Cargo weight revamping

[Hawk]

Those look good Gumboots. Nice job.

[Gumboots]

Got something worked out for the open hoppers too. Unfortunately the default load graphics look like total rubbish, but I can't be bothered fixing those at the moment. Beats me why someone thought iron ore looked like radioactive lava, and bauxite looked like minced chicken guts, but we'll just have to put up with it for a bit. Remapping all of the cargo models to a better image isn't actually difficult, but it's not something I want to do right now.

Anyway this is what the hoppers will look like. The A are ones are so tiddly that I decided to do them as triples just for fun. Of course I already had late era triples set up ready for the H era car, although I did change them slightly to give them a bit more oomph.

[Gumboots]

I'm going to push the hoppers out this week, or at least by sometime on the weekend. I've exported all the files for covered hoppers and am about to start on open hoppers. I figure I can get tankers and reefers done next week, as most of the work on those is already done. Stock cars and box cars currently need a bit of work, and flatcars are going to need more, so they should come over the course of the next few weeks or so.

Anyway this is what I have for tankers at the moment. I was thinking of doing them as singles, but can do them as doubles easily enough if people would prefer that.

The remaining classes (box, flat, and stock) will definitely be singles, apart from the late era double well car lunacy, which I'm going to throw in just to see who freaks out.

[RulerofRails]

Looking good! Single tankers sounds good. I think it would be nice to sort of mimic what trains are using in bulk (a generalization), making those the doubles. The ones you have done so far seem to reflect this IMO. I would suggest making double boxcars before a certain point (1950ish).

[Gumboots]

It'd have to be either 1940 or 1965, because those are the change years for boxcars. Of the two, 1965 would make more sense. That way you could bring in the 86 foot boxcars in roughly the same year as they really were introduced. You'd need 86 footers, because if you're running doubles before then they would be 40 footers (at a minimum) so anything less than the 86's would appear to be going backwards in terms of a progression. Which is fine if that's what people want for a basic pack. I already have the 86's modelled and skinned, so we can certainly have them.

[RulerofRails]

My suggestion was based on the fact that boxcar traffic seems to have been reduced (overall generalization) once highways and trucking especially long distance became more common. So the idea was to visually reduce the impact of boxcars after a certain point in a typical "mixed" consist that the game will cobble together. Maybe it isn't a good idea in practice. The only double box-cars I have actually run in the game are the ones that WP&P made ages ago.

Just went and reviewed your plan. Thinking sensibly that would be better for a general pack, given the 86-footers aren't used in other parts of the world. Doubles would be running over the length limit anyway.

[Gumboots]

Yeah I'm not keen on it. I can't see visually halving traffic being a good idea. RT3 has several things that aren't entirely realistic. Stock cars in the 21st century are an obvious example. We have them and are going to keep having them, even though they aren't used anymore IRL. Ditto for the boxcar stuff. I think I'll stick to that plan you linked to.

[Gumboots]

Just ran some tests on the hoppers. They all work. Only catches are:

1/ I forgot to set the axle positions for the open hoppers. This is easy to fix.

2/ The E era covered hoppers have the same bug that the Class P8's tender sometimes gets, namely that the game generates a random white smoke file at the body origin. Beats me why it does this. The P8 tender doesn't even do it consistently. A lot of the time it's fine but every so often it'll pour out white smoke. So far the E covered hopper is doing it consistently.

This may, or may not, be easy to fix. None of the other hoppers do it, so I'll try messing around with car ID numbers and see if that helps. It may be that some ID numbers trigger the bug, in which case having a list of them could be useful. If that doesn't work, I currently have no idea what will. In which case we'd be back to RT3 being intractably annoying and borking things up randomly. Which would be awesome.

[Hawk]

2/ The E era covered hoppers have the same bug that the Class P8's tender sometimes gets, namely that the game generates a random white smoke file at the body origin. Beats me why it does this. The P8 tender doesn't even do it consistently. A lot of the time it's fine but every so often it'll pour out white smoke. So far the E covered hopper is doing it consistently.

I've never noticed that before. But then, I rarely run steam unless I have to.

[Gumboots]

It's bloody annoying. If it wasn't for this we'd have a complete set of covered hoppers ready to go, right now. But no, once again RT3 has to go and screw up what should be a simple and easy process. It's things like this that really knacker the entire modification process. Now I'll have to waste time trying to find a fix for this bug, with no guarantee of a positive result.

I just tested changing car ID number. Makes no difference. I even tested using a diesel instead of steam loco. Makes no difference. I have noticed that there are two emission points, not just one. They're not coming from the body origin. They're coming from ground level, directly under the centre of the innermost axles on the car body (where in this case, the car "body" carries the inner 8 sets of wheels and 2 inner truck graphics).

The other thing is that I've noticed the "smoke" doesn't behave like ordinary smoke files. Ordinary smoke files only emit a little bit at stations, ramping up to a lot at full speed. The randomly-generated smoke is going full bore even when sitting at stations. I think it might actually be a volcano file or something, rather than a locomotive smoke file.

Edit: Just tried changing start year. No difference. Changed weight. No difference. There's hardly thing else that can be changed in the .car file, and in any case the coding is identical to the other cars that do work perfectly.

[Gumboots]

Here, someone test this for me on their box. It's the complete set, A to H eras inclusive. The problem era is E, from 1925 to 1949.

Installation is the standard deal: back up anything you think should be backed up, then copy the files to the relevant folders.

Edit: Zip removed. Debugged version is a few posts down the page.

[RulerofRails]

My memory on the smoking P8 is quite vague. I'll look at it, and give the new files a run.

[RulerofRails]

Unfortunately, I get smoke too.

Yeah, the P8 sort of hazes a bit at rest, which isn't really that bad. These things are belching, wow!

I tried a little messing with the .car files and I don't think it's a bug with that specific spot in the list or ID because if I call other models for example the D 3dp file, that works correctly. Did you try to see if these cars do the same thing as singles?

[Gumboots]

The P8 tender will belch the same way at times, but not always. It's intermittent. The "hazing at rest" is just the game's normal locomotive steam files. When the tender belching smoke kicks in it's really noticeable.

Anyway I just made a complete new test installation, with everything set back to default. E era covered hoppers still belch, so at least we know for sure it's something to do with that particular car. I'll repack them a couple of different ways and see if it makes any difference.

[Gumboots]

Found a fix. I repacked everything so the E era was renamed to a W era. IOW, xHopCoverE everywhere was just changed to xHopCoverW. For some weird reason (and I have no idea why) this fixes the car so it doesn't smoke. What the heck. It works. I'll take it.

Screenshot and debugged zip are attached.

(Oh and just for the record, I tried repacking them as single cars too but that didn't help)

Edit: Forgot one edit in that zip. New zip uploaded.

[RulerofRails]

Tried the updated zip (RC2). Worked after changing the .car file references for the W-era from "E" to "W". No smoke.

[Gumboots]

Edit: Forgot one edit in that zip. New zip uploaded.

Fixed. Grab RC3.

[Gumboots]

Found another dumb limitation in the game. Cargo models can only be applied to a body, not to trucks. On trucks the cargo model simply won't be called, even if the file exists. The screenshot shows what happens. Although correctly skinned cargo models for coal and iron are in the PK4, all that's visible is the underlying base skin of crushed rock.

This is a bit of a nuisance, since it means that to get the right look for double and triple open hoppers there will need to be a specific car type for each cargo, with the cargo skinning built in. Fortunately this is not difficult, since all it means is some copying and mass renaming of files, along with a bit of skin tweaking, and some minor hex file edits.

Anyway at least they all appear to be working.

[Gumboots]

Ok, open hoppers are done too, at least for 1.05. There are three separate classes for bauxite, coal and iron so they all get the right cargo skins. When I get around to doing 1.06 stuff, might as well have specific ones for ore and rock too, but for the moment I'm only doing 1.05 cargoes.

Have all been tested. All work. H era looks like the screenshot. Files are in the zip. Installation is the usual procedure.

Edit: Zip removed due to later version being made.

[Gumboots]

Alllllllllllllllllllllllllll righty then tankers. Seven of them.

Yes I know I said next week, but they were so easy to finish and I was on a roll. They look like this:

Installation is the usual deal. Weights for each era are:

A (pre-1875) - 7.6 tons
B (1875-1899) - 10.6 tons
C (1900-1924) - 14.5 tons
D (1925-1949) - 21.5 tons
E (1950-1974) - 29.8 tons
F (1975-1999) - 39.8 tons
G (2000-9999) - 50.0 tons

---

Edit: Old zip removed. New and better pack available on this link.