Step by Step Guide to Route Building for MSTS
Version 2
by Michael Vone
I have written a "Step by Step Guide to Route Building for Microsoft Train
Simulator", counting 388 pages.
It is available from Abacus Software Inc., and requires Adobe Acrobat 4 or later.
The price is $20 for new buyers, while previous buyers will be able to
upgrade for $10.
As before, the Guide comes as a downloadable and printable PDF file (now 388 pages).
For more details and to order, please go to
Abacus.
I welcome comments on this Guide in the
Route Design Forum at Train-Sim.com,
as well as by e-mail to Michael Vone.
I will try to update the Guide as more is learned about building routes for
MSTS.
New in Version 2 of this Guide: many updates and new details have been added,
as well as several new topics, including:
- adding non-default tracks and roads, including XTracks;
- changing the track's appearance;
- linking distant places with straight tracks;
- controlling forests;
- an extensive discussion (60 pages!) of how to control the MSTS Environment,
which includes fog, sky, water, rain or snow, and wind;
- a discussion of how activities depend on the installed types of
switches and signals;
- making Introductory Train Rides;
- a much amplified discussion of how to prepare documentation and
illustrations (such as the logo, map and "detail" images that the
user sees at start-up of a route);
- a discussion of the file size of a route, and of the add-on utility
Route-Riter to compress routes and prepare them for distribution;
- several new appendices dealing with degrees of curvature,
the structure of the route folder, a suggested checklist for route building,
changing and making texture graphics, color definitions in the hexadecimal
code used by MSTS, and controlling the camera in MSTS, useful for screenshots.
New also: The sample First Route provided with the step-by-step project to
build your first route has been amplified with a dozen "environments", in
order to illustrate how much control you can have over fog, sky, water, rain
or snow, and wind. You can make frozen water, rainbows, lightning,
multilayered clouds, UFOs and much more.
Overview
This Guide deals mainly with the Route Geometry Extractor, the Route Editor
and parts of the Activity Editor of Microsoft Train Simulator.
It covers mostly the laying of tracks,
the shaping of terrain, adding objects, textures, transfers and sounds, and
how to control the environment (weather and water).
It shows how to use the Activity Editor to test and drive your routes, and
explains how to prepare a route for distribution to other users.
The Guide combines two approaches. First, it includes a step-by-step
route-building project, which starts with the simplest aspects of creating
a route and laying track. It then gradually and methodically builds up
toward more complex tasks, such as making hills and rivers, tunnels and
bridges, and adding forests, roads, road traffic, level crossings, signals,
mileposts and speed limits. It also explains how to import and use objects,
textures, transfers and sounds from default MSTS routes. This project
allows a beginner to learn as much or as little as he or she wants. A simple
working route, called First Route, is included that illustrates every single
step of the project.
Second, for the more advanced user, the Guide explains each aspect of route
building in more detail, giving options and alternatives, and warnings about
dangers and pitfalls. This includes a discussion of how to efficiently
package a finished route for distribution to other users.
Several Appendices list a variety of useful information,
such as all known Route Editor commands and their actions,
all available track and road sections, conversion tables for slopes,
gradients and degrees of curvature, how to prepare textures and
how to control the viewing cameras.
Acknowledgments
I benefited immensely from the very important contributions that
were posted by many people at the Train-Sim.com Route Design Forum.
I hereby most gratefully acknowledge those contributions.
This Guide started as a short Tutorial that I intended to upload for free
distribution. Just like a route that never stops growing, this text would
not stop growing, thereby covering more and more aspects of route building.
It took an immense amount of time to gather the information (often
incomplete and contradictory, or non-existent), to check it all out, and to
turn it into simple step-by-step instructions. I had no help from Microsoft
or Kuju. The task of making this bulky Guide both practical and widely
available was beyond me: I needed professional help. Abacus also gave very
wise and much appreciated advice for its content.
Contents of the Guide
The following screenshot from the Guide shows the beginning of the Table of Contents.
The convenient page thumbnails and bookmarks at left allow you to quickly find
the pages of interest. You may also print the Guide on paper for easy reference.
You may view the complete Table of Contents
to get a better idea of the wide variety of topics covered by this Guide.
Screenshots and illustrations
Please click here to see screenshots
and illustrations from the "Step by Step Guide to Route Building for MSTS".
Please be patient while the images download.