Railworks America

Hi everyone,

I'm a brand new member here as you can probably tell! After having Train Simulator 2017 for a while, I started to fiddle around with the game files a little bit and discovered the great world of converting BIN files to XML and all of the information contained within. I like programming, so I thought I'd start writing my own utility to make it super easy to edit things such as your game options or other such things that may be stored in these BIN files. I'd love to ask this wonderful community for help in testing it (once I have something ready), but am I allowed to post such a thing here? Is this section the best place for it?

Thanks!

Sure, go for it.
I also program utilities for processing XML files for a few games including TS2017. I use vbscript with the built-in XML library.
You can find some here: http://railworksamerica.com/index.php/l ... -railworks.
Once your utilities are ready, we can add them there.

Thanks Chacal, hopefully I'm not duplicating efforts here too much! :) Do you think I would be able to push frequent updates to gather as much feedback as I can during the development process, or would it be preferable to wait until it's in a more complete state?

Before you go too far you might want to look up RWTools and see what all it does. One of it's most often uses is it's ability to edit bin files without having to turn them into xmls. And a ton of other stuff. Just Google it and it will pop up.

tgp1994 wrote:Thanks Chacal, hopefully I'm not duplicating efforts here too much! :) Do you think I would be able to push frequent updates to gather as much feedback as I can during the development process, or would it be preferable to wait until it's in a more complete state?

Go for it even if RW-tools is quite a good and complete tool. I would encourage you to focus on tools that will open, edit and transform to other graphic formats. A more efficient tool to view and transform .TgPcDx binary file to 1) dds 2) classic format : jpeg, targa. Would love to see a tool that show any 3D model in an independant window which we could rotate in any XYZ orientation; as we had in MSTS. This would give us a direct access from texture tweaking or painting to a direct 3D view WITHOUT lunching Train Simulator. Also, providing a bridge to any 2D software (Gimp, Photoshop, Paint, etc.).

You can consider me as a potential tester

QcRail

buzz456 wrote:*&!welcome!&* Before you go too far you might want to look up RWTools and see what all it does. One of it's most often uses is it's ability to edit bin files without having to turn them into xmls. And a ton of other stuff. Just Google it and it will pop up.

Hi Buzz, thank you for the welcome. RWTools was actually my inspiration, but I was a little turned off by the necessity to install OCX files to my system directory just for some XML editing. My hope is to create a lightweight tool that only depends on the .NET framework, which almost everyone has installed anyways.

QcRail wrote:Go for it even if RW-tools is quite a good and complete tool. I would encourage you to focus on tools that will open, edit and transform to other graphic formats. A more efficient tool to view and transform .TgPcDx binary file to 1) dds 2) classic format : jpeg, targa. Would love to see a tool that show any 3D model in an independant window which we could rotate in any XYZ orientation; as we had in MSTS. This would give us a direct access from texture tweaking or painting to a direct 3D view WITHOUT lunching Train Simulator. Also, providing a bridge to any 2D software (Gimp, Photoshop, Paint, etc.).

You can consider me as a potential tester

QcRail

Thank you for the encouragement and offer for help QcRail! I have to admit, working with graphics is a little bit beyond the scope of my initial plans for this application, but that certainly doesn't mean it won't happen.

One of the cool things that could be done if you wanted a little project would be to convert METAR weather reports into actual weather blueprints for railworks. I created a semi-manual way to do it using spreadsheets but I'm sure a more robust program would be much more widely used.

Feel free to readup on my solution here:

https://alpenfreight.wordpress.com/port ... r-decoder/


I am also playing around with ways to make a persistent Quick Drive world by generating scenario blueprints that preserve previously completed scenarios. I believe all of this could be done with external programs as well, but I lack the development skills to make it a reality.

Alpenfreight wrote:One of the cool things that could be done if you wanted a little project would be to convert METAR weather reports into actual weather blueprints for railworks. I created a semi-manual way to do it using spreadsheets but I'm sure a more robust program would be much more widely used.

Feel free to readup on my solution here:

https://alpenfreight.wordpress.com/port ... r-decoder/


I am also playing around with ways to make a persistent Quick Drive world by generating scenario blueprints that preserve previously completed scenarios. I believe all of this could be done with external programs as well, but I lack the development skills to make it a reality.

It seems like every day I'm learning about more ways I could benefit the TS community by creating utilities. Thank you for the tip on that!

I think what I may end up doing is creating a project board where people can vote on ideas they'd like to see implemented, that way I can work on features that would benefit the most people first. I think there are several websites that will allow me to do that for free, I'll have to take a look.

Good idea, but first get your feet wet with some personal projects. Go with what you like before catering to this unruly crowd's desires.