Site Redesign & a New Release

So, for the past couple of weeks, I've been working hard on several small bits, and now have two things to show for it!

Whilst sadly I'm not quite there with the next release of the Plymouth route, my website has been completely rebuilt in Wordpress, with image slideshows, and generally a cleaner and much tidier theme.
Please report any broken links, missing images or missing content that you see, and I'll fix them. (The old site will be decommissioned shortly)

Secondly, I'm very pleased to announce version 1.2 of TrackGen- This was initially created by Nils Busch in 2008, and he has been generous enough to allow me to host a version with an important fix and a couple of new options. 
TrackGen allows you to create smooth switches and curves for BVE/ OpenBVE. 

As it was broken on Windows 8 (And potentially more systems, I'm not sure...), I've fixed this issue, and added two new options-
Use PNG textures
Do not texture rails

Please let me know if you find any issues or bugs, and I'll see whether I can do anything about them.
(I'm aware that entering extreme but technically valid values may cause unexpected results; Looking better into validation)

Cheers

Chris Lees

http://www.bvecornwall.co.uk

Hello Chris,

congrats to your new site design, it does look very well! I will give the TrackGen a try, as I am looking for a program to create curved switches for my route. :-)

Neat, clean designwith good navigation, Chris. Excellent work.

hi chris. nice new site, but i can't get track gen to work, i can't change any of the settings as i could#nt with the old program. i am using windows 7.cheers jack

Jack,
I have win 7 myself, so I installed the program and gave it a go. It works for me. Be sure you put the finished track item in a folder WITH the textures that you are using, or you will only see a "white" mesh in object viewer. I opted for ".png textures" and tried both "with" and "without" embankment in th eadvanced options box. All fine.

thanks graymac will try.regards jack

hi graymac.thanks it worked. much appreciated. jack

Glad to see you've got it working

For what it's worth, Switch will also create curved switches, but you need to work out the correct offsets manually.
The current major limitation of TrackGen over Switch, is that it doesn't create crossings or slips. Objects created with it should mix and match with those from Switch, if you turn off the textured rails option. On the flip side, it's objects look a lot nicer

Cheers

Chris Lees

http://www.bvecornwall.co.uk

Thanks Chris, it works a treat with Win 7, I`m playing about with different textures and shading, some are looking just what i need for the new route, how does it deal with point switching ?, i seem only to be able to produce pointwork in one direction...regards

Remember to enter a "-" sign in front of your chosen value for left radii etc. It's a bit different to using "Switch", though the results so far seem encouraging.

Hi Gray , thanks for that, did produce both left and right turnouts using the "-", i was refering to the direction of travel, couldnt see
 how to do that..regards

Right! Not sure, I will need to play around a bit and see what happens   

Direction of travel works a little differently with TrackGen, but simple enough- You just need to know what Rail 0 is doing.

For example-
A standard 25m right-hand switch.
* To travel along the left branch, set Radius/ divergence of Rail 0 to 0m, and divergence of secondary rail to 2m
* To travel along the right branch, set Radius/ divergence of Rail 0 to 2m and divergence of secondary rail to -2m
In essence, if Rail 0 is placed to the right of the secondary rail, you need to subtract the distance from which it is offset from the divergence of the secondary rail. This isn't particularly user friendly, and I will look into fixing this


The download has also been updated to v1.21, and an updated .exe should be attached.
Edit: See second page for v1.22, fixed a couple more critical bugs.

Changes:
* Generation of curved rails and switches now works correctly on locales which use a comma for the decimal separator.
* Your selected language is written to the registry and should now be remembered between program runs.

(I wasn't planning another release this quickly, but I got the bug report and it was severe enough to need fixing in a hurry)

Cheers

Chris Lees

http://www.bvecornwall.co.uk

Erm, Chris, I'm not sure but I think mobile1 is referring to the question how to influence whether the frog or the blades are showing in the direction of travel.

Hi Chris, sorry if i didnt make myself clear. I was indeed, talking about the rail position within the object , i.e. on a lefthand 25m turnout, how do i change the point diection from right to left or the opposite..regards

mobile1 wrote:Hi Chris, sorry if i didnt make myself clear. I was indeed, talking about the rail position within the object , i.e. on a lefthand 25m turnout, how do i change the point diection from right to left or the opposite..regards

I know
Try what I posted above. It works differently to Switch as the rail referred to in the first box is always the one you're travelling on, and thus you need to work from there what the secondary rail is doing.

As stated, its not the most user friendly of ways of doing things but it works.

Chris Lees

http://www.bvecornwall.co.uk

Hi Chris, my sincere apologies, i didnt read your reply, as you say it works perfectly...the objects look really good...Is there any plan in the future to try to bring down the file size....regards

mobile1 wrote:Hi Chris, my sincere apologies, i didnt read your reply, as you say it works perfectly...the objects look really good...Is there any plan in the future to try to bring down the file size....regards

At the moment, no. If you reduce the number of segments this will help though.
I'm concentrating on fixing the bugs and improving the original code before I do anything else. 

Cheers

Chris Lees

http://www.bvecornwall.co.uk

Version 1.22 now attached. Changes:
* No longer crashes if the path is invalid.
* No longer crashes if you do not have write access to the selected path.

I haven't found any more critical bugs (Yet!....)

Edit:
As always, please see *either* my site for the most recent version, or the current development version will be attached to one of my last couple of posts in this thread


Cheers

Chris Lees

http://www.bvecornwall.co.uk

So, this is version 1.3 Alpha 5 of TrackGen:
--See below for current versions--

This implements Platform Generation into TrackGen.
Curved and straight platforms & ends are available, with variable width.

Fences are yet to be implemented, but otherwise outputs from this should be 100% compatible with those produced by a certain withdrawn utility

Cheers

Chris Lees

http://www.bvecornwall.co.uk

Does what it says on the tin. Nice simple interface, thanks Chris,   

OK, so V1.3 Alpha 6 is now up:
http://www.bvecornwall.co.uk/downloads/beta/TrackGen_alpha136.7z

This implements texture picking for all main components (Other than the rail textures).
Please don't move or delete the BMP subdirectory, as this is used for the initial texture load

It doesn't currently move the output files into their own directory- You will need to do this manually.
Similarly, relational textures are not currently supported- All texture files must be in the same directory as your object file.

I'll implement fences for platforms and trackside next.

Finally, this is a response for Alex Fairlie (The email you entered into the contact form is bouncing....) :
At present, curved tunnel generation and differing gauges are on the wishlist, rather than my to-implement list.
I'll try and look into them at some stage, but I make no promises at present

Cheers

Chris Lees

http://www.bvecornwall.co.uk

Attached is V1.3 Alpha 7.

This corrects one bug:
* Railside texture co-ordinates were written out to curved objects even if untextured rails were selected. (This should have no effect as no texture was loaded)

It also refactors the BMP/ PNG chooser code to be a little more efficient- It's now setting a string once and then calling this string, rather than an if/ else block each time a texture is called
Again this should have absolutely no effect on the end user.

Please extract this into where you extracted V1.3 Alpha 6, as there was one file added in this version which is required.
This file is a preview version of the completely oversize embankment texture- This will be changing to a more reasonable sized version at some stage in the near future

Cheers

Chris Lees

http://www.bvecornwall.co.uk

Apologies for the frequent updates on this one
Attached is v1.3 Alpha 8- Please extract into your TrackGen folder.

This release adds fence generation, and again, output is 100% compatible with the previous utility, and takes the same format of texture.

I've now implemented everything in the initial workload for this release- I'm intending on fixing the German translation next, before leaving for a week or so and officially releasing as V1.4.

Cheers

Chris Lees

http://www.bvecornwall.co.uk