Evil Genius at work

[Gumboots]

I know diesels and other IC engines can run on propane or butane quite happily, as long as they're tuned for it, so I can't see why they wouldn't run on methane.

[Just Crazy Jim]

I have been trying to find what replaced Shays once they stopped being manufactured. It turns out that for the most part, Shays weren't replaced. They typically died in service, frequently having gone through a series of owners before going to the big roundhouse in the sky. It honestly never occurred to me that a locomotive would be replaced by something other than another locomotive, but such seems the case with Shays. From what I have managed to find out, in the part of the USA where I live, after the Shay, the logging industry started using a variety of vehicles, everything from bulldozers to heavy trucks/lorries, but rarely made use of a company-owned locomotive. And it seems the only reason that Cass Scenic Railroad exists is because Mower Lumber Company was still in possession of Shays when it folded in 1960 and became part of the West Virginia State Park system before the holdings were liquidated.

[Gumboots]

So, in other words, you can replace Shays with anything you like for RT3 purposes.

I had thought a Heisler might be fun to do sometime. And/or one of the bigger 3 truck 90 ton Shays. Unfortunately there's no way of animating the bits for either of those, apart from the wheels. The driveshafts and connecting rods are a no-go for this game.

[Just Crazy Jim]

So, in other words, you can replace Shays with anything you like for RT3 purposes.

Very true. I should be celebrating... but now it weighs on me to make the decision >_<

I had thought a Heisler might be fun to do sometime. And/or one of the bugger 3 truck 90 ton Shays. Unfortunately there's no way of animating the bits for either of those, apart from the wheels. The driveshafts and connecting rods are a no-go for this game.

There used to be a two-foot ga. Heisler used at Camden Park, it's long since been replaced by a diesel powered "tender" that pushes a mock-up locomotive along. The current setup doesn't even bother to carry over the conceit of steam power enough to have the pistons connected to the drivers.

They've got one (maybe two) Heislers at Cass Scenic Railroad (see pic) - Seen from the side while in motion, most of the working parts are obscurred by the steam venting.

Shays, on the other hand, don't seem to have any steam below the boiler level, even when pulling a grade. So there's nothing to hide the lack of animations.

Blind guess, but I think a Climax might be fairly easy to model with animations if you started from the Baldwin 0-6-0 as it already has the piston set at about the right angle and has proper animations. A drive axle rotation being left off might not even be noticed.

[Gumboots]

Yes Climax would be fairly easy to do. As you say, the lack of driveshaft rotation shouldn't be an issue. Tilting cylinders isn't hard to do either (set up an empty at the centre of the drivewheel, and rotate around that).

Personally I find Heislers more interesting. They're technically a rather good piece of kit. I had thought the proposed (but never built) four cylinder compound V4 Heisler would be a good unit.

[Gumboots]

"...a Climax might be fairly easy to model with animations if you started from the Baldwin 0-6-0..."
Or even an S-3. This only took a few minutes (obviously far from finished).

[Just Crazy Jim]

Looking over the Camelback 3DP, I'm sort of confused. It's made to a higher level of detail than most PopTop locomotives, with 3D cylinders for hand-railing instead of transparent 2D textures, then flipping the other direction, it has an 8-sided cylinder for the boiler. And it has one of the weakest looking textures I've seen so far, starting at 512x512 on top of being pretty second rate. I was considering making a crazy Camelback 0-8-8-0 ... But the amount of Dr Frankenstein work needed to pull that off ... yeesh. So, Instead, I think I'll leave that one for Gumboots

[Gumboots]

Oh if I was going to build one of those, I wouldn't even bother looking at the default Camelback. No point.

[Just Crazy Jim]

For no reason in particular, I was reading about Phantom Islands this afternoon. One in particular was on maps and mentioned in treaties for over 300 years: Saint Matthew Island. It seems that the English, Dutch (Sint Mattheüs Eylant), French (Île Saint-Mathieu), Portuguese (Ilha de São Mateus), Spanish (Isla de San Mateo), Genoese (Isola San Matteo) and Danish (Sankt Matthæus Ø) (maybe the Swedes and Courlanders too) all at one time or another had great plans for and sent colonists to this non-existant island in hopes of having a perfect platform from which to exploit the riches of Africa and the East Indies. For a place that never existed, it sure has a lot of history.

I, of course, want to start a railroad company there

[Just Crazy Jim]

Well, another unproductive day. Other than managing to produce a fairly authentic lo mein in the kitchen, I have not made any progress, especially with modelling new locos. I did make a couple of buildings that I may eventually post if I can ever make textures for them that don't look like they belong in the Simpsons or Futurama.

I reinstalled SMR to take a look at it, since I couldn't remember much about it other than it was weak compared to RT3. It chapped a bit to see the B&O Grasshopper fully animated in it and not RT3. Also the DX Goods 0-6-0 doesn't look bad and there's potential for the 0-8-0 Webb Compound as a base for Frankenstein locos of the future. But over all, the locos in RT3 look better, even if they are lower poly. There a sort of look about all the locos in SMR that puts me in mind of a model train set. I think that's the basic flaw with SM games these days, cosmetics over substance. The core of Civilization really hasn't changed significantly since the DOS 6.x/Windows 3.x version. And there is something about SMR that stinks of Civ in most of its underlying operation. But the same could be said of many game IPs, no evolution of content, just more triangles.

Considering the amount of ego-bruising Sid felt over how limp the reaction was to SMR, we'll probably never see an RT4 or RT5. Which means it's on us to make it, I suppose. I know my skills aren't up to making a game from scratch and hacking the EXE is dancing with the Devil . I'm already making signal gantries and road semaphores/lights, not that they'll do anything except eat GPU cycles at this point. Just makes me wish that the chaps at PopTop had made the game a bit more mod-friendly.

[CeeBee]

IMO both games have good points and bad points. TBH, I've played a lot more Railroads over the years than RRT3. Tracklaying is probably my biggest bummer with RRT3 but the scale of maps is much better in RRT3. When I get sick of one, I leave it for a few months or longer and play the other. Need a new game of some sorts though, but Railroads is not a real hot topic with the younger set anymore.

[Just Crazy Jim]

Agreed, the track laying tools in SMR are much better in terms of controlling the grade, but weak on actually managing traffic in a realistic manner since trains do not use double track properly. In my experience with SMR, double track is only useful near stations.

I agree with you about the scaling of the map. The scaling of the maps and the the flexibility of that scaling in RT3 are superior, but there are certain details of the SMR maps that I think were managed a bit better, like rivers having depths rather than dimples. On the other hand, the "compressed" terrain in SMR is a bit of a nuisance making maps (especially large maps, such as there are in SMR) increasingly unplayable as the size decreases or increased from some golden size.

The economic model in RT3 is a bit more robust, I would even say more complete, than the economy in SMR. Many of the same cargoes and industries are present in both SMR and RT3, but how they interact to form the economy are radically different in the two games. I suspect that comes down to the fact that SMR is a real-time strategy game built on top of a turn-based game engine which is essentially the same as that used in Civilization. This becomes very apparent once you enter multiplayer mode in SMR. Whereas, to all appearances, RT3 is a solo real-time strategy game with a multiplayer option.

Ultimately, my disappointment with SMR is in the overall look and feel of the game. It's simply too cartoonish for my tastes, but that comes down to the textures more than the models and "filler" animations. If I were industrious enough, I could very easily replace all the DDS files and make it to my liking. Or remake the models to my liking. That, then, brings up the matter of modding.

SMR appears to use the basic Civ4 XML structure, so it should be relatively easy to add user-made content to SMR. I've made plenty of content for other Civ4 based games, so I'm quite familiar with the doing of it. But unlike Civ4 and Civ4Col, the core DLL code was never released, so more complex mods like those that are available for Civ4 and Civ4Col are probably not possible. The same is true of RT3 - a major, sweeping mod just ain't gonna happen until the tabula obscura that is the EXE becomes readable.

And, then, there is the matter of animations. Neither RT3 or SMR are particularly friendly for adding animations to user-made content. SMR is slightly more friendly for this, but not enough to say it is "better". TBH, more user-made content has been made for RT3 than was ever made for SMR. At the end of the day, SMR was more or less regarded by modders in the Civ community as nothing more than a resource for new content that could be injected into Civ4 and Civ4Col mods. The same is true of Pirates! I base this on the fact that nearly every model in SMR and Pirates! is used in some Civ4 mod... except the trains. I only know of 2 of the locomotives being used in a Civ4 mod. I would suppose that comes down to the fact that the loco models in SMR are just too high-poly for the render engines used in Civ4 and Civ4Col. In the reverse, I do not know of anyone ever making a new locomotive for SMR, which I believe speaks to the matter directly. It would seem that Meier didn't get the memo that train fans want more choo-choos to play with. Not surprising really, in several interviews Meier has admitted that he is not IRL a great fan of trains and only made the original RT for the money.

SMR is also prone to CTDs more so than RT3, especially when using the map editor. Which was only released as a last ditch effort to keep the game "current" long enough to return a profit. Which from what I have read, it never did. After a few hours of play, both SMR and Pirates! have a "rushed to market", half-finished feel to them. Which I think is what they are. I believe that both games were made solely to generate a copyright, thus establish ownership of the IPs, as soon as Sid Meier regained control of the IPs, thereby quash all competing development.

Mind you, most of this is opinion and conjecture. It's not like Ol' Sid went all bleeding heart confession on me.

[Just Crazy Jim]

On the topic of "a new game to play", I've played Chris Sawyer's Locomotion and wasn't greatly impressed. It has an almost antique look to it compared any other game released in the same year (2004). To me, it looks more like SimCity 2000 (released 1995) than a 2004 release rightly should.

I recently played a demo/beta of Bounty Train (in development) and it might be fun if I got into that sort of thing. But I am not an old west-themed game sort of guy. And the cut-away views of the locomotives and rolling stock just bother me.

I also tried Train Fever (2015) a while back. Looks good, but feels like it was sent to market before completion. And the user interface is a bit crude and cumbersome. The same is true for Transport Fever (2016). Both look good, but come up wanting.

Railroad Pioneer looks interesting, but it received mediocre ratings and I refuse to use Steam after being burnt a few too many times with their purchase model.

Also on Steam are EEP 12 (2016) and Cities in Motion2 (2013), both look slick, but I don't know anyone who ever played them. There's probably something to that.

Rails Across America (2001) was one I missed. I heard a lot about it in the early 2000s, but never got my hands on a copy. It received fairly good reviews on release and had a bit of fan community, but it's since fallen off the radar. I do recall liking the look of it, somewhere between the look of RT2 and SMR if memory serves.

Microsoft Train Simulator and Trainz and Train SImulator (your year goes here) all left me feeling like I was working a job.

And although Rail Nation (a tablet/smart phone app game) looks good, I have no use for anything that requires me to finger paint on a glass pacifier.

Years ago, I had a copy of 3D Ultra Lionel Traintown (1999) and it was fun for what it was, but lacked a lot of the elements of a proper simulation strategy game.

Sadly, I think that about covers all the rail-based games of the past 30 years. I dearly hope that I'm wrong and someone sounds off with something I've missed.

[CeeBee]

Out of all those Trainz is the only one I played but that was pre-2006 or so. I was a beta tester from the 1st version till 2006 and after x thousands of hours I just plain burned out. I keep staring at the 10 or so various boxed versions and the numerous cd's filled with DLC stuff but so far I've not taken the plunge. I'm sure I will sooner or later what with all the "free" time retirement brings.... ahem forgot the honey do list.... might be awhile methinks ;)

[Just Crazy Jim]

Just ordered The Train GIANT, Railroad Pioneer, Loco-commotion, Loco Mania and Train Empire from a seller on ebay. Old games though they may be, all but Railroad Pioneer are new titles to me. Now we just have to see if any of them are good. :D

And I hear you about Trainz. There are a mind-numbing number of DLCs and versions now. I think the version I had was just "Trainz" no number, back in 2003 or 2004. There wasn't any DLC stuff available for it then, but you could see the gears grinding up for micro-purchasing across the whole gaming industry. Not all that surprising at the time, printer companies had been doing the same sort of thing for years: Sell you a printer on the cheap, then rake in the cash selling you ink or toner.

[Gumboots]

I can't remember where you mentioned it, but you said you were keen on the old "shark nose" diesels. I just stumbled across this page while looking for something else. Might be useful to you.

Passenger Shark Painting & Lettering

[Just Crazy Jim]

I can't remember where you mentioned it, but you said you were keen on the old "shark nose" diesels. I just stumbled across this page while looking for something else. Might be useful to you.

Passenger Shark Painting & Lettering

Much thanks! I have one roughed out and these will certainly make the units more "authentic".

[Just Crazy Jim]

Looking at the model for the DD 080-X (named "FutureL" in the game files), is something of an exercise in disappointment. I'd never played with the DD 080-X much, so I didn't notice that it only has double-bogie trucks. I guess I should have known that from the name, DD and 080 (e.g., 0-8-0) and all that. But for a "future" loco, I'd have thought the boys at PopTop might have been at least a little bit adventurous, maybe give it quad-bogie trucks (those already exist in the real world) or four sets of double-bogie trucks (I've seen that as well) or something, anything, besides static image double-bogie trucks that slide along the tops of the rails without animation....

Why even bother showing the trucks on a "future locomotive" in the first place? Why not place those parts discretely behind a nacelle shape or something to the same effect?

The fact it is diesel also bothers me. In 2003, there were already maglev trains in operation and the principle of maglev trains has been around since the 1910s. So why not electric at the very least? Granted, the Catenary/OHLE system used in the game is a bit out of step with 3rd rail electrics, which is what most RW maglev systems have used. But still, diesel? In the scenario that introduces the DD 080-X, they establish that they know about global warming, and whether you agree with it or not, it does not follow that if you start a scenario saying greenhouse gases have wrecked the planet that you then use a diesel locomotive to try to "fix" anything. That's running your argument the wrong way.

Still, for all its weirdness and flaws, the DD 080-X remains one of the most-likely-to-actually-be-made "future train" designs I have seen to date.* At least, they got that much right.

* Boy, howdy! Is there ever some stiff competition for the category of most ridiculous and unworkable future train design out there on the Interwebs.

[Just Crazy Jim]

I went snooping around mod sites for locomotives and rolling stock in other games and found (much to my surprise) that there are train mods for Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. After a bit of snooping, I saw the GTA:SA loco mods are vastly too high poly to import into RT3 - averaging about 10k triangles, so the models are probably from TurboSquid or a similar site. The very idea that a player can steal a train strikes me as being a bit ridiculous, but such is the mind of modern game developers that "no logic" is the rule of the day.

At the same time, I also found a number of very nice DLCs are now available for Trainz. And The Count of Monster Disco in particular caught my fancy, plus its a stand-alone that doesn't require any other purchase. I may actually enjoy that one.

[Gumboots]

The fact it is diesel also bothers me. In 2003, there were already maglev trains in operation and the principle of maglev trains has been around since the 1910s. So why not electric at the very least? Granted, the Catenary/OHLE system used in the game is a bit out of step with 3rd rail electrics, which is what most RW maglev systems have used.

If you want to run maglev, you need to generate the power to levitate the train, all of it, as well as push it forward. Trains have very low rolling resistance per ton, so maglev is not always going to be a better solution. You're falling into the trap of "Oooo, teh future! Must be all magical n stuff!"

But still, diesel? In the scenario that introduces the DD 080-X, they establish that they know about global warming, and whether you agree with it or not, it does not follow that if you start a scenario saying greenhouse gases have wrecked the planet that you then use a diesel locomotive to try to "fix" anything. That's running your argument the wrong way.

Depends how you get your fuel. There are various ways of making biodiesel. Or you can run them on gas, which can be made from garbage dumps.