Traincar Woes

[slider38]

Hi Guys, I have been trying for some time to get a traincar to work and have made no progress. I have downloaded the "Wooden Boxcar" BB and am attempting to use it in my map. I was able to get it running as long as I made no name changes to any files. Now I am trying to use a second set of boxcars for another item and am stuck. I have developed an ammunition plant and I'm trying to use the boxcars for transport. I have renamed the boxcar kfm files and nif files and made the adjustment in the kfm files to reference the ammo_car_v1.nif and ammo_car_v2.nif files. I have created the icons, repainted the diff files etc. While everything looks great in nifskope, it always bombs while trying to get it into my game. My traincar file looks like this:
<TrainCar>
<szName>Ammunition Car</szName>
<szGood>Ammunition</szGood>
<szModel>Ammo_Car.kfm</szModel>
<szDummyModel>Ammo_Car_dummies.nif</szDummyModel>
<szIcon>icon_car_ammo.dds</szIcon>
<szGroundClackSound>AS3D_CLACK_PLANET_GROUND</szGroundClackSound>
<szBridgeClackSound>AS3D_CLACK_PLANET_BRIDGE</szBridgeClackSound>
<RunLength>30</RunLength>
</TrainCar>
The box car is based on the Foodcar so the rest of the kfm references are to the foodcar. I am assuming that I don't have to copy all the foodcar files to my user folder? I just can't figure out what to do. I went through this same thing with my first usage of boxcars and eventually just gave up and used the existing names to the point of even saving my paint scheme with the original box_car2_diff.dds name. I don't know why this is so difficult - nature of the beast I guess. Anyway, if anyone has any thoughts or wants to see more code, please let me know. Thanks, Slider

[slider38]

Hi Guys, In case it sounds familiar to anyone, I still can't get this working, but it feels so close I can taste it. It goes into "building up steam" for 5 seconds or so before it blows me to the desktop. I don't get the black screen of death, but it feels ready to start before it fails. It has to be one of the last things the game is looking at that is causing the failure. I just can't figure it out. Slider

[snoopy55]

If you are using an existing BB as is, there is only 1 thing you HAVE to change, the Good. Changing the szName is fine since the game does not really see that. By this I mean you ask it to haul a Good. It finds the Good in the list of TrainCars it has in memory and uses the information related to it.

If you want to change the skin of the car as you are, you do not even need to change the name of the DIFF DDS file UNLESS you are going to do more than one skinning of that BB. As to the dummies and icon files, those do not ever need to be renamed unless you plan to change the length of the car (the dummies file) or change the color/shape of the icon. That dummies file does nothing more than tell the game where the trucks are and where the car/engine/tender connects to the ones before and after it, and the less names the game has to mess with the better off it is, and the less memory it uses.

I'm guessing that you are using the Brown Box Car BB, I cannot find a Wooden Boxcar BB. This is all you should have to do to it:

<TrainCar>
<szName>Brown Box Car</szName>
<szGood>Ammunition</szGood>
<szModel>Brn_Box_Car.kfm</szModel>
<szDummyModel>box_car_dummies.nif</szDummyModel>
<szIcon>icon_car_goods.dds</szIcon>
<szGroundClackSound>AS3D_CLACK_PLANET_GROUND</szGroundClackSound>
<szBridgeClackSound>AS3D_CLACK_PLANET_BRIDGE</szBridgeClackSound>
<RunLength>30</RunLength>
</TrainCar>

The brn_box_car_v2_diff.dds is all you should have to edit for skinning.

If you are still having problems with it, upload or PM the BB you have made and I'll look at it for you. Also, watch your spelling, this game is a bit dumb in that way.....

[rodea2007]

This game has limitations, you can not put all your models such as Trains, TrainCars, industrial or whatever your liking in one Map, like for example my Map Borneo Island, I still use some of the original train car, though I have all the mod to the model, so why .... because if I add one more mod Cars to replace the original Car then the map will Crash to Desktop. This is what the limitations of this game owned, only programmer from This Game can figure it out............

[snoopy55]

Rodea, am I understanding you right? Are you saying that you can not use ALL mods in a map?

[slider38]

Hi Guys, Well, I got my traincar to work - but I can't tell you why it works. Snoopy, you're right. It was the BB_Wood_Brn_Box_Car2.zip files that I've been working with. I used them once for one good and ended up using the files as is. What I could not understand is why Box_Car2 should be any different than Ammo_Car - same length file names and these files did come from Food_Car. Anyway, it wouldn't work that way, so, on a whim I renamed the files Box_Car3 and voila! Weird! So now I have box_car2 files for one good and box_car3 files for another. I made the same changes to these files as I had made when trying to use them as ammo_car - but one way worked and one didn't ??? I don't see that the offsets in the kfm file would no the difference between them. In my younger days (old days) I fooled around with my computer and did some programming back when hex was very common. As long as the name is the same length I do not understand why my names wouldn't work, but alls well that ends well. If anyone knows what is going on with this traincar name business, I'd love to know why the game sees them as different. Since the only file name change in the kfm is to box_car2.nif and the rest of the references are to food_files, I can't believe the BB author made any offset changes within the game - wouldn't make sense. Slider

[rodea2007]

Rodea, am I understanding you right? Are you saying that you can not use ALL mods in a map?

As I said before the game had limitations, that mean like this case, I want to add all Mods Train Cars as I created to Borneo Island Map, but then the map got CTD when I did it, so I decided to reduce the number of Train Car mod, then the Map run fine,

[bobby]

Rodea, am I understanding you right? Are you saying that you can not use ALL mods in a map?

As I said before the game had limitations, that mean like this case, I want to add all Mods Train Cars as I created to Borneo Island Map, but then the map got CTD when I did it, so I decided to reduce the number of Train Car mod, then the Map run fine,

That is not a limitation to the game, That just shows that one or more of your traincars has problems with them that caused the map to CTD or crash. And by the looks of it you did not check them to find out which ones were causing the problems.

I have all Modded Traincars in my latest map that I am working on now and have not had one CTD or crash except where there was a problem with the nifs and there are 29 traincars. 1 Is stock but the rest are all changed.

[snoopy55]

slider38 - one of the reasons for the name differences with dummies fies that are the same is because it is one of the early ones. It was also an early BB and at that time I was not editing them for space, but for speed, speed in how much time it took to convert those files to convert the maps to SAMs.

The only possible reasons I can see for the car failing would be spelling. You can use the same car KFM for all the cars in your map and it would still run fine.

Beyond that, without seeing the files and possibly the RRT_TrainCars XML, it is almost impossible to tell exactly what the problem was. And even you have to agree on that Rodea.

[rodea2007]

Rodea, am I understanding you right? Are you saying that you can not use ALL mods in a map?

As I said before the game had limitations, that mean like this case, I want to add all Mods Train Cars as I created to Borneo Island Map, but then the map got CTD when I did it, so I decided to reduce the number of Train Car mod, then the Map run fine,

That is not a limitation to the game, That just shows that one or more of your traincars has problems with them that caused the map to CTD or crash. And by the looks of it you did not check them to find out which ones were causing the problems.

I have all Modded Traincars in my latest map that I am working on now and have not had one CTD or crash except where there was a problem with the nifs and there are 29 traincars. 1 Is stock but the rest are all changed.

Ok..you can put all mods of train cars but did you have others mod like Trains, Industry depot etc in your map?......, if not...yes of course that is not caused CTD, but if you Notice on Borneo Island Map, not only Train Car have mods but the others have too

[bobby]

Rodea, am I understanding you right? Are you saying that you can not use ALL mods in a map?

As I said before the game had limitations, that mean like this case, I want to add all Mods Train Cars as I created to Borneo Island Map, but then the map got CTD when I did it, so I decided to reduce the number of Train Car mod, then the Map run fine,

That is not a limitation to the game, That just shows that one or more of your traincars has problems with them that caused the map to CTD or crash. And by the looks of it you did not check them to find out which ones were causing the problems.

I have all Modded Traincars in my latest map that I am working on now and have not had one CTD or crash except where there was a problem with the nifs and there are 29 traincars. 1 Is stock but the rest are all changed.

Ok..you can put all mods of train cars but did you have others mod like Trains, Industry depot etc in your map?......, if not...yes of course that is not caused CTD, but if you Notice on Borneo Island Map, not only Train Car have mods but the others have too

Yes i knew you would say that, So my reply to that is YES I do have other mods for everything in my map that is why it is taking so long to make it this time.
I add 1 mod at a time and test everything works, then move on to the next item on my long list.
So as I said in my other reply you can have a fully modded Map and not have the CTD/crashes, the only reason maps CTD/crash is because there usually is something wrong somewhere with one or more of the mods used in the map you are attempting to make, Or a bad xml listing/spelling mistake, Or the Computer just doesn't have enough resources to run the game properly.
So there Is no limitations on what you can use in a map.

Anyway enough on this subject in this topic as its getting off track.