Page 1 of 93

[Mod] Advanced Trains [advtrains] [2.4.3]

Posted: Sun May 22, 2016 20:58
by orwell
ADVANCED TRAINS

Image

Update 2.3.0: The modpack no longer contains trains. Please install Basic Trains to get them back!

This mod features realistic trains and various equipment for railways, with a focus on automated train operation.
Main features:
- A small selection of different trains (passenger and goods trains) (see also "Extensions")
- Almost-realistic tracks with actual curves and switches
- Railway signals, controllable by various means
- ATC: Simple, command-like automatic train control
- LuaATC: Powerful Lua-scripted automatic train operation(requires some programming knowledge)*
- An Interlocking system, featuring track sections, routes and automatic stopping before signals
Planned features:
- A timetable-based automatic train operation system.

Website

Download / Git
Content Database:
https://content.minetest.net/packages/orwell/advtrains/
Git repository:
http://git.bananach.space/advtrains.git/
Issue tracker:
https://bugs.linux-forks.de/advtrains/

License of code: AGPLv3
License of media: CC-BY-SA 3.0

Recommended Addons
Basic Trains by me: http://git.bananach.space/basic_trains.git/
More trains by rubberduck: viewtopic.php?f=9&t=24112

Extensions
These are some additional mods that add more content to advtrains.
You just need to install those mods and enable them.
Disco Trains by sivarajansam: https://content.minetest.net/packages/s ... scotrains/
granite by Smacker: https://github.com/h-v-smacker/advtrains_granite
older (might not work):
various trains by mbb: https://mbblp.github.io/advanced-trains
Andrey's stuff: https://github.com/Andrey2470T/Advanced ... dditional-
Decoration blocks:
metrosigns (over 1300 items!)
https://git.bananach.space/railroad_paraphernalia.git/
viewtopic.php?f=9&t=19743
Tunnel building
Tunnelmaker: viewtopic.php?f=9&t=20159
Digtron: viewtopic.php?f=9&t=16295

Servers
There are some servers running the Advanced Trains mod:
Linuxworks Next Generation
- I am frequently online on this server. If you are in trouble with some railway setup or have a question, it's best to catch me there.
*) LuaATC is in use in a variety of applications, most notably the Spawn subway system, on this server
Grand Theft Auto Minetest
- This server has some subway lines operated by advtrains.
Pandorabox
ITALIAN ULLA SERVER
Сrimea HiTech&Magic (RUS) SERVER
Survivalworks Urban Edition
There might be more of which I am not aware.

Contributors
Advtrains wouldn't be what it is now without the help of numerous contributors providing bugfixes, new features or additional content.

Active contributors:
- gpcf (gabriel)
- yw05 (ywang)
- Blockhead
- Maverick2797
- rubberduck [moretrains]
- W3RQ01 (dario23)
- doxygen_spammer (doxydoxy)

Past contributors:
- mbb
- Smacker
- Hume2
- techniX

Special thanks also go to gpcf and all players of LinuxForks Next Generation for acting as a "live beta" of advtrains and enduring lag, crashes and disasters.

------

Get in touch: Discuss with us on IRC - https://libera.chat Channel #advtrains

------
Access code for Advanced Trains Wiki account creation:
SEMAPHORE

Re: [Mod] Advanced Trains [WIP]

Posted: Sun May 22, 2016 21:16
by TumeniNodes
Sounds really cool! Do you have any screenshots?

Re: [Mod] Advanced Trains [WIP]

Posted: Sun May 22, 2016 21:22
by webdesigner97
Sounds interesting! Minetest really needs a good mod for trains :)
I hope that one day we'll reach something like this:

Youtube | Official Build A World Channel: Trains & Tracks - Part 3 - 'Rails Demo'

Re: [Mod] Advanced Trains [WIP]

Posted: Mon May 23, 2016 00:39
by benrob0329
Is it based off of the railnet mod? If not, I'd recommended you take a look at it, its pretty cool.

Re: [Mod] Advanced Trains [WIP]

Posted: Mon May 23, 2016 05:07
by lightonflux
First impressions:

* Rail blocks need different names, other wise it is hard to test as you have to use every block before you have an idea what it even does
* crashes when connecting wagons (nil value)
* check if wagon is placed on track_vert and deny placement to prevent bugs (wagon stuck in track_vert or other wagon)
* node highlight of track_vert (1 & 2) broken, and player can walk into the block
* don't let the player place wagons in the ground (place on != track block)
* traintester tool on wagon crashes the session (nil value)

Good enough as a first 0.1 release. Better release often, then almost never like some other mods.

Re: [Mod] Advanced Trains [WIP]

Posted: Mon May 23, 2016 13:48
by orwell
lightonflux wrote:First impressions:

* Rail blocks need different names, other wise it is hard to test as you have to use every block before you have an idea what it even does
in the end, ther will be only the track placer available and it won't be called trackplacer but just 'track'. you wil do anything other using the trackworker
lightonflux wrote: * crashes when connecting wagons (nil value)
it shouldn't. can you please provide debug.txt entries?
lightonflux wrote: * check if wagon is placed on track_vert and deny placement to prevent bugs (wagon stuck in track_vert or other wagon)
you're right, I will fix this. but i will allow placement and just fix positioning, because i plan to add cog railways
lightonflux wrote: * node highlight of track_vert (1 & 2) broken, and player can walk into the block
ok, this could be improved. you can walk through because these nodes are not set as walkable, because then you could place torches and rails on it, which you shouldn't do.
lightonflux wrote: * don't let the player place wagons in the ground (place on != track block)
will be done.
lightonflux wrote: * traintester tool on wagon crashes the session (nil value)
ah, I think I know what I did wrong...

Just keep in mind that this mod is far away from being finished.

Re: [Mod] Advanced Trains [WIP]

Posted: Mon May 23, 2016 13:51
by orwell
benrob0329 wrote:Is it based off of the railnet mod? If not, I'd recommended you take a look at it, its pretty cool.
Nope. It's almost completely my work, except the rail texture (but I will improve this one too, so that it looks good even for 45deg rails)
But I will implement that train-not-being-unloaded stuff one day, maybe I can draw inspiration out of it (of course while giving credit to stu). Thanks for the suggestion.

EDIT: well, the texture does not look 'good' for 45deg rails, it looks 'acceptable for a wip mod'

Re: [Mod] Advanced Trains [WIP]

Posted: Mon May 23, 2016 13:54
by orwell
TumeniNodes wrote:Sounds really cool! Do you have any screenshots?
No, but I will create some when I have better models and textures (that will be in about two weeks, when I have more time)

Re: [Mod] Advanced Trains [WIP]

Posted: Mon May 23, 2016 13:55
by orwell
webdesigner97 wrote:Sounds interesting! Minetest really needs a good mod for trains :)
I hope that one day we'll reach something like this:

Youtube | Official Build A World Channel: Trains & Tracks - Part 3 - 'Rails Demo'
Indeed, something like this is what I'm dreaming of.

Re: [Mod] Advanced Trains [WIP]

Posted: Tue May 24, 2016 03:05
by AccidentallyRhine
I would be really interested to see how those high-radius turn rails from the Build A World video might be implemented into a mod like yours.

Re: [Mod] Advanced Trains [advtrains] [WIP]

Posted: Mon May 30, 2016 18:48
by orwell
Update
1. github
2. models
3. improvements
4. trains travel through unloaded mapchunks

next: better couple logic

EDIT: 5. screenshots

Re: [Mod] Advanced Trains [advtrains] [WIP]

Posted: Mon May 30, 2016 23:25
by Nathan.S
You sir, are a master. (assuming Orwell is a guy name :S)

Either way, this looks AMAZING.

Let me know if you want any help with train models, I'm kinda okay at Blender.

Re: [Mod] Advanced Trains [advtrains] [WIP]

Posted: Tue May 31, 2016 06:25
by orwell
You are always welcome to help. The locomotive is not animated, if you can animate it, that would just be so cool...
George Orwell was a famous author.

Re: [Mod] Advanced Trains [advtrains] [WIP]

Posted: Tue May 31, 2016 11:50
by TumeniNodes
The screenshots look great!
And it is great that you decided to use 45* angles... makes much more sense then 90* turns.
I am still of the opinion though, that rails should be scaled up in size = double the width.
I wish they could be done as this example 2x4 sections of track.

Image

It would add a lot of richness, and better proportion to the feature. As well as the ability to create larger engines and carts, and it may help with the collision space, by acting as a buffer zone, by extending outward x 1 on each side of the tracks?
I don't know if this is something anyone else would like to see, or if you think it is a good idea??
Of course they would actually be scaled down to the default 16x16 blocks, this example uses 64x64


Anyway, time for me to try out your great work : )

Re: [Mod] Advanced Trains [advtrains] [WIP]

Posted: Tue May 31, 2016 12:18
by orwell
Since the 45deg rail textures extend over node borders, actually every rail node is a mesh consisting just of a plane that spans 0,5 node lengths over th node border. So it is really easy to extend the rail width a bit.
May I use that rail texture you posted? it looks great...(it has even got a gravel bed...)

Re: [Mod] Advanced Trains [advtrains] [WIP]

Posted: Tue May 31, 2016 13:32
by Nathan.S
orwell wrote:You are always welcome to help. The locomotive is not animated, if you can animate it, that would just be so cool...
I'm not sure if I can get animation one an object like a train, as I wouldn't know how to make the model use animation, unless it uses something like the mob api where animation is an option. I guess I'll have to look at the code. I might still have an old train model sitting around from the last train mod that somebody started on, but then gave up on, or whatever happened to that mod. I'll try and get a little something together tomorrow. If nothing else, a slightly better texture than what's going on now, where it will actually look like a train engine, or car :D

Re: [Mod] Advanced Trains [advtrains] [WIP]

Posted: Tue May 31, 2016 14:29
by TumeniNodes
orwell wrote:Since the 45deg rail textures extend over node borders, actually every rail node is a mesh consisting just of a plane that spans 0,5 node lengths over th node border. So it is really easy to extend the rail width a bit.
May I use that rail texture you posted? it looks great...(it has even got a gravel bed...)
Absolutely, I'd be honored if you did. Let me know if you want/need other textures, or even if you want me to make any changes to this one. I just threw it together as an example

Re: [Mod] Advanced Trains [advtrains] [WIP]

Posted: Tue May 31, 2016 15:48
by orwell
Nathan.S wrote:
orwell wrote:You are always welcome to help. The locomotive is not animated, if you can animate it, that would just be so cool...
I'm not sure if I can get animation one an object like a train, as I wouldn't know how to make the model use animation, unless it uses something like the mob api where animation is an option. I guess I'll have to look at the code. I might still have an old train model sitting around from the last train mod that somebody started on, but then gave up on, or whatever happened to that mod. I'll try and get a little something together tomorrow. If nothing else, a slightly better texture than what's going on now, where it will actually look like a train engine, or car :D
Well, I just need a model file with a well-working animation. I will write the code myself.

Re: [Mod] Advanced Trains [advtrains] [WIP]

Posted: Tue May 31, 2016 16:27
by Desour
looks very nice
Edit: its extremely buggy and the size of the mod is gigantic, maybe you should not make round meshes, cubic style is better and please scale the textures of train and wagon down

Re: [Mod] Advanced Trains [advtrains] [WIP]

Posted: Tue May 31, 2016 21:19
by orwell
of course its buggy, its a WIP mod.

and have you ever seen locomotives with cubic boilers?
the textures may be scaled down.
Notice that the main size of the mod should come from 1. the xcf projects(they are huge) and 2. the .blend files that lie around everywhere...

BTW pushed an update, first part of better couple logic done.
EDIT: now the discouplers are done too, and trains collide again.

Re: [Mod] Advanced Trains [advtrains] [WIP]

Posted: Wed Jun 01, 2016 20:47
by Nathan.S
So I added a little animation to the engine, the pistons and drive links move together. Everything is controlled by bones, and two empties. To change it up you only need to change the animation of the wheel center empty, everything else is either a child or is being modified by that with constraints.
The forum doesn't allow the .blend format so I've uploaded it to my website instead.
http://www.nathansalapat.com/downloads/ ... tion.blend

I do think you could drastically lower the amount of faces in the model without much of a notice of quality loss. The two pistons that go into the little cylinders and the cylinders themselves have lots of faces, but are small enough, especially the pistons that they could be at like 12 faces without anybody even being able to tell. I'm not going to try and tell you what you should be doing with models though, so I didn't touch anything other than to add the animation.

Re: [Mod] Advanced Trains [advtrains] [WIP]

Posted: Wed Jun 01, 2016 21:29
by TumeniNodes
Nathan.S wrote: The forum doesn't allow the .blend format so I've uploaded it to my website instead.
This is something we may be able to ask to have added to the forums? Especially now since meshes will most likely be utilized more often with recent changes?

Gonna check out your blend, sounds awesome so far

Re: [Mod] Advanced Trains [advtrains] [WIP]

Posted: Wed Jun 01, 2016 21:33
by Nathan.S
I wouldn't know who to ask, but maybe I'll make a post in the feature request part of the forum.

I only added the animation to the model, it was created by orwell.

Re: [Mod] Advanced Trains [advtrains] [WIP]

Posted: Wed Jun 01, 2016 21:40
by TumeniNodes
celeron55 would prob be the best person to pm regarding it. I think adding .blend and .obj would be very useful and justified (if they are options)

adding animation is no little feat... I'm sure orwell will agree

Re: [Mod] Advanced Trains [advtrains] [WIP]

Posted: Thu Jun 02, 2016 17:29
by Desour
maybe make mesh for rails, for more information, maybe ask wikipedia (de)
at now the 45° rail is wider than the normal

and i still dont like these cylinders in the trains, minetest is a cubic game