IOS - RT3

[Tomix]

Hai all,

Since I didn't see any progress on the other Island of Sodor route, I decided to create my own. I'm still learning RT3 mapping, so pardon my bad map making skills.



I also did three of the engines so far, including Gordon, James, and Thomas. Keep in mind these were made before I updated to 1.06 and Trainmaster, so I can improve them a little. I had to use the Shay for Thomas, since It was the only small engine I had.







All engines suffer from the night bug and for some reason won't load the correct wheel textures unless I save the scenario and reopen it again.

Cheers

-Tomix

[Blackhawk]

Welcome to the site and good luck with your scenario/reskins.

[AdmiralHalsey]

Ok this brings back a lot of memories. I would download this in a heartbeat for the nostalgia factor alone.

[Altoona+BeachCreek]

Is there any chance of getting skins/engines without the faces? You did a great job changing the colors on these engines, and I can tell you'll be "Very Useful indeed." Hehehehe...

[Tomix]

Thanks for the positive feedback!

As far as the engine faces, I could probably find the photoshop files on my computer. I did these skins quite some time ago.

There are a few engines in the 1.06 and Trainmaster updates that might suit quite well for some of the Thomas rollingstock, however I will need to track down the creators of the locos to get permission to reskin them.

-Tomix

[AdmiralHalsey]

Hey I have a quick question. How large is the map going to be?

[Tomix]

As of now the route will be 800 x 589.

Edit: Nearly finished with the route heightmap.

[AdmiralHalsey]

It sucks that the only model you have for Thomas is a Shay. Why not use the DX Goods or the G4 engine models for him?

[Altoona+BeachCreek]

You should be able to make any engine a "tank" engine by removing the tender files. For an example, see the 2-6-4 model in the 1.06 pack. If you need any help with hed editing, ask Gumboots. And, most of the old contributors who added the engines in the downloads page are long gone now, so permissions may be difficult. What I'm wondering though is if you need perms at all. I wouldn't take my advice as gospel, but I don't think they would mind if you reskinned or remodeled any custom engines.

[Hawk]

And, most of the old contributors who added the engines in the downloads page are long gone now, so permissions may be difficult. What I'm wondering though is if you need perms at all. I wouldn't take my advice as gospel, but I don't think they would mind if you reskinned or remodeled any custom engines.

Most of the contributors to the archives don't mind if you use their stuff. Just include a read me text file, giving them credit for the original, out of appreciation and consideration.

[Tomix]

Turns out I lost all of the Photoshop files for Gordon, Thomas, and James. Must have been when I had a PC crash some time ago. I wanted to try compiling the A1 with the Black 5 tender (Since gordon doesn't have the A1 style tender, the Black 5 tender suits his basis more) and I keep getting this error.



I kinda followed the Black 5 .lco and .car files, but I keep still keep getting this error message.

Here is the file structure for my PK4:



Ignore the tmp folder, that isn't in the PK4. :P I can also post the lco and car files if needed.

As far as the older content, I'll keep that in mind. I probably will use the Black 5 for henry, but replace the drive wheels with the A1 ones, since the current bogies on the Black 5 have no piston rods.

I'm really bad with Hex, so I doubt I will be able to hex edit them easily. However I'm pretty good at using the 3D modelling program Blender.

Is it possible to flip the 2-6-4T Suburban Tank around? That actually might be a good Thomas candidate.

Cheers

Tomix

[Tomix]

Alright, after a month of not working on the project due to school, I have the map almost finished being built. I just need to fix out the lake terrains since they were a bit dramatic when first generated.

Edit: Got the river sections in place. Now to add rivers!



Also made progress on another engine to add to the fleet. This time it's Spencer, based off an A4.



I have released my Gordon and James models, so if you want to add them to the site you are more than welcome to.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/g7rdh8v18e91a ... Engine.PK4

https://www.dropbox.com/s/buljokr9v08n6 ... Engine.PK4

If you need shots of them in-game you could use the ones earlier in the thread.

Cheers

[Hawk]

I have released my Gordon and James models, so if you want to add them to the site you are more than welcome to.

I'll probably wait until the map is released, since I assume they'll be needed for it.

[Tomix]

Alright, I have the route geography done, however I really don't know how I should go about painting it.

As I keep researching the Blender that works with RT3, I got this guy imported from a Nintendo DS game.



Not really happy with how he looks, so I'll be making some adjustments to him.

[Gumboots]

Painting maps is a real pain, due to the way the editor degrades the image each time it's saved. The usual advice is to test it as much as you can before painting it. That way you get the best gfx quality on the finished product.

Another option (which I've used) is to have a painted map stashed, and use a copy of it for testing. Once the events, etc are sorted, copy the code for them to the stashed map in one sitting. The gfx on the test map will be stuffed by then (mostly around river/lake/ocean edges).

[Tomix]

I see. So I should do everything else before I do painting? Makes sense.

[Gumboots]

Yeah preferably, or as much as possible. The editor saves the .gmp with a lossy format for the painting. Beats me why on earth anyone would code a lossy format for WIP stuff, but they did. We're stuck with it. This means that if you're working on a map it will look worse every time you save it. It's subtle, but it's cumulative.

You can paint over stuff to try and make it better again, but I've found this doesn't work all that well. The problem is largely to do with water. The game is coded so that although rivers are translucent, the game actually puts a strong blue colour somewhere in the code. This bleeds more and more whenever the map is saved. If you paint over it, it comes straight back once the map is played. It's a real nuisance. The same happens around lakes and oceans. If you look at a lot of the third party maps, you can see that the blue colour has bled all over the place.

If you get a WIP map in the editor and put a river down, with no height change for the bed, then erase it, you should be able to see that something is left behind. It's a sort of murky brown line or something that is where the course of the river was. I think this is related to the stuff that bleeds. There's unknown rubbish in the editor coding.

I also found that large rivers aren't as bad for this as small ones. The bleed radius seems to be independent of river width. They all bleed the same but on the wider rivers the bleeding is largely contained within the river itself, so it tends not to look as bad.