RRT 3 - Trainmaster

[nedfumpkin]

Okay, so over the weekend I worked on the Bio-Diesel Plant and the petro-tankers. The Bio-diesel plant is basically the oil refinery with some grren paint and stripes on the chimmnies. The petro-tankers are tanker cars painted black. I have always been bothered by the fact that the game used stainless steel tankers for everything. So now petroleum products travel in a black painted steel tanker. I am also going to make white painted tankers for chemicals and gum.

The Bio-Diesel Plant makes petroleum products from hemp (1938) and corn (1950), and has pulp as a by-product of Hemp, and ferilizer as a by-product of corn. Part of me is considering also making plastic as a secondary by-product starting in the 80s, or changing the plastics factory to include cellulose based plastics.

But, nothing is preventing this stuff from also being configured as a mod of 1.06 and 1.05 since the bio-diesel plant can make diesel out of corn and coffee. Oil and Diesel can be changed to travel in the petro-tankers as well. But I'm not going to spend any time on it unless people actually want this as an add-on. Lemmeenoh

[Grandma Ruth]

I'm taking a bit of a break from this for a week or so while I take care of some other real life issues.

Don't forget to tell us how the "Christmas party" thing turned out
Back to your great development work - is there a way to change the car icons on the train list - I've attached a picture to show what I mean.

Click on picture to enlarge

The cars on train 36 could be diesel or milk, oil, - anything liquid, practically. Is there a way to make them look different for each cargo, as well as the actual cars on the trains?

[nedfumpkin]

Re: Christmas party...waiting for the decision from the tribunal expect a few months at least.

It's funny that you bring the car icons up because I am working on that precisely,except I am making Fettucine Alfredo before continuing.

The icons will be the same as the cars so you will be able to tell them apart on the train list. I could make a separate tanker for each liquid cargo, but I think three colours will suffice so you at least know the cargo group that it is in. Mouseover will tell what the precise cargo is.

Once I get these done, I am also going to explore the concept of having multiple cars for the same commodity. It's just a theory, but if I can do it, then alcohol could go in a box car or a ss tanker and it would be random. That's my project for next weekend (...three weekends ago)

[WPandP]

NedF will be picking up my slack, to be producing the various tank cars. My own freight car mods do just what you ask, Ruth, using a unique car for each individual cargo (even if it is just a "roadname" change). I don't think there is any built-in limit to keep us from implementing unique cars and icons for every load in the game. However, this does make it that much less likely that you'll recognize at a glance what kinds of cars your trains are hauling.

My workaround for this was to stick with broad color families, for the most part, such that covered hoppers are grey (ish), boxcars are brown, reefers are yellow, etc. What NedF is talking about, though, relies on your ability to recognize the profile, and then differentiate specific load based on color. My system, with color as the broader category, was developed because some loads change over time, in terms of the car that carries them. Grain, for instance, gets loaded in boxcars up until the 1950's, when the covered hopper was coming into general use. I have bauxite in open gondolas for a while, then in covered hoppers to represent pelletized loads. Sugar can be in either covered hoppers or in tank cars, as corn syrup. Automobiles will start off in boxcars until Autoracks get developed. And so on.

As far as randomizing from multiple cars, I highly doubt that this is possible, but it would be exciting if true. I would think that you would have to enact it at the CargoType level, have a given cargo point to alternative car assets. I don't see it happening, though; change just a single character in an asset filename and the game chokes. Everything is pretty much locked into 1-to-1 correspondence.

My efforts at developing multi-car sets could have the appearance of different cars, with a little work; the "car" that is Truck1 could be skinned a little different than Truck2, in some cases. It would only work for cars whose skin includes both sides, which isn't very many.

[nedfumpkin]

My plan is to try to make duplicate car and cgo files with one of them A and the other B. So you would have for alcohol.. alcoholAA.car and alcoholAB.car. one would be a boxcar, the other a tanker. I'll also try using "1" if that doesn't work. Either it will always take the first listed, the game will crash, or it might cycle through them. If this works, then it can also be ported out to passenger carriages.

Something, I haven't really decided yet is whether I am going to increase the number of eras for freight cars, and if so, how many and which ones. I do want to duplicate box cars so that there are a number of different ones, just for eye candy if nothing else, but also to allow for customizing if people want to. Of course, if I was Google or Microsoft, I'd figure out a way to sell advertising on the side of boxcars and retire a paper millionaire next Thursday.

Here's the Bio-Diesel Plant....

[nedfumpkin]

Petro-Tanker - for all your oil tycoon needs. :)

[Grandma Ruth]

That's it! Wow!

[JFMarvelous]

Looks good Ned, And as always, it's not if we want these new mods and upgrades,it's when can we get them Keep'em coming.

[WPandP]

Ned, since you've done a skin and I've done a similar skin (I never released it, but I do have a black tank car lurking around my hard drive), maybe we can use one for oil and the other for diesel. For milk, I've long been mulling the concept of a true milk car, though it would require significant 3DP editing. Of course, there were express milk cars that were basically just boxcars on passenger car trucks; that is pretty simple to skin.

Maybe we should swap some assets by email and see what we've got.

[nedfumpkin]

Thank Ruth and JF...I am hoping to have something packaged up this weekend. It'll be a few things for 1.05 and 1.06.

WP&P...I saw that you'd started work on tankers...but figured you'd never finished them since you didn't have them uploaded. I'm still torn over whether or not to have a tanker for oil and another for diesel. I want to make the white chemical tanker before re-visiting the black ones.

Trade assets? Sure, but I have tonnes of stuff on the go, and I am still sorting out the freight cars you have going already. Easter is a 4 day weekend for me, and I am hoping to get a lot done between now and then and just maybe have something for people to start looking at...but expect a d/l of about 150mb at least. But I make no promises other than I am continually working on this whenever I can.

Still trying to figure out what you mean by a milk car...I'm fine with the stainless steel tanker car for milk, but I am always open to new ideas.

[WPandP]

NedF -

What I meant by asset-swapping was that you send me your black tanker and I send you mine, and then presto we each have two skins slightly different, one for oil one for diesel.

My intention all along was to have a unique car for each cargo, even if some of them look rather similar. This way, the start/stop dates can be staggered and the car weights can ratchet up gradually; I've mapped all this out in a spreadsheet, which is serving as my roadmap. However, once I discovered the secret of multiple cars, that sort of became part of the grand design, to make all freight cars come in pairs or triples, and that takes a fair amount more time.

I've gotten away from productive work in the last few weeks, though. I need a kick in the rear, I guess. I've got a vista-dome observation car in the works, just a few details to resolve.

[FMCRR]

I've gotten away from productive work in the last few weeks, though. I need a kick in the rear, I guess. I've got a vista-dome observation car in the works, just a few details to resolve.

I got a size 12 attached to the end of my foot if you think that would help any.....
Just let me know!!!!

[davey917]

Still trying to figure out what you mean by a milk car...I'm fine with the stainless steel tanker car for milk, but I am always open to new ideas.

Milk transport followed a similer development path as grain & corn.
Even as late as the 1950's, milk was transported in 20(?) gallon cans, picked up at a local depot, either in dedicated boxcars or, on a smaller scale, in the baggage section of a combine.
There were, however, specialized 'tank cars' used for larger operations in more urban areas near large cities. They started as tanks enclosed in a boxcar, then to specialized refrigerated & Insulated Tank cars. The Wikipedia Tank Car Page has a link to a photo of a restored, and very destinctive, Borden Milk Tank Car.
Milk, in the US, is transported mostly by truck today, with the possible exception of Mega-urban areas like New York, Chicago, or L.A.

[nedfumpkin]

After considering all of this, I think I like the idea of having separate cars for diesel and oil. I'll also use refrigerate cars for milk, at least until the 50s. I am going to take the produce and put them in their own cars since produce is picked early with the intention of ripening in transit and that doesn't happen so well in the cold.

[nedfumpkin]

From left to right...

Oil - Petroleum - Chemicals - Gum - Milk

Milk is in a refrigerated car until 1940. The other cars have different years for when they change. Chemicals are brown until 1970.

[Grandma Ruth]

When will they be available to download???

[nedfumpkin]

My plan was to have them ready today...but I have to go out this afternoon so it shouldn't be long. I just finished the skins for the B era for all the cars. I also want to make the service centre (filling station - gas station - convenience store) as part of the package.

[Grandma Ruth]

[nedfumpkin]

I'm still working on the Rainbow Tanker - Petro Pak. :)

I've got all the skins for the cars done, but I still have to clean up some profile images, and make the service station. I had to go out of town today for a hearing test and didn't get back until late. So it's be a few days. On another note, I have supersonic hearing. Exceptional even. For once, having a sheet filled with almost all zeros was a good thing.

[nedfumpkin]

The Rainbow Tankers Petro Pak...