Railworks America

I'm currently working on a switching scenario for the Horseshoe Curve route in which I decided to give the new AI pick-up function a try. What I wanted to do was to have some AI work going on in the background while the player did its own switching in the foreground. Unfortunately, the route designer placed end-to-end track markers on nearly all the yard sidings and AI pickups cannot take place under those circumstances. That is, I can create the instructions, but the AI engine just sits tight "scratching its head", obviously not being able to figure out the instructions.

I intend to keep trying, but I really wish that route creators would place a single, short marker on each yard track for the purpose of naming it, thus allowing scenario writers to place additional markers for specific actions. The only other solution would be allowing track markers to overlap each other, which is not currently possible.

Tom Pallen

You might want to look at the STOP AT function. It is in the list with the other markers while in the scenario editor. I believe it is to be placed on another siding marker to have AI stop at that point. I have not fooled with it yet. I just got a handle on Marshalling though.

Thanks, Bob. I found a description of the Stopping Points marker in another part of this forum and have started experimenting with it. Thanks for pointing it out to me. I'll post any positive results in this thread later.

So far, I have managed to coax an AI engine into coupling to a wagon located within a route-level siding marker and then drop off the same wagon at a Stopping Point scenario-level marker placed within another route-level siding marker; the same engine then travelled to a siding parallel to the drop-off point, but I had to use drive-to instructions for every movement or else it would merrily ram into the wagon it had just dropped, causing one of those circus act leaps. This was on the Hatchet Hill Quarry route working in a free-roam scenario.

It would sure be nice for RS to provide a detailed manual regarding the RW3 scenario writing tools!

Tom Pallen

As promised previously, I've written a scenario to demonstrate improved AI switching capabilities in RW3. The scenario takes place on the Horseshoe Curve route, which I chose because it was created specifically to make use of (show off?) RW3. As usual for me, I've packaged the scenario as an RWP file. The scenario should be available here soon.

Tom Pallen

This just in: Hawk has let me know that my scenario has been added to RWA downloads. TAP

Getting back to the topic of Stop Points, they do not seem to work with AI trains. When used in player train instructions, they indicate a specific stopping point along, let's say, a long siding or destination marker, which shows up as a small red arrow in the F4 HUD's ribbon, but they only seem to confuse AI trains, whose engineers/drivers evidently cannot see those little red arrows.

Tom Pallen

Are there any scenario specific markers? For example, destination markers that are placed in scenario creation and only appear for that specific scenario... the same way you can place objects that only appear in the scenario they were placed in.

I think there's scenario specific versions of all the track markers now ( at least the useful ones ). You can also set track properties per scenario.

Maybe this helps....
Thread: "Placing Stopping Points in Scenarios"
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3742

NDORFN wrote:Are there any scenario specific markers? For example, destination markers that are placed in scenario creation and only appear for that specific scenario... the same way you can place objects that only appear in the scenario they were placed in.

Scenario specific track markers include Siding, Destination, and Passenger. Have you tried reading the "Timetable Editor" manual? It doesn't cover all the new to RW3 features yet, but most of the things that can be done in scenario creation and editing are there and quite well explained, too.

Tom Pallen