Adding a tail light to rearmost vehicles.

[Carinthia]

I won't argue, but that isn't what my memory tells me. But no big deal.

John

[gptech]

The file names and paths between the various editions of these coaches may be the same, but there are definite differences between the contents of the .Geo files themselves. Not huge differences, not enough to change the size of the file but significant enough to make "you need to edit the 4th line up" totally wrong,
If the files and paths were the same most of this thread wouldn't have been needed to be written

[MisterWho]

... the file contents are exactly the same under RW6 as they were under RW2...

To rephrase, the files in the folder ...\Assets\DT\DT_MK1_coaches\... delivered by Steam when RW2 was the latest version have exactly the same content as the files in that same folder currently available from Steam. And the contents were the same under RW2, RW3, RW4 and RW5 - I checked them all yesterday.

Why do you refuse to accept the truth and make your lives more difficult by doing so ?

[gptech]

Because you're arguing about something we don't dispute. The files from Steam for the Steam released version haven't changed, but they differ from the files in the AP version; differ from the files in the DT original version. By all means enlighten us about the files, and their internal configuration, that you have on your system but could you try to do so without being offensive?

[MisterWho]

If you had bothered to make that clear in your first response there would have been no need for me to bother with a reply at all ...

[Carinthia]

We have wandered.

What I was asking about was whether it is worth pursuing the "automatic" tail lamps on the DT/Steam/AP Mark 1 stiock given the variety of versions.

Would a "fixed" tail lamp on coaches be an option? I think I remember some early Kuju stock had UKTS Free Pack options with tail lamps.

To be practical, perhaps the only ones that need it are the BCK and BFK in each livery. I'm just not fond of trains without tail lamps! This would be beneficial, too, with trains powered by the Jubilee with the SSS sounds.

John

[gptech]

Certainly for adding a tail light to stock that doesn't have one the .Geo edit has hit a wall; as we've found the internal differences between the various editions of the coaches makes it a complicated task to formulate a 'standardised' editing procedure. I think the most we can do with that is supply guidelines as to what and where edits need to be made.
The animation method would also seem to be dead in the water, at least in it's present state--just like the .Geo edit it only works if the stock in question has the light enabled in the modelling. However, (and this is more thinking aloud than a reasoned, tested theory) could it be utilised to define the visibility of a light added as a child object?
Adding lights as children goes back quite a way, possibly even to the original Rail Simulator, and the UKTS packs feature coaches and wagons with lights added. RW Tools, I believe, also includes a routine to assist in the placing of such children.
We now know we can *hide* nodes of a model via scripting, so could this be applied to a child object?
More questions than answers, and it's certainly going beyond my scant understanding of scripting but if somebody would care to take up the baton as it were....

[gptech]

While it's true that the DT Mk1 coach files supplied by RSDL / RSC / DTG are not the same as when they were originally released, it's only the file timestamps that have changed (at least twice between RW2 and RW6). The actual file contents however are exactly the same now (well, as of earlier this month when I last did a cache verify) as they were back on 18th Feb 2011 under RW2. There's been no change in the number of files and folders, or in the names of the files and folders - the file contents are exactly the same under RW6 as they were under RW2.

Are you confusing files and folders? Checking the file contents involves viewing the internal make-up of the files, folder contents would be checking the number of files present in a folder and the naming only, so your last line should possibly have been:

" - the folder contents are exactly the same under RW6 as they were under RW2."

Comparing the Steam supplied files with those I bought directly from DT is a different matter however. While there are 1510 files in 136 folders which are the same in both releases, The DT direct release has 152 extra files not contained in the Steam release, with 55 extra files in the Steam release that are not in the DT direct release. I haven't yet done a detailed analysis of what these differences represent.

Try a very quick and perfunctory one---are there a number of .bak files; .xml conversions of the .bin files; .cost files?

[nschichan]

Certainly for adding a tail light to stock that doesn't have one the .Geo edit has hit a wall; as we've found the internal differences between the various editions of the coaches makes it a complicated task to formulate a 'standardised' editing procedure. I think the most we can do with that is supply guidelines as to what and where edits need to be made.
The animation method would also seem to be dead in the water, at least in it's present state--just like the .Geo edit it only works if the stock in question has the light enabled in the modelling. However, (and this is more thinking aloud than a reasoned, tested theory) could it be utilised to define the visibility of a light added as a child object?

Hello gptech,

The animation is only there to work around inverted lights_revhead and lights_fwdhead nodes and won't help if there no such nodes in the geo file.

The animation method though works well if you want to ditch those nodes (just animating them so that they are always 1km below the loco/wagon, they can't be hidden as the core game always overrides the visibility) and want to add your own child objects so that you can control them finely via scripting.

Adding lights as children goes back quite a way, possibly even to the original Rail Simulator, and the UKTS packs feature coaches and wagons with lights added. RW Tools, I believe, also includes a routine to assist in the placing of such children.
We now know we can *hide* nodes of a model via scripting, so could this be applied to a child object?
More questions than answers, and it's certainly going beyond my scant understanding of scripting but if somebody would care to take up the baton as it were....

Yes you can hide nodes of a child object (a very handy feature) just by using:

Code: Select all

Call("ChildName:ActivateNode", "node", value)

where value is 1 or 0 depending on whether you want to show or hide the node.

You could therefore add two children objects at the front and back of the wagon/loco that you'd hide or show depending on whether there are wagons in the front and the back of the rolling stock. You can get the presence of wagon on the front or back by checking return value Call("SendConsistMessage", msg, param, direction) it will return a different value if a wagon is there or not (I think the exact value is precised in the DevDocs). You'd have to chose your msg number wisely so that it does not interfere with other messages that could be used by other stock in the train.

[gptech]

Thanks for that information nschichan, I understood about half of it but it certainly does open another avenue of exploration.
I've a few wagons with rear lights as children so I shall have a play about.