Campaigns, anyone?

[low_grade]

I noticed that you can designate a scenario a campaign scenario, but I've never tried it and haven't seen any postings about campaigns, so I thought I'd ask if anybody knows anything about how to make them before I jump into it.

I've been thinking a two or three stage scenario would be interesting, and I've seen a couple scenarios out there which somewhat do this, but really it might be better to do a mini campaign. So, any thoughts?

[JayEff]

No one has done it with RT3, so I would keep the first one simple.

Secondly I the scenarios should have a unifying theme.

Thirdly, they should occur in chronological order.

I am thinking, five U.S.A. scenarios in the PopTop campaign as an example.

How about a Latin American campaign? You have made two scenarios, I translated Rodnei Coutinho's Brasil, and there are a couple of Argentine and Central American ones around.

You could spruce it up by adding some new company logos, players and / or loco skins. Or music.

[KevinL]

I checked the box to make the scenerio a "campaign" once, and I was no longer able to play it from the menu until I unchecked the box. I'm not sure how that is supposed to be used.

[Sugus]

That's an interesting question (creating a campaign) I've never thought about till now. Seems that there's something to find out first (how can we do that) before looking for an interesting story.

@low_grade: I agree that a Latin or South American campaign would be a great thing.

If anyone already has any experiencies concerning "campaign creation" - let me know, please!

[nedfumpkin]

I am currently working on a campaign called Made in America. The Black Diamonds scenario is the first in it, and there will be others going through the entire period.

PS...when you tried to play the scenario, did you go into the campaign screen or the scenario screen?

[proudcanadian]

I just wonder how a player-made campaign would work...would it directly transition to the next scenario in the campaign after you've finished the first, or would you have to go back to the campaign screen? It will obviously count the medal scores in each to get the total campaign score at the end, I suppose. Since no one up until now has attempted it, I guess it'll be the first time we'll actually find out.
I remember reading somewhere about a large player-made Railroad Tycoon 2 campaign that got about half-finished before being scrapped. I wonder if there's anyone around who was a part of this experiment...?

[nedfumpkin]

After doing some digging and checking things out, it doesn't look like it is possible to create new campaigns. The campaign seems to be hard coded in the exe. I'll keep digging.

[Sugus]

I'm impatiently waiting for your success!

[low_grade]

Well, I'm afraid Nedfumpkin is right. Makes sense when you fiddle a little bit. Trying to start a single player campaign doesn't give you the option of selecting a campaign, for instance, it just shunts you over to the default campaign screen Poptop created with all the usual scenarios. Perhaps by creating 13 original scenarios and then giving them the same names as the Poptop campaign scenarios (backing up the original maps of course) you could have your own campaign, but other than that there probably isn't any way to do it without code hacking.

As far as multi-stage scenarios go, though, there could be some interesting things to do. I'm thinking of something like starting from a base map in the year 1829 you could have goals for every 25 year period through to the modern era, for like 7 mini scenarios total, and in between each 25 year period you save a couple of variables depending on how well the player has done, add or destroy buildings, probably destroy all or most track, stations, and trains, and then give the player or the player's company starting cash to rebuild that is somehow related to how well they've done so far. A player could start the scenario in any year, though it would be recommended to start in the years which mark the beginning of a new mini-scenario. This is more elaborate than my original inspiration, which came when I was working on the Chile scenario. Essentially all of Chile's infrastructure was wiped out by a massive earthquake in the early 1900's. Though I didn't incorporate this into the scenario, it make me think, wouldn't it be interesting to have an event in the middle of a scenario which created a tabula rasa, so that the scenario would be played in two separate stages, saving just a few variables in between.

I'll have to look into the options a little more before I start on this, but I'm thinking of implementing this idea on a Cleveland, Ohio, centered map. Early years are short lines and moving settlers West. If there's a way to take company property away from a player and giving it to an AI, I might like to try doing that, and have the second stage be consolidating the short lines. Third stage would be building industry and connections to Pittsburgh, Detroit, perhaps Chicago if I include that far West, Columbus, Indianapolis, Cincinnatti, etc. I'd probably use territories and a really big map, forcing the player to focus on only a small territory to begin with and opening more up through the stages. Forth stage might be more focused on commuter traffic. Fifth stage, which would be 1929-1954, would be weathering the depression, modernizing, considering the electric option, mobilizing for WWII. Later stages would be proving that railroads are a viable transportation option in the face of the highway system and airlines, so more focused on efficiency and otherwise winning back customers. Well this is all just off the top of my head here, but you get the idea.

[nedfumpkin]

One thing I am considering though it since I can't create a separate campaign, I can always replace the existing one with all new maps. I think there is thirteen in all. This way I could have a completely new campaign set for Trainmaster. Just means I have to really convince people to create campaign scenarios.

[proudcanadian]

It seems really weird that PopTop would design the game to give the option to make a campaign scenario, yet do not actually have a way to allow a player-made campaign to be created. Well, it's not the first time they've done something like this.

[JayEff]

Well they needed that option to be able to do it themselves.

[Gwizz]

I'm sure I made a campaign map. But, I'll be dang if I can remember how I did it.
I still have all of my beta CDs and it is possible that this was one of the things that PopTop removed to get the final version out the door.

[nedfumpkin]

I've taken a look at the exe file and the campaign maps are listed in it. I am going to try replacing the name of one of the maps with a different map, and see what happens. I may be able to completely change all the campaign maps for TM, but I am going to have to have them with names exactly the same length.

I may also be able to replace troops with another cargo that I want to behave like troops, and then have the troops behave like cargo. One thing I am thinking about is replacing the troops as express with gold, but for the life of me can't think of anything to rename it to that has the exact same number of letters.

[nedfumpkin]

Eureka...it was even easier than I thought. The campaign name that shows in the screen is in the language file. By making a map a campaign map and then renaming it to a previous campaign map makes it so that the new map is in its place. Next, the movie has to be replaced, and the backdrop. But for TM, it will be quite east to set up any campaigns just by replacing the existing ones since they can't be played anyway.

Oh, and that means I need 13 maps to have a full campaign set. Of coursse anyone can create a scenario to be part of a campaign