Warll's Blog ワロウのブログ » sidMeiersRailroads

SMR, Simple, complete

Warll — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 05:54:37 +0000

www.smrsimple.com is done, I only need to add one or two more things but for the msot part it is done, now for it to stand the test of time.

Smooth sailing so far

Warll — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 05:35:32 +0000

Everything is going along well so far, with both myself and the new site.

I’ve started adding descriptions from the map’s orignal topic if there is a useful one there.
I’ve got some more Japanese studying done.
Did well, I think, on my last Social Test hope I also do well on the finals.

PS: Is there really no one that wants to help me get maps up?

My plans.

Warll — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 02:00:09 +0000

So I want to do something big. My I idea is for yet another website! Yeah I hear what your saying, “but Warll that is the last thing the SMR community needs”. Well you’re right, I myself don’t think the SMR community is large enough to support even two sites, although in this case it likely would fall apart if it was forced into the same one. What I would like to do is make a one stop destination for new users. Heres what I have so far after very brief brainstorming:

It would be a related URL so that if we play the cards right we might just be able to get it to show up on google searches.
It would be wordpress based, include a directory of maps and host maps.
There should be a easy to use GUI tool for changing maps, the SAMs are so simple it is a shame that nothing automated has been made.
It would be a platform for both sides of the community, if new users want to go deeper they may. As I see it now the amount of drama will simply stare new users away.
It can be hosted on my dreamhost account although if it gets big as I hope it does ads can be added. Thats neither here nor there though.

The entire point of this would be to get new players to SMR and get the content that is already out there to people. There is a need for this as can be seen from the fact that people are still downlaoding SMRI.

Uh oh.

Warll — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 21:20:31 +0000

Reading about and seeing what all has happened it looks like the SMR community is not as dead as I thought it was. I think I will have to reinstall SMR, wonder where I can find a Japanese copy. Really have to force myself from doing it right now, my finals are coming up.

Sid Meier’s Railroads!: Intercontinental, it’s done.

Warll — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 05:23:51 +0000

About two years ago I was an active member of the Sid Meier’s Railroads!(SMR) modding community. I have never been much of a programmer, or any programmer at that. My one attempt at a map failed hard. The thing is though we had no shortage of maps. What we did have though was a mess and an initiative lead by snoopy to get multiple maps working at a time.

This mess was, in my opinion a result of out first attempts at maps. You see when Sid Meier’s Railroads was first released there was no SDK, that didn’t stop us and as such Dwax was the first to made a map based soley off of reverse enginering the games files. Ok so saying that makes it sound harder then it was, after all the game used primarly XML and hightmaps. The fact that the game shared an engine with Sid Meier’s cizilization and Oblivion also meant that there were a number of tools we could use for the models.

The problems mostly came from the conflicts between the XMLs. This was only compounded by the fact that Sid Meier’s Railroads istelf before the patches was bugy and had a nasty tendency to crash to desktop(CTD). Making it very hard to tell apart a mappers error or “normal” gmae crash. With that said thanks to efforts to standardize our use of the XMLs we were able to make maps work together some of the time.

By this point we had a wealth of maps but many of them would not work together, a big stumbling block for new users. This lead me to suggest Sid Meier’s Railroads!: Intercontinental(SMRI) with the goal of making a all in one map pack. All a user would need to do was install and play. I am actually surprised that Sid Meier’s Railroads Intercontinental got off the ground, really all the thanks goes to Atani and Snoopy who put work into the installer and maps and managed to get ~20 maps together. In the end we got it out in time for Sid Meier’s Railroads one year anniversary.

After that we got one minor patch out before we left it all alone. At the time it was my intenention to make a sequel. That just never happened though and now its nearly two years later and I say for sure that it will not, well atleast not by my hands anyway.

I guess I should these two bits of knowledge, there are two known bugs from what I can rememeber.

Sid Meier’s Railroads must have been luanched at least once before you go to install Sid Meier’s Railroads!: Intercontinental. It works this way because Sid Meier’s Railroads!: Intercontinental must be installed to the “my games” Sid Meier’s Railroads directory which is only created once the game is luanched. This might create some conflict for users with none defualt home directories. To get around this simply copy the Sid Meier’s Railroads “my games” folder to where it would be in a defualt configuration, you should then be able to copy and overwrite the folder back to where Sid Meier’s Railroads expects it.
The Egypt map has a bug that will cause you to crash to desktop. If I remember right and I likely don’t, this has to do with the XML for one of the goods.

So in closing I will make these points. That Sid Meier’s Railroads!: Intercontinental is still the easyiest way for a new player to get new maps that I know of. As well if anyone is interested in reusing the Sid Meier’s Railroads!: Intercontinental name for anything Sid Meier’s Railroads related they are welcome to it, just contact me for the Moddb profile and Atani for the website. You must though be serious about this, I still do have an afinity for SMRI.

Anyway thank you everyone who has played Sid Meier’s Railroads!: Intercontinental, thank you all the mappers who made this possible and thank you Atani and Snoopy. I really love the time I spent with you all on the forums, maybe I’ll see you guys again.