More Rules

RULE 4

Do not use Double Sided Mesh.

I use to use them but I stopped due to the way Trainz renders them, the color dose not match with single sided. You can not use the same texture on a single and a double sided mesh. When you use a double sided mesh you double the number of vertexes.

RULE 5

Only use dependencies that are built-in or on the DLS.

This avoids the Emails and Post of  "Where can I find KUID: XYZ...." and a missing dependence can make your content unusable.

RULE 6

Use scripts carefully.

If you do not know how to program be very careful with scripts, a lot of them require you to edit them before you can use them. A new update to Trainz can make a script have an error that is very hard to fix.

Rules for making good running content

All the following rules are what I use not all are N3V but some are. Their to help make Trainz run better, badly made content can kill your FPS. Their also what I have found to work good for me over the last 14 or so years of making content.

When Trainz first came out we had very little data on how to make things and the error checking was set to skip lines it did not know in the config file and stop checking on an error. This lied to a lot of errors in old content and why the DLS is being cleaned up.

RULE 1

Don't make what you can't see.

You would thing this was obvious but I have seen it done by new people. This also goes for detail you can not see with the 4 Trainz cameras. I found this out when making a trackside sign that all the detail I had in it could not be seen in game going 1mph and looking for it.

RULE 2

Use as few materials as you can.

This is from N3V, and it is materials not textures, a material can have more than one texture, this is why you can have a normal map texture, it dose not count. On the Forums you will see the word "textures" used where the word "materials" should be.

RULE 3

Also from N3V, keep the number of vertexes to a minimum.

This is also known as "number of polys" witch is the wrong thing but what you see in the Forums, it is short for polygons but all video cards only use triangles and only the number of vertexes or points is what you have to watch as there is a lemit on the number you can have( it's in the millions).
This is also why I have RULE 1.

 

Making a Alco A1A bogey cont.

The bogey is now done and two have been uploaded to the DLS, two more will be done much later.

To make the LOD I have made the mesh using 8 layers.

L1

L2

L3

L4

L5

L6

L7

L8

 

 

L8 is the shadow, L7 is the less than 500 lowest LOD, L6+L1+l2 is my low LOD, L5+L4+L1+L2 is medium LOD, and L1+L2+L3+L4 is the highest LOD.