[steamer_ctn]

pwillard, on 22 January 2023 - 08:01 AM, said:

Are people actually using the MSTS based route building tools these days? And if you are curious, I did start to write a TSRE document but was told to stop.

That is a shame as I link to it from my tutorial site, and had hoped that it would be updated over time.

[charland]

Yes, people are still using the old MSTS RE to create routes these days.

Paul :-)

[Weter]

Welcome, Hendrik.
I've started new route about 2 seasons back, and intended to tell about my work here too, because that time, i've decided to involve all possible ORTS features into the route.
As a result, "Small training route with potential" thread was started and some discussions and useful advices appeared there, So, You are invited to look and join.

Second thing: if You are going to build a real-based route, I strongly recommend You to learn Darwin Smith's document about minimizing topography distortion of coordinates gird before starting Your work.

Also, meet with Steam4me site's tutorials.
Especially - an experiment's review, which files and folders of the route do what.

*.zip *.tar and *.cab - are different archive formats.
Newest version is 0.7.12 and is in zip.
Once You unpack *exe-file from that (~25MB) and run it, It will download via Internet all needed files and place them to needed folders automatically - You'll get working build after few minutes.
What is MinGW and other tools - I also don't have any ideas. They were not used by me all these two years.

[Weter]

Usually TSRE shows things in black, when it can't find appropirate textures, but there are some odd cases, when reasons are not so obvious.
BNSF scenic route in recent edition uses only *.dds-textures. Mixing it with different route only may cause overwriting files with same names.
Anyway, analysing ORTS log-file and TSRE log-file (but latter is less clear for me) will point You, which elements are missing, which misrtakes with files are problem.

Global shapes are for all routes, but global textures of tracks are not used: You have to have specific track textures for every route - If i've caught idea correctly.

Track and road sections with textures are prepared by numerous of authors and may be found in Internet (Xtracks, Scale Rail, Fine Scale, italian tracks, DB tracks (german) and german roads&bridges by late Norbert Rieger, New roads, etc) Tsection.dat is regularly extended database of all track sections vector components (trains and cars are following invisible vectors, shapes, covered by various textures are just attached to these vectors to make them visible and variety-looking. It's Your desision as an author, which track and road sections to use in Your route - whuch are more appropirate for Your purposes (broad, middle or narrow gauge, etc)

Route's (local) tsection.dat is for storing data about dynamic tracks of this route only. Read Steam4me tutorials - I advice again.

[pwillard]

Where is Darwin Smith's document? Should a copy exist here on ET?

And hey, since we are now somewhat abandoned by Goku... maybe I will just pick up the TSRE document again... can't hurt. My link

[Weter]

Hello.
It's on UK Trainsim, so registration or Darwin's goodwill are key for getting it.
Actually, Indeed that information is essential for including to TSRE's great manual.
As well as consist editing module description, seen among google documents.

[eric from trainsim]

Better grab that UKTrainsim content quickly... it's on borrowed time.

[pwillard]

eolesen, on 23 January 2023 - 07:38 AM, said:

Better grab that UKTrainsim content quickly... it's on borrowed time.

Argh. My login no longer works at UKTS... so I'm boned.

[eric from trainsim]

Here's the UKTS route building tutorial

 NewRoute1.pdf (6.41MB)
Number of downloads: 45

[Hendrik]

Weter, on 22 January 2023 - 01:53 PM, said:

Once You unpack *exe-file from that (~25MB) and run it, It will download via Internet all needed files and place them to needed folders automatically - You'll get working build after few minutes.

Thanks for the great tips, very useful!

I read in the TSRE documentation as well that TSRE downloads its resources from the internet, which it probably does, but I think after some testing that you need to download both the newest TSRE9999.exe and the newest "arch" file and store them both in the same folder when running TSRE for the first time. The "arch" file appears to (currently) contain the "templateroute 0.6" (and perhaps other data) that TSRE stores in its tsre_assets folder and uses that template to populate new routes with the necessary files and a small number of objects and textures.