Enriching your new Route

GET STUFFED! - Enriching Your Route

by Jim "Sniper" Ward

This is the latest in the Stuffit package, and it includes some new batch files for sorting out custom objects from the originals.

Click here to commence downloading the SniperStuffit4.ZIP package described in this tutorial

You newbies that never heard of this, this is a method for copying all the objects from the six original routes to your newly extracted route, and includes tools and instructions for how to package the route for uploading when your masterpiece is finished.

Click on the to download and save to disk, then find the place on your disk you saved it to, doubleclick on it to unzip it, you'll get a folder named \stuffitpack.

Open Windows Explorer, open the folder named \Stuffitpack, click edit, select all, copy.
Now go to \Train Simulator\Routes\RouteName, (that new route you made in the geo extractor that only has a few lame objects from the \template folder), click edit, paste. At this point the \RouteName\ folder should have a new folder named \Stuffed, a bunch of .bat files, and a file named stuffit.ref.

Double click on EZstuff4.bat, wait for the DOS window to finish copying all the files, then close the DOS window. Delete, move, or rename the RouteName.ref. Now right click on stuffit.ref, select rename, and type in RouteName.ref (whatever the name of the original .ref file was).
That's all you need to start, open the route in the route editor, you should now have an object menu with a couple thousand buildings and bridges to choose from. The only thing you gotta watch for is the forest region treestumps, don't use those without copying the ace files they use from \textures to all the seasonal subfolders. (I'm gonna update this and get it out of beta, just waiting for Hank (signalmaster) to fix the signal dat files to eliminate the Japanese ones that don't work, and hopefully including some of his signals in the package.)

Packaging and Distribution

All the following bats from my belfrey are for packaging and distribution, and my guess would be that it's gonna be a while before you need to learn all that. Hopefully Mike Simpson will have RouteRiter perfected by then, which will make all the packaging steps automatic, and all the packaging/sorting batch files obsolete. Then you won't need to learn how to use them, thus saving a lot of money on aspirin!

If you're going to distribute your route, read the following (several times! - editor) to ensure a compact, simple route building protocol.

Route Folder Structure & Packaging a Route by Jim Ward.
Route Folder Structure & Packaging a Route - additional notes by Jim Ward.

19 July 2002