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RealRailway (RRW) - Development and Support

Started by Swordmaster, June 14, 2013, 08:42:19 AM

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Simmer2

Hello everyone and thank you for keeping SC4 alive :)

I seem to have a problem with the new RRW texture from Rivit not showing up in game.
I removed any and all rail texture mods I had but that did not work.
I then removed all the plugins but the NAM 32 folders and Rivit's RUM 2 and still no new texture showing, only the original Maxis.
Also none of the wide radius and FAAR pieces have the new texture, also some of the elevated pieces still show the Maxis rail texture.
Any solutions would be greatly appreciated.

Sim
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Indiana Joe

Quote from: Simmer2 on March 20, 2015, 11:30:40 PM
Hello everyone and thank you for keeping SC4 alive :)

I seem to have a problem with the new RRW texture from Rivit not showing up in game.
I removed any and all rail texture mods I had but that did not work.
I then removed all the plugins but the NAM 32 folders and Rivit's RUM 2 and still no new texture showing, only the original Maxis.
Also none of the wide radius and FAAR pieces have the new texture, also some of the elevated pieces still show the Maxis rail texture.
Any solutions would be greatly appreciated.

Sim

You have to do a Custom Install from the NAM installer and select the RRW to be installed.  It does not come in the standard package.

Simmer2

#882
Quote from: Indiana Joe on March 21, 2015, 12:20:15 AM
Quote from: Simmer2 on March 20, 2015, 11:30:40 PM
Hello everyone and thank you for keeping SC4 alive :)

I seem to have a problem with the new RRW texture from Rivit not showing up in game.
I removed any and all rail texture mods I had but that did not work.
I then removed all the plugins but the NAM 32 folders and Rivit's RUM 2 and still no new texture showing, only the original Maxis.
Also none of the wide radius and FAAR pieces have the new texture, also some of the elevated pieces still show the Maxis rail texture.
Any solutions would be greatly appreciated.

Sim

You have to do a Custom Install from the NAM installer and select the RRW to be installed.  It does not come in the standard package.

Hello Joe and thank you for the quick response.

Duh! I was looking in the wrong place during the custom install.

Thanks again Joe :)

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roadgeek

I have been wanting to see FA STR. Has any of that been developed?

eggman121

Not yet.

The development of the RRW has been at a standstill ever since the lead modder has been away.

NAM 33 will be more of a RHW focused release again, but future NAM editions are slated to have more RRW content

-eggman121

eggman121

Back again  ;D

Well with the NAM 33 Pre Release out here is some of the Current Plans for NAM 34

I term it as Real Railway FlexTrack.

https://youtu.be/mvReWFhuA2U

Remember this is only going to become available FROM NAM 34 Onwards!!!

I have decided to make this video public to reassure you that the RRW will receive due treatment!

-eggman121


JoeST

gosh that looks amazing you're really pulling out all the stops wow
Copperminds and Cuddleswarms

art128

Very exciting video... :)
I'm really looking forward to NAM 34..
I'll take a quiet life... A handshake of carbon monoxide.

Props & Texture Catalog

belfastsocrates

That looks absolutely fantastic!! Fabulous work so far, very impressive.

Do you think there will be an option for a different base colour by the time it's available for NAM 34 release?
A unique nation fusing technological prowess and unparalleled grandeur

"Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination" - Oscar Wilde

eggman121

Thanks for all the responses everyone  :thumbsup:

Quote from: belfastsocrates on July 30, 2015, 03:48:21 AM
That looks absolutely fantastic!! Fabulous work so far, very impressive.

Do you think there will be an option for a different base colour by the time it's available for NAM 34 release?

I am only working with the standard colors that the RRW originally had but I am not going to be making alternate textures for the RRW.

If you would like I can pass on the textures I am currently using but since there are a lot of textures to make it would be a sizable task to make alternate textures!

-eggman121

vortext

#890
Are these single PNGs, or are base and tracks in seperate layers in another format? If it's the latter changing the base wouldn't be too hard: split them into seperate files first, then run through FilterForge to change appearance (similar to what I did with cobble stone roads to dirt roads) and merge back with the tracks. If they're single PNGs than it might still be feasable to maybe change the coloring of the base in similar fashion (i.e. running batches) but making masks layers would be pain and the marging of tinkering would be far less.
time flies like a bird
fruit flies like a banana

feyss

OMG!

This is just awesome. I was waiting for this since years and you make it real. I can't wait to try it in-game.

Thanks for your work  :thumbsup:

carlfatal

Eggman, this is unbelievable - a dream becomes true!  &apls &apls &apls

Thanks a lot for your work!  :thumbsup:

eggman121

Thanks everyone again for the kind words.  $%Grinno$%  :thumbsup:

Now textures.

I just had a thought that maybe I could use mgb204's method of Multi Colored Alphas to apply the Ballast. It means that I have to go back and redo my textures. But that should not be a problem.

So here is the plan. there is a base alpha for the Ballast and another alpha for the rails and maybe another for the sleepers. I still have to tune to the mechanics of the textures but if I find it work it is totally plausible to have different texture types based on only a few textures. Hopefully mgb204 will fill me in on the details.

-eggman121

belfastsocrates

I don't want to be the cause of additional complicated work. I don't have any issue with the rails or sleepers, just the brown ballast. Something more 'grey' would make this perfect for me as it's more 'urban'
A unique nation fusing technological prowess and unparalleled grandeur

"Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination" - Oscar Wilde

mgb204

Yes it's possible, but unless you've separated track layers as Vortext mentioned to use as templates, you'll find making the new DO alphas probably quite a lot of work.



So for example, if you took the default ortho DTR as an example here, isolating the track is very simple (3px wide 1px either side of the main rail), then you need to isolate the sleepers also. With those parts of the texture gone, create a second Alpha layer, combined with the original default Alpha layer (Bottom Left) you'd have your new D0 ready for use. In the example the red parts of the D0 would be the parts that were replaced, gradients included.

However, just for that one texture, I had to manually map the rails and sleepers to isolate them and create the second alpha. Not to mention that a simple ortho texture is a cinch compared to diagonals or complex curve pieces. If you already had the separate layered textures as files, then you would be able to make all the alphas without much effort, but if those were merged and lost when the final textures were processed, once more this process would require unravelling them to be of use. The only benefit to having D0s for automation is really that you can create many custom sets without further effort once the templates are in place.

Of course it's shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted, but it's for this reason that development multi-layered files are always worth keeping aside. I must admit I also had to learn the hard way before I started to think about keeping them for my projects, but then the creator of RRW would have thought of these textures as final no doubt.

Since the NAM has never been in charge of alternate rail textures really - these were always 3rd party mods - I'd expect someone out there to create alternatives at some point. Although, given the exponential rise in the number of textures, this is starting to become very challenging already.

Is it really just the ballast that some of you don't like about the RRW textures? It took a while for RRW to win me over but I find I really like the textures the more I use them, it wasn't an instant thing.

Frankly looking at Eggmans video (some great exciting developments BTW :bnn:), I wouldn't want to miss out on the improvements that are incoming. Not to mention that puzzle pieces are going to be a thing of the past sooner rather than later, so holdouts of the old rail system may end up with reduced functionality in such a scenario (just speculating, I'm not 100% on the actual plans here). Off-hand, since re-using the old rail textures is out of the question due to changes in gauge which would mess with pathing, if the entire texture were changed, not just the ballast, at least that would be a far more practical solution for a texture override in the here and now:



That's a quick mock-up done as an example with a more grey-tone to the ballast. Eagle-eyed viewers will notice the colour shift of the rails and sleepers too, but I think that's ultimately something that's not unpleasant. It would be possible to batch process the colour offset to every RRW texture with automation, so at least this sort of solution would be eminently practical. Bear in mind that any batted-in textures would match the original RRW textures though, although that should only be bridges and tunnels I think.

eggman121

Thanks for the prompt Response mgb204  :thumbsup:

Unfortunately the Textures are fixed for most of my working files  &mmm But I base most of my work off the extruded geometry of the orthogonal textures. So it wont be that hard to make an alpha set as shown above.

Question? Can I just use the Alpha template for orthogonal and extrapolate it to match the geometry of the tracks? If so I can make some base textures to the color of the different layers? would that work?

-eggman121

mgb204

I'd personally try a few samples, don't follow my example though ;), the red part needs to be green or cyan, I was being lazy when I made it so didn't correct my error since it was just to show the theory.

Assuming the same geometry would be applied when morphing the D0 Alpha from the ortho one to a given shape, yes this should work. The issue is that the D0 defines what parts of a given texture to replace with another texture. So if all lines up correctly with the green/white parts in relation to the rails/sleepers then this is workable. The overall Alpha doesn't matter too much, since that can be automated in other ways, we just need the rails/sleepers to be correct. I've really messed the sample up, it should look like this:



I've attached that for you, so you can play with it, if you send me some morphed variants and point me to the corresponding game textures I can do some quick tests to verify everything if need be. That brings me to the next question, how many of the textures did you create, I was under the impression the original base set came from Willy, so I've no idea how those will fit into this process. That said if we can automate creation of such a set of D0s, that opens the doors to simple custom batch replacements of the ballast for all to customise as they like, which could be a boon to RRW adoption.

eggman121

Quote from: mgb204 on July 30, 2015, 05:26:01 PM
I was under the impression the original base set came from Willy, so I've no idea how those will fit into this process. That said if we can automate creation of such a set of D0s, that opens the doors to simple custom batch replacements of the ballast for all to customise as they like, which could be a boon to RRW adoption.

Many of the Textures I used came from Willy to make the standard set. Minicurves will no doubt be problematic. So texturing may have to start from scratch. GIMP has a pretty good magic wand tool so, I could edit the textures to alphas from there, I will see how that will go.

Thanks again!

-eggman121

mgb204

I dunno, the Magic wand in PS certainly wouldn't be accurate enough to do such a task... that said the base set is probably quite small in comparison to the expansions you're creating. The original Maxis set was not so large really, but that's before taking into account the additional puzzle pieces.