Railworks America

Has anyone figured out how if it's possible to get decals to load in a Q-drive scenario without having to go in to the editor and add them.

Decals for what? Could you elaborate?

ChrisOnline wrote:Decals for what? Could you elaborate?

Sure. Almost all of the repaints I have done on the Feather River F7 and the EMD FP7Pack01 have used a decal kindly provided by the guys from Searchlight so the side panels can show all the fancy stuff there without the incredibly tedious job of trying to match up all those ribs on the model. They are child objects. If you have Searchlight FeatherRiver enabled the decals show up in all these repaints however it is not enabled in your normal QD.

I think if you add it to the route properties xml in the route folder it will load them every time you load the route. It's near the bottom of the xml. you don't need the ID #'s for it to load.

As soon as I did that the route wouldn't show up in QD.

Yes, that is definitively possible:

In Sources:
Create your decal with Blender in your own provider/product folder . The reason: Within packages with copyright control (you find these *.sbn inside) the TS does not accept new Gepcdx-files.
Export it with a scenery blueprint.

In Assets:
Move the compiled scenery blueprint of the decal (only the blueprint, after tests) next to your repaint.
In this example it is placed in DTG\MRCEDispolokPack01\RailVehicles\Diesel\BR266\29003\ and is named emd_Euro66_zusatz.bin
Add the following section after the line with the entry "<Children>" (there is only one) :

Code: Select all

         <cEntityContainerBlueprint-sChild d:id="150426">
                     <ChildName d:type="cDeltaString">Decal</ChildName>
                     <BlueprintID>
                        <iBlueprintLibrary-cAbsoluteBlueprintID>
                           <BlueprintSetID>
                              <iBlueprintLibrary-cBlueprintSetID>
                                 <Provider d:type="cDeltaString">DTG</Provider>
                                 <Product d:type="cDeltaString">MRCEDispolokPack01</Product>
                              </iBlueprintLibrary-cBlueprintSetID>
                           </BlueprintSetID>
                           <BlueprintID d:type="cDeltaString">RailVehicles\Diesel\BR266\29003\emd_Euro66_zusatz.xml</BlueprintID>
                        </iBlueprintLibrary-cAbsoluteBlueprintID>
                     </BlueprintID>
                     <Matrix>
                        <cHcRMatrix4x4>
                           <Element>
                              <e d:type="sFloat32">1</e>
                              <e d:type="sFloat32">0</e>
                              <e d:type="sFloat32">0</e>
                              <e d:type="sFloat32">0</e>
                              <e d:type="sFloat32">0</e>
                              <e d:type="sFloat32">1</e>
                              <e d:type="sFloat32">0</e>
                              <e d:type="sFloat32">0</e>
                              <e d:type="sFloat32">0</e>
                              <e d:type="sFloat32">0</e>
                              <e d:type="sFloat32">1</e>
                              <e d:type="sFloat32">0</e>
                              <e d:type="sFloat32">0</e> x
                              <e d:type="sFloat32">1</e> z
                              <e d:type="sFloat32">0</e> y
                              <e d:type="sFloat32">1</e>
                           </Element>
                        </cHcRMatrix4x4>
                     </Matrix>
                     <ParentNodeName d:type="cDeltaString"></ParentNodeName>
                  </cEntityContainerBlueprint-sChild>


Adapt the path and ID and if your model has the same center like your loco you even do not have to adapt the position.
To easily do that I have added "x z y" to the code above (please remove it).

This method works with all static models, unfortunately it seems not with animated objects, like drivers.

Kris

Thank you. That's all great if you know Blender however I was looking for a simpler solution. If it doesn't exist then I guess I will have to continue to tell people if they want to run a QD with these re-paints they will have to go in on each scenario and activate the decal.

I have had some success by going into the route editor on a route where I plan to use one of your locos with the Searchlight decal and activating the Searchlight/Feather River folder as if for scenery assets and saving the changes.

Then when I do a quick drive on that route the decals are visible.

The down side of course is that you have to edit each & every route where you plan to use one of your Feather River based repaints. Tedious but once done, it seems to work fine for me. I have done the same with other decal folders.

You can enable different packages by default in a route. This is specifically useful if you want to use things like Searchlight's mods, or weather mods and other things in a route.

1. Extract the Route AP file in the Content/Routes directory. I actually extract the file and then delete the AP file so there is no issue with the game reading files from the wrong location.
2. Ensure the route folder is not set to read-only. This has troubled me more times than I'd like to count, but I would first go to Content/Routes and make sure that whole directory is not set to read only.
3. In Railworks go into the Route Builder and edit the route instead of the scenario
4. Enable the addon packs you wish to have always active and save the route


You should then be able to use quickdrive scenarios and have access to the assets needed for any addon.

Are you guys talking about editing the route xml or going into one of the bin files?

buzz456 wrote:Are you guys talking about editing the route xml or going into one of the bin files?

Editing the route directly in the route editor. As in CTRL-E, click the blue box, activate the decal folder, save the route. Done.

Awesome. That's a great catch! Thanks for the tip. Worked like a champ.

buzz456 wrote:Awesome. That's a great catch! Thanks for the tip. Worked like a champ.

Thanks. Some days I have bright ideas, other days I put the laundry in the refrigerator.

Seriously though, I was inspired by a repainter who stated clearly in his docs that his repaints couldn't be used in QD.
QD is what I do... so i fumbled about and got lucky.

I just went and bought some new shoes with memory insoles. Now I can always remember why I went into the kitchen.