Afterthoughts from Challengers

[Acorncomputer]

I am starting this thread so that all Challengers who have taken part in this unusual event can reflect on the week, letting us know about the highs, the lows, the good, the bad and generally how it has gone for them.

[RSderek]

Also, suggestions on how things/tools can be improved.
These can be looked at for future upgrades to help the creation process run smoother.

regards

Derek

[ashgray]

Also, suggestions on how things/tools can be improved.
These can be looked at for future upgrades to help the creation process run smoother.

regards

Derek

We already have a number of threads for suggestions & improvements to RW - I suggest we keep this thread on topic.

Ash

[RSderek]

Yes we do, but I want it from the guys who have produced from this challenge.
Focused thoughts only please.

regards

Derek

[RCH37401]

If I am honest, I have found it rather difficult

I knew that a route ina week task would be hard, but I ddint realise that I was to have such a rough time when I started since Sunday. I did start of Friday, but since then, barely anything has happened.

I know that all the regular events at home and other places doesnt help, but I really wish I had been able to.

The reason I am posting now is that I know that I am not going to be able to complete the route in 50 mins, but will give it a go over the next coming month before Christmas, so maybe people can enjoy it.

I will be interested to see what other people think about this, but I found it as I say, hard and slightly frustrating, but this is nothing any of you Guys have done

Cheers, and all the best

Richard

[KeithBridges]

HI
i think it went quit well for me but on tuesday i did not have a chanse to carry on building because i had so much homework
but apart from that i think it went well.
chris

[AndyM77]

I think I've said most of it in my thread...

Working with the gradient tool has been possibly the most frustrating, trying to go from the level track to the incline or decline, by this I mean at the 'ribbon' points which become sharp angles and trying to smooth them out results in the same thing (or worse) happening further down the line.

The 'Painting' tool is frustrating too, trying to paint the ballast and not getting it in surrounding fields (take a look at the section in my route between 'Downfields' and 'Leaftown', you'll understand what I mean when you see the rapeseed texture all over the tracks as the paintbrush wants to fill in a complete square at a time when I might actually want to fill in 1/3 of that square, and at an angle too).

I found out tonight when finishing off the simple scenario, that a Destination Marker is just that (a destination), you can't seem to assign a drop off command at a destination marker, even if it's the end of the line. So of course, that was wasted time changing the markers back to 'Siding Markers'.

Filling in vast blank areas is for me problematic, it's either Trees or, um, Trees.. Buildings are fine and dandy, but I tried to build to the thought that a building will have far more polygons than a bunch of trees helping framerates on lower spec computers (mines quite old now, so not top of the line).

I'm also not artistic, so alternatives to trees would be handy, just don't ask me what the alternatives are!

Finally, floating trees / objects I had to spend quite a bit of time fixing some floating trees, and I think I've got most of the weeds level. It'd be nice if say an object such as trees could adapt to the actual surface of the land rather than having to manually lower and manipulate them, I'm thinking of some sort of deformable mesh for those objects. Of course for buildings you could keep the current static mesh and then adjust the terrain around it as we currently do.

If I think of more I'll update this post...

[NeutronIC]

For my part...

Well, track laying has gone FAR smoother than it ever has in the past so something has obviously got better there, either the product or me I'm assuming not the latter Previously i've always managed to screw the track up some how and in a couple of cases wind up with a route that won't even load any more - no such troubles this time around, even with a few modifications I made to the track that I felt would surely cause problems, all went easily. Granted, my track is hardly complicated, or well laid, but still, it's an achievement for me

The biggest challenge for me has been all the terraforming, it's quite a slow painful job. Not sure what could make it better, perhaps choosing not to terraform so much of the land An easier way to do sea would be better, instead of having to set our loads of water decals.

DItto the comment on texturing, I always thought Trainz was quite imprecise but this is horrible. I suppose that a good artist can easily achieve nice results but it's not easy for us plebs to use at all with what is effectively a large grid of squares that get filled in each time, trying to lay the ballast under the track with it going down one side of the hill and up the other was just silly.

The gradient tool seemed easy enough to use but then I wasn't doing anything too fancy. Did what I needed very well though.

I still think the offset tool is my favourite tool in the box, used it all over the place for all kinds of things from fences and bridges to the support walls on the rise up to the coal chute.

Once i've got my route to a reasonable stopping point my plan is to move on to a realistic route and use RWDecal to help get that one going, only a short route (about 30 miles or so) but it will be good to have a go at.

Matt.

[NeutronIC]

Oh, I also wanted to add one more thing - a huge thank you to Geoff for his instructions on how to get started with the route template, getting the loading image in and so forth. Exceptionally easy to follow and worked very well, first time. Why can't RailWorks do something to eliminate the need for this? Unless you're building a completely generic, fictional route that doesn't involve SRTM (and thus you don't care about its location), and you don't want a load screen or route description you will ALWAYS need to follow those steps.

I would love to see RailWorks do these steps for you:

User clicks Create Route.
RailWorks shows default templates and offers "create new template"
User clicks Create New Template.
RW asks "Long / Lat" and offers the normal defaults - if user doesn't care they click next, otherwise they enter and click next.
RW asks "Enter route description" and user clicks next
RW generates a default JPG file for the route
RW creates and compiles the template and then sets it up with the route and loads it ready for editing.

In the future, users can then tweak the content of the load screen by editing the JPG and re-converting it to ace, but they never have to actually deal with the blueprint editor for something so basic and common as getting started building a route properly.

Matt.

[Acorncomputer]

trying to lay the ballast under the track with it going down one side of the hill and up the other was just silly.

I have managed to create a lofted undertrack texture that gives a more even ballast/gravel bed to the track area which avoids fiddling around with the paint brush. A set of these in different widths and textures should save a great deal of time although I do not think I am up to job of producing a good enough quality set myself. When I worked out the technique, however, it only took about 10 minutes from nothing to getting a loft into the simulation.

[jamesh]

Hmm thoughts.
First I'd like to thank Geoff for organizing the challenge for a couple of reasons.
First going by the screen shots the big winner here is the community there should be several really fun routes for them to use. I don't know about others, I plan on extending my route over time and adding to it, especially as there are areas I would like to have touched up a little more or added too.
Secondly on a personal level the challenge was a very good way of forcing me to sit down and actually take a look at what Railworks could actually do. I had read a lot of the comments both good and bad but hadn't actually sat down and used the tools. Actually to be quite honest I had pretty much lost interest in train simming and hadn't touched anything since January. I must say though I'm actually quite impressed with the tools and the potential they offer.
Interestingly enough Derek I have been thinking about ways to improve the tools as I was building the route challenge. Rather than post everything now I'm going to sit down over the weekend (once my head has stopped spinning) and try and come up with a list and possible solutions. I agree with most of the comments so far.
I'm also glad you are serious about improving the tools for Railworks. The challenge has shown me the potential of the simulator and made me think about re-doing some of my MSTS routes in Railworks. Better tools would be more of an incentive to do this.

Again Geoff thanks for organizing the challenge.

Cheers,

James.

[moranb]

I was probably a little too ambitious in trying to complete an 11 mile route fully scenicked in one week. I probably would have done better with a shorter route. As it was, I felt I was putting myself under a lot of pressure in the last few days to complete it.

I had two 'crash to desktops' during the building - the first when I attempted to undo several actions in succession and the second when I selected a group of assets to copy them to another location (it was a mixture of lofted and static assets, so that may have been the cause, but I have succeeded in doing this in the past). But I have long got into the habit of saving (pressing F2) at regular intervals so no great damage was caused. In fairness, I have to say that I find World Editor to be very stable, but the advice to save regularly - and it such a simple action- is good advice.

I made good use of the gradient tool but again, you learn with experience and especially when adjusting gradients of track it is very important to place additional gradient arrows where you want to stop the adjustment. I think it was in one of Derek's blogs that he showed a way of easing gradient changes and I made good use of that technique. However, now that we have RWDecal2 it would be very helpful if it was possible to use the gradient tool to adjust, for example, a road, track or river that is laid over the decal. I found that to make these adjustments, I had to move the decal out of the way.

My main 'peeve' is that when laying lofts along the track - whether it is the weed line, telegraph poles or fences - they sit several inches above the surface of the earth - unfortunately noticeably so and once they are down, you have to manually adjust them with the gradient tool so that they sit on the surface. For a ten mile route, that is a lot of adjusting. Its particularly noticeable with the rural wire fence.

Overall I find the painting tools easy to use - in fact I get great satisfaction seeing the billiard green change to a realistic looking landscape. Its important to adjust the strength of the paintbrush depending on the work you are doing - highest strength for the large areas of fields and medium/low strength for areas around the track. Painting track bed does not bother me too much - I tend anyway to use the dry grass texture for the trackbed and if it spreads occasionally beyond the area of the tracks, it does not matter, But I did , in a few places, use the tecnique mentioned by Geoff of laying, in my case, the dirt road under the track.

Finally, in my view the new RWDecal2 which became available just before the challenge has the potential to revolutionize route building - at least in areas where there are high resolution Google images. I believe it could do for RW/RS what Mosaic did for MSTS. I was able to lay more than 150 'chunks' over the week - something that would be impossible to achieve without the tool. £1 is too little to donate - I hope anyone who uses it will be generous and support its further development. I would humbly suggest that RS.com contact the developer to see if they could come to an arrangment to incorportate RW Decal into the DEM building process in RW. If the tool can be further developed so that the decals are automatically placed in the correct position in RW/RS, that would be great. I am looking forward to using this tool when I resume work on my main RW/RS project - the Dublin-Cork line.

BFM

[hertsbob]

Before I start, I must acknowledge the two main sources of information I've used to create my route:
The Great Northern Railway in the East Midlands No.4 by Alan Henshaw.
http://www.meltonmowbray.steamrailways.com/index.php
I've tried as best as I can to match photos from these sources, and overall I don't think I'm a million miles away in most cases.

I am starting this thread so that all Challengers who have taken part in this unusual event can reflect on the week, letting us know about the highs, the lows, the good, the bad and generally how it has gone for them.

I'm absolutely knackered! I've been working on my route until around 00:30 every night this week, and have been really starting to feel it over the last couple of days - the route has become all-consuming. Incredibly, once I'd explained what I was doing, Mrs Bob has let me work on it virtually the whole time I've been home from work. She does keep asking "When will this game will be finished?" however. Hmmmm.

The biggest low for me has been the ongoing issue that no matter what I do I can't get a loading screen or route markers working. I left it far too late to sort out in the first place, and I only realised I had issues last Friday night.

I have also learnt that if you chose to build a route in open countryside then that's what you get... Miles of it!

However, the highs have far outweighed the lows: (not necessarily in order)
- Realising I was actually going to get finished
- My first finished route
- My first working semaphore signals
- My first scenario
- My first working Portals
- I actually rather enjoy driving the route!

I'm surprised that you mention terrain painting as being an issue, as this is one area I find rather enjoyable. I'm not sure if this is obvious or not (please forgive me if I'm teaching Granny to suck eggs) but I've found it's a lot easier to hold the brush still and move the world, instead of moving the brush across the world.

[tedious mode]
I've also been wondering what brush-sizes people are using.
I've used a 25 brush at 0.45 for trackwork in three passes, inside to out; gravel track bed, gravel trackbed grass, bare grass
For field borders (both inner and outer) I've used a 35 or 45, depending on how I felt at the time
With fields themselves, I've tended to max-out at a 105, although 65-85 has been more common
The biggest brush size I've ever used has been 225...
[/tedious mode]

Overall, I've found the Challenge to be a very rewarding experience, and certainly very challenging!

Cheers

Bob

[moranb]

One additional point I forgot to mention as Derek has asked for suggestions to improve the WE tools. I presume that most route builders use windows mode when building routes because you can close a window without saving when necessary. But would it be possible to have a separate small window next to the main window with a list of the assets most recently used - say the last 15 or 20 - something similar, dare I say, to the most recently used panel in MSTS (as expanded with MSTSBin). While it was less of a problem with the challenge because we were using only default assets, as more and more assets are added by new developers, it becomes more difficult to locate the asset you are looking for in the various lists. In this context too, I find there is a certain amount of duplication even with the default assets - some of the US assets are identical to European assets, but have different names. The same is true of some of the assets in the IOW line (for example, the 10, 20 and 50 meter shrub line exists under two different names).

BFM

[class43HS125]

Hi,
My Challenge afterthoughts ....

It was an enjoyable exercise in self discipline and time management given that there are so many different minor tasks involved to complete the major task.

My biggest hurdle was the lack of experience at landscaping. But I know that anyway. My high school art teacher had my artistic ability sorted many years ago, how right she was. I knew how I wanted the landscape to look but found that there is simply not the ability to create what I wanted in the way of low bush that followed the contour of the land over vast areas. Yes more experience on my part would mean that I learn ways around this but how to achieve the covering of large areas of landscape seems to be a common theme. One suggestion that I would seriously propose is that there is a ban on high level fly pasts. The view from the train is NOT the same as from 1000ft up so in reality, why are we so set on satisfying the high flyers?. May be there is a market for pre planted country side, purchased by the square mile. Then we can build our routes through the already existing countryside just like real life. Just a though from outside the square. Would probably cost as much as the railways had to pay for the right to cross the land in the first place.

A major for me was the fact that the Left mouse click and drag Circle thingy is just that , a circle. I would far rather it was the more normal rectangle shape with the origin corner being where you first click and then drag from , just like the “area select” in the art/graphics programs. I was forever having to watch where the other side of the circle was going when it came to getting trees to site on the ground.

Another issue I did have was being able to find things, now I know that could be called an “experience /practice makers perfect “ thing but its an issue which wasted a lot of time. A suggestion is a search box option at the middle fly out level . Select the option you want in the top left flyout , then in the middle fly out, either type a key work in the box and any option with the key word in that list comes up enabling you to select the one you want ,or go looking just like now.

Trees are wonderful in that even though they may be of the same kind, they are actually all different. Now I know that such an option is just pie in the sky. A suggestion is that there be some form of random rotation option able to be activated so that one can do repetitive placement and they not all be facing exactly the same way. I accept that Forward Facing trees are impossible to do this with. While rotation is possible using the Gizzmo its very time consuming for a row of individual trees. True, if your going from Reading to Paddington at 125mph its a non event really, but at 30mph with time to enjoy nature I feel it needs some addressing. Would be useful for houses as well.

I found Jeff’s RWDecal Program a brilliant aid to route construction. Using the center marker and combining this with the RW feature that when a decal was selected from the list it is grabbed in the middle , made for very quick placement of the decal, a quick rotation to line it up and carry on. Such a quick process enabled me to place the required decal, do some work on the area and delete the decal, observe my handy work and use the undo option to restore it or do some more work and restore the decal later very quickly. A real plus, to my way of thinking.

Time wise, a week was a long time to remain focused but for such a challenge there really is no other way. By design I was able to have the week clear of revenue producing activities that required my presence elsewhere which was just as well cause I spent at least 12 hours most days on it. The learning curve was quite steep in several places and time consuming which I figured was going to happen, real easy in places and vertical when it came to the packaging stage. I have never tried creating a scenario before so I meet a few brick walls on that one and had to abandon a few false starts. I would be the first to agree with the fact that I can do things faster now than I could before when it comes to route building. Faster is one thing but any better, that is another story for the future.

The only thing left to do now is wait and see if the powers that be can in fact go from Here to There and Backagain.

Ross
NZ