Stokers' Corner

[WPandP]

I use GIMP, not Photoshop, and when I save a TGA, it prompts me with two checkboxes - one for compression, and the other for "Origin at bottom right". Because I don't want either, I make sure neither option is checked. However, it seems like the first time I save a given TGA file, both options are by default checked. This leads me to believe that this is default behavior, and perhaps your problem is that your TGA's are being saved with these options enabled. I don't know what to tell you about disabling them in Photoshop.

Ned, do you know whether the same restrictions apply, if you are just creating a TGA that you will later convert to DDS? Can you still get a correct DDS if you save the TGA with compression or even at 32 bit rather than 24? I haven't tried it using my DDS converter.

[nedfumpkin]

I haven't tried either, so I don't really know. Since what I have going on is working, I am not so much inclined to mess with it.

[WPandP]

Stoker appears to have answered my closing question - he is saving TGA's in PS that don't work in-game, yet produce workable DDS's when converted.

My other reason for using TGA's rather than DDS on my mods is that it leaves them in a more ready state for others to develop their own skins. All this hassle we each go through, to arrive at a reliable way of creating DDS files, I don't think the average modder should have to go through that. If I provide a DDS, then they have to at least find a way to read that file. A TGA, on the other hand, just requires that they have an image editor, which if they are embarking on a skinning project they most certainly already have. And I always envisioned others, like NedF and Holger, etc., developing alternative skins for stuff that I produce. Yes, the TGA is bigger, but I figure that anyone downloading and installing a mod is doing so willingly and they can make their informed choice when they go to download. Mapmakers have the same dilemma - a 1024x1024 map is a huge file to download; they might have chosen to make something 256x256 instead, with the accompanying loss of geographic resolution. If the player can't afford the bandwidth to download the huge maps, then they can just choose to play with smaller ones. I actually prefer a bigger map, because I happen to have a fast computer and a decent net connection, and I don't want to skimp on geographic detail. So, yes, the TGA's present a cost in the form of filesize, but a benefit in terms of non-proprietary format.

I wonder, too, whether a PK4 with DDS files is really that much smaller than one with TGA's instead. I would think that a DDS could not compress as much as a TGA (since the TGA is in uncompressed format), and thus the penalty for the final mod isn't all that great. I haven't tested this.

[Stoker]

This whole format issue is very strange. I have been doing some tests to try to get a good way to produce and correctly save any skins. My last test revealed a true oddity. I opened the Weapons Factory skin as a .dds in GIMP. I removed the cannon skins by selecting and clearing those areas and saved the skin- going through and saving all the sizes from A to F in the UEC folder. I fired up the game and everything worked perfectly- the cannons did not show up- this was the first step I was taking to repaint this building as a more generic factory for other uses. I then closed the game and opened the modified weapons Factory skin in Photoshop and the cannon skin portion is still there! Thinking I must have made a mistake and opened the original file, I re-opened it, and it is definitely still there. I then opened the same file in GIMP and it is exactly as I had saved it- with the skin portions for the cannons being cut out. I suspected that I perhaps made a new layer and that the cutouts were made in this top layer, leaving the original layer, which PS is seeing, but that does not appear to be the case as there is only 1 layer. It looks like the easiest way for me to produce some repainted skins will be to just do it all in GIMP and save them as .dds, even though I am much more familiar with the PS tools and effects.

[WPandP]

I have seen the same kind of thing - when you "clear" an area, it really just changes the alpha channel without changing the pixels in the base image. GIMP is showing you how things look according to the alpha channel - i.e. the pixels are clear - while PS is showing you how things look in the base image - i.e. the pixels have various colors. Both are true.

I know what it is like to give up one image editor in order to learn another; it irritates you for a while. But rest assured that GIMP is fully capable of doing any edits you need to do, and I think that once you get used to it, you won't miss PS (too much).

[Stoker]

Well, after a fairly long (a year?) hiatus, I have gotten the RT3 bug again, and have some time to produce something useful for the community. I have several 80% complete maps and a nearly completed add-on for 1.06 that fixes the non-use issues with the new cargoes and ties up many of the loose ends left by 1.06, without being a complete redux of the game like Trainmaster. This add-on isn't meant to "compete" with Trainmaster, I view that as something geared towards the RT3 modder community and hardcore RT3 gamers, and what I am working on is meant to be as simple and small (around 50 megs compared to the nearly 1,000 meg zipped size of TM) as possible in regards to installation and playing, meant for the casual RT3 player. The add-on will enable more cargoes to be available from the start date (Yes- they had Steel, Furniture, and Cheese in 1829 ) to allow for more complex early railroad scenarios to be created without changing the functionality of most scenarios. In other words it will be backwards compatible with previous 1.06 and earlier scenarios and can be used without having separate installs of RT3. There will be a variety of new industries, and scenarios made using these new items would of course need to be played using the add-on. The biggest change is requiring the use of fuel for most heavy industries(using completely new industries- leaving the originals intact so earlier scenarios will still function), hence I have given the name King Coal to this add-on. I will be posting updates and asking for advice and ideas in this thread, and of course, please feel free to ask questions, give any comments (good or bad) and give suggestions about the direction of the project.

Keep an ear to the rail, King Coal is just around the bend!

[Stoker]

Here's a sample of the new industries that help fill in the non-used cargoes from 1.06 and also some new industries that make sense in early time period scenarios. All of these buildings can be built beginning in 1829 except the Advanced Smelter, which can be built starting in 1856. Everything is still being tested to refine in/out/profitability ratios, but these seem to work well . I am currently using existing building models for all of these, I will repaint some existing ones to differentiate them and hopefully find a few new ones as well.The Company Housing is the same as a regular house, but can be built by thee player. This allows having a buildable house, but unlike when checking "house" in the overall industries list you don't have ALL of the houses (20? 24?) crowding the build list in the game, and only allows a certain level of house(small) to be built instead of all of them

[Stoker]

I have been experiencing a very odd RT3 malfunction. The Hotel is turned off in the build menu on all maps, even when I try opening the Editor and enabling/disabling Hotel in the Industries list. The really odd part is that the same thing is happening in all 3 of my RT3 installations, which are completely separate. Is there some sort of residual memory cache that is screwing this up?

[Stoker]

This problem only seems to affect my 3 installs of RT3 with the 1.06.exe .In a clean 1.05 install I have everything works perfect. It is very strange. I can start a map-(any map) from the main screen- and all buildings that are supposed to be buildable (including Restaurant and Tavern) in that scenario are there EXCEPT for Hotel. I can Shift+E to open the editor and the Hotel will then show on the build menu, but will disappear as soon as I go back to regular play mode. I have tried changing build hotels/taverns/rests in the conditions menu- changing back- saving- reopening- etc etc all to no avail. I have been working on some maps for "regular" 1.06 in a clean install, and havn't tampered with the Hotel in any Mod install .But, after I noticed this problem this morning, I tried my 2 Mod 1.06 installs- and they both behave exactly the same. I suspect it has something to do with the enable/disable Industries Overall function of the game as it does some really weird stuff when your working on scenarios, but why it would affect 3 separate installs makes me think that the game must have some settings cache that it saves- and gets recalled when any version is running. Looks like I might be doing some clean installs today.

Update: Looks like the effect was being caused by only 2 or 3 saves of a certain map. After one of the maps with whatever it is thats corrupted is opened- it and all games after that would not show Hotel in the build menu . I trashed the saves and everything seems ok now, and not much lost.

[Stoker]

Here's a sneak peak of an upcoming scenario titled Mile High and Rising. It's made for 1.06 and uses all of the cargoes for the period 1865-1900 which the scenario takes place in.

[Stoker]

Amazing how fast the saves stack up when trying to work out a new map. I start naming map projects @ 100 and work my way down with each new save, so that the newest version will be on top of the list. I now have the terrain/resources- etc. all worked out on this map and have begun creating the events. This scenario is a bit different than most in that you will have the option to play as one of 8 historical Railroad companies that were fighting for the Colorado market, and several other historical non-railroad companies as well(Coors, Colorado Fuel & Iron, and a couple of mining companies). Each company will have its own medal tasks, starting with building the historical Mainline for that company and for the non-railroad companies there are distinct goals for each, some requiring the acquisition of a railroad and others purely staying in the Industrial market.

[Stoker]

Well, I must say that working on this map is making me homesick for old CO. I have over 70 cities on here now, all pretty accurately placed and I think that's about all I am going to include in this scenario. Looking over the namelist I could only think of 3 that I haven't been to. The rivers are done and don't have too many height errors-etc anymore (I think). I would like to include a lot more but they make too many areas unbuildable, I might experiment with shading in some blue ground texture to continue "rivers" in some places. The whole map is pretty washed out colorwise right now, I am going to give it a fresh paintjob before release. I have done some experimenting and have been able to float in the "red band" of sandstone everywhere pretty darned good using the "fill up" and "fill down" in the editor.
The Player list is going to be fixed @ 10 with 9 being pre-made companies/chairmen and the 10th option being the standard 100k Player Cash with no company start. Each pre-made company (and the player-started company as well) will have unique medal goals and tasks and a semi-historical starting position. I knew some things about some of these companies, and have learned quite a bit more since starting this map, but I would like to hear any suggestions from the community that make sense for a historical based goal . The Players associated with each pre-made company are mostly going to be random, as most of the real chairmen are not included with RT3, but Jay Gould and a maybe a couple others will be fixed.

The companies are going to be :
1: The Denver & Rio Grande This company is going to be the hardest and longest to win .The D&RG (or D&RGW-I decided to use the original name instead of the more long term one) serviced at least 50 of the cities on this map, I have to do some more checking that number might rise even higher. So there is going to be a connection goal of around that # of cities, perhaps having fewer required depending on difficulty level. The D&RG had some interesting concepts including some of the first routes built almost purely for their scenery and the fast parcel shipping concept. So their operations included long slow scenic tours (even in the earlier years there were many train tourists from "back east" visiting Colorado) and also a small and fast - almost UPS type approach to service the towns in its route. That's not to say that the D&RG didn't haul it's fair share of pure tonnage in the form of coal and ores, but these were two things that were associated with the D&RG . So I am working in a passenger production/price bonus system (based on haulage #s rather than speed) and a Hotel bonus that will make them quite profitable and help get Passenger production up. The fast parcel concept will be implemented by a stations visited count AND mail haulage quota that will boost mail production and perhaps price.

[Stoker]

The map is now pretty much done, and the basic structure of the different players and the selection system is done as well. This is a fresh repaint with the "redband" floated in . I may end up changing this to one of the brown colors because in the mini map for Engine selection the red glows and looks terrible.

[Stoker]

Here is a sample download for the new Mile High and Rising Map. The 000_KC zip is the scenario, with the start date open. The suggested start dates are 1860 - 1880. There are no medal events yet, but the basic structure of all the different players is taking shape. Each Company/Player will have unique medal goals. The Jan83MHAR zip is a saved game taken at Jan 1883 after an 1874 start as D&RG. I have 100% control over the D&RG and 100% control of a shell company (you are allowed to start 1 company in this scenario) that when merged will make a complete network from Denver to Albuquerque to Salt Lake City.This is the heart of the D&RG Mainline and will be part of the medal goals for this company to complete this in a given time period- perhaps ten years since I was able to do it in 9 fairly easily. This game is about at the limit of what my antique computer will handle, I am curious how other systems can handle this level of build and # of trains. I am quite pleased with the AI tack building action in this map. In the saved game nearly all of the track in the mountains was AI built- even the loop and spokes @ Buena Vista and the Loop tie- in @ Cheyenne. The third zip here is a Language file that will allow you to see the names intended for use with this scenario. "Troops" are renamed to "Men" for instance to allow them to be used as either soldiers or Workers- the latter being the case for MHAR. To use this first rename your existing language file (in the Data/Language folder) to something else and then unzip this one into there. If you want to switch back just name your original back to RT3 and make a temporary name for the MHAR one. None of the name changes are too drastic, most of them just making the cargoes more generalized- like Packaged Foods instead of Cheese. One Cargo that is changed from its original 1.06 useage is Dye, which has been renamed Leather, with Dye farms being re-buildinged using the Bakery model and Renamed to Tannery. King Coal will address all of these same changes plus a few more, and includes many new industries, some of which are built into this MHAR scenario as Programmed warehouses. This is a real fun map to build, and the stock market can be a real roller coaster . So anyone interested in doing some Railroading in sunny Colorado give this map a whirl and let me know what you think. Happy Railroading!

[Stoker]

OK, after a 3 year hiatus I have an improved version of Mile High & Rising! I always keep going back to RT3 and this scenario I have been making in particular. It keeps growing and getting more complex, I think it is close to completion now- LOL. To be honest I have not fired up this scenario for a few months but I intend to this weekend. I had some interest expressed in this scenario, so I am going to post the latest version. The latest version now includes a choice of 9 different pre-made companies and 3 choices for starting your own company. Each company has it's own goals and win conditions, so it is obviously a really complex scenario. One of the big things that I have NOT completed at this point is a good briefing, and briefings for each company, I hope that you can get the hang of it. There are many custom made Warehouses and special industries that I have swapped out the buiildings for, so bear that in mind. One goal of the custom warehouses was to create a real use for Ore, which was left hanging in the breeze in 1.06 and never got completed. I will have some time to work on some of these things this weekend, at which point I will post a more thorough explanation of the intricacies of this map here. Until then, here is the latest version of Mile High & Rising. If anybody actually gives this a run through before this weekend, please give me any feedback that you can- regardless of how scathing it may be. Anybody who has made these scenarios knows how hard it is to see every detail without some feedback it is really hard to catch everything, and maybe more importantly to keep interest in your scenario.

++Mile High & Rising_e.zip

(4.14 MiB) Downloaded 296 times

Edit to add: This is a 1.06 scenario. One issue I am aware of has to do with the D&RG scenario (option 1) that screws up in regard to the connection to Leadville and then later with the completion of the mainline to Salt Lake City (the details are a bit fuzzy right now), but it does not make a crash or anything of that sort. It has been a while since I have played this, I will fix some known issues and make a better test version of this at some point this weekend, but as is the scenario is nearly fully functional and in my own humble opinion a heck of a lot of fun to play. This is NOT one of those sparse maps, it could be better described as an "Embarrassment of Riches", but the goals are set accordingly and you really have to hustle. Please feel free to ask any questions and please note any errors you encounter and let me know,and Happy Railroading!

[RayofSunshine]

Stoker,
I like the concept of this scenario, as a player can play each railroad on an individual basis.

The 1 problem I have, since there isn't a "briefing" as to what constitutes a "production"

As I live in CS, some of the terrain is not in reality, but as it only being a scenario, it is within the imagination of a creator. But the surrounding cities are at least in a perpective location. So it is an enjoyable creation in the concept of its goals.

[Stoker]

Thanks for the input Ray. I was concerned that perhaps there was a glitch relating to the custom building swaps I used in this scenario, but I guess that is ok. As far as the terrain goes, it is actually derived from the USGS data and to my knowledge is accurate with a couple of exceptions, mainly that Albuquerque in reality is a bit off the map to the south, and that I had to smooth out a few places and/or move cities slightly in order to have buildings place in certain city locations.

As for "production": Troops are meant to be Workers, or second class passengers. The Express Terminals create a supply/demand flow for passengers and "Workers" and these will usually make a profit. Weapons are meant to represent Mining Machinery, this is why you see barracks in most cities, especially the mining boomtowns. Ore can be processed into "Ingots" by using the "Refiner" warehouse(factory) . Also, "Crystals" can be processed into Ingots at the Warehouse/factory "Chemical Processor". "Crystals" represent the various oxide ores that must go through a chemical process to yield Gold/Silver/Copper etc. There are then several uses for Ingots (instead of the wonky dysfunctional 1 use for Ingots in 1.06- the "Machine Shop"). First and foremost of these is the Denver Mint, which creates a huge demand for Ingots (Gold/Silver/Copper) and will suck up a whole bunch of them per year. The next most important demand for ingots are the East and West bound Warehouses- especially if you are playing one of the companies that owns one of these. These are not purchasable during the game as they have way too much profit potential to be plunking them down all over. The next use for Ingots is the Assayers office, which is mainly used to create demand enough for Ingots to make the production of them profitable, but they consume very little of them. Thirdly are the Brass Foundry and Tool Manufacturer warehouse(factories). These can be built in game, and can make a good profit, but there is a limit to how many you can build and still be profitable because there is a limited supply of Ore and therefore Ingots to be had and these are programmed to consume a lot of Ingots (some Ingots are used to produce other loads at a profit, and there is also a demand that simply consumes Ingots) and limit the overall profit potential of these industries. The Mining Supply Warehouse and General Supply Warehouse are both meant to create demand for things required to mine, and they in turn produce Ore and Crystals when fed with the required items. The other big thing to know about this scenario is that heavy industry is best done in one of the "production zones" . Outside of these zones it will be very hard to produce industrial goods. I will go further in depth on that subject soon, but in general anything that requires skilled labor and an industrial base (machinery/weapons - etc) is best produced in an industrial zone rather that out in the "boonies" . Steel has a production boost in Pueblo, Durango, and Denver as well. These are historically where there were actually Steel mills and or Iron foundries.

There are many more intricacies with the production chain for this scenario, if anybody has any questions please post them and be as specific as possible and I will explain what I had in mind, and perhaps tweak them a bit where problems are spotted. I thought I would have time to tinker with this scenario some this weekend, but the weather was just too nice here in AZ, so I was outside getting some things done. My indoor season here is approaching rapidly so I will definitely have the chair time to get this thing wrapped up in the next couple of months.

Thank you again for giving this scenario a go Ray O Sunshine, I really do appreciate your input and I hope you had fun.

[Stoker]

I was curious as to whether I had the placement of Colorado Springs shifted for functionality purposes so I checked, and it is in fact dead on accurate in it's placement and the terrain elevations- etc.

Mile High and Rising Colorado Springs location

Google Map of Colorado springs location


I posted these links to pics showing the location of CS in both MHAR and from Google MAPS. Some cities (mostly in mountainous terrain) have been shifted due to terrain issues, but CS is not one of them.


Hawk: Not sure if this is related to the new server, but I am getting the following error message when trying to link to pics in my Photobucket page :

It was not possible to determine the dimensions of the image.

[Blackhawk]

I think photobucket may have recently disabled hotlinking for their photos so that may be the reason it doesn't work.

Speaking of server issues though, do the time stamps work correctly for others? Mine is saying this is posted at 10am when it is the afternoon and I double checked to make sure I was set for the correct time zone.

[Stoker]

Thanks for the thought Blackhawk but I am pretty sure the issue is here. All of the pictures I posted here from my PB in the past are all working fine, it is just ones in new posts here that will not work. This makes me think the issue is on this end and not at the PBs end. Also, I have been posting new additions to my PB in other forums recently and there are no issues. Hawk has been solving these issues as soon as he gets alerted to them, I have full confidence that he will work this issue out as well.

Oh, and to anyone giving MHAR a testrun, the issue with the connection to Leadville has to do with a special award for doing it in less than two years while playing as the D&RG. You get a double bonus for it is the issue. I may work this out or I may just do away with that particular reward. It is pretty darned hard to get there in two years, but I assure you it can be done...