1925 A1 Berkshire (Gumboots Locomotive Works)

[Blackhawk]

Also, just for the heck of it, can someone who already has my Berkshire installed try this skin out in their RT3 and see if it works for them? (Just to check it's not a glitch on my box)

I tried installing the Berkshire and then the skin in 2 copies of RT3 and no luck in the skin coming up in either. As for looking at the pk4 file, etc. I can't help in that area.

[Gumboots]

Ok, I got it working! You can skin third party custom locomotives! I know because I've just done it.

What's more, by doing it manually I was able to get this skin running with full-sized 1024x1024 A skins. IOW, in-game selectable skins are NOT limited to the 512 x 512 A skin that TrainSkin.exe spews out. You can get quality as good as the primary skin if you are prepared to do the work.

Zipped PK4 is attached. As long as you have my A1_Berkshire already installed, this pack will give you a second skin with a green firebox and boiler, like the Division Point model of a Boston & Albany A1b (pix in slideshow at bottom of this page).

Pix of it running in the game follow.

Both_skins_running.jpg (84.45 KiB) Viewed 6368 times

Upgrade_dialogue.jpg (156.43 KiB) Viewed 6368 times

NOTE: Personally I do not consider this skin read for prime time. It was made when I was working on this Berkshire before New Year, to try out the idea of a second skin. All I did today was add some stuff necessary to get it running as a selectable skin. Although it's quite nice I'm not happy about some of the detailing.

It's attached here purely as a proof of concept, so that people can see it is possible to have selectable skins in the game for custom, third party locomotives. If people want to play with it they're quite welcome to, but I'd prefer to do a better version of it before people start talking about the archives.

[Gumboots]

Ok cool. Got the beauty shot problem sorted. It seems as though skins for third party locomotives will only show the beauty shot for the primary skin. If you try to have a different beauty shot for each skin, it throws a tantrum and gives you the mutant gold-plated Kriegslok.

So, it works now, in that at least it shows a nice picture of a Berkshire even if it doesn't have a green boiler. This is pretty good, since I find I hardly ever look at the beauty shots anyway.

I've also whipped up a pretty decent profile image, again of a Berkshire but this time with green boiler.

I've edited the last post to remove the "known issues" since they're now fixed, and ditched the old zipped PK4. New zipped, more-but-not-completely finished PK4 attached here, if anyone wants to try it and give feedback.

ETA: Zipped PK4 deleted. Updated versions of both skins added to later post.

[Gumboots]

Figured out which lights are which in the Berkshire and H10282 and NYC J1 Hudson models (they share the same Light files). There are 8 Light files in total (except that the Hudson is missing 2, since it doesn't have the pair of small running lights up front).

The only difference between the Berkshire and the H10282 and NYC J1 Hudson is that the Berkshire now has the lights inside the firebox moved rearwards to compensate for the new position of the backhead, and the Hudson lacks the running lights. Yes, Berkshire lights have been moved now. Cross one thing off my revamp list.

I've also done the alpha channels to allow for headlights and windows to glow at night, and for the lights inside the firebox to give firebox and backhead dial lighting at night. I found that it wasn't necessary to go further than the E skin with the cabin windows. Headlight and running lights were fine only going as far as D. I only went down to the C skin for the backhead detail as it'll never be seen when zoomed out further.

Since both the primary (black) and green skins use the same alpha channels, doing it for both wasn't any harder than doing it for one. It's just a matter of fixing one, then copy/pasting the entire alpha channel to the second skin's images. I actually just nicked the relevant chunks of alpha channel out of the default H10 images, since for the bits in question the only difference between the Berkshire and H10 is that the Berkshire has the extra cabin side. That just meant copy/pasting the alpha for that into the new location.

I also tweaked the alpha for the narrow windows at the front of the cabin. That only had translucency/night glow for a small square at the top of those windows. I just put a selection around the window gfx, then got a brush with some grey and extended the translucency to the full height of the windows. Easy.

Anyway, that's #2 crossed off the revamp list too.

So, Light files (for either the Default H10 or for the Berkshire or for the NYC J1 Hudson).

Light 1 is the headlight,composed of 2 individual lights: 1 for spherical glow and 1 for the main beam.

Lights 2 and 3 are the small running lights in front of the feedwater heater (These are missing in the NYC J1 Hudson model, but could easily be reinstated).

The last 5 are at the rear, and do cabin dial lighting and firebox effects.

Light 4 is the middle of the three small lights at upper right of the backhead (This is #2 in the NYC J1 Hudson model).

Light 5 is the one above and to the left of Light 4 (This is #3 in the NYC J1 Hudson model).

Light 6 is a larger one, on the centreline and lower, to do the firebox effect (This is #4 in the NYC J1 Hudson model).

Light 7 is the last of the three at upper right, lowest and furthest out (This is #5 in the NYC J1 Hudson model).

Light 8 is the small green light at upper left of the backhead (This is #6 in the NYC J1 Hudson model).

Pix attached. Wont load revamped zips yet as I'm tossing up whether to do a bit more tweaking.

New_lights_front.jpg (105.32 KiB) Viewed 6305 times

New_lights_cabin.jpg (79.75 KiB) Viewed 6305 times

[Gumboots]

Ok, have contemplated further tweaks. Aint happening. Not at the moment. There's other stuff I want to get onto, so for now the Berkshire development is stopping at this point.

Attached are two new zipped PK4's. These have the corrected alpha channels for both skins, and the corrected lights positioning for the primary locomotive files.

If there is enough demand for it, I will look at finishing the green skin up into something a bit slicker. Would also consider other colours, again if there is a demand.

@Hawk: The new PK4 for the main locomotive (ie: the one inside A1_Berkshire.zip here) is ready for the archives, when you have time. I would like it to replace the current zip as it is a better example. IMO it's not worth keeping the old one.

All notes and PSD's still apply, so no need to change any of that. The only changes have been to .DDS alpha channels and the positioning of the firebox lights. That's all contained in the PK4 itself.

Edit: redundant zips removed.

[Hawk]

@Hawk: The new PK4 for the main locomotive (ie: the one inside A1_Berkshire.zip here) is ready for the archives, when you have time. I would like it to replace the current zip as it is a better example. IMO it's not worth keeping the old one.

Got it updated.

http://hawkdawg.com/rrt/rrt3_extras/rrt ... otives.php

[Tomix]

Quick question, with the "skins" are the wheels supposed to change when you select them? With my Thomas skins created by TrainSkin.exe, I have to save the game, and reload it to have the wheels change texture. This only works on the default locos I've tried, because when I tried to make a skin for the Black 5, it didn't show up in the other color when I reloaded the game.

[Gumboots]

I haven't tried changing the wheels yet. I know some people had trouble getting custom wheel colours to show up, but one bloke said he got it to work. Unfortunately he was a bit light on detail, and hasn't been back since. He mentions it here.

I assume he means putting all the image files loose in that folder as well as in the PK4, but frankly I can't see why that would make any difference. They should load the same either way. Mind you, I haven't tested it yet.

I got the extra custom skin to work for my Berkshire (obviously) but am not quite sure how I did it. Probably best if you take a look inside the PK4 for it and do a bit of comparing.

[Lirio]

That's a good looking locomotive Gumboots, great job! I notice you're using the profile icon I made for it, and it pleases me that I was able to contribute in some small way. ^_^

[Gumboots]

Glad you like it. It even has four back wheels now.

[Gumboots]

Was just reminded of something. This here Berky uses the same tender as the default H10 and the custom NYC J1 Hudson. All I did was take the same tender geometry and split it out to its own file, then add a second side to it.

This means that if anyone is skinning up the default H10 or the Hudson, or even if they just want a USRA style of tender for anything, nicking the one out of this Berkshire would be the way to go. If you do that you'll be able to have your custom text the right way around on both sides of the tender.

[Gumboots]

Had another look at this old beast, now that it's going to be pretty easy to fix some of the things that were just too much hassle via manual hex editing. It's been imported into Blender and I've already fixed a stack of reversed normals, just for fun.

At some point I'll make the shorter tender with the high rolled top on it, that was used by B&A etc. The default black loco, or the alternative green one with the green boiler, will be able to use either style of tender just by simple renaming of a tender skin file. Obviously either or both of these tenders would also be usable with other Berkshire skins, or with other custom locomotives.

A1_Berkshire_skinned.jpg (21 KiB) Viewed 4788 times

[Gumboots]

I had a PM from AMD 103, asking if my offer made almost 5 years ago still stood:

Some people might be wondering what the company initials "B.T.R.D." stand for, and why the locomotive is going to be numbered "2152". I chose B.T.R.D. for the company name as it hasn't been in operation for more than a century now and is rather obscure. This means it wont be mentally associated with any particular location by most people, making it good for use in any location.

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Special Christmas bonus offer

"BTRD" does have an actual meaning. So does the loco number of "2152".

The first person who can tell me what "BTRD" really stands for and why the loco is numbered "2152" can have a custom skin with company name, company logo and locomotive number of their choice.

Said PM included the correct guess for the meaning of BTRD, namely Bob the Railway Dog.

Bob the Railway Dog (also known as "Terowie Bob") is part of South Australian Railways folklore. He travelled the South Australian Railways system in the later part of the 19th century, and was known widely to railwaymen of the day.

I suspect nobody has noticed yet, but when I did the black skin for the SAR Class 500 Northern I made it with "Sir Robert Terowie" on the nameplates. The green skin for that loco has the actual name of the first of the class (Sir Malcolm Barclay-Harvey) but I had a bit of fun with the black one.

AMD also figured out the reason for the loco number being 2152: it's a simple code that uses the positions of letters in the alphabet, and is Bob's name (B=2, O=15, B=2).

So, since it's almost Christmas, even if it's five years later, we discussed what he wanted for a custom skin and I whipped it up.
It looks like this:

The PK4 is in the zip is attached below. Just extract it to UserExtraContent or PopTopExtraContent (either folder will work).
I'll get it sorted on the right archives page during the week, but for now you can grab it here if you want it.

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Edit: Got a minor bug. For some reason (ie: brain not working) I made the number on the headlight plates as 9083 instead of 9803, and I also named all the files as 9083 instead of 9803. So I'll fix that and upload the thing again. Update: It's fixed now.

Which now has me thinking that I might as well tweak the graphics a bit and have two different skins: 9803 and 9083. Why not? Bit of fun, and hardly any work.

[AMD 103]

You probably know I'll only use 9803.

As I explained to GumBoots, 9803 is supposed to represent the years of PopTop's Railroad Tycoon Releases. (1998 for Railroad Tycoon 2, and 2003 for Railroad Tycoon 3.) 98-03.

That's also why it's called PT&S 9803, instead of something else. Because for some reason, I really kinda like having some locomotives in PopTop games having PopTop on them in some way.

Probably something from me growing up RT2 and especially RT3 with them no doubt.

[Gumboots]

Yes, but I wasn't suggesting the extra skin for you. It was easy to make the first one, but I'm not all that keen on it myself, so I'm tempted to do one that is more to my taste just for the heck of it.

[AMD 103]

Go ahead and do make another version. It's your skin, and it's just a favor to me for winning some sort of weird prize.

(I'll admit, 9803 is something of a awkward number.)

[Gumboots]

Y'know this thing really does need a revamp. Turns out the flipped normals in a few places are easy to fix, because the Blender import script ignores normals in the .3dp and just lets Blender calculate them after the model is imported. That means flipped ones are automatically fixed just by importing the model. Can't get easier than that.

And there's several other things it would benefit from. Tender wheels could be actual wheels (not at all difficult to do now), and the tender skin could be done as 1024x512 instead of 1024x1024 (would save half a meg for the graphics card). Plus the original A1's (the A1a and A1b) had four wheel tenders on 70 ton Andrews trucks, and I happen to know a bloke who recently made Andrews trucks for some tank cars anyway. Can easily add some extra faces to the boiler, etc to make things less blocky. So there's quite a bit of scope for tweaking the thing up without it being too much drama.

I already had done a fair bit of this stuff just when messing around in Blender between doing other things, so I think I'll pencil in a revamp for early in the new year. Cargo cars first, then locomotives next year.