Rivers and River Junctions

[Hawk]

I had waterfalls in one of my maps. They look pretty cool. Especially when adding the mist.

[Gumboots]

Yeah I like them. I've just been experimenting a bit more. Looks like there is no lower limit to carving out canyons. I went down another 454 units, which according to the edges of the map puts me through the Earth's crusts and into the mantle. Still works fine. They got rivers and lakes down there. Who knew?

I'm tempted to make a sandbox with epic scenery just for fun, as a change from serious coding. Would be good practice to using the editor too. Having got this far I feel like running trains down the canyon to the foot of the waterfalls.

[Hawk]

which according to the edges of the map puts me through the Earth's crusts and into the mantle. Still works fine. They got rivers and lakes down there. Who knew?

Wouldn't the rivers and lakes be steam if it were as hot down there as scientists say?

I'm tempted to make a sandbox with epic scenery just for fun, as a change from serious coding. Would be good practice to using the editor too. Having got this far I feel like running trains down the canyon to the foot of the waterfalls.

I just might have to install RT3 on this Win 7 box to see that one. My old XP gaming rig died on me. I think it was the MB. It was like an old friend dieing. I had that machine for 10 years.

[Gumboots]

RT3 runs well on W7, as long as you use the VooDoo 2.53 thing to fix graphics.

[Hawk]

Yea, the VooDoo thing. That's what I need. I've seen it mentioned several times in the forums. I'll see if i can find it.

[Cash on Wheels]

which according to the edges of the map puts me through the Earth's crusts and into the mantle. Still works fine. They got rivers and lakes down there. Who knew?

Wouldn't the rivers and lakes be steam if it were as hot down there as scientists say?

I'm tempted to make a sandbox with epic scenery just for fun, as a change from serious coding. Would be good practice to using the editor too. Having got this far I feel like running trains down the canyon to the foot of the waterfalls.

I just might have to install RT3 on this Win 7 box to see that one. My old XP gaming rig died on me. I think it was the MB. It was like an old friend dieing. I had that machine for 10 years.

After 10 years? I was thinking about throwing my last one (which would've be 10 years old this year) from my balcony to the dumpster. I decided to be smart and give it away.

[Gumboots]

Yea, the VooDoo thing. That's what I need. I've seen it mentioned several times in the forums. I'll see if i can find it.

http://dege.freeweb.hu/

I have found one odd thing when attempting to run trains to the foot of the falls. Apparently bridges refuse to build below zero altitude. Can't get any to cross a river down at -450ish, no matter how much encouragement I give them. Might be a handy thing to note if anyone is doing a map with canyons. The only way of getting down to such depths is along a grade that doesn't require bridges.

[Hawk]

After 10 years? I was thinking about throwing my last one (which would've be 10 years old this year) from my balcony to the dumpster. I decided to be smart and give it away.

It ran great for that time. I guess that is a good long life for an MB.


Thanks for the link Gumboots. I downloaded the 2.53 version, even though there was a 2.54 version. Since you specifically stated that version I figured I'd go with it.

[Gumboots]

I didn't know there was a 2.54. I just grabbed the latest available at the time I wanted it.

[Gumboots]

Messed around with it some more. I can see this turning into something. I have the rudiments of a story line kicking around inside my head.

Anyway, trains now go to the base of the falls, and for some reason it's happy building bridges below ground level now. Couldn't get them to work yesterday. Today they work. The overall layout looks like this:
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Station at the base of the falls:
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Entrance to the big tunnel, where the canyon takes a hard left bend in the layout overview.
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[Gumboots]

More shotz. This is where the tunnel comes out.
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And this is what you see when you face the other way:
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I used some tricks to get this thing built. Usually you couldn't do this with a wooden bridge.
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The trick here was to build the bridge before putting the lake in. Did something similar for the run along the canyon, building the track along the river bed before putting the river in. If the river went in first, it wouldn't be possible to build that close to it.

[Gumboots]

This is the second station near the falls, but at normal ground level.
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The upper bridge in the middle of the layout. The tunnel entrance is visible in the background.
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And the other station, next to the lake at the top of the waterfalls.
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I think "epic eye candy" has been accomplished.

[Hawk]

I think "epic eye candy" has been accomplished.

Indeed it has.

What's the purpose of this?

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[color=#FFFFFF].[/color]

Is that to add an extra line break?

[RulerofRails]

Looks nice. I remember some waterfalls in the Great Northern map. They were good, but not this level of "epicness."



PS
I'm using version 2.54 of dgVoodoo. Either version should work fine.

[Hawk]

I copied the RT3 installations from a back up (I did not install), placed a shortcut on the desktop, used the engine.cfg from the Vista fix and RT3 seems to run and look fine to me.
What's the purpose of the VooDoo thing?

As for rivers and such, have you guys seen either of Kraellin's maps, either K's Big Cliff or K's Grand Bay (I can't remember which one) in the Other Lands section - bottom of Page 2. He experimented with this stuff way back in the GoD forum days.
Maybe not as extensive as what you've done Gummy, but then - I don't remember.

[RulerofRails]

What's the purpose of the VooDoo thing?

To let your graphics card do most of the work it should when running the game. The Vista fix or "Disable Hardware T&L" option was designed for incompatible graphics cards back in the day, to use extra CPU instead. Basically, game should look better and run faster/smoother. There are some screenshots of the difference it makes visually versus Vista Fix/Disable Hardware T&L on my machine in this post.

I should take another look at Kraelin's maps. I did look at them way back, but my first impression was that there was not enough smoothing and the objectives were rather limited. Maybe it was a hasty conclusion.

ETA: Had a look at some of his maps. My observation was mainly about the US ones, which people have made more complicated scenarios with. They might look good, but they're not a heap of fun to actually build track anywhere near the mountains. Could definitely use smoothing.

I'm not so frequent in the Other World category, I had only downloaded K's Scenic Trip. I missed the two prettiest ones: K's Grand Bay and K's Rocky Road that look great IMO. I don't know how they would play with so few cities. It would probably devolve into a play where individual houses (preferably if you can catch a couple with one station) out in the boonies are your untapped "demand locations." How did you play them?

Interesting how he marked the locked reserve cells with a visible cross in some cities.

[Gumboots]

What's the purpose of this?

Code: Select all

[color=#FFFFFF].[/color]

Is that to add an extra line break?

Yup. I don't like the way the software crams things together. IMO it's easier to read if there's a bit more spacing, particularly when you have text after an image.

[Gumboots]

I copied the RT3 installations from a back up (I did not install), placed a shortcut on the desktop, used the engine.cfg from the Vista fix and RT3 seems to run and look fine to me.
What's the purpose of the VooDoo thing?

You don't need the Vista fix with Voodoo. The default engine.cfg is what you should be using.

On my box, Voodoo not only enables water reflections (which don't work with Hardware T&L disabled) but also enables better shaders everywhere. The game is a lot "flatter" without it. It also helps stabilise frame rate, giving more consistent performance. The cargo price maps also give better graduations between price levels.

As for rivers and such, have you guys seen either of Kraellin's maps, either K's Big Cliff or K's Grand Bay (I can't remember which one) in the Other Lands section - bottom of Page 2. He experimented with this stuff way back in the GoD forum days.
Maybe not as extensive as what you've done Gummy, but then - I don't remember.

Haven't seen them yet, but will take a look.

Edit: Took a quick look at Grand Bay. Spillway effect using particle objects is nicely done. I was thinking I needed them to be denser around the base of my falls. The terrain has a great feel to it, although it would be almost unbuildable in places. The painting shows up the limits of the 1024x1024 bitmap format. You can see every pixel in parts of the map, which somewhat detracts from the effect. The biggest drawback is that you can't get a decent overview on my box, because the map keeps whiting-out large sections.

I'm not really a fan of 1024x1024 maps. Generally I think RT3 does better with smaller ones. The recommended size limit in the editor equates to 640x640, and the PopTop map builder says it has a limit of 768x768. I'm finding with the Latvia map that a 768x512 plays really nicely as an all-round thing. This is 4% less in area than a 640x640, and is easy to handle in overview mode while still giving a decent sense of space and terrain detail.

One of his threads mentioned bridges over bridges on another map (not available). I have played around with that a bit and it is possible, but it's very tricky to arrange and appears to be rather random, even though there is undoubtedly an algorithm behind it. It can also easily result in the lower bridge being cut, meaning it has to be rebuilt to be usable. You can't predict when a bridge crossing another bridge will be possible, so if you were wanting to use that effect you'd have to see where it was possible by trial and error, and then build things to suit around it.

There's a related thing where above-ground track crosses a tunnel. That's generally easier to arrange, but often has the effect of pulling the tunnel's track (not the casing) up to ground level. The result can be a couple of squares in the middle of the tunnel having insane grades even if it was originally laid at 0%. The only way to fix it is to re-lay the tunnel.

[Hawk]

What's the purpose of this?

Code: Select all

[color=#FFFFFF].[/color]

Is that to add an extra line break?

Yup. I don't like the way the software crams things together. IMO it's easier to read if there's a bit more spacing, particularly when you have text after an image.

I just hit Enter twice or three times if needed.

Like this.

So, extracting the 3 dll files isn't enough.

Copy the three .dll files under the "MS" folder in the download and just paste them into your RT3 folder.

You still have to run the exe and still do some extra editing just to get RT3 to run and look good, even though my vid card only has 512 MB VRAM?

http://hawkdawg.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=42226#p42226

Well, since I really don't play RT3 anymore and all I use it for is to get screenshots for the new maps to be added to the archives, I'll just leave well enough alone.

[Gumboots]

Yup. I don't like the way the software crams things together. IMO it's easier to read if there's a bit more spacing, particularly when you have text after an image.

I just hit Enter twice or three times if needed.

Doesn't work. Tried it. The software drops the line breaks between text and images. It'll keep them between paragraphs, but not between paragraphs and images. Come to think of it, the way to deal with this is really CSS. If images were given a top and bottom margin, the problem would go away.

The default CSS is a bit silly:

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div.inline-attachment dl.thumbnail, div.inline-attachment dl.file {
    display: block;
    margin-bottom: 4px;
}

Divs and dl's* are block display by default anyway, so unless they were previously declared as something else (they aren't) it's superfluous to specify block here. And if the margin was called as margin: 1.5em 0; that would automatically give a standard line height spacing between the image and the surrounding content. Which would be cool, but which you probably can't be bothered messing with, so I can just add it to my custom userContent.css for this site.

Oh yeah, note for RoR: Pale Moon supports userContent.css, so if there is something you don't like about the presentation of a site you can write your own CSS to override the default.

*Oh and unless they have another tag also calling the same class name, which they probably don't, there's no need to specify tag there either. Simply using the class name is better for performance and makes for easier customisation.