RRT3 Going Nukular

[nedfumpkin]

Okay, first I want to publicly commend WP&P on the great stuff he did with his boxcars, and at the same time thank him again for directing me to ddsview since the inability to convert or view dds files has held me back considerably.

I've decided to create a nuke pack for RRT3, and I am open to suggestions as to what to include. So far here is what I've got coming.....

New cargo and their carriers:

- Plutonium - lead lined box car - dull grey (small but extremely heavy)

- Explosives - same boxcar style as above but not as heavy and dark blue.

- depleted uranium - lead lined box car

- DU ammunition - same as regular ammo

- missiles - missile carrier - basically a box car skinned to look like its covered with a tarp.

- nuclear missiles (ICBMs) - missile carrier - same as above

- circuits - regular box car

- copper - ore hopper


New industries....

Copper mine

Nuclear Reactor - takes uranium and produces depleted uranium and plutonium. (1950)

Explosives factory - takes chemicals and aluminium and produces explosives (1930)

Munitions plant - takes copper and depleted uranium to produce DU ammo (1960)

Missile Factory - takes steel and explosives to make missile (1950)
- ICBM (1960) I'm still working out how I am going to do this because I want it to take steel, circuits, and plutonium to make this.

Electronics Factory - takes copper and plastic to make a circuit.


To prevent the new cargos from messing up older scenarios, I am going to prefix them all with an "x," as in xPlutonium, xCopper....

For the most part, I am going to use the models for the current industry since I am still not able to properly create new structures. I'll just change the signs and maybe some colours. If anyone else wants to create new structures, then by all means I up for it.

If anyone can think of anything else to add, then I'm also up for that as well. Any thoughts and suggestions are welcome.

[Penn Minuteman]

I was going to say Atomic Annie. The US Army's 280 mm cannon that fired a nuclear warhead but I just checked and found that of the 30 made. None were ever mounted on rail cars. Only a duel truck setup where one driver drove backwards.

How about working in photo cells. The original nukes used them to fire the HE around the core before they advanced into circuitry. Think of a Kodak flash bulb (for you old timers who still remember them).

Original atomic bombs needed 2 types of reactors, 1 took natural uranium and produced U-235, the other took same uranium and produced Pu-239. See link here http://www.chemcases.com/nuclear/nc-09.htm.

Here is just a link that may give you some ideas. http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/

Penn Minuteman

[Wolverine@MSU]

I seem to recall during the development of the 1.06 patch that there was a limit on the number of cargoes that the game could manage. The new cargoes added in the patch took up some of those slots, so I don't know how many are still left to be filled. Perhaps Milo could shed some light on this. I think there was an extensive discussion about exactly what cargoes to add because the number was limited.

[nedfumpkin]

I just read through the docs for the 1.06 patch, and I'm not exactly sure of the limits, if they are scenario dependent, or game dependent.

In any event, I'm not playing with the 1.06 patch, and a number of other people also can't use it, so this is going to be something for the 1.05 patch, and if if works on 1.06 then great!

One possibility I could look at is to take the cargo and industry, and any rolling stock from the 1.06 patch and combine it with what I am doing and then be able to have those parts accessible to people who can't play the 1.06 patch. If it can fit that is. In that sense we could have an alternate patch that doesn't muck with the game play, but just might allow people who have the 1.05 patch the ability to play some 1.06 scenarios.


Edit: Actually, I just realized that I couldn't include the 1.06 industry and cargo because then it would cause the problems that are why I am prefixing the cargos with an x.

Instead, I'll just focus on making something that is 1.05 specific so that us from the other side of the tracks will have some new things to play with. We can even do a PC/Mac commercial. :)

(I'm still thinking about the flash bulbs.)

[WPandP]

My recollection was that while the set of active cargoes was limited, one could somehow "skin" a cargo to represent something else, thus reusing a cargo slot. For instance, one might change Produce into Widgets, and the game would show no produce but rather widgets in its place. I really am not sure how this is done; I never got into cargo modding.

If cargo "skinning" is actually not that hard to do, then I'd suggest keeping the scenario 1.06 compatible by going that route, rather than using up the same limited extra slots that 1.06 uses up in its additions.

[nedfumpkin]

I'm pretty sure that the limit on cargo is when setting up the scenario, not that is available in the game. Since I have no way of testing it in 1.06, I'm not going to worry about it and continue focusing on a wicked add-on for 1.05.

Some other things I want to add is a mall and a smelter. I want to make these based on the warehouse set-up but have them buildable and buyable. This way, the scenario writer could set the input/output cargo for them.

And then finally, I also want to change the chemical plant so that it is buildable.

[WPandP]

Still, I'd strongly urge you to use the naming convention adopted for the 1.06 cargoes, and extend this system. I believe everything in 1.06 had a 4-digit prefix, after a tilde. If you use the same "Dewey Decimal System" then your cargoes would work fine in 1.05, as well as in 1.06. If you don't use the same system, then you'll be spending a lot of time diagnosing people's problems when they are trying to play a scenario after installing your mods... like, if a scenario was created by someone who has 1.06 installed, but they stripped elements out to make sure it was 1.05 compatible, but then your mods get employed and the game crashes, and who really knows why?

I just think that there isn't really much more work to abide by 1.06 conventions, even if you're not doing a 1.06 scenario.

[nedfumpkin]

Okay, I should be able to do it by going with the ~5000 series. This should also allow me to include the 1.06 cargos and industries in this pk4 file.

[WPandP]

Regarding some of the buildings you intend to make:

Explosives can be just added as an additional productions formula to the Ammo plant, and the DU weapons production could be added to the Weapons factory. This way, you don't have to develop a unique model, and it would make it easier for others to craft scenarios using your extra cargoes. This is because when you make a unique building (like my Cereal Plant), it must be enabled for a given scenario in the editor, and if you want it to auto-spawn on the map then you have to set regional percentages for it. This limits the usefulness of custom buildings.

However, if you take a building already in the game and just tweak its settings to add or edit production formulae, then no extra effort is required in the editor, on a scenario-by-scenario basis. Of course, I think you'll want to tweak things in scenarios in order to take advantage of the modded buildings anyways. But for the "dumb user" who just wants to download and play with things, it'll just be more straightforward.

Plus, there is the issue that we can't make new buildings shapes, only new skins, so unless you have a LOT of creativity your extra buildings won't really look all that different; might as well just use the defaults.

A modded Weapons Factory would still work right in scenarios that don't use your cargoes; if the game finds that either an input or and output cargo is missing, then that whole production chain will simply not show up in-game. Thus, your Copper + DU = DU Ammo formula could be added to the building, and for those scenarios that do not use Copper, that production chain would just be shut down. Otherwise, the building would continue to function normally with its other production chain(s).

[Hawk]

Prior to the 1.06 patch, there was 19 spaces available for new cargos. I don't recall how many new cargos were included in the 1.06 patch but that would need to be deducted from the 19 spaces to give you the amount of spaces left in the game engine available for any new cargos.

[Hawk]

Ned - you have a PM

[WPandP]

Another suggestion:

For the missile carrier car, how about trying the D-era Dining Car as a base model? It is longer than the boxcars, and with its rounded roof it will look more like a tarp covering. Skin it to look like a flatcar with this tarp thing stretched over its load, leaving some "gaps" along the edges that look like places where you could peek under the tarp. However, rather than making those "gaps" actually transparent, do what I've done and make them shadowy-dark. The reason I say this is because the dining car has no "floor" to form the deck of the flatcar, so if you looked through one of those holes, the illusion would be spoiled. This is what I did on my 70-ton iron ore hoppers, and other cars.

Speaking of which, I think the obvious starting point for Copper Hoppers is my Iron Ore Hoppers - just look for a different railroad, and recolor the ore load a little, good to go. My Iron Ore Hoppers were based on the B-era Livestock Car, which I found to be the right length and also had a flat roof. And, my DMIR car side was just taken from a photo of a model - scour the websites of major model railroad manufacturers and you'll find plenty of source material for skins.

[nedfumpkin]

I just went through all the new buildings bca files in the 1.06 patch and I was just thinking along those same lines. In one sense, some of what I was going to create as new is already existing in the 1.06 patch in a manner of speaking.

The thing I am wondering about right now is that I am thinking that it may be possible to create a sort of 1.06a patch that might make it so that 1.06 games can work on 1.05 machines, and some new stuff is added.

Right now I have so far accomplished a new Nuclear Reactor. I don't know if it works, but I made a few minor changes to its skin so it is the same shape, but somewhat distinguishable from the power plant. I don't know if it will generate electricity yet. The last time I tried I wasn't able to. If I can get it to produce electricity and at the same time the DU and plutonium, then I will have succeeded. But now I am thinking of changing the plutonium to isotopes and then the hospital could have a demand for it too, and the pharma co. I have a very high ratio set for this.

Since there already is an electronics factory, I won't make one. But I still want to try to make the smelter since I am trying to make it like a port/warehouse where the scenario editor can select input output cargo, also, the furnace should demand coal but it doesn't.

The missile factory is going to be new since I am trying to make something separate from weapons, and I am also going to make a military storage facility that is kinda like a deluxe depot. But I can add DU ammo to the current munitions factory.

I would like to also think about your tannery idea, and maybe incorporate that as well. Thanks for the tip on the dining car. I hadn't started skinning it yet because I was trying to figure out which car to use.

I'm kinda stuck between making some modifications to the 1.06 stuff, and adding new, or just adding all new. What say the folks who made the 1.06 patch?

[KevinL]

Uranium is already part of the game (after 1960 or so?). You could modify the ammo plant or the weapons plant to accept steel + uranium = nuclear weapons.

[milo]

RT3 does have a fixed number of cargo type slots. Original intent with 1.06 was that, rather than adding new user-defined cargos, we'd skin existing cargos with similar behavior (coffee as a skin for tea, for example)... but I don't think I finished the code to support it. I do remember that 1.06 came perilously close to the limit for cargo types (as in 1-2 more cause the game to crash); if you're planning to add several cargos you're probably better off writing the scenario for 1.05.

No backwards-compatibility patch is feasible, I'm afraid. If 1.05 hits a 1.06 extension, it crashes to desktop. Best you can do is check the Version field at the start of your scenario and arrange for the game never to go into your 1.06 events if it's running on 1.05. I think it may take some complicated juggling to create the scenario, as well - you may have to create the map in 1.05, and then bring it up in 1.06 to add the 1.06-specific events.

[nedfumpkin]

Thanks for the information Milo. I guess I am just going to have to focus on a 1.05 pack of stuff and not worry about 1.06. Which is too bad. There are 10 new cargo types in 1.06, and I can use some of them, but I still need 2 or 3 new cargos.

But I am going to try to make this work for all users because I am trying some things out that I am hoping will work in Rail Mogul. such as a smelter, generic factory, and co-op.

Right now I am having trouble getting my new tarp-covered long flatcar with bulkheads to show up in the game. Gotta go step by step adding parts until I figure out what is causing the problem...I keep getting the default auto-carrier showing up instead.

[WPandP]

I remember having the auto carrier show up instead of my custom cars, too. I don't recall how I resolved that. But I think it's mainly a case of making sure that you've referred consistently to the right car name every where that it shows up, in the hex-edited CAR and IMB files. It loads the auto rack as a default, as it is the first in the alphabetical list of cars, which is an indication that somewhere along the way the game has not been told the right assets to load.

I'm looking forward to seeing a screen shot of this car! Hope you get it to work soon.

[nedfumpkin]

I'm kinda flip flopping between stuff that I am making since I am also doing a lot of thinking while I putter.

I'm reskinning the Aluminum mill into a missile plant, and I am going to reskin the recycling factory into a smelter. I want to try to make this a variation of the Gwizz port, and also see if I can't stick it trackside as a station. I'm also going to go step by step over everything in the tarp car and try to get it to work.

[nedfumpkin]

Making some progress....

I ended up reskinng the Recycling plant into an explosives factory. I'm going to start it in 1847, and at that time it is going to take coal demand only (always), and then it will take paper or cotton to produce explosives. Later in 1930 or so, it will be diesel and fertilizer or chemicals and aluminum.

Then I am going to see if I can't make it so that explosives will increase the production of mines and logging camps, as well as being a component in making missiles.

[WPandP]

Looks good!

One suggestion I would make, though, is to make some bits and pieces of the building transparent, to change the overall look of the building. Maybe you've already done this, it's hard to tell from just one screenshot. Anyways, by blanking out parts of the model, you can really change the feel of it; my Cereal Company got rid of a big fence and some other exterior features that were present in the original (munitions factory) in this manner.

I love the choice of using the Recycling Plant, though, because it isn't something we see often in games, so it really does look unique! Keep up the good work.