QUOTE(yellowdog @ Feb 18 2004, 01:59 PM)
First off, I have a few comments/questions about Activity Master.
1) Is this program significantly different from Conbuilder? It seems like the only thing Conbuilder has difficulty with is replacing wagons in loose consists.
2) I read through the *.pdf and am wondering if there is a way to display stats about the consist in order to reduce the amount of errors that swapping rolling-stock creates. I.E. can Activity Master have a readout that says something like--"Consist is X ft long and weighs X tons"? If not, not only will loose consists be a headache, but imagine running an activity which requires two trains to pass, but both trains exceed the limits of the siding they're supposed to pass in. Or, if someone replaces, say 3 GP9s for 3 AC44s and expects to pull 100 cars of loaded coal, they will be surprised when they hit the sim. Some of this is a "no brainer," and some of it would be impossible (esp when replacing rolling stock that doesn't exist on the harddrive, i.e. giving Activity Master nothing to compare to) but it would be handy to have the info up front. I haven't used Conbuilder in a while, but I believe it has this function (someone correct me if I'm wrong).
3) Will there be some sort of visual interface where we can see the cars we're picking from, similar to how Conbuilder and the AE work? This may have been covered in the *.pdf--I didn't get that far.
Yellowdog:
Great questions. Thanks for asking! I'll try my best to answer.
>First off, I have a few comments/questions about Activity Master.
>1) Is this program significantly different from Conbuilder?
I have ConBuilder and it's a GREAT program. There certainly are some similarities. To me it's a different type of program. It's targeted more towards spicing up activities, and enabling users to run any activity they've downloaded, with just a few mouse clicks. ConBuilder allows you to really get "under the hood" and manipulate each and every car (wagon or engine to be exact) in a consist to get just what you want. But this can be time consuming and tedious for some.
I have written, and posted (mostly on train-sim) a lot of free activities. But there's always a trade off. If I do my best to make the activity as authentic as possible and include a lot of rolling stock that's likely to be found in the area, as I did with my original activities for Enocell's Newark & New Jersey Railroading route, then I'd get a lot of complaints about all the downloads that were needed. I'd tell folks, "Hey, if you don't want to do the downloads, you can go into ConBuilder and change out the rolling stock you don't have, for stuff you DO have". Usually people didn't want to go to the trouble of doing this, especially if there were a lot of AI trains. Also as you mentioned you can't change out loose consists using ConBuilder, so you were back to either the MSTS Activity Editor, which some folks loathe, or, editing the Activity text files.
When I wrote SwitchList Generator I tried to include the MINIMUM of extra rolling stock with the templates, so the maximum number of people could use and enjoy those templates. So for Ohio Rail I only used the Ohio Rail rolling stock pack. For Canton I likewise used all the Canton rolling stock. Then I had some folks complain, too many Canton boxcars, couldn't there be more variety? SwitchList Generator gave folks the chance to experience a route in a manner more similar to the way a real railroader would experience it: running the same route day after day, but with different work to do. Cool, but not quite realistic enough. Because in the "real world" the rail cars would have different looks, and be from different roads, just about every day. And all the passing trains wouldn't have the same cars and engines every day either. How to make MSTS activities replayable, endlessly, with variety and realism? I was struggling with this, and tried using a global search and replace on the .act files with a text editor, it was too hard, I made mistakes, the activity wouldn't load. So, I came up with a utility that would take any activity or SwitchList Generator template, and repopulate it with rolling stock, in seconds, with the press of a single button. Activities usually still work because only rolling stock actually on your drive is used, and the cars are replaced with the same number of cars.
>2) I read through the *.pdf and am wondering if there is a way to display stats about the consist in order >to reduce the amount of errors that swapping rolling-stock creates. I.E. can Activity Master have a readout >that says something like--"Consist is X ft long and weighs X tons"?
Activity Master isn't really "consist-based", like ConBuilder, it's rolling-stock based. It's true that with Activity Master, as with any other utility that modifies activities, even the MSTS Activity Editor, you COULD make changes that may cause an activity to become unplayable. So far that hasn't happened in our testing. If it does, Activity Master has a "restore activity" button that gets the activity back to it's original state, including all the consists.
Instead of having a readout on consist tonnage and length, Activity Master gives the length of each car (piece of rolling stock). So you can (and should) replace 50' box cars w/ other 50' box cars, etc. It would take a lot of cumulative errors though to get a train with the same number of cars to not fit in a siding. Still I suppose it could happen. As for tonnage, when you're dealing with AI trains, MSTS doesn't really care about this once a consist has been set up. When creating a consist initially in the Activity Editor, it's true, MSTS DOES take into account the trailing load and the engine HP. It then sets up some variables in the consist and service files such as "MaxVelocity ( 33.08096 0.76283 )" Once that's set, as long as it isn't modified, the consist will perform the same regardless of what you substitute. You could replace four dash 9's with a single Alco RS1 (using Activity Master, NOT using the Microsoft Activity Editor!) and the train would perform the same.
The loose consists are trickier because they have to fit in the sidings they're "parked" in. Some sidings are tight, others have plenty of room. But since Activity Master gives the length of each car, if you replace all cars with cars of equal or less length, you won't have any problems. If you DON'T do this, and you replace some 40' box cars in a small spur in Canton with an equal number of 80' cars, then you'll likely start MSTS and see "Activity Begins with Objects In Collision, Which is Prohibited." Then either go back to the original, or change it. Since Activity Master works by assigning a particular substitute, or list of viable substitutes, for each TYPE OF CAR, it's still easier to do this than it would be to manually go into the activity editor and change the loose consists manually. Because, even if there are 200 spurs with cars on them, if there are only 20 different types of cars used in the activity (a typical number ... if you are working with an activity that uses all default rolling stock, the number will be even less), then you only need to set up which cars can be used to replace those 20 cars ... you DON'T need to worry about what is in each spur. So you select the potential replacements for each of the 20, or, just those cars you'd like to replace (you can always leave some as is), and when you push the "Replace" button, the original activity is backed up, and all those cars chosen are replaced with one of the allowable possible replacements you've chosen.
One place you CAN get into trouble: changing the Player consist. Because of this Activity Master has a facility that allows you to MANUALLY choose the driveable engines. Because, unlike the situation described above for AI trains, MSTS DOES take into account the horsepower to weight ratio of the PLAYER train, and adjusts it even as cars are picked up and dropped off (as you know from driving these trains!) So, you should exercise a little judgment and either NOT replace the player driveable locomotives, or, replace with similar type engines or similar horsepower. Since you can see the original engines, and pick each engine you want, this shouldn't be too tough. If you have a 100 car coal drag as you describe, and repalce 3 AC44's with 3 GP9's, you're right, you won't be able to get far.
>3) Will there be some sort of visual interface where we can see the cars we're picking from, similar to how >Conbuilder and the AE work? This may have been covered in the *.pdf--I didn't get that far.
I'm sorry, but no. It works by car names and descriptions. I would like to add that but I don't have the ability to read the .ace files. ConBuilder generally uses icons rather than actual pictures of the rolling stock. Still, remember you'll be replacing possibly 100 cars at once. So scrolling through a lot of individual pictures could be tedious.
When matching to rolling stock you don't have, Activity Master has a fairly good database it uses to make sensible matches. Also, you can usually tell by the name what the original car was. Of course, sometimes this will have to be trial and error.
I think the beta testers have had pretty good results from the program. I'm still getting reports in and making tweaks. I have to admit, when this first worked it was a thrill for me: I took one of my original freeware activities, the "Harvest Grain Train" (which I've written for both the Default Marias Pass route and Marias 3.1, and ran the utility on it. It originally had only one type of car: the default US2GrainCar. I replaced them all, with the press of a button, with a virtual rainbow of grain cars, from roads all over the US, like you'd see on most real grain drags. All the grain cars in the player train, as well as all those to be picked up in sidings, were changed. It looked beautiful! I don't have a "before" picture, but here's an "after" one to give you an idea (I also changed locomotives from the default dash 9's to what yo see in the picture). I opted not to touch any of the other car types (you have that flexibility in Activity Master).
Finally, THANK YOU for taking the time to download and look at the preliminary manual, and, I appreciate your thoughtful and intelligent comments. I'll try and make this utility better, comments like yours help me to do this!
Happy Railroading,
Steve Davis
sgdavis@vigoris.net
Activity Master Web Site
