Rather ancient carriages I have made, looking for critiques

[cjbarnes5294]

What a beauty!

Kind regards,
Chris

[AndiS]

That's the worst case, I guess. You make a fine model based on the information you have. After that, someone comes up with first-class information that shows that your best guess was a bit off (which lies in the nature of guesses).

[TrabantDeLuxe]

...and then it turns out every batch of 30 has their own little quirks. I could write a book about this loco, with the amount of information gathered. By the way, if anyone has a pic of a builders plate of the 'New York Air Brake Co.', I'd be much obliged.

@Chris: The model or the loco. My opinion of the loco is that the cab spoils the clean lines somewhat. At least it's not a 50's version, Nederlandsche Spoorwegen had a habit of hanging everything Knorr GmbH would sell them on the side of these things.

[briyeo]

Funny you should ask, I just happen to have a New York Air Brake Company plate handy. Hope it's suitable.

[TrabantDeLuxe]

Handy as in 'hanging on the wall next to me'? Thanks a lot for those! With surety and swiftness I've started creating the rough outlines, hope to have it finished soon:

.

For those wondering, 66 Broadway was demolished in the 60's. Oh, progress...

Also, this has happened: The first 35 engines where delivered in a slightly different configuration. Uses mainly the same textures, but a 1024*2048 map of 'patches' was added.

[TrabantDeLuxe]

Had some 'fun' in matlab the other day. Script takes valve events, boiler pressure, R.P.M., and spits out a surface plot of T.E. versus speed and cut-off. I've used this to determine my .csv's.

[TrabantDeLuxe]

I'm tempted to do a whitewash livery for these type of shots.

[TrabantDeLuxe]

This was much easier than expected.

Edit: To justify me posting this at a dev forum, here's how it's done:

First of all, there's 5 animations in total for the valve gear - full forward, half forward, mid-gear, half back, and full back. In the update function, we set the appropriate time for the animation, much like you'd do with a wheel animation. The wheels themselves, including pistons and connecting rods, have their own animation. Then there's the issue of showing and hiding the correct nodes - done by a seperate function. This function is called each time the reverser changes.

Code: Select all

function SetValveGear(Reverser)
   local ARG = 0
   
   -- Pick the correct setting:
   if Reverser < -0.50 then
      ARG = 1
   elseif Reverser < -0.20 then
      ARG = 2
   elseif Reverser < 0.20 then
      ARG = 3
   elseif Reverser < 0.50 then
      ARG = 4
   else
      ARG = 5
   end

   -- Hide/unhide nodes:
   -- Back-Back
   Call("*:ActivateNode", "EccLF_BB", (ARG == 1) and 1 or 0)
   Call("*:ActivateNode", "EccRF_BB", (ARG == 1) and 1 or 0)
   Call("*:ActivateNode", "EccLB_BB", (ARG == 1) and 1 or 0)
   Call("*:ActivateNode", "EccRB_BB", (ARG == 1) and 1 or 0)

   Call("*:ActivateNode", "LinkL_BB", (ARG == 1) and 1 or 0)
   Call("*:ActivateNode", "LinkR_BB", (ARG == 1) and 1 or 0)
   Call("*:ActivateNode", "LinkHangerL_BB", (ARG == 1) and 1 or 0)
   Call("*:ActivateNode", "LinkHangerR_BB", (ARG == 1) and 1 or 0)

   Call("*:ActivateNode", "ValveStemL_BB", (ARG == 1) and 1 or 0)
   Call("*:ActivateNode", "ValveStemR_BB", (ARG == 1) and 1 or 0)

   Call("*:ActivateNode", "WentelAs_BB", (ARG == 1) and 1 or 0)

   -- Back
   Call("*:ActivateNode", "EccLF_B", (ARG == 2) and 1 or 0)
   Call("*:ActivateNode", "EccRF_B", (ARG == 2) and 1 or 0)
   Call("*:ActivateNode", "EccLB_B", (ARG == 2) and 1 or 0)
   Call("*:ActivateNode", "EccRB_B", (ARG == 2) and 1 or 0)

   Call("*:ActivateNode", "LinkL_B", (ARG == 2) and 1 or 0)
   Call("*:ActivateNode", "LinkR_B", (ARG == 2) and 1 or 0)
   Call("*:ActivateNode", "LinkHangerL_B", (ARG == 2) and 1 or 0)
   Call("*:ActivateNode", "LinkHangerR_B", (ARG == 2) and 1 or 0)

   Call("*:ActivateNode", "ValveStemL_B", (ARG == 2) and 1 or 0)
   Call("*:ActivateNode", "ValveStemR_B", (ARG == 2) and 1 or 0)

   Call("*:ActivateNode", "WentelAs_B", (ARG == 2) and 1 or 0)

   -- Mid-Gear
   Call("*:ActivateNode", "EccLF_C", (ARG == 3) and 1 or 0)
   Call("*:ActivateNode", "EccRF_C", (ARG == 3) and 1 or 0)
   Call("*:ActivateNode", "EccLB_C", (ARG == 3) and 1 or 0)
   Call("*:ActivateNode", "EccRB_C", (ARG == 3) and 1 or 0)

   Call("*:ActivateNode", "LinkL_C", (ARG == 3) and 1 or 0)
   Call("*:ActivateNode", "LinkR_C", (ARG == 3) and 1 or 0)
   Call("*:ActivateNode", "LinkHangerL_C", (ARG == 3) and 1 or 0)
   Call("*:ActivateNode", "LinkHangerR_C", (ARG == 3) and 1 or 0)

   Call("*:ActivateNode", "ValveStemL_C", (ARG == 3) and 1 or 0)
   Call("*:ActivateNode", "ValveStemR_C", (ARG == 3) and 1 or 0)

   Call("*:ActivateNode", "WentelAs_C", (ARG == 3) and 1 or 0)

   -- Forward
   Call("*:ActivateNode", "EccLF_F", (ARG == 4) and 1 or 0)
   Call("*:ActivateNode", "EccRF_F", (ARG == 4) and 1 or 0)
   Call("*:ActivateNode", "EccLB_F", (ARG == 4) and 1 or 0)
   Call("*:ActivateNode", "EccRB_F", (ARG == 4) and 1 or 0)

   Call("*:ActivateNode", "LinkL_F", (ARG == 4) and 1 or 0)
   Call("*:ActivateNode", "LinkR_F", (ARG == 4) and 1 or 0)
   Call("*:ActivateNode", "LinkHangerL_F", (ARG == 4) and 1 or 0)
   Call("*:ActivateNode", "LinkHangerR_F", (ARG == 4) and 1 or 0)

   Call("*:ActivateNode", "ValveStemL_F", (ARG == 4) and 1 or 0)
   Call("*:ActivateNode", "ValveStemR_F", (ARG == 4) and 1 or 0)

   Call("*:ActivateNode", "WentelAs_F", (ARG == 4) and 1 or 0)

   -- Forward-Forward
   Call("*:ActivateNode", "EccLF_FF", (ARG == 5) and 1 or 0)
   Call("*:ActivateNode", "EccRF_FF", (ARG == 5) and 1 or 0)
   Call("*:ActivateNode", "EccLB_FF", (ARG == 5) and 1 or 0)
   Call("*:ActivateNode", "EccRB_FF", (ARG == 5) and 1 or 0)

   Call("*:ActivateNode", "LinkL_FF", (ARG == 5) and 1 or 0)
   Call("*:ActivateNode", "LinkR_FF", (ARG == 5) and 1 or 0)
   Call("*:ActivateNode", "LinkHangerL_FF", (ARG == 5) and 1 or 0)
   Call("*:ActivateNode", "LinkHangerR_FF", (ARG == 5) and 1 or 0)

   Call("*:ActivateNode", "ValveStemL_FF", (ARG == 5) and 1 or 0)
   Call("*:ActivateNode", "ValveStemR_FF", (ARG == 5) and 1 or 0)

   Call("*:ActivateNode", "WentelAs_FF", (ARG == 5) and 1 or 0)




   return ARG -- for debugging
end


The fun bit is that (a == b) and 1 or 0 returns 1 if a = b, and 0 otherwise. In fact, you could place any logical expression in there. It's basically a way of converting boolean (true/false) to 1 and 0.

[VictoryWorks]

Nicely done. That's how I did it for the Steam Railmotor's power bogey which has external Stephensons gear - 5 groups of nodes in exactly the same positions as yours.
I prefer your show/hide code logic, very neat indeed.

[TrabantDeLuxe]

My initial script was a horribly long if-elsif-tree, but this is much more elegant. A possible optimisation would be to figure out a way to, on reverser change, only actively call ActivateNode for the current valve gear shown, and the one that needs showing - although my script is full of calls and removing them doesn't yield any noticable performance increases. There's even a 20-iteration loop for doing physics, which doesn't seem to hurt.