Stevens Pass

[cnw1970]

I was wondering if anyone has purchased Stevens Pass and your thoughts on the route. The $40 price tag seems a little steep to me.

[buzz456]

I was wondering if anyone has purchased Stevens Pass and your thoughts on the route. The $40 price tag seems a little steep to me.

It is a superb piece of work. If your budget allows you will not be disappointed. Many screen shots will be posted over the weekend. I just spent two hours puttering around in Everett. There is switching galore without over getting out of town. Headed East now.

[arizonachris]

Everyone was saying that the Surfliner was RSC's best work to date, and it is great. But, G Trax and Great Northerner have raised the bar once again. Buzz is right, this route is superb. Not only do you get the route, you also get a GP38-2, an ES44DC, and 14 scenarios. And with not a bug in sight (well, so far anyways)

[buzz456]

I just got done with staying up too late last night and then wasting the morning away running this thing from end to end. Screenies later today in screenshots. Just a couple of quick comments. This is a big route with a long mainline run particularly with the speed restrictions going over the cascades. Along with that, both in Everett and in Wenatchee, you could spend a week running switching scenarios so this route has something for everyone and you haven't lived until you see the Cascades in the Winter time. More later.

I know I'm sounding like I'm drooling but I have always loved the Pacific Northwest and this captures it. Now off to create a apple train to Everett for export.

[Janine]

All new routes so far are funtastic, also because you can now actually SEE something inside a tunnel thanks to the new lighting graphics (lensflares), also at night generally. When I go back to Donner Pass and the older locomotives, you're basickly blind in a tunnel. Not in this one or Surfliner. :)

[dejoh]

As I find the Stevens Pass route fantastic and well put together, and enjoy it immensely, I find the freight car sounds lacking. To me, they sound like the default Kuju sounds but just a tad better.
Is there any way to add the latest Krellnut sounds to the route? I miss the great slack coupler sounds when I start and stop along with the freight car rumble.
Any help would be appreciated.
P.S. Glad to have the forum back

[buzz456]

Have you figured out how to unpack the ap file? If you have I'll send you the fix. If not PM me and I'll tell you what you need to do.

[dejoh]

Thanks Buzz, I'll PM you.

[USRailFan]

Have you figured out how to unpack the ap file? If you have I'll send you the fix. If not PM me and I'll tell you what you need to do.

Aren't they just normal .zip files? Just use an unzipper like 7Zip or WinRAR, and open them like you'd open an ordinary .zip file.

[buzz456]

Yes.

[dejoh]

Thanks for the help Buzz. Got the great sounds into the Stevens Pass Route. Although the creators of this route had somewhat decent sounds, The bang of the coupler slack, when starting and stopping, is now a standard sound for me on all routes.
Its a must have for realistic sound reproductions.
Again, thanks for the help.

[GaryG]

Hi Buzz

Any chance of documenting the sound import method? Perhaps a text file in the library.

The ap file is interesting, almost no compression used. I used WinRAR as a test and recompressing (both RAR and ZIP) gave me almost half size files. I also found that uncompressing the ap file then renaming it so there was no ap file findable still allowed Stevens Pass to run.

The reason I was experimenting was to fix the rubber band couplers on the ES44's. I did that by hex editing two values (six bytes) in the file. I saw that their file had Stevens Pass specific info in it, that's why I edited rather than just replacing it.

I also saw some tank cars were also rubbery but not as bad. Not sure what cars I was seeing so didn't fix them ... yet.

GaryG

[ChrisOnline]

The ap file is interesting, almost no compression used. I used WinRAR as a test and recompressing (both RAR and ZIP) gave me almost half size files. I also found that uncompressing the ap file then renaming it so there was no ap file findable still allowed Stevens Pass to run.GaryG

From extended discussions on UKTrainsim.com since TS2014 and .ap files came along, it has been concluded that the .ap files are not intended to compress or save space, but to pack into one file which Steam/RSC can quickly identify as needing updating on a file verify, while the lack of compression means there is no slow down in loading on the fly (in fact I saw an argument that it may be even quicker). It seems that Railworks looks for files in folders first, so any edits/changes etc in the files will take precedence over what is in the .ap file. So yes, if the file is unpacked into the full underlying folder structure, and the .ap file renamed or deleted, everything will still work. However a file verify/Steam update may well zap those files and folders (including non-standard updates) and replace everything with the single "official" .ap file again. So any edits still need to be backed up and likely reinstated after a file verify or maybe a Steam update.

Chris

[buzz456]

Hi Buzz

Any chance of documenting the sound import method? Perhaps a text file in the library.

The ap file is interesting, almost no compression used. I used WinRAR as a test and recompressing (both RAR and ZIP) gave me almost half size files. I also found that uncompressing the ap file then renaming it so there was no ap file findable still allowed Stevens Pass to run.

The reason I was experimenting was to fix the rubber band couplers on the ES44's. I did that by hex editing two values (six bytes) in the file. I saw that their file had Stevens Pass specific info in it, that's why I edited rather than just replacing it.

I also saw some tank cars were also rubbery but not as bad. Not sure what cars I was seeing so didn't fix them ... yet.

GaryG

OK. First do you have 7-zip? If you do go find the Stevens pass route. It's in GNTX in case you haven't looked not in RSC. That's where I looked first and couldn't figure out why it wasn't there. There will be nothing in there except a StevensPassAssets.ap file. The top choice when you right click on it will be open and the second one down is 7-zip. When you move the mouse arrow there the top choice is open archive. Do that and you will see all the files in there. All you need to extract is the Audio file and I also extracted the RailVehicles but I'm not sure you have to do that. ANyway when you get the Audio file in front of you go find the wagon folder and just paste the contents NOT the whole folder that I sent you into the wagons folder. It will ask you if you want to overwrite some of the. Say yes to all.

Wagons.zip

You need to have ver3 Krellnut wagon sounds installed for this to work.
http://railworksamerica.com/index.php?o ... Itemid=206

[GaryG]

Thanks Buzz,

Here's another file you could add to your Wagons zip to fix the ES44 stretchy couplers. This file has two values hex edited and seems to stop the couplers from pulling free of their pockets during a heavy pull. It uses the values that Kali came up with in the past. See the attachment comment for the file destination.

GaryG