Converting Euro couplers to US couplers

[sniper297]

Subtitle, "dadblasted furriner dinkytoy bumpercars don't even LOOK like real trains!" :mad: Hee-hee, no US 3D cad guys coming in from MSTS yet, John Fowlis seems to have gone Asiatic with all them trips to China, and the one GP-7 source file Dick Cowen sent me won't open in the blueprint asset editor. So I'm stuck at this point with converting dinkytoys, thanks to BigPeter I got the dope on where the coupler heights are. Uploaded one of them German BR294 switchers converted for US couplers tonight, should be in the file library tomorrow or Monday. Meanwhile working on converting some freightcars, first thing is make a new folder and copy the contents of the one you're cloning in, rename the main bin file and edit with RStoolsTMB;

http://forums.flightsim.com/vbts/attachment.php?attachmentid=1962&stc=1&d=1204436761

To change the name internally so it shows up in the list as a different car. I don't bother with translations, but it's best to at least replace the different ones with the English name so some Dutchman don't download it and get two sylmmswagen or whatever it is in his list.

http://forums.flightsim.com/vbts/attachment.php?attachmentid=1963&stc=1&d=1204436767

Easiest way to do this part, open the main bin for a US engine or car, click and drag to select everything from the opening FrontCouplingBlueprintID to the closing RearCouplingBlueprintID inclusive, CTRL C to copy. Switch to the one you're hacking, click and drag the same text, CTRL V to paste and overwrite the whole smash.

http://forums.flightsim.com/vbts/attachment.php?attachmentid=1964&stc=1&d=1204436775

Next datablock is the front coupling pivot, count 14 lines down, that's the coupler attachment height. Change that to 0.873 for US couplers. Next go to the rear coupler pivot, count down 14 lines and change that to 0.873.

http://forums.flightsim.com/vbts/attachment.php?attachmentid=1965&stc=1&d=1204436781

Lot of the aliasing stuff can be left as is, but if you intend to repaint it you need to change the paths here so it don't alias back to whatever you cloned it from. Skip this step and you'll be looking at brown paint that you could have sworn you painted green 5 minutes ago. If you get the original textures or that weird looking missing texture skin, you probably have the path wrong in one of these blocks.

http://forums.flightsim.com/vbts/attachment.php?attachmentid=1966&stc=1&d=1204436787

End result ain't half bad altho it's gonna require some trial and erroring to figure out what maps where.

[Bill Hobbs]

Sniper,
I did a couple of these conversions yesterday on loco tenders and found that I had also to adjust the same element of the matrix for the Receiving Points.
I made alternate tender and engine bin files for US and British style couplers and left them in the same folders just changing the names so that one can tell what couplers are on what equipment. This works ok provided that after modifying the tender files one also makes some change to the engine bin files. RS doesn't seem to want to detect the extra tender unless one does this. Figuring this took way longer than making the coupler mods.

Bill

[sniper297]

Several items, first off the folder structure and internal paths. Some files have not only the name of another file, but also the PATH to the folder that file is in, so if it's not correct you get (1) couplers with no engine between, or (2) the wrong textures or missing textures.

Textures are called from the main bin file (similar to MSTS .eng or .wag) and the GeoPcDx file (shape). Near as I can tell the bin file has the filename and path to the texture, the GeoPcDx has only the names, not the entire path. Never been able to edit a GeoPcDx file so I'm not really sure on that one, but I found the surest way is to leave the texture files with the same names, but in a different folder, and change the folder path in the bin file to point there. The whole thing seems unnecessarily complicated to me, but maybe I'm missing something that would simplify it. That said;

http://forums.flightsim.com/vbts/attachment.php?attachmentid=2661&stc=1&d=1206465515

Only trouble I'm having with this one is the logo is reversed on one side of the tender for some reason, the couplers work fine doing it just by the above method - with one difference. Due to the nature of steam with tender, I hacked the front coupler only of the engine, and the back coupler only of the tender, left the tender front coupler and engine back coupler alone. Being drawbars they don't need to be changed, and I figured leaving them alone would reduce the potential complications since we got enough already. :rolleyes: Other possible problems, need to change the name of the main bin file plus the internal display names (and all the language names) inside the bin file, and remember to delete the corresponding blueprints.pak file for whichever subfolder it's in.

[Bill Hobbs]

Sniper,
Like you, I found the path situation rather complicated. That is why I left the modified tenders / locos in the same folder as the original. I failed to mentioned that I changed the bin file name and all the internal names for the tender / loco as well. That done, both show up on both the Consist editor by timetraveller and the listing inside the scenario editor.

I took this process one step further and copied a simulation file from the default folder into the individual engine folder so that I could change things for one loco without changing the others inside the 5MT folder. This was done as a learning guide to eventually attempting to change one of the locos from vacuum brakes to air brakes. By isolating an individual loco, if I screw it up (as I know I will), I only have to restore that one loco's files. Further study on this project makes me concerned about what these changes will do to the sound control files (why the h**l are they called "proxy" files anyway? What are they a "proxy" for?)

Bill

[sniper297]

Dunno, I go over to UKtrainsim and England appears to have abandoned English for some other language. Read a thread about a "deltic clag" with a "rake of carriages" which is "digging into banks" while a "spam" is "shunting goods wagons", it takes quite a bit of reading before it becomes apparent they're talking about trains, especially when they throw a World War 1 biplane into the discussion. Maybe "proxy" means they pipe the sounds thru Elton John's amplifiers or something. :eek: