Two new scenarios

[thietavu]

I have now started to convert two huge scenarios of my own, Scandinavia and China, to TM. So far, the main "obstacle" has been that something previously called as "rice" is now called as "Lavender" - and especially under Windows 7, that rather ugly purple stuff simply looks... well, ugly. ;)

Otherways, I can only thank all of you, guys, who made this possible!! I hope I can bring my own, humble part, by giving these two scenarios as complete and good as possible for people to play. It will take some more investigation around the towns/cities involved (in China's case, 170), but I hope that soon enough both of these scenarios might be nice challenges for all TM players!

[nedfumpkin]

Looking forward to it....

The crops were changed to meet the farms. Coruscate came up with the lavender farm, although I made the crops. They produce medicine.

To get rice produced, you use the farmstead community, Adjust production levels for what you want, although they show the same crops as the dairy community, which is just hay.

[thietavu]

Thanks for clarifying these things to me - and sorry for me being impolite and calling that lavender "ugly"... It isn't ugly, it was just my mild temporary frustration after seeing that all the countless rice fields in my China map had turned purple! :D Well, that only gave me a good reason to do some serious changes in that map's looks. :)

Otherwise, the conversion has been surprisingly straight forward. I played my first TM version of China for about 5 hours without problems. Even the balance issues weren't that bad. Of course, I'm now going through all the 176 (yes: now there are six more! ;) towns and cities, using Wikipedia, MS Encarta and whatever I can find to get the industries and other things just right. Or as right as possible without going crazy...

What did, however, drive me nuts, was my other big scenario: Scandinavia (and large chunks of Russia & Central Europe). It just crashed TM no matter how carefully I removed all the 1.06 industries - just like I did with China map. Then I noticed something peculiar: the changes I made to two things (ore mine & concrete plant) were not saved. No matter what I did, they always came back.

Finally before giving up, I remembered: I had manually placed some things on the map - including these two types. Victory? Well... After bulldozing the ****** things from the map (painful because ore mines are small and the map is huge), I once again saved, hoped and tried... And: CRASH! You guessed it. :P

Finally I did what I've learned works as the "last hope" in IT issues: tried something illogical. Went through all my 100+ cities and made sure that these "ghost buildings" show zero % weighting. Saved. Tried. Crash. But then I did that again (!) with no changes - and finally: worked like a charm. Weird.

So, there is a chance you can one day try building railroads from Helsinki to Murmansk and even Tshernobyl... (yes, I just had to include that town! ;) - and from Tallinn to Amsterdam.

One thing I noticed: although TM loads a LOT faster than RRT3 and somehow even feels snappier, the frame rates I get in windowed mode are truly sad. Perhaps this is the penalty from having to disable that one GPU acceleration part in Windows 7, but I was amazed to see 20 FPS and even below with 3.7 GHz quadcore computer with ATI 4890 and 8 GB RAM. Is the new "business intelligence" in game this much heavier, or what might be the reason? I was used to 60 FPS and more in RRT3 1.06.

But once again: FANTASTIC WORK, GUYS - THANK YOU!!!

[nedfumpkin]

Thanks for the compliments, and great to see it work out.

If either, or both of those maps want to become campaign scenarios, there is always a bit more room. Capaigns are divided by century, so it's just a matter of when the start dates occur.

Looking forward to playing the maps.

And yeah..China is a big map...when Ifinally get to the nukular map I am making, the Anthracite base map is pretty much the same, so I'll have a billion cities and towns to sort through as well. :)

[thietavu]

Thanks for the compliments, and great to see it work out.

If either, or both of those maps want to become campaign scenarios, there is always a bit more room. Capaigns are divided by century, so it's just a matter of when the start dates occur.

Looking forward to playing the maps.

And yeah..China is a big map...when Ifinally get to the nukular map I am making, the Anthracite base map is pretty much the same, so I'll have a billion cities and towns to sort through as well. :)

Now everything else about the China scenario is ready, only some of the scripts are missing (I'm a total newbie with creating them, so it goes slowly). After playing the end result for two hours I'm so far very happy about it. The huge size and realism (the map is so accurate that one could actually learn Asian geography and business playing it! ;) make countless very different challenges possible using it. For example, I decided to connect Shanghai to Chengdu in surrounded-by-mountains Sichuan... It's not easy - not in real life, not in this game! :) It took me 8 1/2 game years to do it, and the experience was extremely interesting challenge to me (climbing mighty mountains using locos of 1850!).

I think many of us will scratch their heads trying to reach Chengdu! ;)

Some other very interesting (to me, at least) challenges with this map are involved with Mongolia, Trans-Siberian railroad, Vietnam (and their war), Tibet and tropical Bangladest on the feet of Himalayan mountains... Some may find it interesting to unleash North-East China's endless industrial power - once you can deliver there enough coal, iron and so on! Then there is the politically unstable Korea(s) to tackle. And Japan, Myanmar, India... Even the first task, connecting Beijing to Shanghai isn't trivial.

I would be glad to give this and maybe the Scandinavian scenario to TM campaign scenario(s) if you and other people consider these good and interesting enough. I have designed both of these "giants" to be kind of very long and relaxing experiences where the challenge is often quite different from most RRT3 scenarios. Here your problem might not be clock or getting 20MUSD personal money. It might be what to do with your army of 60 20 year old, totally worn-out Pacifics which can't handle China's often cruel grades any longer... This map shows some interesting "features" of many engines. For example, one otherwise very powerful and usable steamer doesn't last longer than 5 years in the mountains of Mongolia. Buy 60 of those - and you'll be in big trouble in 5 years! ;) So, in these scenarios you don't need to think very fast. You need to think right, realizing that a network of even 300+ engines taking right stuff to the right places isn't just action game. It takes some planning. I myself found, for example, that with this amount of traffic, the biggest cities do actually need 2 if not 3 railway stations! :)

Maybe we should take the first version of my China map for RRT3 out from the map archive for now. I'll update that version too, but I think this new version is so much better in all ways that the old version might just be a disappointment for too many people... What do you think?

[nedfumpkin]

Sounds like you pretty much captured the essence of Trainmaster.

I know I'm the worst offender for all that I have written about TM when it comes to the Persian Electric map because although it is a big map, it's not really a detail oriented map, but what you are describing has some similarities to some of the things I was doing in Black Diamonds, although completely differently.

Personally, I have gotten really bored with the same old connect two cities make a gazillion dollars in x years scenarios. I am looking for more challenges, and twists in the game.

So to that end, I have even decided that I am scrapping the CA01 Birth of a Nation map,and starting it all from scratch with a brand new map made from scratch, and that map will not only be bigger, but cover only as much as about 1.3 of the original Ontario/Quebec/NY-MA map. My first draft of the map itself came out well, but I have an idea that I want to try which will make it even better I think...such is what I am working on tonight.

So again, I am looking forward to when these maps are done.

[edbangor]

Personally, I have gotten really bored with the same old connect two cities make a gazillion dollars in x years scenarios. I am looking for more challenges, and twists in the game.

So to that end, I have even decided that I am scrapping the CA01 Birth of a Nation map,and starting it all from scratch with a brand new map made from scratch, and that map will not only be bigger, but cover only as much as about 1.3 of the original Ontario/Quebec/NY-MA map. My first draft of the map itself came out well, but I have an idea that I want to try which will make it even better I think...such is what I am working on tonight.

That's a shame as I rather liked "Birth of a Nation" as it's a good way to get people into TM without dropping them in at the deepend of the cargo chain.
Plus there's some nice twist with changing companies etc.

Still more TM scenarios is always going to be good.... just stay away from those average speed goals..

[nedfumpkin]

Oh please don't get me wrong...I am making a new version of the same scenario. The differences will relate to the American companies, but not the basic premise of the game at play. You are still going to have to switch companies and take over your first.

The original map goes from Windsor to Quebec City....Today it is known as the Windsor-Quebec Corridor, and it is where VIA trains are going back and forth with stops along the way. Travelled that train many times, at various points. The map also goes down to Boston. For me making that connection has usually been burn track anyways.

The new map, at 900x600 or there abouts, covers the area from Kingtson (west) to Rivière-du-loup (east), Lac St. Jean (North), and Plattsburg NY/Bangor Maine in the south. With the exception of Bangor, and Rivière-du-loup, I have been everywhere on this map. (Even Chicoutimi).

So the geography will be much better represented. As I've said before, I never liked the original map because the geography was poorly represented. I think now the islands that form Montreal will be much better, and represent the real challenges of getting a RR onto it.

[edbangor]

Plattsburg NY/Bangor Maine in the south. With the exception of Bangor,

Your discriminating against the Bangors.... I'll have to get onto my American cousin NY/Bangor about that...

[thietavu]

An update regarding the huge China scenario under construction...

As said, I have pretty much re-made it from the early, not too great "China Ultimate" version I posted on RRT3 section. Now, after 21 improvement rounds and endless hours of testing, the new China scenario for TrainMaster is close to getting ready. Now the winning conditions more or less work (some tweaking still needed) and many parts of the map (especially Tibet and Mongolia) both look much better and also have new places to visit, many corrections made (locations, details, industries, etc etc), and overall "now it's what it was supposed to be" feeling to myself.

Some interesting notes... As this is a HUGE scenario, I tried to really push it in my latest "test game". How about having very nearly all the now 180+ cities connected, some even having several stations - and close to 500 (!) engines running by 1930? ;) The amount of cargo and express moving on those virtual rails defied my sanity... With 180+ cities and a huge country, that's simply realism - and realism of China's railroads has been my aim from the start.

I noticed that "fleet management" will really be a top priority in this scenario. Managing 500 or so engines (I don't know what the actual limit might be - 400..500 worked still fine on my computer) can be a nightmare if not planned carefully from the start. Since this is also a VERY long scenario, from 1850 up to 2020, things happen; wars come and go, borders may open and close, and again: keeping your fleet of locomotives both efficient, reliable and suitable for the ever-changing times takes some serious planning. = fun. :) In normal RRT3 scenarios one very seldom needs to even consider, for example, having different tracks for different kinds of trains (not to mention having more than one station per city).

Here it's all different. You need bandwidth! You need track, lots of track. Lots of stations. China needs to haul its massive resources as freight through often very difficult terrain. That, again, can virtually stop all the other traffic, including express trains! You may easily create one hell of a "traffic jam" where nothing really happens. ;)

How does such a traffic jam happen? One warning example... and a hint, too. Some engines in RRT3/TM are pretty unique in their capabilities. One of them is Shay... There are *many* situations in this scenario where a Shay can be about the only usable way to move things between some more difficult mountaineous places. Fine. So, you put your Shays to priority class "slow freight" because that's what they are: ****** usable but also ****** slow!

Now, sometimes some tough mountain track connects to your more ordinary mainlines! This is where things get tricky. You probably run your mainline freight fleet quite slowly, too, on the same, lowest priority, saving the "middle" priority for fast freight and mixed trains. And then there are the expresses in their own priority class...

The problem: a Shay is SO slow that if it needs to share a mainline with "normal" freight engines, it forces them to halt! Things are even worse if your Shays actually carry express too. Then it may take a lifetime (almost) before your Shay even gets a permission to leave some very busy station such as Beijing. It then very efficiently slows down all the other traffic - and doesn't get away from that busy mainline almost at all... Once I was almost fascinated watching an old freight steamer trying to leave Anshan main station. It took about 5 minutes, if not more... And in this game, 5 minutes is a *lot*! ;)

Ways to avoid such situations? Well, there are ways. You could always build a side station only for Shays (or bullet trains, etc.).

Another thing to consider in China: the routes. You can, of course, create a cobweb of 180+ stations wildly connected to each other. Chances are that you'll go crazy before you lose the whole game... Like in real China, it's all about huge amounts of things moving on clear, sensible, long routes. North-South, East-West, whatever. For example, in North-East corridor of China (steel, coal, iron, oil with connections to Trans-Siberian Railroads) you don't need "mountain"-type locomotive monsters on its flat main lines. From Nanjing to Chengdu (a typical West-East line) it's completely different! You need completely different engines and planning to make that work!

The beauty of planning these "mainlines" very early in a smart way is that if and when you need to, for example, upgrade your Nanjing-Chengdu locomotive fleet, they are very likely easy to find and replace! Try replacing single locos in a fleet of 500... Good luck! :) So, think big. Don't buy just single locos. Buy fleets for a route! Every time you open a new route, buy 10..20 engines of the same type (if sensible) to run on it. Some of the engines are very, very good for this scenario. And some are very close to useless... A part of the fun will be to find out what is what! ;)

But then again, the biggest fun is in trying everything and finding out things nobody expected!

I hope to finish this scenario in a couple of weeks now. Still need at least one complete test run. But we can already see that TM is capable of handling massive torture and load. Great work, as said many times already! :)