Simple Idea for New releases

[pjt1974]

This may have been mentioned before but why don't route developers show a 2D map of the route as part of thier advertising screenshots.
Half the questions from the Doncaster add on thread wouldn't have needed to be asked or answered.
I know it seems a simple idea, but a 2D map screenshot of the completed route shows the potential buyer the whole route, including which yards, sidings or branchlines are included or not.
Am I just being daft or does anyone else agree it could be an idea to promote?

regards
Phil

[MisterWho]

Phil,
personally, I think it's a great idea,
moi

[0931330]

Hi All
Merry Christmas & a Happy New year to All
We at the IOW Network have always produced a map to help you get around system, even the download photo of the route on UKTS shows the map.

Regards
Ian

[simuk]

We thought about doing this for Bristol to Exeter, but because the route is so long you can't get it all in one screenshot as the 2D map won't zoom out that far, and when it is zoomed out you can't see any more than the basic white line showing the main path of the route, with no detail of individual sidings or other detail that it sounds like you are interested in seeing.


Thanks,

Simon
Just Trains

[smarty2]

Surely it must be possible to do it another way? Personally I think the idea put forward is a good one.

[TransportSteve]

It's a very good idea by Phil, however, as Simon commented regarding the Bristol - Exter route, the 2D map size would only be suitable for very small layouts to indicate the major relevant named areas of detail.
Anyone can print a map of any route from A-B, but, all you'd see would be a huge white line across the screen with yellow lines for the yards/sidings and green lines for the stations, etc, which have been built on the route and might not prove to be very helpful to everybody. The only alternative would be to have 2, 3 or 4 maps of every layout showing the intense areas of high detail.

Cheerz. Transport Steve.

[styckx]

What would really add value to a route, and I've only see it done once or twice, is a nice large, layout of the route done in Photoshop.

I enjoy writing scenarios but one of my hangups is, lets say your train starts at point A, obvious decision is where you want the next stop to be. Being unfamilar with the route this usually means trawling through the mini 2D map scouring for little green lines, then zooming in to catch the station and platform names, then finally adding the instructions.

Secondly, it would help with accomplishing scenarios. Let's just say you're a 33 year old, 5'9 lanky pale American, driving on a big scary British route and the instructions are like "pick up some hoppers from Laguana FishTail Bypass Depot track 4".... Uhh.. What? Where is that? Off to the 2D map for a scavenger hunt.

Either running in windowed mode, or like me, a dual screen monitor setup, you then would have a nice reference map to plot out scenarios with ease and a lot easier to reference than the 2D map in game.

Fantasy land I know, but I would use route maps every day no doubt.

[ightenhill]

Fully agree with that Styxx..

[gypbrc]

Yeah, this is a good idea. I remember Simon showing us a screen of the track layout at BTM before release. Usually there's not much more of a comment than 'ooh, that's a lot of trackwork'

Also, RSC did post a screen shot of the track layout at Doncaster:
http://railsimulator.blogspot.com/2010/ ... -busy.html
Admittedly it was rather a small image and looking at it now it's clear the depot isn't connected to the mainline.

As for a tool in scenario creation, it's a very good idea. WCML North in particular I think would have benefited from such a driver's guide.

[styckx]

I'm going to try some mockups in the coming days of how to do this properly. I will start with Bristol to Exter I think. Objective being, make it as informative as possible and capturing the whole route and details of all areas without the image being 10,433x8,322 in size. I'm thinking a simple condensing and number system will work.

ie: If "Dairyland Depot center west" has 10 different tracks, and there is also a "Dairyland Depot center east' with 15 tracks, obviously labeling out 25 different tracks will clutter a map (just like it does the 2D map with unreadable overlapping names). Just point out where east and west centers are on the map so you at least know where to find track "#4" a lot faster since you at least know where the right depot is now.

Something sorta of like this, except for the route, and a little more detailed, but still ease to glance at for reference.

http://www.usatrains.com/r22000parts.html

[msdejesus]

Let's just say you're a 33 year old, 5'9 lanky pale American, driving on a big scary British route and the instructions are like "pick up some hoppers from Laguana FishTail Bypass Depot track 4".... Uhh.. What? Where is that? Off to the 2D map for a scavenger hunt.

Very good points, imho, replace 33 year old, 5'9 lanky pale American with "42-year-old not so pale Spaniard" and you will get how I feel ;P

[styckx]

Maybe I'll send in an email.. I remember Paul Jackson making the statement once about sending in ideas, and if my memory serves me right he said something along the lines of "Somtimes what sounds hard is easy to implement and what sounds easy could be hard".

My theory is, if the game knows where you're supposed to be going for a set of instructions, then theoretically it could also reference the marker with that name and draw (as an example) a little red star graphic on the 2D map where that location is is actually located. Complete the task, that star then is drawn over the next destination and so on.

*shrug*..

P.S. Sorry to the OP (forget who it was now) for straying off your original topic.

[AndiS]

For me, schematic maps are the number one missing item in route documentation. At the simplest, you need the following:

1) A route schematic, a la tube or rail network plans, just a line or two with the stations represented as dots or dashes, with the name printed next to it. It takes far less time to do than a decent start-up screen. And no, having this map on the start-up screen is not what you need, unless you have photographic memory skills. You need it as a PDF to print out our show on the screen, independent of the game.

2) Track layouts of all stations. The mainline should be a straight line and the length should be to scale, with the width grown to make the tracks discernible. If the markers follow some logic scheme (which they should anyway), it will suffice to print a single word "yard sidings" over all yard sidings and put the highest and lowest number to the corresponding track. Same for platform, depot, whatever. Sure, there will be numerous special tracks with special labels but they don't pose a label placement challenge normally. And you can/should always consider the example quoted by styckx.

I have experimented with producing such track plans from the 2D map in the game. There is one difficult step -- getting the layout straight. Basically, you would lay a Brezier curve along the mainline and then morph the picture until the Bezier is a straight. I don't know of automatic ways to do that. You could try with a series of applications of the barrel distortion correction (shifting the image out to make it fit the algorithm). One thing I will try one day is using Blender lattices on a plane with the map on it. But I guess that plane should have lots of vertices, so my PC might not be up to it.

The easy steps are these: Make a series of screenshots of the map, turning everything off, with the exception of the platform and siding markers, maybe. But no labelling! Compose a big picture of the screenshots (in Gimp or Photoshop) - very easy if you took the shots systematically and numbered them. Invert colours. Apply a binary filter to make the track show as fat dark lines and the grid to away. Using the rubber, you will remove any icons from the upper right corner in the screenshot. Rotate the picture to put the mainline more or less horizontally. Then comes the painful distortion step. Then you reduce the resolution of the mega image, thereby choosing a reduction factor for the length 5 or 10 times higher than for the width. Then, you can add some labels.


Then, there would be my favourite, which will not show up in a long time:

3) A track plan of the whole route, with the length to scale. In a way, you just compose the output from (2), taking care of the lateral distances. Then, you add the signal locations, at least for the block signals. Then, you put the resulting straight, slim diagram to a bigger page, either vertically or horizontally. Then you add a grid showing the miles in one dimension, and a few hours' worth of 5-minute separators on the other dimension. Then, you instruct scenario authors how to plot a train running at X mph on this page, and how to plot a Y minute stop. Finally, you instruct them how to see conflicts in block occupation, and the amount of safety margin in the timetable. Then, half of the dispatcher hating will go away, I guess.

Actually, you can go with a cheap substitute where you just print the station names on a straight line representing the route. Plus the location of block signals. You can derive this without graphical processing by running the route once in a scenario where your only stop is at the far end of the route. You note the figures for "distance to next stop" shown in F3 (or F4 now) when you pass the near and far end of a station, or a block signal. It would be more precise if you would -- maybe in addition -- note the location of platform or siding ends, but things start to get complex here, again, for bigger stations. And we are talking about cheap substitute. Simply tell people to round up the minutes and they will not worry about 0.1 mile.

[pjt1974]

P.S. Sorry to the OP (forget who it was now) for straying off your original topic.

no problem, the whole idea was opened up for discussion. If my original idea gives sparks somebody else into a eurika moment that benefits us all then it's done it's job.

[dparry]

Do you mean something like these?

http://www.uktrainsim.com/filelib-info. ... leid=24013

http://www.uktrainsim.com/filelib-info. ... leid=23198

http://www.uktrainsim.com/filelib-info. ... leid=23975

I have not had a chance to do any more recently, but I could have a go at another one if there is sufficient interest.