Alternative Terrain Textures for RailWorks

[sniper297]

Actually there's no risk at all if you follow the steps;

1. Open RW launcher, package your route as an RWP.
2. Open your route's RouteProperties.xml in notepad, EDIT, FIND "terrain".
3. Change the names in that datablock, example it says Product - KUJU Provider - RailsimulatorUS, change to Product - PortOgden and leave the rest alone. In the case of Geoff's textures use that path. Save and exit.
4. Open in game, see what it looks like. If it's totally trashed, go back to the route selection menu, select your route, hit the DELETE key on the keyboard.
5. Back to the RW launcher, install your route from the backup RWP, try again.

Step one is the most important, in any game I package up whatever I'm modding at least once per day, giving it today's date as a filename, for example 9302010.rwp or 10012010.rwp so I know which backup is the most recent. And of course I make a backup as a matter of habit before trying anything screwy.

[pauls]

Hi Geoff and Screwy,

Many thanks for your advice on this - perhaps I'll get the courage and give it a try - at least with backups I can recover the original route.

Cheers
Paul

[longbow]

I'd thought to keep open the option for one or two custom terrain textures on a new route by copying the default texturing.bin file into my developer assets folder and altering the route template and route properties to point to this new location. All the references in texturing.bin appear to point straight back into the default Kuju folders, yet the terrain textures have disappeared in game so obviously I'm missing something. Any ideas please?

[sniper297]

Couple possibilities;

1. Double check the new path in RouteProperties.xml to the texturing.bin file is correct. (also make sure you're editing the one you THINK you're editing, them GUID numbers all look alike!)
2. Double check you have the object filter in the route turned on for the new texturing.bin folder.

If you download the PO&CM asset pack and look at the texturing.bin files in RW-Tools, you'll see I changed the very bottom reference to point to my custom grass.TgPcDx, and for actual custom textures I changed the path for those, but all the default textures that are referenced I left the paths alone. However, for that to work, the object filter for the route needs to have Kuju\Railsimulator, Kuju\RailsimulatorUS, and \PortOgden checked ON for the textures to all show up.

[Acorncomputer]

HI Longbow

I think it is best to create a new blueprint from scratch. You need to have all your terrain textures in one place including any default ones that you want to use in your set.

Read through my tutorial for a better explanation if you have not already done so.

[longbow]

Sniper - thanks, I had forgotten to see if the developer box was checked, but it was.

Geoff - good advice but hacking the bin file would get the job done much quicker! Incidentally RSC haven't provided the source files for US terrain textures so I'd need to mess around with dummy ace files to get a terrain texture blueprint to export.

[Acorncomputer]

Hi

Remember that you can only use default terrain textures in your own terrain blueprint for distribution that have been supplied with .tga files by RS.com.

Although it is relatively easy to copy and alter default blueprints, in practice you cannot copy any of the default terrain texture files and distribute them with you route. It is OK if you are doing this for yourself but as with all other default files, they cannot be distributed. By creating your own .ace files from only those terrain .tga files provided by RS.com you can give them a different name and include them in your own blueprint for distribution but the US terrain, for example, cannot be distributed at all in your own blueprint as there are no .tga files provided.

I set out to create a brand new set of terrain textures that were close to the default ones (mainly UK) so that no default textures are required at all and all of them can be distributed with the route. The same applies to the default procedural flora texture sheets. You cannot copy and distribute these, you must have your own or use the ones I created.

Easy to hack default terrain, yes, but watch out for copyright issues.

[longbow]

Indeed so. But my impression is that each texture is referenced individually in the texturing bin file, so presumably a custom bin file could be pointed to selected custom textures outside the Kuju folders.

[Acorncomputer]

Indeed so. But my impression is that each texture is referenced individually in the texturing bin file, so presumably a custom bin file could be pointed to selected custom textures outside the Kuju folders.

The full path of the texture files is not shown in the blueprint as all the related .ace files are assumed to be in the same source folder as the blueprint. As far as I know it is not possible for the blueprint to have a full path entered that relates to .ace files held in a completely different developer/product folder. I have not tried it but the blueprint usually becomes unusable when the pathing is not correct.

Whilst route templates can reference a terrain blueprint located in any developer folder, the terrain blueprint needs to have the texture sets in the same developer/product folder. It is best to create a terrain blueprint for every route so that is part of the route folder structure. As we cannot place our own terrain blueprints in a 'core' location and we do not want a user to download another route just to get the terrain blueprint and textures, bespoke terrain textures for each route is the best answer although this does add to the file size of the route.

[sniper297]

"we do not want a user to download another route just to get the terrain blueprint and textures"

That's the primary reason I uploaded the PO&CM asset pack as a separate download, anyone wants to use that asset pack in their route merely needs to point to that asset pack, no need to download my route to make the other one work.

"in practice you cannot copy any of the default terrain texture files and distribute them with you route"

Like most game EULAS what it says is you can't distribute default files "unless they have been substantially modified", the exact definition of "substantially" is open to debate. All my "custom" textures were clones of defaults, some completely repainted, some merely changing colors slightly to make ballast blending easier, for example. If they're not modified in any way at all there's no point to distributing them since the end user already has them, so it's more efficient to alias to the existing ones anyway.

[longbow]

I now have my custom texturing.bin working; the problem was simply a mis-spelt folder name (good call Sniper). However Geoff was right; trying to link this to textures outside the default terrain textures folder causes a SBHH. Rats.

As for distributing modified default terrain textures, I rather assumed - as Sniper has - that this would fall under the same permissive category as reskinned rolling stock textures.

[Acorncomputer]

My interpretation of the use of default terrain textures was based on Derek's answer in the original thread on this subject -

http://forums.uktrainsim.com/viewtopic. ... 5#p1301053

Derek only refers to the use of .tga files supplied and not the modification of TgPcDx files.