Cargo weight revamping

[Hawk]

That's a cool tanker.

[bombardiere]

How does that monster turn on curves.

P.S. thank you for boxcars. I did download those and I will try it if I have time during Christmas. :)

[Gumboots]

It's not too bad on curves, although I haven't tested on super tight ones yet and I expect they will be a bit amusing. I just got it running and gave it a quick test. Behaviour is pretty normal. It's only a little bit longer than the post-1990 auto racks I made before. It just looks five miles long because of the proportions of the tank.
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xTankerF_in_game_2.jpg

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xTankerF_in_game_1.jpg

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[Gumboots]

I just tested it on a series of hairpin corners. Seems to be fine. The trucks follow the track perfectly.
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Hairpin_corners.jpg

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These corners are about as tight as I'd ever lay during play, apart from a few very rare exceptions. Only catch is the skin is a bit too dark under game lighting, IMO, so I think I'll lighten it up slightly.

[bombardiere]

Looks like it is doing well. Some of my model railway coaches cut more in the curves. Good work

[Gumboots]

It's pretty easy. For single cars like this you just set the truck attachment points (bytes 16-27 inclusive) and the TrackPoint.3dp to be the same. That makes the trucks pivot around their centres and stick to the track at their centres. Works with four wheel trucks, or six or eight wheel trucks.

[Akarin]

Ok, we haz boxcars. Eight custom eras. Files are included for 1.05 and 1.06 cargoes.
Double cars for every era. They look much better than single cars. I'm liking them a lot.

Obviously these are still only single loads, even though the cars are modelled as doubles. To make it easier on the brain when checking your train list, the profile icons are done as single cars. If you see eight boxcars in your train list, your train is hauling eight loads. Simple.
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Screenshot_G_and_H.jpg
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The profile icons for each load have two bars above them, to indicate the double cars. These are coloured the same as the cars. They aren't in your face, but are still noticeable enough for a reminder. So if you are hauling a short consist of five cars you shouldn't be scratching your head and wondering why there are miles of cars behind your locomotive.

The only exception is the double-stacked containers for the H era. Due to the height of these, there wasn't enough room above them on the profile image to add two bars. So the H era profile icons have x2 on the side of the upper container. I think this looks ok and does the job.

Anyway, zip is attached. Installation is the usual deal: back up the relevant folders first, then copy the new stuff into the game folders. These will not work with saved games, but should be fine with any new scenario or sandbox.

Is this compatible with WP&P's rolling stock? The only cargo that overlaps would be goods but I wasn't sure if there would be a conflict with that CargoModels.pkf file that WP&P's stuff requires. Plus I need the WP&P's goods car for the pulpwood car. I could just exclude the goods files when installing this and be fine, right?

[Gumboots]

It's sort of, but sort of not, compatible. TBH this all started when I got to the stage where, for various reasons*, I was over using WP&P's sets. I am planning on doing flatcars as well, but they will end up using their own custom CargoModels_x.dds set. Obviously this would not be compatible.

At the moment the boxcars should be compatible except, as you pointed out, with WP&P's Goods cars. It should work if you exclude his Goods car files, but I haven't tried to mix and match his sets and mine and any testing of that will have to be done by you. I have more than enough to deal with already (which is why it's taking so long ).

My set assigns Goods to a boxcar anyway, and calls custom profile icons for all cars. This means WP&P's Pulpwood car should still work, as the slot it calls for profile icons will still be available AFAIK.

*Short version: I used to like them a lot. They are much more fun than the defaults but, bearing in mind what we have since learned about the game's algorithms, he didn't have a weight scale that made sense to me in terms of a playable in-game progression. Plus I wanted a range of double cars, and I wanted them with better modelling and skinning than some of his cars, and I had developed the skills to make them myself.

[Akarin]

It's sort of, but sort of not, compatible. TBH this all started when I got to the stage where, for various reasons*, I was over using WP&P's sets. I am planning on doing flatcars as well, but they will end up using their own custom CargoModels_x.dds set. Obviously this would not be compatible.

At the moment the boxcars should be compatible except, as you pointed out, with WP&P's Goods cars. It should work if you exclude his Goods car files, but I haven't tried to mix and match his sets and mine and any testing of that will have to be done by you. I have more than enough to deal with already (which is why it's taking so long ).

My set assigns Goods to a boxcar anyway, and calls custom profile icons for all cars. This means WP&P's Pulpwood car should still work, as the slot it calls for profile icons will still be available AFAIK.

*Short version: I used to like them a lot. They are much more fun than the defaults but, bearing in mind what we have since learned about the game's algorithms, he didn't have a weight scale that made sense to me in terms of a playable in-game progression. Plus I wanted a range of double cars, and I wanted them with better modelling and skinning than some of his cars, and I had developed the skills to make them myself.

Well I did what you suggested and things seem to be working, including the pulpwood car. I only tested in sandbox but I covered all cargo loads and transition dates. Everything looks fine so far, but I'm open to suggestions. I can understand why you didn't include loads that required reefers, but why did you leave alcohol and ceramics out? Unless you're saving ceramics for flat car loads I can understand, but the alcohol ones seem odd.

I do think your box cars go well with WP&P's stuff to a degree. Unfortunately I don't have the dates of all his cars so I can't check out all the possible combinations. The absolute exception is this abomination http://hawkdawg.com/img/rrt/rt3/xtras/wp/CHOPcornX.jpg. While there's nothing wrong with the model I just don't understand why it's on my trains in the 1880s. Nonetheless I like the direction you're going, but I might have to wait until you have replacements for all of WP&P's cars if you future stuff ends up using their own custom CargoModels_x.dds set.

*Edit*I only realized while testing that you had other packs out for hoppers and tankers. At this point the only WP&P cars I plan on continue using are the reefers and express cars.

[Gumboots]

I also have a pack for autoracks. http://hawkdawg.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=67&t=4094

I have changed the weight scale slightly since then, but for the autoracks themselves it makes very little difference.

Anyway, reefers. Haven't got around to them yet, which is why there's nothing for them. I have a set roughed out but they need more detailing, particularly the 57 ft mechanical and the 64 ft Trinity. Mind you I could just throw them on the tracks anyway. Might give me an incentive to do more work on them if I see them running around. I was thinking of doing billboard reefers for alcohol just for fun.

Reeferz.jpg

The tanker set is being revamped a bit, including that eight wheel monster just up the page. I wasn't really happy with the first tanker set, so have gone over them to make them a more historically accurate progression (IOW, ditch a lot of PopTop bits) and to give them colour schemes that don't look like crap under RT3 lighting.

A_to_G.jpg

G_to_A.jpg

Hoppers also need more work IMO. I just used PopTop models as a basis, but with the new double boxcars being made to scale (ditto autoracks and tankers and express) some of the PopTop mutants are still too small. Really the H era (post-2000) needs to be twin 50 footers or something like that.