So, like a lot of people recently, I bit the bullet, my tongue and bought TRS19. Sssh lol

...why are all the roads floating half a metre above ground? I've noticed it in the built in routes (old splines I suspect) and a route I imported suddenly is doing it as well. You can look right under them to the other side, and it looks damn silly. :hehe:

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I sometimes think that Trainz is actually a 'Roads Maintenance' simulator, with a bit of railway action. If your graphics card supports turning shadows on then the problem is compounded.

I have spent many hours over the years adjusting road spline points heights to better align them with the ground they are running over. Then, once you finally get them correct, the cars float along over them like something out of the Jetsons. And when the next service pack or full release becomes available everything needs adjusting all over again. As you say, this no doubt is because the splines are old. But new replacement splines are hard to find.

Alikiwi said:

I don't see it onscreen and only at the end. So is there a rule that needs to be added to the session to show it that I haven't seen?

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I have never used the scoring system so I cannot answer that one. But I seem to recall (foggy memory membranes don't let too much in these days) some posts about this. It may or may not be a bug.

why are all the roads floating half a metre above ground? ... You can look right under them to the other side, and it looks damn silly. :hehe:

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It does look silly but not all roads are affected. It is an old problem first noticed in TANE (or even TRS12???). There is a height tag in the config.txt files that can fix this but it is a bit impractical to retrofit that to all the older splines - since everyone else would also have to do the same retrofit. I have spent many a "happy hour" these past few days meticulously adjusting the heights of those floating roads near to the track. It is not like I have anything else to do these days.

Well yes, we have plenty of time on our hands, way too much! But I'm sure we could all spend it on something else rather than adjusting spline heights! But there is a lot of old stuff that doesn't work out there and for some odd reasons they remain as the routes (including payware) get dragged into the next version of Trainz. You'd think they would get replaced with newer versions, especially track and roads, but maybe as you say, not a lot of choices to pick from that are suitable. Dragging time I guess (as in spline points downwards) !

pware said:

...I have spent many a "happy hour" these past few days meticulously adjusting the heights of those floating roads near to the track....

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And no doubt you will spend many more happy hours to come on this. In the experience of this obsessive compulsive road height adjuster every service pack and new release will have you revisiting some of the roads you thought you had nailed. Less so in some of the recent releases, but still one of the joys of upgrading.

Yeah floating roads... I remember fighting that way back in TRS2004. It's a combination of things that caused it. There was a mistake somewhere that cause the roads to be offset from the surface about 3 meters. It may have been a typographical error in the very first roads whenever they were created. Trainz being Trainz, assets get replicated so as to change the name, clone, and come up with a new version. Then because the roads floated above the surface, Auran made cars float above the surface by 3 meters so the wheels were in contact with the surface. Okay that fixed that, but the roads still floated above the terrain.

Then the roads got "fixed". This caused the hover cars because the cars now floated and the roads didn't. In my TRS2004 onward days, I would always get a hover A-Team truck right at the grade crossing when I wanted to take a screenshot! It seemed that was the vehicle that managed to get in my view every time!

It finally took Clem, aka BNSF50, to come up with his better roads that don't float, and then George Fisher came up with his AASHTO roads. These all worked well and still do today. They got around the floating look by fixing the alpha-channel along the side. Charlie Whitedog too did that with his roads as well, and finally Maddy did it. We no longer have floating roads because the YARN and YARN-nish roads by Streadway and others, are not only thick enough to dig into the ground, but also tall enough to prevent the hover cars.

Now all of this is well and good, but N3V has since corrected the height difference of the Carz causing the YARN roads and their cousins to now have cars that run on flat tires because the wheels now dig into the surface.

To be honest, I would prefer to have flat wheels than have hover cars.

We'll get it right eventually, I think.

FootplatePhil said:

And no doubt you will spend many more happy hours to come on this. In the experience of this obsessive compulsive road height adjuster every service pack and new release will have you revisiting some of the roads you thought you had nailed.

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Not what I really wanted to hear since I have just finished "defloating" the last road section - it took about an hour or two each day spread over several days to achieve but it is now done.

The next step is to start texturing the landscape. I am considering using PBR textures close to the track but I will make sure that I make regular (hourly if needed) backups and have a base or original source backup made before the first texture brush touches the terrain.