How do you make your own loading screens?

[KeithBridges]

Hi
I was just wandering how you make your own loading screens because i was thinking about haveing one for the railway centre V2
Chris

[RSderek]

Hi,

have a read of this;

http://forums.uktrainsim.com/viewtopic. ... 18&t=85944

regards

Derek

[KeithBridges]

hi
Thanks for sending me that link but i do not under stand a lot of it.but thanks
Chris

[Acorncomputer]

Hi Chris

You can only add a loading screen to route that has been created from your own blueprint (I think) and your route has been created using the standard new route facility in Rail Simulator. This is probably why you cannot fully follow my instructions at the moment.

It is possible to convert an existing route such as yours to reference your own route template but it takes a little bit of work to do this.

I suggest that before you start a new route or consider uploading a new version of your current route, you either post for help on the forum or pm me and I can help you with the screen.

You can, however, quite easily add a route description to your current route so that this comes up on the main Rail Simulator window when the route is selected. Go back to my tutorial and in the second section there is a bit about adding a route description/information page. I think you will be able to follow that - have a go.

Can I also direct you to this topic on creating your own signs. Although this is not directly related to your enquiry, this little tutorial does explain the way the developer folder system works and may help - http://forums.uktrainsim.com/viewtopic. ... 5#p1036646

[mikesimpson]

The latest version of RS_Tools on my site includes menu items on the Easy Blueprints named
Add Route Description
and
Add Route Loading Picture

The help file gives details of how to make a suitable Route loading picture, all you need to do is to provide a picture in .dds format which is 1028x512 pixels in size.

[Acorncomputer]

Hi Mike

That will save a lot of explaining in the future!

Thanks

EDIT : I did not know about this but it works a treat, even adding loading screens to routes without developer folders. No excuse now for any new routes not to have their own loading screens and descriptions.
Note that the free program paint.net will produce .dds files for anyone without a graphics program that will already do this.

[KeithBridges]

Hi
Thanks for telling me that i am have a go at the moment and when you make a Blueprints what do you put in the longitude and latitude colomes?
Chris

[Acorncomputer]

Hi

Latitude and Longitude will be roughly the centre of your route which you can get from Google Earth if you are building a real route but almost anywhere else if you are not building a real route and will not be using DEM data to mould the landscape. For a fictional route try not to use 0.00 and 0.00 as there are a number on routes on this origin and the route markers clog up the system!

[KeithBridges]

Hi
in rs tools pro when i click on add rote loading screen and it says i need to make a .dds folder and when i do it comes up with a run time error 75 what should i do???
Chris

[Acorncomputer]

Hi Chris

I am not too sure what is wrong here, perhaps Mike will confirm, but I would suggest that you have not told 'Tools' where all your various folders are. Just check in the Options menu at the top of the Tools window that all the paths to Rail Simulator, Texture Editor, etc, have been set up.

You will need to create a screen in .dds format before 'Tools' can add it to your route but even if you had not yet done this, it should not cause 'Tools' to crash when moving to the next part of the process.
I use XP but I wonder if this could be a Vista problem again.

[KeithBridges]

Hi
thanks for that and i have XP not vista
chris

[Acorncomputer]

Hi Chris

I have just successfully added a loading screen and route description to your route with Mike Simpson's Tools as an experiment and it all works fine.
Keep trying to get this to work yourself, it is worth it.

As with all experiments and new ideas, it is best to copy the whole Rail Simulator folder before mucking around in case you have to reinstate it.

[KeithBridges]

How do you change the pic to an dss file??
Chris

[Acorncomputer]

Hi Chris

You will need a graphics program that can export a picture in .dds format. Paint Shop Pro, Photoshop and others can do this but if you do not have a program like this you can download paint.net for free (you may get follow up e-mails advertising products) and you can use this to create your picture of the size 1024 pixels wide by 512 pixels high. You will need to learn how to use paint.net but a little practice will help. You have an option to save this in a number of formats but I suggest one save as .bmp file in case you need to use it again and one as a .dds file.

Note that in saving as a .dds file you have to select some properties for the saved file. I suggest you use the default values but it is possible that the loading screen will not display properly in which case you should try again to create a .dds file (from your saved .bmp file) with different settings.

The screen graphic must be exactly 1024 pixels by 512 pixels. One or more pixels out and it will not work.
The name of your loading screen should be in the format loading_The_Railway_Center.dds or loading_TheRailwayCenter.dds. It may work with spaces between the words but in Rail Simulator it seems best not to leave spaces as some parts of the program fail through not finding the files due to spaces in file names.

I must again emphasise the need to make regular back ups of your whole Rail Simulator folder. If something goes wrong and RS fails to load then you delete the faulty folder and replace it with a copy of you last full back up. Rail Simulator should then start up again after a bit of file reorganisation and you will be back to exactly where you were when you made the back up.

In normal use failure of Rail Simulator is rare for me but it does sometimes go wrong when experimenting so back ups are essential if you are doing this type of thing.

This is not to say that there is anything wrong with Mike Simpson's 'Tools' of course, but it is the users of 'Tools' like us that are more likely to be faulty.

[KeithBridges]

HI
I downloaded Paint Shop Pro and i export the pic how do you export it to dds format???
Chris