(mod) Fixing The Station Lighting

Hey guys.

Thanks to the modding community, I’ve discovered a tool which allows me to edit the materials and blueprints of assets within TSW.

As part of a test bed, I decided to see if I was able to change the colour and intensity of the station platform lights in TSW on the GWE route. After much trial and error, I successfully got it working.

As you can see here, I’ve changed the colour of the halogen platform lights from a standard white colour to a more typical warm orange colour. In my opinion it looks great.

What I plan on doing next is fixing the non-existent platform lighting on the Glasgow Cathcart Circle line. Currently has a very dim white ‘stage’ spotlight effect, which looks awful. I plan on fixing this so it is a a nice bright orange colour, as per reality.

As you can see in the images below, here is what I have done. This is also the tool I use to change the values etc. Let me know what you think

Great Western Express upgraded lighting mod Download Here
Glasgow Cathcart Circle upgraded lighting mod Download Here

 

Spooky............

 

Looks fab!

 

Londonmidland doing his magic once again to make tsw much more immersive. Well done

 

Thanks. I just like adding my little touch to the game for the community. Can’t wait to try it on Cathcart.

 

amazing !!!!!!!!!

 

Is this something you're looking to release publically as a mod? Would love to have this in my game!

 

It looks amazing, love it

 

wow, beatiful, nice work.

 

Can someone explain why can't dtg do things like these and improve the station lighting on cathcart circle yet a modder can with less resources?

 

Great work as usual...

 

Probably priorities, how it was coded/built, time, etc. Games take a lot of time to make and not everything will be perfect. As long as it's good enough, it's shipped.

 

Yes. I plan on putting it on the Train Sim Community website once I’ve done it.

 

Thanks

 

Accountants

 

So accountants prevent a dev from going into the settings and make some tweaks?

 

There may be a boatload of things DTG could do, but some of them, at least, might only work for the PC version and it wouldn't be fair to implement them for a minority of players. Just guessing here.

 

yes, they will determine the costed time on a project and the dev team decide what they use it for. We all know they don't get time to put/fix/ identify everything they'd like for release now without this too. This is part reason we see new things we like which aren't always there on next route release

 

Question is why cant DTG do this? Same with the sky...

 

If that’s even remotely true it is beyond insanity.

 

This looks like a great improvement.

 

If a modder can do it in his spare time then I cant see any justification as to why a dtg employee cant do it in their spare time or when they aren't working on anything new. All it requires is to go into the game files and change a few numbers. For them, that shouldn't be difficult

 

Maybe they are not permitted to go rogue on an agreed build, no different to building a house, a builder wouldn't be let to put a different to kitchen to spec in because they had free time or fancied it (likely).

Unlike londonmidland - they quite simply may not know how to or be arsed to.

 

Dtg can't make everything perfect. If they were to do everything, then routes would take forever to make. Maybe it's deadlines/amount of time, amount of resources, computing power, etc. It might have taken londonmidland a bit of time to even find the feature and w bunch of trial and error to even get it to where it is. Adding stuff takes a lot of time, trial and error. I'm sure the devs want to make the game good, but I'm guessing deadlines and the reasons listed above could play a factor

 

Correct, it did. I wasn’t even sure it would work at first, but to my surprise it did.

So a lot of trial and error, but the end result is worth it.

I’d say with this sort of thing, the devs don’t have time and/or permission to change stuff like this. Though that’s modding in a nutshell, we get to change and alter what we like.

 

Yeh, a lighting dev not knowing how to improve station lighting is something I don't believe for a second. They are literally a developer. There are other routes that have better station lighting than cathcart so they should know how to tweak lighting settings to make the lights brighter at the very least

The time part though could be understandable

 

Lovely stuff.

Just out of interest LM, would it somehow be possible then to add/improve street lighting and others like Houses, Yards etc. I was thinking in particular the NTP route which has no/poor lighting in yards, streets and buildings.

 

I’m going to try this with GCC tonight. I’m not sure about buildings yet.

 

I completely agree, I don’t get why so many players of this game give DTG so much slack. They’ve been taking us all for mugs for years.

The way I see it is that when they’re making a route they have the choice to set the lighting up correctly the first time around or release it in the state they did with GCC. That didn’t need beta testers to tell the devs it was completely incorrect…they set it up like that and knowingly released it, expecting you and I to pay money for it.

As with so many things with TSW, things only need rectifying because they were created initially as a dogs dinner. So it’s not about creating extra dev time after release, it’s simply about having a bit of care and pride in your work and doing it properly first time around.

It’s awesome that modders make this game bearable, but it shouldn’t need saying that they really ought not have to. 99% of the mods out there are not additions or expansions to the game, but fixing careless and basic errors made by DTG themselves. They do this without access to the editing tools which is even more ridiculous.

 

I agree. Anyone with an eye can see that the platforms in cathcart at night were way too dark. Im surprised that wasn't rectified by the devs themselves before release. You would think they would've spotting that the station lighting at night was too dim during development and testing. Surely they wouldn't have been tight on time since all it would require is to go to the files/settings and change a few values and considering that routes prior had much brighter station lighting, it wouldn't have been difficult to do for them.

The modding community do a great job as always. Modders seem to care more than DTG do in certain areas which is why I keep questioning why the devs cant fix something as simple as station lighting since the lighting team would surely know how to do it and have more resources to do so. They should have a bit more pride in their work frankly.

I also don't get why some give DTG slack for things like these either considering that other routes have much brighter station lighting

 

As always amazing work londonmidland. Making the game feel more realistic everysingle time. DTG need to hire someone like you. Can't wait for your full released of this mod for all route. Keep up the amazing works.

 

Thanks. I’m not sure if I can do it for all routes, as it depends on how the lighting has been set up. It seems it’s different for different routes, as this way doesn’t seem to apply for GCC.

 

Hey guys.
I've made some massive visual improvements to the station and railway lighting on Great Western Express.
Changes include:

• New halogen platform lights (old orange lights)
• New LED platform lights (white lights)
• New yard/depot lights
• Improved road lighting with better illuminance and range

All changes include a brand new colour temperature representing their real life colours, as well a more realistic spread an increased light illuminance (brighter)

 

Seeeeeeexy

 

is that true ? speechless

 

Yes. I changed this all myself, without even having to use an editor.

 

Is the one showing the yard (most recent pics) really that bright IRL? Looks like daylight and no separation between the lightpool areas and the darker areas.
All looks a bit bright and little too wide in the light casting

 

I remember the outstanding good skybox mode came to life with this method, too

Oh-oh ... TSW2 stationary light overhaul mod incoming ..

 

Generally speaking, in the real world, you would light things with good illumination and light spread to cover all the area you want lighting up. You wouldn’t have lights that light up tiny pools of light under a pole with massive areas of darkness in between like how it nearly always looks in TSW. So I would say this looks a lot better and more true to life. It certainly doesn’t look like daylight and the pools of light overlap just as they should.

 

As stujoy mentioned, I wanted to avoid the small, round pools of lighting as much as possible. These are high intensity lights mounted on tall poles, so they would definitely spread the light out over a large area.

The way it looked before looked horrible and was completely unrealistic.

 

The mod for this route should be out tonight. Fingers crossed

 

Stunning job, as always!
I haven´t played the game in a few months but this would definitely make me open it again.

How´s the impact on performance? DTG was always scared that light sources will impact fps and perhaps it is one of the reasons why they leave lighting as they did.

 

DTG Alex

Can you inform us if better lighting like in this mod will soon come to TSW2 to replace the current very bad lighting?

 

I personally haven’t experienced any performance issues with the new lighting. In fact I’d say it’s the same as it was before.

 

londonmidland can you please tell me which tool you use for that ?

 

Its a tool called UAssetGUI, which allows me to edit the values of blueprints and materials. There's no simple 'on/off' or sliders within this UI, so it can be quite daunting to use at first.

 

Mod is now out! Download here

 

Really nice job on the lighting! However, I think your implementation of the PIS terminating feature may have messed up the PIS boards at Paddington. They all show 'London Paddington' now, which wasn't the case before.

 

Ooops! Let me quickly rectify that.

 

**If you've recently downloaded this mod, please re-download it, which fixes an issue with the PIS**

It should be called '!GWEUpgradedLightingV1.1'