The Storm of 1952
Technical Notes
File Modifications
This is definitely a technical topic, but the important part is simple. Once you’ve run the nine 1952 Storm mini-activities, you may want to turn off some of the special effects. Click here to find out how. Otherwise, read on.
In order to implement some of the special effects that are part of this add-on, we included revisions to certain files that shipped with the original Donner Pass release. Affected are two of the world files, and the four route database files. Here’s the list:
File |
Folder |
w-012903+014282.w |
WORLD |
w-012906+014284.w |
WORLD |
Donner_T.tdb |
3DTS_DONNER1 |
Donner_T.rdb |
3DTS_DONNER1 |
Donner_T.rit |
3DTS_DONNER1 |
Donner_T.tit |
3DTS_DONNER1 |
The world files contain new animated “hazard” objects which are seen in some of the activities. Since these objects are very specific to the events of 1952, they should be turned off when not needed – which is most of the time.
One way to turn them off is to make sure the Hazard freq: Animals slider in the Activity Editor is set fully to the left, or 0%. Most activities are normally this way already. However, some activities require the slider to be set at 100% in order for other special effects to work. Examples of these effects are the train order signals at Colfax and Truckee and the repair shop doors at Truckee yard.
A more positive approach is to use the two new batch files that were installed in your WORLD folder. First, locate this folder using Windows Explorer. The path is usually ..\Program Files\Microsoft Games\Train Simulator\ROUTES\3DTS_DONNER1\WORLD.
Double-click on the file Switch Snow Hazards OFF.bat. That will – you guessed it – switch the snow hazards off. Knowing this, you can probably figure out what Switch Snow Hazards ON.bat does! Either way, the snow objects remain registered in the database files so they can be turned on and off repeatedly as needed.
Note that in Explore Route mode, no hazard objects of any type are visible.
Snow
Yes, we know. It snows inside the sheds and tunnels. Maybe the next generation of train simulators will address this anomaly.
Activities and Time
If you’ve run some of the 1952 Storm activities, you might have noticed that the start time listed in the Activity Briefing screen ( F11 ) sometimes is different than the simulator’s clock time ( F10 ). Given that most of the activity segments happen during a fierce blizzard, we wanted to keep the ambient lighting fairly dim. The only way to ensure this was to artificially force the simulator clock. So even though an actual event that we depicted may have happened during mid-day, we staged it in the early morning.
The other way we played with time is the activity durations. If it normally takes 40 minutes to travel from, for example, Norden to Emigrant Gap, that’s the duration we listed in the Activity Briefing. As you may know by now, fate often intervened and some of the activity segments terminate a bit sooner than expected.
Rotary Snow Plows
The rotary snow plows are user drivable only in Parts 6 and 7 of this series of activities. Click here for more information.
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