Thrown In The Towel (for Now)

Sorry folks but I just can't get my head round this at all.

Had another go this morning, tried to follow what Matt did with the second route in the presentation laying a bit of track.

Got to the section in World Outline, but where he did something with the Sky Light, Sky Source and Light reflection that made them disappear from the list they wouldn't do that for me.

After a grapple found the TOD4 folder in the core and think I managed to drag the BP_TOD4System on to the route. However in the stream this turned the route tiles a brownish shade but nothing happened here. Thought I would then have a go at doing some terrain painting but couldn't even see how to get started with that.

Already had one, "You're not listening" row with the wife as I was trying to concentrate on what I needed to do and didn't respond to something she asked. So not really a tool you can use at the dining table with other distractions around you. More suited to a professional studio location.

So think I will wait until there are some proper workflow guidelines and instructions before having another go.

 

I looked at that presentation yesterday and things we’re being selected so quickly I couldn’t follow what was happening.
I’m not really complaining because it was more a case of “here’s what you’ll be able to do”, and wasn’t designed to be a tutorial.
Maybe someone could show us all the same steps again but with a fuller explanation.

 

Oh absolutely, it was better than nothing but for a bear of little brain like me who's used to getting a model railway plan on a basemap in Trainz Surveyor and laying track after 5 minutes it's a real culture shock.

 

From what I can tell, they just deleted the whole lighting setup (literally just selected them and pressed Delete) and replaced it with the TOD4, which is like an all-in-one lighting and weather solution.

Once that's done, try typing "ts2.dbg.SetLocalDateTime 5 30 00" into the console, which should change the time to early dawn. Or you can try some other time.

To get weather changes working, there is an extra step not described in the stream (as far as I know). You have to go into the World Settings panel and pick the weather manager class. Though I don't know which one is correct or most recent.

If you don't see the World Settings panel, you have to enable it from the Window drop-down in the top left corner.



Edit: After loading up Voralberg, it seems like BP_Core is the most recent version of the weather and wind managers.

 

I just hear echos from the past: "Where is the editor, give us the editor, we want the promised editor, game is LOVE without a editor..."

 

"So think I will wait until there are some proper workflow guidelines and instructions before having another go" is what I'm thinking too, i did manage to get my api and google map overlay sorted, haha

 

Go figure that It was so simple.

 

Same, not going to do much until the instruction manual arrives.
I think once we've nailed the lidar, the rest should be relatively OK to handle going by my limited experience with UE. Just need to get this terrain sorted, then at least we can paint,lay track or whatever.

 

DTG did not delay releasing the editor until 2023 because of its difficulty and you know it.

 

Ok let me get a little more explicit.

When you hit the Create Route button, the resulting scene will look something like this.


Delete everything that I've highlighted in the outliner and the whole scene will become almost entirely black.

Now navigate to Content > Core > TOD > TOD4 > BP and drag BP_TODSystemV4 into the scene. Everything will once again light up with a new skybox.


Now you can try typing something like "ts2.dbg.SetLocalDateTime 6 00 00" into the console to change the time of day and see the skybox working.

Now to get the weather working, open the World Settings panel form the Window dropdown and select the Weather and Wind Manager assets.


Lastly once you have that done, hit Play and type "ts2.dbg.SetCloudiness 0.5" into the console. That should give you some clouds and show the weather system functioning. Note that weather commands only work while playing.

 

PLEASE prioritise the importing of DEM and LIDAR. If we've got no ground to build on then doing anything else is pointless.

 

Tomas9970 thanks for that, encourages me to have another go.

Maik Goltz , well I don’t know if I was one of those calling for an editor but always welcomed the possibility of one. However there is a world of difference between releasing a complex editor with no instructions and a complex editor with instructions.

DTG Alex , the streams are welcome of course but as I found when going back and watching the demonstration video, blink and you miss it so not a substitute for an illustrated guide in pdf format on the various aspects. Hopefully these can be annotated into something like that at a later stage.

Some of the things we are missing, like how to get a kml file in there are probably a case of someone typing it out in one or two sentences. Like I said if we can get the basics covered I’m more than happy to plod on and learn by experience as we have had to do in just about every other train sim editor.

 

Yep, the big difference is, the latter does not exist, anywhere. This is a pro toolset. They mostly don't have any exiting and easy or full docs. They work, sometimes, and that's it. Development is not fun It's work. The TSC editor and tools are toys compared to it.

 

Well, this is a modified version of the Unreal Engine, which of course has full documentation...

 

Unreal Engine does not have a even near full documentation of all its features. Lots of the pages are basically emtpy.

 

Either way, there's a lot of official Unreal Engine documentation and even more from third parties.

 

I would like to know if you tried the PUBLIC released editor and how much you did in it.

 

Perhaps more to the point I'd be interested to know if he got the hang of how to use the full editor without any advice from DTG.

 

He is a dev from TSG. So i'm sure he knows a lot. But the public version is nowhere near as usable (at this time) as was made to believe.

 

One thing I did notice, can't remember the exact name of the function among the myriad many, is that you can't seem to change any of the information in the route properties box such as the developer. All appears to be locked down to some sort of DTG default.

 

I would say 80% i learned by doing over the years. There was a sort of a basic doc that i got 4 years ago, but that was old already at that point. I have of course the opportunity to ask some DTG devs directly and can look into already made vehicles (not that i do that often as i want to create my very own stuff). But i love to dig out how things work. Lot of the work you do in the editor is your very own idea. That system is quite open. There are no receipts for how to do everything. Just some base things that need to follow guidelines (not much at least). If you expect a full blown manual how to create a route and trains, forget it, that's impossible. You want an step by step manual how to import LIDAR. You will be lucky if you get one since that is not really fitting to all LIDAR then. LIDAR is not a format, it's a technique that uses tons if different aproaches and data formats to store information. It's on you to make it work for UE4&TSW. When i tried it, and LIDAR was not a thing in TSW editor back then, i needed 4 weeks for a 16*16km square to import and get to work. That's now a click on a button i think. It was posted here: https://forums.dovetailgames.com/threads/s-bahn-berlin.35349/#post-250500

 

Liar, development is great fun and I think you agree with that fully. That you get paid for it is nice additional feature.

 

Well, we don't have those guidelines. I presume there are plenty of places where TSW expects things to be done a certain way.

 

That's how development works. Ask somebody and learn something and try to help other people out. For the rest it is just trial and error and if you are very perseverant you may learn it. After a number of years learning new tricks will go a bit easier but you always need to discover new tricks. And sometimes, you are completely stuck and you have a very rough time.

 

I think some people feel they have to prove their "cred" by claiming development must be done without the aid of any sort of documentation.

 

That's where the fun stops.

That's often a silent expectation from your employer/client. Work fast, without any help, and you are a welcome developer. One of my strengts tbh. Delivering a manual to each contractor/employee is often a time consuming and expensive thing no one want to deal with. And especially in the computer gaming industry that's a know thing. You get asked if you can do something, you might say yes, and then it's on you mostly to deliver.