KRS World Editor

[ka959]

An interesting question I have in mind, is that, considering the amount of time since KRS was released, and the Mk1 Update arrived, to the present point in time... How much does the average Joe reckon he's progressed with learning the World Editor, and starting to create his own route/s ?

Everyone progresses at a different rate, depending on his keenness, and time available, etc. I've spent a lot of time, in between my usual work at home, caring for my partner, who's disabled, and later at night, working on things KRS-related, and consider I've made a goodly amount of progress, but there's still a huge amount I need to know. But practice helps, when I make a 'route' simply to test sections of track and tunnels and other stuff, until I get it right, or near to it. It all helps.

Now I've gotten to the problem of inserting speed limit signs, warning signs and so on. What I do, looks right, but doesn't always seem to work as such once I'm back in Drive Mode. I start off in a 30 mph zone, and come to a junction with a right-pointing arrow, and a 15 mph speed limit. The Driver's Aid says next speed limit is 30 mph, which is correct, and the front of the train passes ths 30 mph limit sign, and all's well, until a short distance forward, and it changes to a different speed limit, with no sign in sight.

In KRS, do speed limits for ascending speeds, always take effect once the rear of the train passes the sign, as it should ? But like in MSTS, the faster speeds allowed, seem to show up in the Driver's Aid just as the loco passes the higher speed disc. In TRS2004/2006, the rear of a train passes the disc, and the higher speed takes effect only then.

So, what do you, the present reader of this message, feel your skills with KRS Editor, and general knowledge of the whole sim itself, are like ?

a) Don't wanna know.
b) Only interested in driving trains in pre-made routes & scenarios.
c) A glimmer of interest - the thought of creating your own routes and driving them - eventually !
d) The hell with it... I wanna learn it all, no matter how long it takes, and drive on my own routes !
e) I'm gonna dive right into it and learn everything, so I can create routes for mine, and others' ultimate pleasure.
f) It's wayyyyy too bloody hard for my poor, taxed brain to take in - I'm sticking to others' creations, thanks.

Just quote the message when replying, and choose a letter from the choices above, or, prehaps, add your own single line of thought, instead. But if anyone is interested, can they please offer a written description of how they would setup a speed limit on a length of track - current speed, say, 50 mph, warning of 30 mph limit ahead, the actual limit itself, and then say, 60 mph limit a little further ahead. I want to see how someone else, who's gotten it right, would set it up, step by step, if it's possible to write it down in a message, so it may help myself and then others as well maybe. The video seems a little too complicated in my opinion, with the coloured, patterned, strips between the rails. Doesn't show you how to make them either, in the video. Cheers.

Regards...

Jim McDermott

[sniper297]

Can't answer your survey since you left out "G. Piece of cake due to previous experience with game editors".

For speed limits tho;



Click the selection tool, then click and drag on the section of track you want to change, type new speed limits in right side flyout. For speed limit warning signs;



The sign takes whatever speed the track is set for wherever you connect the track trip marker. Sign on the right has the marker connected to the track right next to it, showing the speed limit next to the sign. The left sign is correctly connected with the marker stretched way ahead so it shows the speed limit after it changes.

[pgmetcalf]

E) .... and it's "got" not "gotten"

[bigvern]

I'll let you know in more detail once my new copy arrives and I get back into it.

From my experience before it does have some good features and some not so good.

Track Laying:
Laying plain track is relatively easy if you have the correct track "rule" selected and once I figured out what the programmers meant to go in the gradient box. Making crossovers and points in general not so easy as previously documented, though some of this probably down to "culture change" and familiarity with how other sims work.

At least you don't have to fight getting precise curvature on splines, but on that note a "flexitrack" option to link odd ends is missed.

Terrain:
Native DEM import good but the additional functionality offered by tools like Transdem (TRS) and TS Tools (MSTS) would have been useful. Didn't really get to do much hand bashing of the terrain with the other tools.

Terrain Texturing:
Only really dabbled but not as quick as MSTS with the tiled system or as artistically forgiving as the TRS terrain palette.

3D Placement:
Problem with roads/fencing already documented but has apparently gone away with Update 1 (or it was all in my mind/user error... ). No real improvement over previous products other than ability to lay parallel lofted objects. Still needs to be done painstakingly and methodically with individual pieces placed and rotated. No random rotation (TRS) or forest objects (MSTS) makes tree placement a bit laborious.

Signalling/Operational/Interactives.
Didn't get this far.

A couple of general observations - the nomenclature for many of the default items is a bit vague and could certainly benefit from thumbnails of the item (or texture). In my honest opinion, it's probably going to be easier than MSTS in the long run but not as easy as TRS Surveyor (overall). Where things fall down a bit as I've mentioned before is the Blueprint issue. Time consuming and quite technical - note the Blueprints have also been cited on the 3D Trains forums as not being exactly easy to work with, even by some of the "old hands". Maybe it's a case of learning new processes or maybe some procedural changes need to be taken on board if/when RS2 gets the go-ahead.

And in response to the OP's question...probably start off as "C" but maybe step up to "E" later on...

[AdamsRadial]

BigVern wrote

the nomenclature for many of the default items is a bit vague and could certainly benefit from thumbnails of the item (or texture

My thoughts as well. We've made a start here http://detheridge.co.uk/mediawiki/index.php5/Main_Page , look under default industrial. I started there simply because it seemed to have most of the buildings I wanted for a colliery.

Others will follow as and when I get the time. Plus, I'll be adding a section on how to add coal loading and unloading now that I've finally found the two objects.

[johny]

E) .... and it's "got" not "gotten"

Please let's not go down that route. Eric Partridge's USAGE & ABUSAGE states:

gotten is obsolete in Great Britain, except in the cliché, ill-gotten gains; but in the U.S.A., gotton (past participle) is preferred to got.

John

[pgmetcalf]

And I'm still not happy with gradients. Installing them is easy enough (+ or -) OK, but adding crossovers on gradients is still tricky, even if it is at the same gradient as the base track.

Then there's trouble adjusting by mouse multiple selected tracks. You can move multiple selected track up or down by exactly the same amount but doing this can have repercussions further up the track as the length of track sections and crossovers points etc affect the height of the track around those areas.

[Retro]

D and E
I have noticed one thing in the next speed display in the driver aid thingy. If you have a 30 MPH speed limit on a section track linked to a platform off the mainline. It does not show this as the next speed limit even when the points are set to take you to this platform in a Scenario. it just shows the next limit on the mainline. Thanks for the Wiki link Adrian most imformative.
Regards James.

[AndiS]

I guess I have tried all the functions minus the tunnels where I fear the portal creation issues reported by others (decals etc.) plus they are not may favourite subject anyway. I have not tried map decals myself, but I am very positive that the different tutorials will map to what I need, and I have concise ideas how to produce them without making individual blueprints.

For me, the intermediate summary is "half-way to what we dreamed of". As someone who tried the MSTS route editor a bit, I must say that this is a very big step forward. At the same time, I see a lot of potential for improvement. The editor of the future will have a lot of complex & abstract tools to place scenery following some kind of rules or definitions. I have no ideas how to bridge such concepts to the common man, so I do demand to see them implemented tomorrow. But things like the lofted scenery could have benefited from more intelligent planning/more variations. And that there are no thumbnails in the object list is a joke, as well as that all the signals and all the platforms and all the plants are in one big list each.

I think that a lot of the frustration that you feel with any new programme is caused by the need to learn something new and the fact that this costs time in which you could have achieved something, were there not this need to find out how things work. Looking at where I wasted most of my time, I would rank it like this:
- Blender
- AI traffic
- Blueprints
- Track laying

Of this, only the time spend with AI was a real waste. Blender is a complex tools which is worthwhile to learn. A lot of the extra effort with blueprints is caused by the added functionality in KRS, compared to MSTS. The blueprint for a simple scenery object is just the same as the .sd file. The bogey blueprint is only there because you can have any number of bogeys on your engine. At the same time, I am not happy that I lost so much time to find out that semaphore arms are "procedural scenery items". But I had similar experiences with Blender, software creators still use too much time to invent new things without need and too little time to explain what they meant with all their inventions. E.g., there is no simple list of all the blueprints with a short description what you can do with each of them.

The fact that track laying cost less time is mostly due to the fact that I came across useful guides how to do a loop before I wasted much time.

Thus, for me it is all a communication affair. The docu is a nice start, but it got stuck after the start. There are some tutorials from the community, but there are also big gaps. Derek does a lot in his spare time to fill some (turntable, foliage), but it is a shame that RSDL (the company) did not allocate significant resources to spread the word on how to use their product so people can enjoy it. There is a lot of trial and error from the community, instead of guided tours to each feature. RSDL are not alone in making this mistake, but it does not help us.

All in all, I am optimistic that once I get the time to make a serious attempt at it, I could achieve a nice result with the world editor given the things I already learnt, and the information waiting to be tried out.

[jivebunny]

I think I'd also have to go with "G. Piece of cake due to previous experience with game editors"

Having had plenty of experience building routes in the original Trainz and then TRS2006, I found the RS editor a piece of cake to get to grips with. Whilst RS may not use splines in the traditional sense, the overall concept is the same and as such I find myself using the same approaches, methods and workarounds as I did when routebuilding in TRS. Unlike MSTS (IMO!!!) there are very few things with the RS editor that restrict routebuilding or make it outstandingly difficult. In fact my only gripes with it are cosmetic, such as the inaccuracy of the paintbrush and the handling of "road" elements, where traffic disappears at the end of a section rather than continuing onto the next one.

JB

[longbow]

There are some issues with it and of course there's a learning curve to climb, but overall I think RS World editor blows its MSTS equivalent away - better documented, better presented, easier to learn, easier to use, much more robust and can be accessed in-game.