Bang!

Bang!

Postby Derek B » Wed Apr 02, 2014 9:18 pm

I'm not entirely sure if this is the most appropriate place for this but I couldn't really see a more suitable location for it so here goes.

I'm sure many of us have enjoyed creating and/or playing scenario's exploiting Kevin Newbouy's "Very Foggy Weather Patterns", I know I have. There's something about driving in the fog that really brings out the all-important immersion factor, all the more so if you're struggling to control a kettle while trying to keep an eye out for signals.

A while ago I was taking the 8F for a run along the Woodhead route, behind a stopping passenger AI in a thick morning haze. Between managing the boiler, trying to remember the gradient profile (I always play hud free) and concentrating on keeping my trains speed under control I managed to miss a distant, get confused as to where I was and found myself overrunning the next home signal to the extent that I could glimpse the AI's tail-light through the fog ahead of me when I finally juddered to a halt. A close shave! If only that distant had been fogged, I found myself thinking. I quickly laughed the thought off. I mean, Railworks doesn't have detonators, let alone the ability to have them interact with signals, does it. It doesn't of course, but that might not be the same thing as couldn't. Which brings me to the purpose of this post.

I'd like to ask those with more knowledge and experience in these things if it wouldn't be possible to create a detonator for use in Railworks? I'm envisioning an asset that would be placeable within the scenario editor. Visually it would be minimal but when a train passed over it you would hear a suitably loud bang. If such an asset was indeed a possibility my next question would be this, could it be made to interact with a signal in a similar manner to an AWS magnet?

Now maybe I'm just dreaming here, maybe I'm alone in seeking a bit more in the way of operational realism, maybe I'm hoping for too much and the whole thing is a technical impossibility, I don't know. But it would be nice to be able, some day, to drive into a thick fog sure in the knowledge that no matter how busy the footplate got I'd never miss a distant signal in the on position again.

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Derek
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Re: Bang!

Postby Nobkins » Wed Apr 02, 2014 9:46 pm

Making a track linked item that interacted with signals would probably not be too difficult. The issue might be getting a sound to trigger in the cab.

There are some LUA scripting people on here who might be able to offer some ideas.

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Re: Bang!

Postby rfletcher72 » Wed Apr 02, 2014 9:46 pm

Mmm.

We already have the TPWS grids that stop us if we SPAD. Could one be scripted to play audio if the aspect was violated in the same fashion?

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Re: Bang!

Postby cjbarnes5294 » Thu Apr 03, 2014 3:07 am

The idea of basing it on an existing AWS asset seems like a good starting point to me, but I'm not sure how we would get the bang (apart from recording one from my cap gun ;) ). We also wouldn't want the detonator to trigger the AWS on existing locos either. Signalling and track linked objects are things I'm not very familiar with myself, but it would be worth investigating at some point.

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Re: Bang!

Postby VictoryWorks » Mon Apr 07, 2014 2:05 pm

If it's simply a "trigger" you need that fires an audio clip (or animation) then that's pretty easy - AndiS cracked that back we when made the first working level crossing gates and I've been re-using it since, the ground platform markers on the SRM use the same principle for example and I've got an extra special cinematic "set piece" that's coming with the Q1 scenarios.
It's a basically a signal with all the capacity that that gives - you can have X number of links that can be used to activate events, you can send messages to consists, you can play animation, sounds, show/hide model nodes and get the state of the next signal - but it doesn't interfere with the signalling system, it simply passes signalling messages on to the next one, and doesn't show up on the route map.

I don't think the detonators actually stop the train? They just alert the crew to stop, so making them part of the AWS system seems to be over complicating it.

So using that as the basis, my suggestion would be:
Set one of these up, making it selectable for scenarios, give it a simple model (aren't they like ice hockey pucks and I think they're placed in 3's?), 1 link which is placed on top of where the model is placed on the track. When a loco hits the link the "signal" queries the next signal and if it's at danger then show some kind of boom (animation, particle emitter, whatever you fancy), hide the exploded "pucks", play a boom sound (or 3?) and we're done.
I believe that some detonators could be dropped onto the track using a system controlled by the signalman? I've no idea what they look like but as the "signal" has constant knowledge of the track state it would be possible to have those devices and to animate them to raise/lower the detonators the same way as a signal arm works.
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Re: Bang!

Postby Derek B » Mon Apr 07, 2014 6:20 pm

Thanks to all for the replies. So it looks like the notion of a working detonator is a goer after all. It could in fact be a nice little introduction to asset creation, involving as it does a simple 3d object, a single, short duration sound and a bit of coding.

Definitely something I'm going to have a go at then. I'm in the right place for advice, now all I need to do is find the spare time! Summer leave probably.

Cheers,

Derek
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Re: Bang!

Postby bescotbeast » Tue Apr 08, 2014 2:43 pm

What a great community led idea and an as ex-signalman I should off thought of this myself but having learnt this at signalling school ( I did get into bother with the lecturer by joking that it was dets that brought down the Bridge on the River Kwai and not explosives :lol: )but then worked mainly M.A.S. I'd forgotten all about it. Maybe the idea could be expanded to cover there use in protecting a failed train in a scenario context?
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Re: Bang!

Postby Nobkins » Tue Apr 08, 2014 5:46 pm

That is a good idea. 3 dets 30 yards apart and stand 30 meters away. 300 yards away from train in the direction the assisting train is coming.... think that is it :D

Or even emergency protection situations.
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Re: Bang!

Postby Chris W » Sun Apr 13, 2014 1:16 am

I'm sure there is still a 'trigger sound' option in the scenario editor, but I believe that it is not scripted as of yet. It would be brilliant to have this working as the possibilities are almost endless for adding extra immersion to scenarios.

Imagine being able to put down a scenario marker and assigning it to play a station announcement as your train passes over it.
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Re: Bang!

Postby AndiS » Sun Apr 13, 2014 11:26 am

This issue gives us a deep gaze into the State of the Game.

1) The logical solution is as described by Pete. Detonators are signalling items, tied into the flow of information between signals and monitoring train movements, like AWS ramps. Of course, they do not stop the train, so they would not send the AWS message to the train but instead do all the things mentioned as the train hits them (in case the next signal is at danger).

BUT: I don't know of a system call that queries the weather, in particular how foggy it is at the moment. And signalling items cannot be scenario-specific.

I considered placing an underground switch in such cases, with track links from the signalling item (e.g., the detonator) reaching down to the switch to detect whether it was set for the straight or diverging path. This would permit the scenario author to switch fog mode on and off, but I doubt people will love it in practice. It sounds like a pain in the neck of route builders and scenario authors, and if you want to save them from flipping all the underground switches on the whole route, you need to implement a message sent from the master fog switch along the above-ground track network to all the detonators, which assumes seamless signalling everywhere.

2) Recent versions of RW brought along scenario-specific special effects like sound triggers and also scenario-specific scripts triggered by events. However, I know of no one who made them communicate with signals.

This means that now you know when it is foggy, but you don't know when the signal is at danger.

To answer this challenge, you could set up your own block working in the scenario script. I never tried it, but if you are passionate enough, you could place scenario event triggers at all the signals and venture to keep track of block occupation. Then, a different set of triggers placed at all the detonators could access this block occupation information and play the special effects if the next block is occupied.

This subsystem would not be in perfect sync with the signals because triggers fire when the train reaches them. So the block is cleared when the train head arrives at the signal, not when the train end clears it.

I must say that I never played with these triggers, since this is the first half-serious use I would find for them. So I don't know how precisely you would go about passing parameters (block number) from the trigger to the script. But from what I glanced, your scenario script has a function
Code: Select all
function OnEvent (event)
where event is the name of the event as entered when you place it. So that could be a block number.
As for playing a sound in a scenario script see here for nschichan's findings.

To me, it sound just too insane to have three subsystems not talking to each other: AI dispatcher, signal scripts, scenario scripts.

Post script: I found this post wrapping the links between script, signal blueprint and sound blueprints.
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