LocoTool V0.4.3 [30 Oct 2004]

Rens2Sea · Post by **Rens2Sea** » 17 Sep 2004 10:49

btw, any eta on a version wich allows encoding xml files back to dat?
Oh, and decoding the train tracks so i/others can start working on maglev

And another thing, can't you release compiled versions instead of source files only?

No idea how to compile them let alone wich programs to use to compile them.

CmdKewin · Post by **CmdKewin** » 17 Sep 2004 12:17

Patchman wrote: The only other language I'd consider writing this in is Perl... it'd be my preferred language, but it'd make it kind of hard for other people without Perl to run it...

plus the fact that parsing in perl is really an easy thing to do...

smallboy · Post by **smallboy** » 17 Sep 2004 12:48

I was thinking: wouldn't it be possible to edit a saved game to make all your trains' age 0 years? Or wouldn't that have any effect on the reliability?

Patchman · Post by **Patchman** » 18 Sep 2004 05:35

Rens2Sea wrote:btw, any eta on a version wich allows encoding xml files back to dat?
Oh, and decoding the train tracks so i/others can start working on maglev

And another thing, can't you release compiled versions instead of source files only? No idea how to compile them let alone wich programs to use to compile them.

a) no ETA
b) a few days later, but you'll have to figure the structure out yourself... you'll just see a bunch of "field_##" entries
c) Only if they actually work, otherwise I only publish the source

Patchman · Post by **Patchman** » 19 Sep 2004 04:17

Ok, the first working version of LocoTool is done.

Download http://www.ttdpatch.net/loco/locotool_v0.1.zip and unzip it anywhere you like.

To use

Drag&drop a vehicle .dat file onto LocoTool. Other .dat files will not work at the moment!
Edit the resulting .xml file with Notepad, or better yet with a proper XML editor
Modify the .png graphics files if you like
Drag&drop the .xml back onto LocoTool to encode the changes back into a .dat file

LocoTool will keep a backup of the original .dat file, with the extension .bak. This backup won't ever be overwritten.

Please report any crashes, error messages or other problems here or by email. I've tested the tool with all of Locomotion's .dat files, and it reproduces them all identically, so in theory it should work for all vehicles.

Patchman · Post by **Patchman** » 20 Sep 2004 05:10

Updated LocoTool, now also works for cliff faces (class 04), tunnels (class 0D), bridges (class 0E), train tracks (class 11) and snow (class 19).

Download http://www.ttdpatch.net/loco/locotool_v0.2.zip

One change is that it now puts all png files in a separate folder for each .dat file, to avoid having thousands and thousands of png files in the objdata folder. Also, some more fields in the vehicle structure are now known and I've added them to the .xml output.

Warning: I'll hold further releases of LocoTool hostage (and with that support for changing industries, houses/buildings and other classes) until someone makes me a nice new bridge with the following properties:

unlimited speed
max height one or two height levels
supports slopes and sloped curves
looks like grass or earth

Basically it should be like a railroad embankment, that is a gently sloped wall of earth overgrown with grass. I just want my trains to be able to climb one height level without slowing down so much

Like this:

Website · Post by **Lakie** » 20 Sep 2004 16:41

that's evil

Pitty I don't have the full game yet, can only make 'demo' .dat files.

Zimmlock · Post by **Zimmlock** » 20 Sep 2004 17:22

Hope to be able to edit the house grafix soon, don't like all those black windows.

Born Acorn · Post by **Born Acorn** » 20 Sep 2004 17:38

you can

Bloodnok · Post by **Bloodnok** » 20 Sep 2004 18:24

Patchman wrote:Warning: I'll hold further releases of LocoTool hostage (and with that support for changing industries, houses/buildings and other classes) until someone makes me a nice new bridge with the following properties:
unlimited speed

max height one or two height levels

supports slopes and sloped curves

looks like grass or earth
Basically it should be like a railroad embankment, that is a gently sloped wall of earth overgrown with grass. I just want my trains to be able to climb one height level without slowing down so much

That, sounds like a challenge.

Having said that, I've never made anything for TTD or RCT before, only fully 3D simulations. What is the creation procedure for this kind of game? What do I need to know? (And is there anything simpler I should be starting with?)

Jak · Post by **Jak** » 20 Sep 2004 21:27

hi there

first, i have a small request, can someone make a list of the files in the objdata folder with descriptions (example: concor.dat - Concorde ... and so on), please ?

second, i have modified all engines, trucks, buses, planes, ships (i hope i don't missed one) that there are no breakdowns anymore. (+changes of capacity of the Concorde and the A380)
if someone has webspace to host it (the rar is 8.840.198 Bytes big), all that want it can have it.
all the changes were made with locotool 0.1 (thx for Patchman programming it)

greets from Germany
Jak

Born Acorn · Post by **Born Acorn** » 20 Sep 2004 21:28

rens2sea has already done that.

Jak · Post by **Jak** » 20 Sep 2004 21:45

Born Acorn wrote:rens2sea has already done that.

ohh... i didn't see that. my mistake.

Dark Rain · Post by **Dark Rain** » 20 Sep 2004 22:35

Well, and here I thought I had found myself a new target game to reverse engineer. I hope you left me some file formats

I suppose I could started to work on a gui version of the tool but that's always the most time consuming thing for me when making tools for games. You would'nt by any chance have written down the file format description? ^_^. I'll look at the code and get familiar with the file format tonight.

Tyrell · Post by **Tyrell** » 20 Sep 2004 22:38

Tyrell wrote:(I'll look at some of the early models tomorrow)

A little later than anticipated (forum downtime).
Looked at a bunch of the early 1900 vehicles (train,bus,etc).
But found no deviations in reliability decay rate's.
Think its save to say that the decay rate is object independent.

ampz · Post by **ampz** » 20 Sep 2004 23:11

Patchman wrote:Updated LocoTool, now also works for cliff faces (class 04), tunnels (class 0D), bridges (class 0E), train tracks (class 11) and snow (class 19).

Download http://www.ttdpatch.net/loco/locotool_v0.2.zip

One change is that it now puts all png files in a separate folder for each .dat file, to avoid having thousands and thousands of png files in the objdata folder. Also, some more fields in the vehicle structure are now known and I've added them to the .xml output.

Warning: I'll hold further releases of LocoTool hostage (and with that support for changing industries, houses/buildings and other classes) until someone makes me a nice new bridge with the following properties:
unlimited speed

max height one or two height levels

supports slopes and sloped curves

looks like grass or earth
Basically it should be like a railroad embankment, that is a gently sloped wall of earth overgrown with grass. I just want my trains to be able to climb one height level without slowing down so much

Like this:

I would really love such a bridge.
Only slopes and sloped curves need to be supported by the "bridge". The rest can be done by simply raising the land and then lay regular track. But it would be practical to have a "auto raise/lower land to track level" option when you build track... It could be implemented as a new bridge type, only instead of building any bridges, it just raises the land.

Patchman · Post by **Patchman** » 20 Sep 2004 23:53

ampz wrote:I would really love such a bridge.
Only slopes and sloped curves need to be supported by the "bridge". The rest can be done by simply raising the land and then lay regular track. But it would be practical to have a "auto raise/lower land to track level" option when you build track... It could be implemented as a new bridge type, only instead of building any bridges, it just raises the land.

Well, but you can't raise the land by a half height unit, so you can't lay tracks on it without building a bridge. And the only sloped bridge at the moment (brick) has a very low speed limit that even the steam engines hit early on.

I want something reasonably realistic so that my trains can go up or down by a height level without being slowed down as much.

(I now realize that asking for unlimited is perhaps a bit unbalancing, but a reasonably higher speed limit shouldn't be...)

Dark Rain · Post by **Dark Rain** » 21 Sep 2004 00:19

I'm looking at the code right now, trying to write down the file format and get a feel of things and I mean holy s*** you worked out a lot of things. Great job, was knowledge of the other TTD any help? I'm wondering if perusing documents about TTD or roller coaster (if there is any) will help.

I'll admit it took me a while to get the hang out of things mainly because I'm a C++ guy and we just don't do things that way ^_^. Well, it's all the same syntax so it's not too bad. Props for using uint8_t, uint32_t and such, few do.

Patchman · Post by **Patchman** » 21 Sep 2004 00:39

The format itself is the same as in RCT2, well documented at the RCT TID (see link in first post). However, the objects all have slightly different structures and so on.

ampz · Post by **ampz** » 21 Sep 2004 00:56

Patchman wrote:
ampz wrote:I would really love such a bridge.
Only slopes and sloped curves need to be supported by the "bridge". The rest can be done by simply raising the land and then lay regular track. But it would be practical to have a "auto raise/lower land to track level" option when you build track... It could be implemented as a new bridge type, only instead of building any bridges, it just raises the land.
Well, but you can't raise the land by a half height unit, so you can't lay tracks on it without building a bridge. And the only sloped bridge at the moment (brick) has a very low speed limit that even the steam engines hit early on.

I want something reasonably realistic so that my trains can go up or down by a height level without being slowed down as much.

(I now realize that asking for unlimited is perhaps a bit unbalancing, but a reasonably higher speed limit shouldn't be...)

That's what I meant. The new embankment type bridge only need to support slopes.
I don't think unlimited speed is unbalancing. It is realistic. In reality, the only thing limiting the speed on such a slope is the power of the locomotive. It takes a powerful locomotive to climb a slope at high speed with a heavy load.

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LocoTool V0.4.3 [30 Oct 2004]

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