Railworks America

hey everyone! Just wanted to pop in and do a little shameless promoting of my site where i'll be hosting my own scenarios.
Mind you I'm learning as i go and that goes for both site and scenario building. I hope you all enjoy the stuff i made and what will be coming out.

https://matchstickstrainyard.wordpress.com/

Your site looks nice: very clean, well laid out; adding instructions for your multi-step download process might be a good idea. I've downloaded your Coal Slip scenario and will provide a brief review after I hunt down the 3 required rolling stock downloads (some of which I may already have): thanks for providing a list of download sites that make cutting and paste easy.



Edit: the download link for your containers scenario led me not to its page in the Steam Workshop, but to a sign-in page and then to some very general Steam page from which I could not find the WorkShop, much less your scenario. Perhaps just providing instructions for finding this scenario in the Workshop would be better? Or, better yet, upload the scenario to RWA and provide a link to it there?

Scenario notes: "Coal Ship Shunting"

1) I'd forgotten some of this route's great features, such as working roundhouse doors and fuel station hoses -- perhaps you should consider starting the scenario with the engineer in the cab? As it is now, the starting view shows the roundhouse's roof, which may confuse some folks.
2) This is the only scenario I can recall without any instructions for the engineer. It's an interesting choice, but on the other hand telling the engineer to give the engine a 180 on the turntable would have been helpful.
3) Do you know that all 7 loading instructions can be combined into one? Not necessary, of course, but more elegant, in my opinion.
4) That's an interesting loader, isn't it? It has two chutes, which suggest that 2 hoppers might be filled at once, but TS cannot handle that. After watching coal spill all over the ground while I filled the first hopper, I decided to position each car centered on the loader's center support, so that both streams appeared to flow into the car.
5) Did you consider ending by having the engineer park in the shed, thus showing off its roller doors?
6) Only one AI train, but it is very early in the morning.

Overall, a good shunting exercise with a rational purpose. Unless I'm mistaken, there are tracks leading out onto a pier with a ship docked alongside, so I expected some kind of action there, but the slightly misleading title is not really a problem. On the other hand, the complete lack of engineer instructions will be a detriment for some engineers.

OldProf wrote:Edit: the download link for your containers scenario led me not to its page in the Steam Workshop, but to a sign-in page and then to some very general Steam page from which I could not find the WorkShop, much less your scenario. Perhaps just providing instructions for finding this scenario in the Workshop would be better? Or, better yet, upload the scenario to RWA and provide a link to it there?

that's super odd... The link all check out on my end. may i ask, what scenario link sent you to the wrong page? I'll still re-check all the links but it shouldn't be doing that.

EDIT*
looks like i put the wrong link in for "Goods to Port" should be working now

OldProf wrote:Scenario notes: "Coal Ship Shunting"

1) I'd forgotten some of this route's great features, such as working roundhouse doors and fuel station hoses -- perhaps you should consider starting the scenario with the engineer in the cab? As it is now, the starting view shows the roundhouse's roof, which may confuse some folks.
2) This is the only scenario I can recall without any instructions for the engineer. It's an interesting choice, but on the other hand telling the engineer to give the engine a 180 on the turntable would have been helpful.
3) Do you know that all 7 loading instructions can be combined into one? Not necessary, of course, but more elegant, in my opinion.
4) That's an interesting loader, isn't it? It has two chutes, which suggest that 2 hoppers might be filled at once, but TS cannot handle that. After watching coal spill all over the ground while I filled the first hopper, I decided to position each car centered on the loader's center support, so that both streams appeared to flow into the car.
5) Did you consider ending by having the engineer park in the shed, thus showing off its roller doors?
6) Only one AI train, but it is very early in the morning.

Overall, a good shunting exercise with a rational purpose. Unless I'm mistaken, there are tracks leading out onto a pier with a ship docked alongside, so I expected some kind of action there, but the slightly misleading title is not really a problem. On the other hand, the complete lack of engineer instructions will be a detriment for some engineers.

wow thanks for the feedback! to address your feedback

1:yeah I think your right, force cab view would be a lot better
2:thats something I have always been on the fence about. some people like it some people don't but i can see your point as it would help the player out more. My fear is making it to hand holding that all.
3: lol yeah i kind of forgot about that... It would make it a bit cleaner
5: that sounds like a great idea i can do

as for the the pier, ahh yes i hate that thing! well let me be more clear. That WAS! going to be part of the scenario but I had problems with the marker for the siding. it didn't clear the coupling task until you almost pull out off the pier. I thought this would have been a problem with confusing the player so I dropped the idea.

for the feedback! I think seeing how easy it is to replace files on google drive I will go back and make some changes.You did bring up a lot of good points.

EDIT*
I just reworked the scenario and updated the download link. Now it makes full use of the pier (found out about the custom task markers). so this is almost a total rework of the scenario.
link: https://matchstickstrainyard.wordpress. ... scenarios/

Funny, 3 years ago I too made a scenario for the plow on Donner Pass. I then got sidetracked fixing the plow (most of its features are broken), which made me learn lua scripting, then promptly forgot the whole thing.

Think the website looks great, congrats.

jpetersjr wrote:Think the website looks great, congrats.

thanks!

Hey everyone, just posted a new scenario up on my site.

edit*
just got done with one for Donner pass. i'll be updating the site soon.