Rather ancient carriages I have made, looking for critiques

[TrabantDeLuxe]

Hello,

Quite a wall of text Andi, and I'm not sure wether I exactly follow this. My original proposal was a bit of a brain fart, and in my naïve mind nothing is fully fledged yet. For one, I'm not the type of guy to create a website to host bits and bobs tomorrow. Anyway, some points:

But I cannot help repeating that the freeware scene needs to free itself from being unpaid payware creators. I mean everyone works along alone in their closet, secretly hoping to become big and/or make money one day, or thinking that if others demand money for this, they cannot give away anything that could be reused for free.

snip

Caveat: Looking at the small number of freeware creators left and the buzzing payware industry, I must be missing something important. Don't listen to me.

I do not see myself as an unpaid payware creator. I have chosen this prototype because it interests me, add features that interest me, and am only bothered to fix bugs that bother me. I have dabbled with the idea landing myself a payware job somehow, as I think the quality in the models is there, but I don't want this to feel like a job. Besides, the Staats isn't the most well-known of prototypes, so I don't reckon I'd make a killing of it. Also, my best attempt at customer support would be an audible sigh.

As a quick response to the last line of this quote: Making content for TS is difficult, requires loads of perseverance, and the tools are not free per sé.. And the time aspect got me thinking. I've got a humble library of parts that have been used on lots of rolling stock. The bogey you see, is the standard model that the Prussian railways (K.P.E.V.) use. I'm pretty sure that Westinghouse brake pipe couplers are standard. Same goes for vestibules. Have I mentioned air pumps, injectors and the like? And in stead of having multiple content creators invent the wheel on their own, why not share this. If people can learn from it, even better.

I can't be the only one who find making all these bits and bobs a bit annoying after a while. a library of parts would take a lot of the drag out of content creation.

Now the tricky bit is how to manage all this. Obviously, it's easy to say 'non-commercial only', but how do we check? How do we ensure a level of quality, a uniform system of file formats, and all that?

[JamesLit]

I have dabbled with the idea landing myself a payware job somehow, as I think the quality in the models is there, but I don't want this to feel like a job. Besides, the Staats isn't the most well-known of prototypes, so I don't reckon I'd make a killing of it. Also, my best attempt at customer support would be an audible sigh.

Just re that bit, I would have you on my team in a heartbeat - with skills like yours anyone would be lucky to have you on board, even if you were to choose your own projects.

Re this very interesting freeware library type concept... well, I very much like the idea, it'd be tricky but I think it's doable, so I'll keep my eyes on this one!

[AndiS]

Sorry for the text wall, I had bullets there but they just made it an item queue. My mental concept of the issue is that it is all a mess of interrelated aspects. Every time I see a clear line, I see two or three things that blur that line.

I do not see myself as an unpaid payware creator.

It never occurred to me that you could refer my remark to yourself.

KPEV sounds great. For most, they are the early German steam, and the best documented for sure.

I am not sure which camp you are advocating

If you find me in anyone's camp, kick me out. Or have a beer with me there, as I try to be in everyone's camp, but only for a beer, and then move on.

Actually, I feel a lot like Trabant. I have tried the "live your dreams" route for ages. This "feel like a job" and the customer care are exactly the downside of "crossing the line". But great to spend lots of time on something you really like. Like I said, it is all just messy.

[TrabantDeLuxe]

No worries Andi, I'm practically unoffendable. I do share you're admiration for the KPEV, as I really like the idea of a T18 + a rake of abteilwagen. In a riot of colours, as per länderbahn tradition of course!

Now back on topic (if there is even a central topic in this thread...), I've done some coupler effects. The script that controls all of it is woefully inefficient (sends of a consist message every tick, still have to look at an elegant solution), but I've got connecting brake hoses!

.

And the last vehicle neatly stores the hoses and chains:

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[JamesLit]

That looks wonderful!

But what happens when it goes round a corner? One assumes that's why no one else has done it.

[TrabantDeLuxe]

Stop asking difficult questions mr. Lit.

They do disconnect, although given the short wheel base of these vehicles it isn't all that noticable. I had expected the gaps to be a show stopper, but it's barely noticable from a few yards away. A larger issue is that this being a scripted feature, the hoses will obviously only couple to stock made by me. By the way, I'm surely not the first to do this am I?

[JamesLit]

It's Littlewood, if you want to get all formal, Mr DeLuxe

That's fair enough.

And no, I don't think you're the first to do it at all, but it is a totally unprecedented thing to do (on the whole) because of the visual issues when cornering that the incredibly vast majority of stock would encounter. I suppose people see it as being an all or nothing scenario - and we can't have all, so...

[TrabantDeLuxe]

My mom does indeed call me DeLuxe.

I see the point. But in a world where springs don't spring, brake rigging doesn't rattle about and cut-off isn't actually set I think it's the least of our issues. One could (but I won't) resort to animating the hose swaying over a certain arc (say 10 degrees), use the GetCurvature() call, and figure out where to point the hoses and set the animation accordingly.

Björn.

[AndiS]

Easy answer first: Quite a few have done some scripts and being incompatible with everyone is industry standard. You can use it as a sales argument, people simply ought to get your complete collection. Mixing your exquisite models with inferior ones is tasteless anyway. Have a few beers reiterating that and it will feel good. The alternative is to become very unhappy about all the incompatible train end markers, PZBs, and various connectors; and the total lack of actions from DTG. However, that helps no one, so go with the majority and remember that the others are incompatible with you, not vice versa.

Have you considered an extension at the coupling that is narrower than the hose and sticks in the opposite hose end? It would be invisible unless the gap opens, in which case the visual gap would be cluttered by the (dummy) extension. So the observer would not see a gap and rarely notice the width difference. To prevent Z fighting, you could give the left half 3 and the right half 6 (or something like that). Now you could maybe get along with a very small width reduction. But I don't know if this Z bias works across assets.

I was thinking about GetCurvature, too. But I seem to remember that the manual said it looks at the head of consist. So it might not even give you the value you need. Of course, I never tried.

[Heiko]

I really like the idea of a T18 + a rake of abteilwagen. In a riot of colours, as per länderbahn tradition of course!

+1
yes, absolutely! I was thinking seriously about doing a T14 or T18, but then again there are so many vehicles from the 1950-1980 era on my list, enough for at least 10 years in my own speed of building. And it's more than probable that there will never be a route to run Länderbahn trains... On the other hand, it would be a real challenge to build a route set in the pre-WW1-years (I could imagine to take part in such a project, but I'm not able to lay a simple piece of track, let alone the signalling. I'm useless except for building objects, placing them and doing historical researches).

I am one of the "Quite a few" that have done scripts for couplers and carriage connections AndiS spoke about (but, of course, only with some help from this community). Although AndiS is right with his statement "Mixing your exquisite models with inferior ones is tasteless anyway" and my own ultra-modern carriages could never run together with yours, I would gladly offer my Lua-solution as a base for your specific needs. Maybe at least some - at this moment - unnecessary compatibility could be of use for future projects that are geographically and temporally closer... (my Beta-tester told me ultimately that the brake hoses of my carriages are compatible with those of the "Leig-Einheit" from the manufacturer "Eisenbahnwerk". If that's really the case, it was pure coincidence).