Railworks America

Hi all,
New kid on the RW block, but with a bit of a track record in FSX stuff.
I have some good memories of Southern California dating back to the mid 70's when I worked in Ventura County (living in Italy now BTW).
Visits to Palmdale, Mojave and (yes, still possible back then) Edwards AFB. Imagine I climbed all over the A-10 Warthog when it was still in prototype stage.........
Of course, I'd like to see some of that country in RW3 and decided on a route around that area, basically running from Barstow to Bakersfield (yep, includes The Loop where I spent countless hours getting high on diesel soot).
I'm not very impressed with the stock Barstow BNSF yard, it's far from complete and I'm a bit of a nerd when it comes to 'prototypical'. Hence I decided to redo that part of the route.
I can see a problem around the corner and would like to know if anybody out there has some experience:
Would the stock route show up under my new route?? If so,is there a way to exclude it, like this is possible for instance in FSX?
Thanks in advance for any suggestions!

Hermit

Hello, Hermit, and

Your best bet is to "clone" the existing default route. I recommend RW Tools : http://www.rstools.info/ It's a must have utility. Just rename your cloned route something like Barstow to San Bernadino2. Your original default route will still be there if you need to start over for any reason.

If I understand your question right:

1) as mentioned by arizonachris, clone the route and work on the clone;
2) if you want to rework a yard, simply delete the track you don't want and relay the way you want it. The old track will not show. However, any ground texturing done in relation to the old track may need to be reworked.

Nope, that's not what I mean! I don't want to work on the stock Barstow-San Bernardino route, I don't want to touch that.
What I intend to do is develop a completely new route from Barstow to Bakersfield. This will include BNSF Barstow yard, a section of track towards Needles, Daggett to Yermo, Barstow to Helendale, but mainly Barstow heading West to Bakersfield via Mojave and The Loop.
This means that part of my new route will overlap the stock Barstow-San Bernardino route. I would like to know if this overlap may create a problem in the game in that the stock route shows through in my new route (or vice-versa if you so please)! If this is a known phenomena, how do I deal with that? I could back-up to stock route, park that somewhere and delete the original, but that may create a host of other problems apart from the fact that Steam will throw it back in at each update.
In Microsoft FSX we have the possibility to 'exclude' part of a scenery and put a new one on top of that. Whatever is underneath the new scnery won't show though. Would be nice if RW gives us a similar option.
My other option would be use a clone of the stock BtSB route and add to that westward, rebuilding the Barstow yard almost completely. I don't really feel like doing that, it may create problems once I put my 'creation' on-line for the community.
Hence, would the stock route show up through my new route and if so, how can I alleviate that problem? There must be somebody out there who has been through this kind of routine.

BTW, I have all of those goodies like RW-Tools, RWDecal, ReDEM and the like, pretty useful although a bit of a learning curve.........

Cheers,

Hermit

You're safe. When you create a new route (or even clone it) it does not know about any of the other routes you have.

Great, thanks! That's a relief to know
No doubt I'll be back with other questions, but having monitored this site for some months now I know I'm in good company
Once I get to a stage where I think it's worthwhile I'll post some screenies. It'll take a while, it's a long route me thinks.

If I may suggest, you could add a lot of playability to the game if you maintain a certain visual continuity between the stock Barstow yard and the one on your route. This would let scenario authors produce scenarios that span both routes.

For example, I could write a two-part "San Bernardino to Bakersfield" scenario:
Part one would have the player drive a train on the stock route from San Bernardino to Barstow and stop there for crew change.
Part two would have the player drive a similar train on your new route from Barstow to Bakersfield.

If your Barstow yard is remotely similar to the one in the stock route, the two scenarios will feel like one continuous one with a crew change in the middle.

Chacal wrote:If I may suggest, you could add a lot of playability to the game if you maintain a certain visual continuity between the stock Barstow yard and the one on your route. This would let scenario authors produce scenarios that span both routes.

For example, I could write a two-part "San Bernardino to Bakersfield" scenario:
Part one would have the player drive a train on the stock route from San Bernardino to Barstow and stop there for crew change.
Part two would have the player drive a similar train on your new route from Barstow to Bakersfield.

If your Barstow yard is remotely similar to the one in the stock route, the two scenarios will feel like one continuous one with a crew change in the middle.

Bonjour Chacal,
I'll certainly look at the possibility, but as said in my initial post, I'm not very impressed with the stock Barstow Yard. Let's just say it lacks...... (and I'm probably spoiled by what can be done in FSX now-a-days). Looking closely at the yard in GE and Bing reveals a lot of features that are missing and/or misplaced. Knowing myself I'll be busy doing a lot of new buildings, bridges, etc., optimized for RW3 graphics engine. I've been thru a lot in FSX and there are some pretty nifty utilities to optimize vertex counts, texture draw calls and so on at xml level. I might even have a go at a 5-unit articulated Husky stack car, which I find is lacking. I'll cry for scripting help on the appropriate forum once I get that far.
Anyways, if some of my yard features can be transplanted on scenario level onto the stock route to make it look similar, by all means I will do so. Right now I've got the route series markers, DEM and GE decals in place, that was straight forward enough. Track-laying time I guess, this is going to be interesting! Let's see how ScaleRail behaves.......