Animated Level Crossings???

[Reppo]

Hi!

Anybody have built a functional level crossing with animated bars using signal scripts, particulary OnPassingConsist scripts?

Thanks.

[iceman2117]

short ...No.

greets ice

[longbow]

..the reason being that currently road traffic won't stop when the crossing closes.

[Reppo]

..the reason being that currently road traffic won't stop when the crossing closes.

Ok, you are right, but anyway I will try to build an animated crossing. It would be a first step.

Wish me good luck please.

Sorry for my english.


Bye.

[CaptScarlet]

I will gladly wish you luck.

John

[ka959]

I will gladly wish you luck.

John

Me too. It's been disgraceful it's been this long since Rail simulator came out, and yet nothing has been fixed, in the way of stopping traffic, by RSDL or whatnot, so level crossings of quality are able to be produced in order to fill that missing spot.

Regards...

Jim McDermott

[longbow]

Can the OnConsistPass function be used to trigger animated scenery?

[ka959]

Can the OnConsistPass function be used to trigger animated scenery?

Don't ask me about this, but if RSDL has been this unwilling to produce any quality level crossings after this long, and surelly, it can't be that hard for them to come up with something as seemingly simple as this (they know what all the code does, if they're the people who put it all together, you know) No model railway system or simulation, for that matter, is complete at all without a level crossing to make it as realistic as possible. If an older technology like the platform MSTS is based on, can allow level crossings that really function, then most surely RailWorks is able to replicate this sort of thing without too much effort. This is the last thing I want from RW, if only they will acknowledge it's what most of us want for our own routes, just to see these pieces of equipment working and doing what they're supposed to do, and see road traffic stopping when the booms lower on the approach of a train, then go back up after the Iron Beast passes !

Regards...

Jim McDermott

[bab7000]

Place some static vehicles at the crossing, and let the animated vehicles stay behind. Problem solved !!

Bab

[ka959]

Place some static vehicles at the crossing, and let the animated vehicles stay behind. Problem solved !!

Bab

True, that will work to some extent, but certainly won't annimate the crossings' working parts, will it ? Not realistic enough for me, to be honest. I'd PAY for a good, workig crossing, believe me, if it came to that !

Regards...

Jim McDermott

[keber]

Actually even level crossings can be animated with current state of RW and even with traffic running through them and stopped when necessary. Just creativity is necessary. Sadly I lack 3D modelling skills to show that.

[karma99]

RSDL are working on this already.

Remember the bug that made vehicles all perform wheelies a month or so back. That was remnants of "code in progress" to make vehicles stop when required.

http://forums.uktrainsim.com/viewtopic. ... 6#p1194616

Hi, sorry that this has happened on some lofts. We will of course be putting out a fix next week.

I've been away for a day or 2 so not looked at which lofts this seems to be happening on but it does seem to be new lofts. I'll investigate further and get back to you.
Some of the unfinished code for level crossings has found it's way into the build. To get the crossings working requires the traffic code to be change slightly.
That code of course was not meant to be included till it was finished and it was just a mistake on my part.
Thats the last time an artist dabbles in code!

However, there are some other nice updates coming soon.

regards

derek

[AndiS]

..the reason being that currently road traffic won't stop when the crossing closes.

Ok, you are right, but anyway I will try to build an animated crossing. It would be a first step.

Wish me good luck please.

I sat down this morning to finally beat up that stupid script. But it will take some more hours to get it done.

Whether it will come with a demonstration object or not depends on my luck with Blender. Last time I tried getting an animation into KRS, I was not too lucky.

[karma99]

..the reason being that currently road traffic won't stop when the crossing closes.

Ok, you are right, but anyway I will try to build an animated crossing. It would be a first step.

Wish me good luck please.

I sat down this morning to finally beat up that stupid script. But it will take some more hours to get it done.

Whether it will come with a demonstration object or not depends on my luck with Blender. Last time I tried getting an animation into KRS, I was not too lucky.

Shout me if you need any help on that mate, my water tower and prairie cab had animations from blender.

[AndiS]

Thanks for the offer. Actually, I did not get around touching Blender anyway, messing with Lua is enough to waste a day. I just used the shunt signal from RSC for "something animated". Anyway, here it is:
http://andis.ukts.googlepages.com/AnimatedCrossing.zip

Temporary usage guide is this:
Make a source folder (like "Animated Crossing" under AndiS or Reppo.
Unzip the above archive. You will find a Lua script and a blueprint with the same name.
Now you have 2 options.

1) If you have nothing animated ready, copy the following from the RW signal source distribution, folder RailNetwork/Signals/UK Semaphore/Sem_Shunt (European version):
pt_shunt.IGS
pt_shunt_ToGo.IA
pt_shunt_ToStop.IA
the Textures folder
one level up, you find the LightGlows folder, which you put besides the Textures folder in your source folder.

Now you export the my blueprint with fingers crossed.
Then you start the game, click the blue cube to select the "Animated Crossing" product, find it as a signal under the same name, place it, with link 0 pointing to the "road crossing" and link 1 pointing away from it. In other words, link 0 goes where you want to start the closing animation if a train travels in the direction shown by the arc of the link. Link 1 goes where you want to start the closing for the opposite direction.

2) If you have something animated and gate-shaped to try out, open the Lua script.
Look for the line starting "-- commenting out any of the following" (line 17). Following that, you find 4 lines defining the names of your animations. Just change the names between the quotes. If you don't have one of the animations, comment the line out by prefixing --.

The animations are:
- Warning, played before the gates actually close.
- Closing of the gates.
- Something played all the time during the gates are closed (like a flashing light).
- Opening of the gates.

I only tested the closing and opening of the gates. The continuous loop needs a little work, the current version does not include that simply because I did not get around testing it.
I have no idea about sounds, but they would be easy to add, be they animations, or be they started by this system call I came across once. Anyone interested (and having such sounds) just tell me.

For double track, clone the blueprint and change the number of track links from 2 to 4. There is no limit to the number of tracks, but links 0, 2, 4, ... must always point to the crossing and 1, 3, 5, ... away from it.

I foresaw the construction of complex gates by composing them in the asset editor, with gates and flashing lights being child elements of the signal blueprint. However, I am not so sure this is a popular idea, because the asset editor is not so popular.

More important, I think that for prototypical behaviour, we don't get around independent objects which then can be combined and arranged by the route builder as needed. Under this scheme, you would have innocent looking items with 1 track link sending "close the gates" to the crossing. There, you would have one or more items looking like gates of traffic lights, each of which has as many links as there are tracks in the crossing.

The big plus would be, that you could open the gate as soon as the train is a few metres away. Currently, the gate is kept closed until the whole train passed the alarming point for the opposite direction, which is quite long.

The other plus is that you can then freely combine different parts (gates, lights) without the need for a new blueprint for each combination.

The downside is that I first need to check with other signal creators which of the meagre 10 message numbers that Kuju granted third-party extensions they already used. Else, there would be stupid interferences with other people's signals. The current (stupid) version is guaranteed to work with any signalling system.

Just try it out, give your thoughts, etc etc ...