This idea originally came up in the middle of the Colton & Northern development and was one reason the C&N got delayed. Just Trains has published the Rascal & Cottonwood. It's available for purchase online and soon on DVD.

http://www.justtrains.net/
http://www.justtrains.net/product.asp?pid=394 DVD page

Let's see, we do movies (just call me Hollywood ), we're published now (autograph copies of the new ads are on the table of the foyer ) and one of these days I'll learn how to build a route!

Rich

[How about doing a computer version. That would be good!!!

Dick

Rich - What's your EULA/policy on using items from the route in freeware projects? Obviously with the caveat that end users will have to buy your product and that the stuff from Colton and Rascal is not under any circumstances redistributed.

I ask as there is still a shortage of US items for RS and the bits supplied with Cajon are for a fairly specialised area.

Vern,

Oh gosh, when it comes to RS it's hard to explain this. It's in the readme or the manual, one of those two of what you can do. Let me try explaining this here as well. With RS you can call the object in your project but you can't include the asset files of the object (whether it's the shape or textures) in your project install file (rpk). Like you said, the end user of your project has to purchase the route(s) to get the actual objects. I don't know if this makes sense or not, it's pretty hard to explain. Does this help? Best if this doesn't make sense to email me and I'll try explaining it... somehow.

Rich

Thanks Rich - you have clarified it perfectly, the objects can be used so long as they are not re-distributed, i.e. same as I have done with the RSDL foliage pack and IOW route in my previous freeware routes. Every copy of my route downloaded means a copy of yours sold - the perfect partnership between freeware and payware!

Order going in to Just Trains or Play.com later this evening!

Ordered yesterday evening from Just Trains - looking forward to the route and some "American Muscle" as well as the buildings to use in my route (which I won't declare just yet in case it turns into another vapourware exercise).

Just holler if you need some help (but do that at RSA). It's pretty easy to build routes in RS. Just don't try to tackle everything all at once. It's just as easy to hand carve terrain as use dems. The terrain tools are great. It will at times seem like it takes as long to build a route in RS but that's because you can do lots more, like painting the ground. There's no forest objects in RS like MSTS, but honestly I don't miss 'em. What I do is grab a bunch of trees, copy them (you just select them using a highlight ring (make sure you don't grab track or road which you can also copy/paste) and them paste them to wherever you want. The only bug-a-boo with that is you have to place them first but they remember where they were last located. So you have to reselect the pasted set and press J. But what makes it so fast is you can paste and paste and paste and fill an area very fast. But you still have to go back, reselect them, and hit the J key so they hit the ground. Roads you can grade properly and your not limited to set pieces. And like I said, you can copy/paste roads and track. Comes in handy sometimes. Bridges are a snap. And loft objects are wonderful for doing fences and walls. With a loft object, which is a repeatable pattern object (like a fence, wall or bridge) you lay along the track a line and then pick which loft object you want to use. and then the loft object is drawn however long your line is. But what's really cool is along the loft object you can select any number of places to shape the loft object to the curvature of the ground (and this works for roads/track). So you can create very realistic looking fencing, walls, roads, track that match your terrain very easily. Most of RS is fairly intuitive and self-explanatory and they have videos you can watch that on average are only 2 to 3 minutes long that tell you everything you need. You can find their link at railsimulator.com

Rich

Thanks for the tips Rich.

I have dabbled a fair bit in the RS editor and released two (short) routes, one freelance Northern Europe the other a short section of Scottish route. The RS editor is certainly easier than MSTS (maybe not as easy as TRS when it comes to terrain texturing). Thought it was time I turned and looked at doing something for the US scene, I do like the "American Muscle" even our most classic UK locos are a bit wimpy in comparison.

Oh, hey Vern, I wasn't paying attention to whom I was writing, I just went to town. Yah, you're right. I don't know about Surveyor but there's a few things with painting that I wish they'd tweak.

Rich