Going Digital

Whoever desgined the cab controls in Trainz, was clearly thinking of old fashioned analog gauges and toggle switches. Its dead simple to build a cab with these types of controls. Unfortunately our Tangara is a modern train, which uses digital displays and a lot of big round push buttons (as well as some toggle switches).

Trainz doesnt handle these well, and requires you to think of ways to make it do things that it was not actually designed for.

Well, Im excited. After a couple of weeks thinking about the problem, and several hours spent reading through old forum posts, the Content Creators Guide, and trying out a few ideas in Gmax, I think Ive finally cracked it. In theory anyway... I havnt tested my ideas in Trainz yet.

We know digital gauges can be done. There is an excellent range of payware locomotives that have them. Its just a question of how. I also got a hint from eldavo on how a big red push button might work in Trainz, and I will be trying that out soon(tm).

Essentially the gauges here are an analog/digital combo. The analog part is easy. The digtal part will require some work. Its basically animation - 150 hand built key frames (in the case of the speedo) Doh!!

That sounded hard until I realised the Ampmeter reads from 0 to 500! Doh!! Doh!! Doh!! I may cheat a little on the Ampmeter.

Getting them to work will requre some scripting, and I have been thinking about that too. The script for the Tangara control trailer is currently being built in my head, and its HUGE!. Hopefully in a few weeks, I can move it on to my computer, and free up some brain-space :)

Im also thinking of ways to make the TMS (Train Management System) computer work (or at least, appear to) and that thought process is coming along nicely - it will probably be done by texture replacement, like the external livery will (hopefully) be. I have a few other ideas brewing, and some of those will be a surprise (presuming they work).

For now, Im not planning on creating any ground-breaking technology such as refueling locos, coupling / air hose systems, or dynamic texturing libraries, and the like, (we all know the ones Im talking about)... but I do want to bring all of the existing (mostly seperate) features that we know about, together in order to bring the Tangara to life.

For example, the Tangara has (as most trains do) headlights and marker lights. It would be remiss of me not to script them, since we all know that this can be done and the scripts are available. We look forward to finding this feature in a new download. In fact, for me at least, it can be quite disapointing to download a nice looking locomotive, only to find that it doesnt have even basic features such as this. It all adds to the realism.

My wife already tells me the untextured static Gmax model "looks real" on occasion.

Bit I digress... Im not intentionally trying to build the hype around the proposed Tangara features, Im just sharing my thoughts. Its actually rather frustrating knowing that Im "this close" to starting to script all of the features together. The ideas are racing through my mind. It would be so nice to get it over with and move on, but that is probably a couple of months away, at least.

Im sure the wait will be worth it. Im also hoping that Auran will release SP1 soon, as part of the scripting requires a fix to the 2k6 decouple bug, so while we wait on that, I can continue to refine the Tangara. If it gets to the point where the Tangara is done, and SP1 is still pending, I'll work around it somehow.

No progress report as such (perhaps tomorrow) but the front end detail is almost done. The file version is up to 297, and Im thinking about starting on the rear end detail.

Actually.. I recently figured out that each file version represents about 30 mins to an hour's work (possibly more) so that may give you an idea of how much goes into one of these (and I still have the motor carriage to go, and at least 6 different versions of each to cover all of the feature / physical differences between the 3 types of Tangara sets that Im building)