The Empty Region

[Emperor Darth Sidious]

Hello,

I don't realy know if anybody thought of this idea or if it already has been released, but I created the empty region.

I have seen a lot of players which were complaining that so many things were pre-selected in the game and that they weren't able to select there own bridges, stations and some other stuff they like.

Personally the most annoying thing to me with the normal region selection is that there are 15 pre-selected industries along with all of there cargo's. Say you wan't to create a completely new scenario with all sort of mods that you have (or only a few cargo's). If you must use one of the game-regions then all of the cargo's from the pre-selected industries are selected as well. But if you only wan't to use your own cargo's then you can't get rid of the already "selected" cargo's. At some point when creating a new scenario you see that annoying message that you can't select any more buildings ore industries because you are using to many cargo's even though you haven't reached the city-buildings limit or the industry-buildings limit. If you already have selected too many cargo's you will not be able to select anything else that uses some new sort of cargo-type which you wan't to use. You see it doesn't matter if you de-select an industry. Once you have selected an industry and already started building a map it's cargo's will be selected as well, and there's no way to de-select the cargo's. So if you have reached the cargo-limit even though you will not use some of the "selected" cargo's because you changed your mind on using a certain industry then you will have a problem. Now you can start building a map without de-selecting all of the pre-selected objects (which is already time-consuming to de-select everything that Chris Sawyer pre-selected)...

With this file a newly build scenario uses only the cargo's that you wan't to use and you will only start with one cargo (Passengers).

There are however a few things I can't take out like this line, because if I do Locotool doesn't save the XML.file:

<useobject desc="cargo" class="8">PASS </useobject>

Because of this line needs to be in the XML.file, some of the things will be selected but they can be turn of easy with this region. The only things that you find pre-selected are some fences, the Train-Tracks (overhead wires, electric 3rd rail, some trains-tations), Tram-Tracks (overhead wires and some tram-stations) and some bridges. However, all of these pre-selected things can be un-selected. In the screen below you can see what i mean:



As you can see all of these files can be un-selected, I know the bridges are not, but if you de-select the train- and tram-tracks (which will use the selected bridges because they are in the ROADTRAM.DAT and the TRACKST.DAT) they can be de-selected and then you will have a completely empty region with no vehicles, tracks, bridges, industries, citybuildings, cargo's or roads selected.

I hope you people can use this...

If there's anything wrong or if there are any questions please ask.

Here's the file:

REGEMPTY.dat

Empty Region File, just place it in your ObjData Map, nothing will be overwritten

(7.52 KiB) Downloaded 493 times

Regards,

Erik

(By the way, if somebody creates a completetly new scenario with the empty region file you can include this file without asking permission to use it, it would be nice if my name is mentioned for the empty region but when you release the scenario this file can freely be included. Permission is hereby granted to everyone who needs it )

[Owen-Alexander]

Nice. Could it also be used for map making, since people complain about mod items being present in non-mod maps.

[Zakos]

It already applies to that because what you select in the editor is what shows up on the map.

[Emperor Darth Sidious]

That's right, and when you have de-selected the few pre-selected objects in the empty region you can finaly start with a completly empty map within seconds...and yes it's will also come in handy when you create a completely new scenario

[uktrackbuilder_loco]

I hate to ask a question but since the items you have in your Objdata folder will be different to mine, when I attempt to import your landscape into my scenario editor surely that is going to crash?

If I recall rightly Lomo works on the basis of stored data tables and any item not present in an Objdata folder will generate an error message when you attempt to open a landscape/game/scenario to which items have been previously selected and a stored table created, that is why we always were told to create a clean install using a basic unmodded version of Lomo for any landscape etc uploaded to the forum.

So I don't understand how you have created an item where your selection can be opened by my computer if the items you have selected and saved as are not present in my Objdata folder

[Emperor Darth Sidious]

Hello Utrack,

It's all right if you ask the questions, that's what I said in the first post as well...let me explain.

Here's the complete XML of the empty region:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<object class="0x9F" subclass="0x118E9F" name="REGEMPTY"><chunk compression="1">
<unknown name="field_0[6]" size="1">1</unknown>
<unknown name="field_0[8]" size="1">1</unknown>
<description num="0" language="0">Empty Region Select Yourself</description>
<description num="0" language="1">Empty Region Select Yourself</description>
<description num="0" language="2">Empty Region Select Yourself</description>
<description num="0" language="3">Empty Region Select Yourself</description>
<description num="0" language="4">Empty Region Select Yourself</description>
<description num="0" language="5">Empty Region Select Yourself</description>
<description num="0" language="9">Empty Region Select Yourself</description>
<description num="0" language="11">Empty Region Select Yourself</description>
<useobject desc="cargo" class="8">PASS </useobject>
<useobject desc="default[0]" class="0">INTERDEF</useobject>
<useobject desc="default[1]" class="5">WATER1 </useobject>
<useobject desc="default[2]" class="12">SLIGHT1 </useobject>
<useobject desc="default[3]" class="27">HS1 </useobject>
<useobject desc="default[4]" class="29">SCAFDEF </useobject>
<sprite id="0" xofs="-56" yofs="-56">
<bit name="hasdata">1</bit>
<bit name="chunked">0</bit>
<bit name="copy">0</bit>
<pngfile>D:\\Game Guides\\PC\\Locomotion\\REGEMPTY\\000.png</pngfile>
</sprite>
</chunk></object>

As you can see, the only files that are in use for the empty region are the 6 files that are filled in by this line: <useobject desc=". The files that the game will use are all standard game files. I have tested this 'mod' on a clean install of Locomotion and it works without crashing the game.

Indeed you see that objects in my game are being selected, but that's because my TRACKST.DAT and RAODTRAM.DAT uses other files then in your game. The fact that TRACKST.DAT and ROADTRAM.DAT are selected is because the XML.file has this line in it:

<useobject desc="cargo" class="8">PASS </useobject>

I tried to leave this line out of the XML.file, but this doesn't work. Anyway, everybody who runs the game uses some sort of cargo and passengers will be used by anybody. This line automaticly selects railway tracks and tramtracks along with the stations that are selected in the TRACKST.DAT and the ROADTRAM.DAT (everybody uses these two files for their games, and although the names of these DAT.files remain the same, the stations that are being used by these two files are not). In this case it doesn't matter if your game is heavily modded (like mine) or if your game is completly standard. The Region file works in both cases...

I have tested the file in all of my ObjData folders (4 in total) and it works in all of them with no crashes at all.

I hope that this answers your question...if it doesn't please call again

Regards,

Erik

[uktrackbuilder_loco]

Thats fine EDS I was not sure because I've gotten my copy of the game to a point where a lot of the extraneous junk I've collected over what 6-7 years of game play is now stripped out and I use very little other than Plastik's US mods and the AMI packs, I've even stopped landscape dev'ing ( in part due to an increasing workload at IMVU in dev there using Gimp) so I wasn't going to run the risk, now I think I might give it a whirl