[HOWTO]Add things to Road, Normal Gauge & Narrow Gauge?

[Zainy521]

As far as i can tell, your TRACKST is fine. What date are you starting the scenario? The bridge might not be available yet (Don't know if you can set it for bridges, but you can set it for signals, so maybe.)

[dcpDarkMatter]

It's set for 1950 right now. Let me bump it up to 2000 and see what happens.

[dcpDarkMatter]

Well, setting it to 2000 didn't work. Going in to the editor, I see there's two train track rails in there (instead of the just one I have). Both say railroad track. One is grayed out and unable to be deselected. The other one has a white check, but won't let me uncheck it, saying it's needed by something else (I'm guessing the steel bridge). I'm not sure why it's adding another track instead of using the one I already have.

I've attached the steel bridge xml just in case.

[Zainy521]

The check one is the regular railroad track. The greyed out one is your normal train track. The other one you should be able to deselect if their is a white check next to it. It's needed by a vehicle. Tracks don't become unselectable by selected bridges, only selected vehicles. I used your currently configured trackst on my game, and I was able to build steel bridges just fine. Did you make sure the your new trackst overwrote the old one?

[dcpDarkMatter]

These are the images inside the editor and then starting a new game.

http://imgur.com/a/PbnsX

There's also a second bridge, the Earth Slopes mod that I've mentioned before that works. Not sure what's up with the Steel Bridge.

[dcpDarkMatter]

Okay, it looks like it was the Earth Slopes bridge that was throwing it off. Taking a look at the XML, the mod was a copy of the trackst.dat file, which means it was overwriting all other custom track info. Now to see if I can just pull the relevant data out of there so I can use both mods at the same time.

[nobodyelse]

Selected it in the scenario?

yes i selected it but when i want to build a tram track i only build tram tracks but no catenaries i dont even see the button on the menu to select catenaries it wont show up pls help

[Zakos]

When adding another caternary, did you...

1: Number the lines appropriately?
e.g.
trackmod[0]
trackmod[1]

2: Change 'nummods' to 2 near the top?

[nobodyelse]

The ROADTRAM.dat doesn't have anything like that and i add the filename(TRAMCAT1.dat) the file is in the objdata but when i start the game i only build tram tracks without catenaries.

[Zakos]

My mistake, the mod variable is roadmod. Follow the first step, but for that variable.

[dcpDarkMatter]

Zainy - looks like it was an error on my end. Thanks for the hep though!

[Zakos]

In case the issue is unresolved, the variable to change after adding a roadmod is Field_1E[7]

[Trekman10]

Ok, so my problem is with the Better Roads mod, in which trains can't intersect with any of the NLRoads. I decompiled one of the road files into XML but now i don't knwo where I add or remove things to make it work.

I've read the entire thread and I don't understand much of it.

[Zakos]

New modders will often have trouble understanding the directions on this thread, you're not alone.

What you will want to do is open the .xml document and add new lines in the compatible[array] field (one for every new road) using the corresponding road's name. Then, and note that this applies to all added lines, change "numcompat" to reflect how many lines that you now have.

[Trekman10]

When I'm not tired and hungry I'll do that.

[doxlulzem]

Seems a legit tutorial but when I drag the .dat files over Locotool.exe it does nothing

EDIT: It has to be in the same folder to work. Done it now

EDIT: When I recompile the .XML, it turns into a .BAK file
A) What's a .bak file
B) What did I do wrong?

[Emperor Darth Sidious]

A BAK.File is simply the new DAT.file (and I guess it's also a backup-file of the original one, but not sure about that. That's why I also make a backup of the file that I'm editing)...But to save your XML.file as a new DAT.file you must first remove the un-edited one.

So when you drop (for example) Trackst.DAT on Locotool, the picture and the XML.file is created. Next, remove the Trackst.DAT that you dropped onto locotool. Do your editing with the XML.file (or the pictures). Then drop the Trackst.XML file on the Locotool and voila your new Trackst.DAT is created (if you edited everything via the correct way) instead of a BAK.File...(but of course make sure you made a backup of your old Trackst.DAT before you edit and remove it)...

Done !

[Tattoo]

And you've been doing this how long EDS? You'll confuse him with that explanation. Geez. I'll explain it to him. We'll use trackst.dat as an example.

To decompile it, you drop it onto locotool.exe. After that, you will have the original trackst.dat + a trackst.xml + a folder named trackst with all the sprites in it.
After you make your changes to the trackst.xml you'll want to recompile it by dropping the trackst.xml onto locotool.exe.
After you do that, you get a NEW trackst.dat AND the original trackst.dat is renamed to trackst.bak.
So now you'll have a trackst.dat AND a trackst.bak and it doesn't matter how many times you recompile a new one, the trackst.bak will always be the original one. I just checked that to make sure.

If you ever need the original trackst.dat, you would remove any others and just rename the trackst.bak to trackst.dat and you'll have the original trackst.dat that you started with.

Now there's an better way to use locotool without having to copy it to the objdata folder or any other folder you're working with. Place locotool.exe and locotool.dll into it's own folder. Then create a shortcut for it and take that shortcut and place it into the Send To folder in Windows. This is the path to it - Users\yourusername\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\SendTo - this way, when you want to decompile or recompile you would just select the .dat or .xml and right-click, Send To, and select the Locotool shortcut. It works and I've used it myself. You can also set locotool to be the default program to open .dat files by double-clicking it. When you double-click a .dat file, a window should pop up asking what you want to do, Use the web service or select a program from a list. You would select a program from a list and goto where locotool.exe is and select it and make sure it's checked to Always use the selected program to open this kind of file. Then you can just double-click a .dat file and it'll decompile it without having to fuss with it but you owuld still have to use the Send To shortcut to recompile it.

I hope this helps you to understand this now.

[Zakos]

To sum it up (because I know from experience how much new users hate reading long posts), the original .dat file has already been updated. You can tell by hovering over it to see when it was last modified.

[Tattoo]

To sum it up (because I know from experience how much new users hate reading long posts), the original .dat file has already been updated. You can tell by hovering over it to see when it was last modified.

Yep, but if they don't want to read then they obviously don't want to learn...