Hi all, Ok a question...... And i hope it makes sense??? I have a few custom livery items for Sandpatch in the game but I've noticed that when i start a service there will only ever be a couple of them used. For example i have four edited boxcars, two edited tankers, two edited grain hoppers but if i start a timetabled service it will only use, for example, one of the tankers and one of the grain hoppers, Or it'll only use two of the boxcars etc..... Is there a limit or should it be able to randomly pick any/all of the edited items without any limit when starting timetabled services? Cheers.
From my experience, that's just random between default liveries and custom liveries, with default liveries being preferred (higher chance of being picked)
But is it a limit of two items though? It will only ever use two of the custom liveries.... never just one and never more than two but always two custom and the rest default. It's also not just a couple of items in the whole train or whole world that uses custom liveries.... In a train of 30-40 items maybe a third to half the train will be made up of just the two custom liveries repeated constantly. This is the same with all the other various trains in the surrounding world etc.... they are all made up the same way where by a third to half of the train uses the same two custom liveries. It just seems very strange that it only ever uses two items out of a collection of around ten to fifteen items and never ever anything but two of them.
I run into this a LOT, since I'm frequently bouncing in and out of game mode to test Liv Des work in game lighting. AFAICT, the game engine can only load a set total number of alternate liveries for any session (the default liveries are always included). Which alt-livs get loaded is randomized, so any session with alternate liveries is like Forrest Gump's box o' chocolates- you never know what you're going to get. The more alternates you have for a particular route, the lower the odds that any one livery is going to turn up. (Interestingly, on Sand Patch it seems that alternate tankers only appear once in a blue moon, and covered hoppers almost as infrequently, whereas coal hoppers, boxcars and well cars mix 'em up every time. Still, it's highly unusual to see more than two alternate boxcars (along with the defaults) at any one time.)
Ok interesting..... I'm still hitting this hard limit of only ever two items though. I've just run an intermodal service (I forgot i have two custom container well cars) and my train was a mix of the default and two custom cars..... BUT all the other trains in the world (There were a couple of manifest trains and rakes of stock in the yard) were ONLY made up of default items whether they were boxcars, tankers or grain cars etc.... This works the same if you drive a manifest you'll get the said two custom items included numerous times in the train and other manifest services will also use those same two custom items within their consists but any intermodal services in the world will only be using the default intermodal cars rather than a mix of the default and custom liveries.
Load into any particular yard-switching service at Cumberland, where there is lots of rolling stock present, several times in a row and you can see the changing roster. The limit is definitely more than two alternate models. I don't know what the limit is, but this being a computer thing could well be 8 (locos in Yn2 livery count against the cap).
Same for LGV, I've created 3 liveries, since I've created the third the first one has not spawned in ~15/20 services.
Okay, 1 load into Y103 Westbound Delivery This is fairly typical, actually a bit light: 2 boxcars, 2 coal hoppers, YN2 on 2 locos. Alternate tankers (4 of them) and covered hoppers (1) not used this time, nor my other two alternate boxcars or any of the non-DTG locos.
Yes i've done this and it's a limit of two items of hauled stock every single time...... I do have some loco liveries in there too though which are also used sometimes...... I might remove the custom loco liveries and see if that then increases the number of custom cars used up from two.
Second load- exactly the same as before, except a second SD40 has been added to the mix without subtracting anything:
Next time, a boxcar swapped: After another two load-ins, I got the covered hopper but at the cost of one boxcar. Took another four cycles before those yellow leasers finally rotated out in favor of another: Not one today have I seen an alternate tank car. They do appear, but it's like hitting the lottery.
Ok some progress...... I removed the loco liveries i had (6 in total) and i also removed the two intermodal cars which left me with 4x boxcars, 4x tankers and 2x grain cars..... When i spawned into a manifest timetable service in Cumberland i had a total of 5 custom liveries used. (Three of the boxcars and both the grain cars). It would appear that the loco liveries maybe take priority over rolling stock? I'll try just adding the two intermodal cars back first and try again and then add one or two of the loco liveries back and see what that does to the rolling stock usage.... Just out of interest where did you get the Seaboard boxcar from and also the two CSX coal hoppers?
I added the intermodal cars back in and started up the Y103 Westbound Delivery again and the number of custom cars went straight down to 3 (either 3 boxcars or 2 boxcars and a grain car). I removed the intermodals again and i then go back to getting five custom cars used in the game at any one time. (I even got a custom tanker in one restart!!!) So it would appear that there is a hard limit of five items that can be used in each game...... Now the question is whether this figure can be changed in any way? Is it something that can be changed via an ini file perhaps?
Those are mine (although, sadly, the Seaboard file got corrupted and I'll have to do it again). The ex-Chessie and gray CSX boxcar are mine too. The Conrail SD-40 is a download from Train Sim Community. Next up, a Chessie/WM "sunrise" livery for the GP-38.
I doubt it. .ini files set Unreal graphics parameters, and I doubt the livery routine has anything to do with Unreal.
Kinda sorta. The white one piggybacked off a downloaded Norfolk Southern hopper; the dark blue one is the white one repainted. These were my first Liv Des experiments
