Cargo weight revamping

[Gumboots]

That's certainly different. Never seen that before.

Notice that when you correct the caboose's .CAR file (i.e. replacing the linked loco 3D-model with any hauled car skin) the phenomenon stops, but all trains in the saved sessions continue eternally with the previously attached "phantom" engines.

I would have thought you were renaming copies of the Adler files to match the default caboose file names. That would be the easiest way of doing it. If you do that, the game will just treat the renamed Adler files as caboose files and never know the difference. The renamed Adler files would just sit as loose files in UserExtraContent.

[sbaros]

OK, in principle it works. I will have to fix the loco skins, but this will not be a problem. One thing I have to figure out is the TrackPoint or LengthPoint, because the "banking loco" currently engulfs the last 2 wagons of the consist.

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I'll keep the other method to arrange cosmetic doubleheaders, which is a good alternative to visually tell trains apart. Much quicker than loco conventional repaintings. Even single-headers could be possible, if I manage to create an invisible loco to provide the actual power. I have already created invisible coaches.

[Gumboots]

Just copy the LengthPoint and TrackPoint files from whichever loco you are using, and rename them to match the caboose files. Easier than editing the hex values, and should work just as well.

Cosmetic double headers can be done without repainting anything, and without making "ghost" locomotives. Repainting is only required if you actually want a different skin.

[sbaros]

Cosmetic double headers can be done without repainting anything, and without making "ghost" locomotives. Repainting is only required if you actually want a different skin.

That's what I am going to do from now on. About half of my repainting so far was solely for visually telling trains apart. When I had several identical Kriegsloks or Northerns operating near each other, it was becoming confusing. Sometimes I happened to re-route the wrong train and realize it too late. From now on, I'll only resort to repainting when I actually want a livery veeeery much.
For the visual identification of trains, I'll prefer these Cosmetic double headers from now on, it allows numerous combinations with minimal effort.
It also helps visually enjoy locomotives which you'd otherwise never see due to their unsuitability for any duties (an unfortunate case with many of Tycoon's default fleet).

In the attached picture we have the "Adler" (more correctly: a Patentee) doubleheading with another Patentee featuring a different tender (the Planet's for that matter). So, I know instantly it is my Smyrna-Manisa-Cassaba run. The Smyrna-Manisa-Aydin has 2 identical Patentees, the Smyrna-Manisa-Balikesir has a third, different tender and so on. If in a scenario you have, say 4 available locos of which only 2 are worth providing the actual power, then your available combinations with the respective tenders are 32 ! If you are willing to do a repaint (or download one) for one of your leading engine classes you raise this to 64 !
I am intersted to know the alternative way for cosmetic double headers without making "ghost" locomotives, but only if this already published somewhere or takes less than 6-7 minutes to write down. I don't want anyone spending valuable time to satisfy my curiosity. I searched the forum by keywords, but failed to find any such mention. I found out however that even experienced and highly productive developers of Tycoon stuff ignored this possibility.

5. Unfortunately, I doubt there is any way to achieve doubleheading or helpers within RRT3.

Some interesting news, especially for the caboose enthusiasts : I just completed a new range of tests

1. Converting the dining car to a banking loco instead of the caboose doesn't create any residual "ghost" locomotives or any other side-effects so far. So, the method I previously described does work at the expense of the dining car in place of the caboose
2. If you sacrifice both the dining car and the caboose applying my method for the former and Gumboots' above proposed method for the latter, you have the option of 2 pusher locomotives uphill. I just tried it and it's a huge booster. By the way, I already had a permanent "ghost" loco in front. The latter of course purely decorative, with no participation in the total horsepower, yet the sight of the 4 exhausts and the feel of heavy haul railroading on a mountain route was superb! It is really worth it with the "articulated" freight cars available from users elsewhere in the forum.
3. The converted "dining car" still generates that extra income from passengers, obviously so enthusiastic about the experience and eager to ride the banked trains!

I hope the gained experience will help me deal with the steam railcar project soon.

[Gumboots]

I am interested to know the alternative way for cosmetic double headers without making "ghost" locomotives, but only if this already published somewhere or takes less than 6-7 minutes to write down.

In essence it's quite simple: you change the loco and tender mesh and .3dp files so that the first loco and tender are defined as Loco Truck1 and Truck2, while the second loco and tender are defined as Tender Truck1 and Truck2. Or, in the case of tank locos, diesels or electrics, you just make a second one as a tender. There are several examples on this site. The first option requires some modelling work and a bit of trial and error. The second option is idiot-proof and can be done in a few minutes, but doesn't allow for non-tank steam locos.

Converting the dining car to a banking loco instead of the caboose doesn't create any residual "ghost" locomotives or any other side-effects so far. So, the method I previously described does work at the expense of the dining car in place of the caboose

It should also work without ghost locomotives if the files are done correctly. The game doesn't care what mesh and texture you assign to an asset. All it requires is that all the files are correct for calls and syntax.

[sbaros]

The surprises go on !
As I was cleaning up my "EngineTypes" content in order to make room for the locomotive experimentations suggested by Gumboots (I had all 96 slots occupied), I found out this: The dining car I converted to a banking loco yesterday, is not only available as a helper via the "select dining car" option of the consist menu, but as a standalone selectable locomotive too (I have currently dressed it as a "Fairlie")! Have a look at the attached screenshot.

The automatically generated speed/traction table is quite remarkable. On one hand, it retains the Fairlie's maximum speed. On the other hand, it obviously retains the negative weight I specified for the "dining car" and confirms my theory, since speed remains almost constant throughout the chart.
When used as banker however, it observes the leading loco's speed limit, not its own.
Bear in mind nontheless, that this is another confirmation that the Tycoon's built-in train behaviour formulae are utter rubbish. A loco of negative weight should have no traction at all ! So, any loco that you might select for the banking engine skin will additionally clone itself into a super-power beast! There are other indications of the Tycoon's unrealistic physics, but this is off-topic and will be dealt with when time permits, at a dedicated space.
I was unable to find out which of the other 96 locomotives it replaced automatically (which would give us a clue as to which order the program loads the installed locomotives till reaching the maximum 96). Certainly it wasn't one close to the alphabetical or the chronological boundaries. Maybe it's the LNER Pacific, I am not sure…
In the meantime I'll extend the experiment to the "B" era with the corresponding DinerB coach and see if an additional "dining car" will occupy a further locomotive slot, displacing some other class.
If anyone wants to investigate the matter further, here is what I did so far.

DinerA.rar

(182 Bytes) Downloaded 110 times

[Gumboots]

You must be doing some seriously weird things to get these results. What you're basically doing is finding new bugs that nobody had ever thought to look for, because they never needed to.

Edit: Aha. I see what you're doing. If you want a bug-free version, you would take the relevant FairlieL files (all of them) and rename them to DinerA. That's how you get any mesh and skin on an asset without it doing weird things. Same procedure with a caboose: rename them to CaboA, etc.

Edit2: What you're doing is calling the FairlieL .lco file, because if you call a loco .3dp the game will also call any matching .lco, and that makes the game think it's a locomotive instead of a cargo car. This is why it's selectable as a locomotive and has the relevant speed stats.

If you did it the other way (ie: copy FairlieL_**** files and rename them to DinerA_****) then it would behave as a normal dining car, apart from the effect of the edited weight value.

[Gumboots]

Come to think of it, this throws the negative weight into doubt too. If you are calling the default locomotive .3dp, and that means you get the default .lco called too, then your change in performance is going to be at least partially (mainly?) a result of the speed stats in the .lco.

RT3 code does have some overrides in some places, to prevent divide by zero errors, and at this stage I'm not sure if that would apply to car/loco weight. I know you can use negative "free weight" in the .lco file and that will work as a genuine negative number, but I don't know about negative .car weight.

To test if you really are getting a negative weight boost from the ,car file you would have to test it without calling any locomotive .3dp and .lco files. It may be that the game is setting the weight to zero in its calculations instead of -32. At the moment it's not clear. The only way of clarifying it would be to take in-game speeds with the edited "caboose" weight and compare that with the results from the spreadsheet. If in-game speeds match spreadsheet speeds for a -32 car weight then it's working. If they don't, the next thing to check would be if the in-game stats match for a zero caboose weight.

[sbaros]

Before dealing with the rest, prepare for more seriously weird things:

1. Remember the "ghost" Patentee (with the Planet's tender) illustrated doubleheading with the normal one about 5 posts above? It was created after that peculiar "banking caboose" effect and would run around eternally if left alone. You may also notice after the next post that it remained doubleheading with the "locomotified dining car" (its chimney barely visible behind the "Fairlie"s traction data table). However, when a station was reached, the "Fairlie" vanished from the head of the train, leaving the "ghost" Patentee alone ! The train's info window now listed the "Adler" as its motive power. The "ghost" ceased being a ghost and became a regular hauling locomotive ! See it in the picture recognizable by the tender.
   

   

2. After some runs, I replaced the unghostified Patentee with the Fairliefied dining car. Out of curiosity I clicked on it and found out that it was acting both as locomotive and as passenger income booster, although the train's "dining car" option was unchecked and the load could have been 8 cars.
   

   

3. This time, there was no more ghost locomotive present to be "unghostified" with the disappearance of the Fairlie-lookalike at the next station. So, the program just crashed out to windows upon arrival.

Conclusions

• You can get gradually rid of "ghost" locomotives created through the "banking caboose" by replacing the hauling engine with a "locomotified dining car"
• You can use the "banking caboose" trick to achieve operational non-standard loco/tender combinations without reserving additional precious locomotive slots.
• The presence of "locomotified dining cars" either at the head, or the tail of trains preserves the passenger revenue supplement.
• Never haul a train with a "locomotified dining car" if a ghost locomotive is not present !

I am looking forward to more "mad scientist" experimentation.

[Gumboots]

Sounds like you're having fun anyway. TBH I think these weird examples are likely to be too confusing and unpredictable for actual gameplay, but they're certainly good for giggles, and we may learn something about the game engine.

[Akarin]

Hey Gumboots, any news on the reefer skins?

Also I got a question about your express packs. I downloaded but never installed the earlier express pack and I noticed I had an Express_E_to_H_new.zip that contained a few hundred files that was supposed to go in the UserExtraContent folder according to my notes I left for myself. However I noticed the complete express pack doesn't have that. TBh, I don't remember where I got that zip (except from this thread) so I'm assuming it's not needed?

Here's a screenshot of an example of what thezip has.

[Gumboots]

Beats me on that one. I think (straining my memory here) it might have been a temporary bunch of files for those eras, which were loose to override the equivalent files in the earlier express pack PK4 (that one used default models and skins for the late eras). Anyway it shouldn't be required now.

Reefer skins: no progress yet. Haven't had much incentive to do them, and nobody has been asking, and also I got sidetracked into the new coding for the site itself. Could probably be persuaded to do reefer skins if someone makes enough noise.

[Akarin]

Thanks! I think I actually found your post where that zip came from and I think you are right.

As for the reefer skins, I'm looking forward to them because the progress you showed from 2018 looked great. Hope that counts as enough noise, but do what you need to do.

[smith121363]

I'll make some noise too, if that will help.

[sbaros]

Run it through my spreadsheet. That will give you performance predictions for any weights.
viewtopic.php?t=4194&p=45528#p45528
You are obviously getting increased speed, but without running the numbers it's hard to tell if you're getting the full benefit of the coded negative weight.

Speaking of this, does the spreadsheet provided here produce reliable results as well ?

[Gumboots]

That's low_grade's old sheet. It's just generally descriptive, and was made before we knew how the game calculated things. So no, it's not accurate as such.

[sbaros]

In this case, a warning might be better added alongside the download link, together with Gumboots more accurate job, which may be lacking some locomotives, however it provides the correct general methodology to cover any of them.

[Gumboots]

Probably a good idea.

[sbaros]

On the purpose of .CCT files

I'm just trying to figure out where the Pulpwood.cct file came from. It wasn't included in your xHopCover_RC3 pack (in fact there wasn't even a Pulpwood.cty file either) and there's no Pulpwood.cct file in the EngineTypes folder of the base game. It's not from WP&P either.

Is there any clue why the RR Tycoon designers opted to employ these additional .CCT (custom car type?) files? They seem to me like a superfluous feature. The exact version of cars assigned to each commodity is already -and I think adequately- specified in the oommodity .CTY file.
These .CCT files seem to be related in some way to the oommodity carried, since the caboose and the restaurant car, which carry no payloads, are devoid of .CCT files. CCT files are obviously timeless, i.e. independent from the historic era, even if though the user is allowed to completely change car category for a load as the years pass. The car category ID specified in each .CCT file is puzzling too. These ID's are coded according to PJay's CCTspec.txt with numbers up to 16, with the vacant places in between probably concerning the non-payload cars, such as the aforementioned caboose. For example, the livestock car carries No.16, the automobile carrier 13 etc. But, where are these codes used in the Tycoon's procedures? After all, a user can arbitrarily assign Electronics to be carried in coal hoppers or Ceramics to be carried in silo cars. Look what I've done in the picture... Apart from the banking loco trick described elsewhere, I have passengers riding that refrigerator car and just put the appropriate cargo sticker outside to tell it apart. I doubt if they paid me a supplement for the extra cool journey, but that's another story. For sure, I didn't hack any passenger CCT file to mess up with reefers, or vice versa.
So, what's the purpose of these separate .CCT files that couldn't be served with all the others? As I see it, all practically usable info is conveyed in the other description files (CAR, CGO, CTY etc). I've been searching the forum to find any clues about their necessity, but I give up ...

[Gumboots]

Yes, .cct files are weird, but I've found some things seem to work with a .cct file and not work without one. They don't so any harm and they're easy to make, so I use them and don't worry about it.