Rolling Stock skinning ideas

[WPandP]

Okay, so now I have re-posted the ZIP file for the Grain car; download it with the same link as before. Or you can just click here:

http://wpandp.com/RRT3/Cgran.zip

Hawk, this is now ready for the big show, go ahead and add it to your site! Thanks.

Those of you that downloaded it before, all you need to do is swap out the PK4 file with the one in this ZIP.

[Hawk]

Got 'em added.

[WPandP]

Okay, here is the early evidence of the feasibility of multiple-car cuts. This makes each car icon in the train list get represented in-game as 2 cars. How is this done? Well, each car is composed of a BODY, two or more TRUCKS, and some number of BOGIES (wheels). There can only be one BODY, but you can have more than one TRUCK... so, I've simply taken the car's BODY file, renamed it TRUCK1, and hex edited all the Y-values of the points in the car to move forward by half of the car length. Then, I did the same thing for TRUCK2, but moved the points backward by half a car length. At the moment, I'm using one of the car's original TRUCKs as if it were the BODY, because it still needs a BODY to connect the trucks to.

The result is an apparent train of 13 cars plus a caboose. The milk car in the middle is just a regular single car, but compare what's on screen to what is in the train list. What I still need to figure out is why the train bunches up so much on right curves but stretches out on left turns, and I also need to figure out why the cars don't flex as much as they should when going around curves. They do bend a little, perhaps enough to be convincing, but I'd prefer a little better tracking through curves. I'm going to keep at it, and hopefully figure out these issues.

[coruscate]

Oh that's niiiiiiiiiiice

[nedfumpkin]

Yes, very nice, and exactly how do you expect me not to fall in love with this?

[WPandP]

Update on Cuts of Cars:

I've done all that I can think of, but it appears that there is some sort of hard limit to how much a truck can flex or rotate, when tracking around a curve. The wheels aren't really attached to the rails, as they would be in real life; rather, the wheels are attached to the truck, which is attached to the body, and the body attaches to the track at its center point. Thus, the degree to which the trucks rotate is some kind of function based on the curvature of the rails, and it is very imprecise. To see what I mean, you can just look closely at the EP2 Bipolar, when it goes through a tight curve; it will come off the tracks a bit.

There is no apparent fix for this, all we can do is get it to approximate as best we can, and this approximation is done by shifting the truck's center of rotation forward or back. The other thing that must be done is to take the first and last trucks and "embed" them in with the car body, as part of the process of redefining the original Body as one of the Trucks. See the attached diagram. By hex editing the Y-values of the points in the Body, the whole car can apparently shift forward or back; with the whole "box" of the boxcar pushed forward by half a car length, that "box" plus the first truck then become Truck1. This means copy/pasting in the points that define the original Truck1 into the original's Body.3dp, as well as the triangles that define the faces.

This method results in a pair of cars that ride on two trucks (at the ends) which do not swivel, and two trucks which do swivel (the center ones, now called the Body, are always tangent to the track). The pivot point for the new Truck1 and Truck2 is roughly about where the bolster for that central truck would be. This seems to work fairly well, and it works best for shorter cars; the longer the car, the more exaggerated the angular error is.

[coruscate]

Awesome work, I can't wait to play with it ^_^

[WPandP]

Okay, here is a Christmas gift for you all!

My first "multiple-car" mod is ready. This is the Furniture Box Car, and around 1915 it starts to carry each load of furniture in two cars rather than one. I have added little orange dots above the car icon in the train list, which designate how many cars make up the "cut of cars". Mind you, these cars do weigh as much as two cars, so they will tax your engines that much more. In my testing, though, even the early engines had plenty enough power to handle the increased train weight. You earn as much as you always do for delivering a load of furniture, it's just that now you have to deliver two loaded cars to earn that revenue, rather than one. Of course, this also means you'll have pleasingly long trains snaking around your rails. See the screenshot attached: this is a train of 14 boxcars and one caboose.

Installing this mod will require that you replace your Furniture.cty file; I suggest saving a backup copy of this file in a different folder, in case you want to go back to using the normal single boxcar. The other files go where they go - see the ReadMe - and do not overwrite anything else. However, be aware that the highly modified files contained herein may make your game unstable; I've had some crashes when rotating the camera, for instance, which puzzle me. I'd appreciate your feedback, and let me know if you have any other issues.

Enjoy!

http://wpandp.com/RRT3/BfurnNW.zip

[coruscate]

This doesn't replace the existing files that make up normal boxcars or even the standard boxcar, which if I understand correctly is just a catch all boxcar anyway?

I've tried a few earlier rolling stock mods and I'm eager to try this one out and start-a-skinnin'.

[WPandP]

Correct- this just redirects Furniture to load into a car called "Bfurn" rather than "Box", handled in the .CTY file. All your other boxcar loads will be in normal single boxcars (until I get around to releasing other mods I guess!). All of my rolling stock mods work this way, so you can return to default cars just by changing the CTY file (in CargoTypes).

[coruscate]

Cool, then I will definitely jump in on this. I read your tutorial a few times so I think I get it, if we can get these working I'll definitely incorporate them into my mod since I need to assign these cargos a real car anyway. I managed to find a few images and sent Ned some as well for his Canadian grain cars.

[WPandP]

If you can get the hang of 3D editing, those Canadian grain cars would look a lot better if the ACF Covered Hopper (default D-era CHOP) was stretched longer and a third or even fourth hopper bottom added. This would be an involved project, I admit, but certainly within the realm of feasibility.

[coruscate]

Cool, I'm going to edit a few of my new catgories to use this car just to test how the weight affects gameplay. I've used quite a few of these mods but haven't had anything to offer because I've been so busy modding the game myself ^^;;

[WPandP]

What have I been up to lately?

I've decided to revisit my earlier rolling stock mods, now that I know how to do 3DP editing and other tricks. I'm working on fixing some of the compromises in my Express Cars mod, which a lot of you are already using. The biggest thing is this: adding in a "Heavyweight" era, from roughly 1915 to 1935, when the passenger cars are long, with clerestory roofs and enclosed vestibules, riding on six-axle trucks. I started with the default B-era Mail car's body, since it had the right kind of clerestory, then stretched it out and tugged and pulled, and basically created the trucks from scratch. Here is an initial screen shot; I won't have this available for a little while, though, as I need to tend to a few other things, such as the Amtrak MHC (the last Mail car) which needs to be lowered, as well as other tweaks. I do intend to create heavyweight Diner and Mail cars, plus probably another troop sleeper.

NedF - I know you're including my express cars with your bundle, just be aware that I'll have a major re-release soon. I'm actually renaming all the assets (to follow the system I developed for freight cars, as described on my web page) so this won't conflict with the earlier version. This coach, for instance, is "XpassX_": Prefix "X" for Express, "Pass" for cargo type (passengers), and suffix "X" for era.

[nedfumpkin]

Here's something you could make....

I'm working on a skin for the 1940-1959 era for the CP Rail "The Canadian" It came out in 51, so it will be early, and it is similar to your Amtrak skins in that it's a stainless steel car. For the 60s, I've made a black and white CN coach, then comes Via Rail stuff.


I like the idea for your heave coaches for the preceding era.

I'm trying to think if there is a way of making the dining car look like this:

The E18 or Class 103 electric locomotives might work, but the undercarriage would have to be transformed to a passenger carriage.

But it would look really cool if it worked....except I have figured out how to modify the cars yet.

[WPandP]

Personally, to do something like that, I'd begin with a regular dining car body and just add points to create the extra faces. Treat the boat tail like a piece glued on the back. It would take a LONG time to get all the proportions just right, and I'm not sure if there's room in the skin to add faces corresponding to the dome. In short, it would be a big project - one I've already thought of and haven't yet been willing to tackle. Just doing the boat tail would be enough, I think, as this was common whereas the dome was unique to a few trains that sported it.

[nedfumpkin]

That's why I thought about the E18 since it appears to already have a dome and a roundish nose. The problem would be squaring the other side and lengthening it. But then the height might be a factor. For now my plan was to just use the same skin as the coach until I can figure something out...but that falls to the very bottom of the list.

[WPandP]

Okay, I've finally got all three express cars (mail, coach, and diner) up to snuff for the heavyweight era (the 1920's). Here is a screenshot of all three. The Dining car is treated here as an Observation car, as it always gets tacked onto the end of the train - imagine Herbert Hoover campaigning from that rear platform! I will be releasing these as part of a revised Express Cars mod; I'm working on cleaning up the other cars in a bunch of subtle ways, such as lowering and lengthening the Amtrak MHC (mail car) to look right. Maybe in the next week, keep checking back!

[Gwizz]

Is it possible to skin a car to look like a B unit?
Or, a 180 degree A unit?

[WPandP]

Gwizz -

Yes, it is possible to do what you are asking, but it isn't done in the skin. You have to hex-edit the 3DP file, which is what I did to create my pair of N&W SD40's; one is flipped 180 degrees from the other.