Cargo weight revamping

[Gumboots]

Looking good! Single tankers sounds good. I think it would be nice to sort of mimic what trains are using in bulk (a generalization), making those the doubles. The ones you have done so far seem to reflect this IMO. I would suggest making double boxcars before a certain point (1950ish).

Had another thought about this. Since I'm doubling up (or possibly tripling) the tiny A era shopping trolleys anyway, and capping off the series with double well cars for the H era, there's a multi-boxcar theme going already. So that got me thinking about what else would be good.

I whipped up a model for a PRR X58 (50 foot low cube) since they were a common US car of the 60's to 80's, and as they're not high cube would still look reasonable in a non-US context. Hooked up two of them as a double unit and laid out a consist alongside the well cars. The result is they're a bit too big IMO. Although the theoretical difference in carrying capacity is about right for the actual weight change, visually the double X58's tend to look a bit bigger just because of the way the volumes are arranged.

So then I had a brainwave. There's no real reason why both cars in a double unit have to be the same. I reckon I can do them by combining an X58 with a PS-1 (40 foot low cube) on the one skin image. It will work, and it knocks back the size of the G era units so they fit nicely with the well cars, and also gives them a shorter and more manageable wheelbase. Fits with the era pretty well too, since PS-1's were built until the early 60's and some did last into the 80's.

So then of course I started thinking about the 1925-1939 F era, which is when I discovered the B&O M53 wagontop. These were nifty critters, made out of CorTen steel and as strong as battleships. Some of them lasted 50 years in service, which is good going for a glorified tin can. I'm rather taken with these, so am thinking the F era should team up an M53 with an AAR 1937, just for fun.

Edit: Sorta like this...

[RulerofRails]

I like this idea.

They look good too. Open doors is an interesting concept. Are they meant to be empties?

[Gumboots]

The open doors is just me being lazy. For a quick whip-up I just used whatever shots I had handy that were close to a straight profile shot. Some of these have open doors, since they were shot in a yard rather than out on the tracks. For actual use in the game I think closed doors would be the way to go. In practice cars would never (or very rarely) have been run over any distance with the doors open.

I've since thought about it some more, and more or less decided just to go with straight AAR '37 cars for the F era. I like the wagontops, but having them every second boxcar just doesn't feel right to me. The X58/PS-1 combo feels and looks right, but the M53/AAR'37 combo doesn't. Here's a shot with all PS-1's for the F era, compared to the AAR'37/M53 combination. I also threw in the E era USRA 40 footers.

However Goods, Rubber and Weapons were going to have their own individual cars anyway because cargo icons won't work with them, and I was going to do Ammunition similarly to Weapons just for the heck of it, so some of those could go in double wagontops just for fun. They kinda look like tanks, so maybe just use them for the military freights.

[RulerofRails]

Sounds Good!

[Gumboots]

Hey I've looked up a few more things, which means trouble. The early RT3 covered hoppers are totally fictional. I always thought they looked stupid, and it's because somebody just made them up. Covered hoppers weren't in use before the 1930's. All cargoes that we're used to thinking of as covered hopper cargoes were carried in boxcars before then.

Freight Car Friday – USRA Standard Freight Cars

Note the lack of any flat, tank, stock, reefer, or covered hoppers from the list. Covered hoppers had not really come into vogue yet. Most of the commodities we now associate with them were hauled in boxcars in 1918.

70 Ton 2-Bay Covered Hopper

History: In the 1930's ACF introduced a new covered hopper which would allow bulk shipments of dry materials. Previously these were packaged and resulted in hand loading and unloading. These commodities included cement, dry chemicals, flour, grain, sand, sugar and many others. The first cars where shipped in October 1936 and had a capacity of 1958 cubic feet.

So really that's what we ought to have: boxcars before 1925 (just because of era change years) and ACF hoppers between 1925 and 1950. Which aint gonna happen right now, but should be on the to-do list for future improvements. TBH the RT3 hoppers are all wrong anyway, so really need a full revamp at some point.
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Anywayz, boxcars. I think the way to go is what's shown in the shot.

The 7 triple A era cars really are a bit much in terms of visuals with A era locomotives, but the way I figure it A era locos won't be hauling a full 7 cars + cabooose anyway. They usually do well with 4 or 5 car consists, which means triples will look good with them. Using triples also simplifies things in some ways. With the central unit being the body file a cargo icon be applied, and hovering the cursor over the body during gameplay brings up the cargo name. That's handy when the icon is too far away to be clearly visible, and is a bit of a fault with the double units.

The doubles have such a small body unit that it can be hard to target with the cursor, and hovering over the trucks doesn't bring up the cargo name. What I'm thinking is that really double units should have a transparent body patch to increase the targetable area for the cursor.

It may be possible to get away with one patch on the centreline, or it may need one either side to work properly. Will test it and find out.
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Oh and the M53 wagontops look good as military boxcars, even though in reality they would usually have been used for general haulage.

[Gumboots]

Just found a minor bug in the tanker pack. The right side graphics for the rear truck on the D era tanker are borked. Dunno how it happened, but somehow the verts got screwed up on the UV mapping. Easy to fix (already done in Blender) so I'll repack them soonish. Will have a thorough check for other bugs first.

[Gumboots]

Have been playing around with a few things, and reading up a bit more. I'd really like to have a proper freight hauler right from the start, in 1830. That way the more gutless Planet can be used for express until the Adler comes along. The LMR were obviously thinking along the same lines not long after they got Planet, because in 1831 they bought a 0-4-0, which they called Samson. This had about 80% more grunt than Planet, and I've found a good drawing for it.

So the Samson idea is looking good. Mesh is pretty much done, and skinning won't be difficult. While messing around with it I had a brainwave about A era freight cars. Like most PopTop stuff, the dinky little A era freights never looked right. Tripling the hoppers gives good consist length, but the poly count is getting a bit on the high side when you have a lot of them.

The brainwave came when I was adjusting the mesh on Samson's tender. I remembered that high grade coal in lumps is about the same average density as water, and of course tenders are designed to carry coal and water, and are designed to the right axle loading for the rails and for tender-sized wheels. So, if you were an 1830's car builder looking to make a general purpose hopper, the obvious no-brainer option would be to make it about the same size and volume as a tender of the period.

Ok, grab the mesh for the A era hoppers (my ones, which have already been messed with) and mess around with that some more. Turns out if you scale them up by 20% for length and height, they end up around the same size as an 1830's tender. Put them together in a consist and they fit perfectly with a locomotive and caboose of the time. Even better, they look the part as doubles, which means poly count can be cut by 1/3 compared to using dinky little triples. This is pure win. Which makes me wonder why I never thought of it before.

And then I found some pictures of the LMR that were drawn by people on the spot in the 1830's. Sure enough, the average freight car was about the size of a tender. There you go.
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So there will be an update to the hopper packs to sort out the A era, and there will be a new freight hauler for the early 1830's.
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[Gumboots]

So five years later...

...I have actually done a bit more. Amazing, huh?

Got enthused about the game again, and since I was playing express took a look at the putative new express pack thingy again. I've figured out a better solution than what I had before. The B, C and D cars for pax, mail, dining and the A, B, C and D car for troops all use the same basic skins. The troops ones are just done in a different colour, and the mail cars have different doors and windows, and the dining car has extra racing stripes compared to the pax car. The troops car uses a slightly different model to the others (clerestory details only) but the others all use exactly the same model for any given era.

I've figured out (d'oh) how to make the cars get bigger without just stretching the skin and without borking things. The idea is to do the longer ones with two-piece sides, so the windows and lettering stay the right size and the number of windows can increase on the bigger cars. The UV's overlap on the skin, so it effectively makes the skin longer. This looks a lot better than what I had before.

So having figured that out I just ran some tests, to make sure the skins I had planned look ok under RT3's infamous evil game lighting. Made a few different sets to try out, and have got them pretty sorted now. These were all just tested on the default C era models, not the new custom models (which are still in Blender). Obviously the troops cars will stay the same colour. Out of the pax/mail/dining cars I like the dark brown, light brown and royal blue ones the best. The grey ones aren't bad either, but the green ones will probably get dropped.
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[bombardiere]

Thank you for continuing this project and bringing new life to RT3.

The previews look great. I kind of like green coaches. Unless you think those look too much Troop coaches. To my eye, the grey ones are least attractive. I am sure that some one can find of an example of grey passenger coach* ;), but I feel that that passenger companies used bright colours.

(* Okey, I immediately thought one. SECR. South Eastern and Chatham Railway. Their coach were kind of mid grey. )

I am still playing 1.05 close to vanilla, so I have yet tested all this wonderful new wagons. However, one thing. I think that I partially know the answer and I am sure that you guys have been thinking this.

Multiple wagon. Do I understand correctly that when there is a two or three wagons grouped together, the game cargo does not change and it still count as one car load delivered?

It would be nice that it could be changed so that when there is two wagons together, I would get money for two car loada. But my guess is that it is hardcoded in .exe and cannot be changed. This extra revenue would make longer trains even more attractive and justify using a slow freight engine.

My pet peeve with slow freight engines is that because they are slow, it takes a long time to complete the run (d'uh) and their overall revenue is low in comparison to faster engines which can make more runs in the same time.

I could use scenario set up and increase cargo prices, but that could wreak industry / game balance. So I would rather see more cargo load delivered than increased price.

[Gumboots]

Yes, I was worried about them looking too much like troop cars. TBH I really like the old Northern Pacific express livery, but IMO it looks a bit too troopy. Although once everything is set up it would be easy to reskin cars to suit personal preference, if anyone wanted to do that.

And yes, numbers of loads is locked into the .exe and can't be changed. The double cars are just eye candy. Increasing cargo prices tends to make the game economy misbehave. If you want to increase rail profits, you can always reduce loco maintenance costs and/or purchase price. You could also reduce track maintenance costs, which would further boost rail profits. Even a reduction in sand, water and oil consumption will help, due to the greater range meaning fewer service stops. There's more than one tool available to adjust profitability of rail.

[Gumboots]

Ok, new express pack. Again.

Edit: See the first post of this topic for an updated pack.

[bombardiere]

A great gift pack. Wonderful new toys to play with. Thank you. Christmas game early.

I have played A and B sets in game and tested C in sandbox. I have no made indepth study on how new weights affect the gameplay, so I comment visual only.

Great work with texturing. I like your wood panel work and how you highlighted raised structures. The door handle on A mail coach is just splendid. You will probably add this to A passenger coach. The swords on troop coach is a nice touch.

The textures are so sharp that I can read the sign hanging on the railing in game. You better write something on it.

A coaches roof is bit bland. It could use some highlights and or rail / dirt effect. But I guess that these are work in progress.

One thing about the coach though. I played an early game, Canada Bound, and in my opinion new coaches are big in comparison to early engines. I was thinking that A period could be based on Poptop's A coach. With a new skin. That Pop Top's A looks very much like an early Liverpool & Manchester Railway coach, so I feel that it could a good base on first coach. Then your A could be pushed to B. And so on.

[Gumboots]

Ok, I can write something on the sign. How about "If you can read this, you are too close"?

The B, C and D cars are based on the default PopTop skins, and the sign already had gobbledegook on it. The wood panelling wasn't exactly my work either, although I did piece and patch it together to get new panelling where I needed it, and did add custom highlights and shadows where I wanted those too.

The thing is that I know how to make my own panelling anyway. That would have been faster by the time everything was done but I was on a theme of mutating the PopTop skins, so kept quite a bit of them as a base.

I agree that the A era coaches could use a bit of grunge here and there. I think the size is about right though. It matches early pax coaches, which were usually triple compartment units. I think they look ok with an Adler up front, and fine with a Firefly. The default PopTop A coach is tiny, much smaller than an original LMR coach, and the proportions are all wrong. PopTop models are not consistent in scale, so rather than try to fit things to no sane baseline I am working to 10" per RT3/Blender unit for everything. Quite a few default locomotives and cargo cars, and the default railway itself, fit this scale well and I'm sure it's what was intended when the game was conceived.

An very early coach body was about 15 feet (4.5 m) long, simply because that's as small as you can make them while still having three compartments. By the time you get framing and seats and a bit of knee room, you need 5 ft per compartment. This was expanded slightly as time went on, since weight wasn't as critical as with a horse-drawn coach and a bit of extra structure was ok.

I modelled mine at 20 feet, which is about right towards the end of the A era. They could be scaled back a little bit. But then some A era coaches were even larger. Here's a diagram of a K.W.St.E. train from the early 1840's. The coach body is 36 ft (11 m) long, not counting the end platforms..

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[bombardiere]

I didn't realise how much you used from Top Pop's creations. That proof how out of touch I am. Anyway, it looks convincing to me so I like your work.

The thing is that I know how to make my own panelling anyway. That would have been faster by the time everything was done but I was on a theme of mutating the PopTop skins, so kept quite a bit of them as a base.

I have noticed this thread. And I need to read it very carefully. A lot of interesting material inside. I use GIMP so I may need to apply it.

Yeah about the size. You are right. It is kind of average of what was available in that period. A period is only 20 years, but there were huge changes even in that time. So I agree with you that a coach from 1850 would look very different than 1830 coach.

To be quite honest, this big carriage has been my annoyance from the beginning. Pop Top's Coach B is so big in comparison to Norris locomotive. Norris is my general duty engine in early scenarios and year 1850 is always a bit of shock when tiny coaches suddenly double their size and dwarf my Norris loco. It gets better when American is available, but that is a five years wait. I have been reading a little about American locos, and now I think that game's American is not a good representative of 1850's 4-4-0. It looks like a later model to me.

I wish that in this area the game could be similar to Transport Tycoon. So that there could be different types of coaches and wagons to choose. Some could be small and slow branchline coaches. Limited capacity, but cheaper. Others would be big mainline coaches. Fast and sleek, but expensive.

This would of course give extra hassle in the game and auto consists would not work. Not to mention that it would require re-writing the whole game. Still I wish that they would have chosen that the cargo would represent units, instead of car loads. This way different coaches and wagon could have different cargo capacities.

[Gumboots]

Yeah there are limits to what we can do. It's easy enough (albeit tedious) to make different packs of cars to get the right looks for different regions, but the game will treat them all the same.

The PopTop American 4-4-0 is some sort of mutant they dreamed up, as far as I can tell. I'd like to replace it with the old "William Mason" at some stage.

[Gumboots]

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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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.

[Gumboots]

Shots of the other eras. The previous post showed the G era (1965-1989) and the H era (1990 onwards), with the X58/PS-1 combination being the G era and the double-stacked containers obviously being the H era.

This is the A era (pre-1840) and the B era (1840-1864).
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This is the C era (1865-1889) and the D era (1890-1914).
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And this is the E era (1915-1839) and the F era (1940-1964).
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[Gumboots]

Had a bit of fun skinning up the 8 axle "rail whale" tanker. Mesh is sorted. Skinning can take forever if you get right into every detail, but this is off to a good start. Won't take much more to get it good enough to use.
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Turns out that tankers are really easy to do. Easier than boxcars, in some ways. I'm going to revise the whole pack, since I wasn't really happy with the first effort. Some of the colours were ok under game lighting, and some were not so good, and IMO having the tankers as single cars doesn't fit so well with the double boxcars and hoppers. So all tankers will be doubles, apart from the "whale" era (1975-1999 inclusive).

[Gumboots]

Alrighty then. Exporting tonight. Tis done, or as done as it's going to get for the foreseeable future. I ended up revamping the mesh again, of course, and have tweaked the skinning to the point where I can live with it. Time to get the thing running.
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[Hawk]

That's a cool tanker.