Surveyor Tools Feature Requests

This page is where the route-creation community gets to post all their surveyor tool feature requests. Request any surveyor tool additions or options that you think will enhance the game.

Requests

Requests are placed in this section by the community, for discussion and possible inclusion. Requests here may or may not make it into TS2009.

• Could an API dll be created to interface with the assets database? Like something that can be used in writing a C# application to interface with Trainz? - Roman

Maybe TrainzNativeInterface is what you needed? -Mike

• It would be nice to have a DEM creation tool included with TRS2009, integrated into the game. Like TransDEM, but simpler to use, but with all the editing features of TransDEM (or at least some!)vector line creation, map textures, separate map-tile-objects for fine detail work etc. - Wayne

• Direct vertex manipulation - the ability to adjust the height of one terrain vertex without affecting the adjoining vertices. Would be very useful for fine-tuning terrain after getting the rough shape with the existing tools. - Curtis

• Ability to lock the x-y movement of an item (but leave z able to move) - would help for basemap templates - it's easy to move them out of the way accidentally if they are hidden underground and you miss clicking on something else and click on them instead (they then snap to the cursor and move, but since they are hidden underground, the user doesn't realize they have moved until sometime later). - Curtis

Add snapgrid 720 and snapmode 1 to the template config. You will then only be able to move it by a whole base board ~Andi

Nice tip - thanks, Andi! -Curtis

• Ability to load a scaled, possibly georeferenced map template (.jpg, perhaps) to help guide track, terrain, and object placement. - Curtis

• A window that shows all textures loaded on a route, with the ability to click on the texture and be taken to when each texture is used. Would be nice if textures could be removed from the map here, as well as being selected to be painted on the map. Bonus for being able to replace a given texture with something else. - Curtis

• In the texture picker window, always show the name of the texture to better help when searching for a particular one. - Curtis

• A window that shows all items used in a map (maybe broken out by surveyor categories?) that allows deletion and replacement with other objects. Would be especially useful for replacing track. Bonus for being able to click on the item and be cycled through all the positions on the map that the object has been placed. - Curtis

• Auto terrain generation, based on several user parameter inputs (desert <-> jungle); (flat <-> mountainous); (water level) etc. - Curtis

• Or just a nice gui frontend to "Make Me a Map Aiden" - Curtis

• Complete overhaul of session creation tools including a much larger editing window, copy/paste commands, smaller rule icons (so you can see more) and the ability to edit a session outside surveyor (i.e. text editor). - Natvander

• Layers! Doesn't need to be too sophisticated to start with, just the facility to turn off the track or to turn off ground texturing would be a big gain. ~Andi

• Allow the builder to designate what streets have traffic and which don't, or what type of traffic. An example being one road might have heavy traffic, the other would have light. All done in surveyor. As opposed to using three or four types of the same road. - Chad

• Ability to rotate assets on all 3 axis (x,y,z) - as an example, to be able to rotate a parked vehicle so it conforms to a slope. - Natvander

• A keyboard shortcut to change texture direction in the Paint menu by 180 degrees. - Wreeder

• A keyboard shortcut to cycle through the textures added to the Advance panel of the Paint menu. This would allow the user to add a group of textures with a common look to the Advance panel and quickly choose from that group while painting an area to create a large area without repeating patterns. For example, Dave Drake has created several sets of textures that blend together very well. But to use them together requires moving the mouse from the baseboard to the Paint panel over and over again. -Wreeder

• Could the copy feature be made to recognize splines also? Currently all it seems to pick up is ground textures and objects. It'd be helpful, especially when making huge fields of rice (in my case) to just copy and paste the spline. - Chad

• Might take too much work to do it, but I'd love to see an "era" selector on the stations. This selection would define what years the passengers come from and change their clothing accordingly. There's a number of third party stations that do this, though I think most require editing the config file. Maybe an extension of the "chameleon" texture trick you see on rolling stock. - Chad

• Full spline handle control. While track and other splines seem to be based on cubic splines, a user does not have full control via handles, like it is possible in most vector programs (e.g. Adobe Illustrator, Corel Draw!, Inkscape). Instead, the control points are "auto-magically" calculated from the successor or predecessor nodes. Trainz should support such handles, with both smooth and symmetric modes for the nodes (same tangent and same tangent/length, resp.) for tracks. The current automatic way could be retained as a third, default mode. For other splines, a corner mode should be available as well. Handles should be three-dimensional, i.e. may have a different height than the related node. While this extension would not allow the user to create mathematical exact fixed-radius arcs and clothoids, these could be approximated much better than today. ~KlausM

• superelevation. Each node would receive an angle that represents the superelevation. Beween two nodes, the angle is interpolated in the same way as coordinates are (i.e. via cubic spline interpolation) ~KlausM

• Track Connection Toggle. Currently, in order to prevent track from linking to another existing section, the user must hold down the shift key and then click in the area they wish. Problem is, that doesn't always seem to work. Nine times out of ten it does, but there's always that one time when the thing connects and while that doesn't damage the route, it is a bit annoying. Could we have a setting in the options where we could toggle whether or not the track will automatically connect to form a spline junction? This could be a setting for splines themselves also. - Chad

• A user defined functions button which allows CC to write functions which enables track laying, spline laying, object placing etc. via coordinate input instead of using the imprecise mouse. Like in any 2D-CAD program. I already propose some ideas about this in the forum in the thread coordinate input. ~Michael Vogt

• Add to the function already in TRS2004 & TRS2006 where one can use the move button in the Scenery Tab to actually move the cameras (both the tracking and the fixed one) around. As in, let the user be able to also raise and lower the camera with the height adjustment tool. Before TS2009 I could do it indirectly by moving the camera by the move button (in the Scenery tab) on top of a grid point, go into Landscape Tab, read out the height on that point, add to it about 2m and then move camera slightly and then lower the ground point back to the height it was before I raised it. This makes it possible to set great camera views from the ground in very tight places, even underground - while the camera move button refuses to put the camera down into the ground as soon as the ground is very uneven. It is often lot of work, but worth it. By having the move function in TS2009 back, and even add to it by letting the height button tool work with the camera would save lot of work. As of all SP1 TS2009, I no longer can use the move scenery button to tweak the camera location, making it impossible for me to any longer set the ground cameras other places then high up in air when ground is very uneven. - Linda

• To be able to ajust the length of day, ie Long summer days getting dark around 9pm getting daylight around 5am, shorter winter days get dark around 5pm. Lots_Trains

• Fine adjustment of building placement. Could it be added that by holding "shift" or something, that the position of a building could be tweaked a bit finer than the current degree turning or movement? It would aid in placing structures that are very close to or touching each other. -chad

• Lockable orientation. Ability to define what orientation buildings will have when placed on the map. Allow people to choose N-S, E-W, and then "random." That way, if you have a street running E-W, you could select that orientation and place buildings without having to monkey with turning them around to face like they need to. -Chad

I'd like to see this option, too. However, I would like to select the angle manually. This would be useful, if we have a street running 60 degrees and we want to add some street lights. Rotating every single object is very annoying. -Zyxist

• Duplicating object properties. We choose an existing object, for example a house, and we can use its height and angle to place new houses. -Zyxist

• Multiple water levels: Allow water to be placed on several different levels, but don't force it to "link" when moved. Maybe a shift command like tracks to prevent the linking. - Chad

• Make Catenary snap to the track. I think it did this at one time, but now it's a matter of trying to line everything up and hoping it works. Letting it snap to the track would make route building much easier. - Chad

• Allow infinite elevation to be set in world origin. At the moment world origin can only be set to 100m above sea level, but I am building a route which has all features between 500m and 800m above sea level. - Bill69

• Duplicate 'straighten track' button onto the Scenery/Splines panel (assuming that it will still work there of course) ~Andi

• Catenary: An option for the height of the wire above the rails with ramping between different heights. Height settings force pantographs following the wire height level. - fatuli

• Direct import of Landscape data (also Objects, Tracks, Trackobjects):
  This is not a real Surveyor request, but I found no better place to post it. If you find one, prease move it.
  I would like to be able to have an importer for most of the data that is stored in map files, (no matter if xml or binary). This includes import of: Heights and texutures, track spline data (also properties like: height, straighten, KUID and bridges), trackside objects, markers (for Staion names, ...), direction/priority markers, normal map objects (like trees, ...), digholes, and add station objects (platforms).
  I want this to load OSM-Data to Trainz, because this allows people to simply use the geodata for a base of their tracks. After the license change it is even possible to use the database as a base for non-CC-BY-SA-tracks. Many cities (at least in Germany) also support the the database in form of well-georeferenced and high-resolution images, that are allowed to be used to be add data to the OSM-Database and in that way they can also be used in Trainz.
  I know TransDEM supports some of these features, but the OSM database contains so much more information. -- Michael

Short List

Requests are placed into this section by Auran if they are somewhat likely to make it into the TS2009 product. Requests from this list will be serviced by Auran as time permits.

• Ability to see an item's description field in surveyor - often, the description has hints on how to use the object. - Curtis

• Can we have a little more control over height increments (we already have rotstep, we just need heightstep to go with it) ~Andi

• Can we organize things so that the Track/DefaultDirection button will work on suitably scripted fixed track junctions. We can use object properties to do this but it would be a lot more intuitive to have the same tool for fixed track and for spline junctions. ~Andi

• Allow the camera to be panned out further. For routes with lots of mountains, it would help to be able to pull further away from the route to see what work you've done. - Chad

• Altering the "Ordered List" and/or "Reset list" so the repeated child rules can be stopped by an event (e.g. trigger). I'm not sure if this belongs in surveyor (as it's a session issue) or scripting. - Natvander

TS2009 Complete

• Let me pinpoint paint in small areas like an air brush. -BG

Surveyor includes a new 5m ground grid which improves the ability to paint small areas.

• Filters! CMP filtering is generally quite good but can we be just a little more comprehensive, allowing a search by asset kind and adding a 'Not' button for every field for instance. Now having achieved that can we move exactly the same search and filtering facilities into Surveyor rather than having that funny little icon hidden away at the top. ~Andi

TS2009 includes comprehensive surveyor filters.

• Kuid (asset) replacement tool - for all assets including textures. This may prove essential when we are required to bring our pre 09 routes up to 09 standard. - Natvander

We won't have a way to replace anything with anything - but hopefully the common types can be replaced in a simple fashion. ~chris

• Let me paint shade shadows on tracks or buildings or under trees. -BG

Use TS2009 decals for this. ~chris

Rejected

If there's a request that we're clearly not going to entertain at the current time, we'll move it to here. This includes both flat rejections and also requests which sound good but won't be done for the next version of Trainz.

• Track should not dip down below the surface when a climbing grade is added to it. -BG

You can either let the track follow the ground, or you can specify a grade. If you do the first, then Trainz is responisble for ensuring that it stays above the ground. If you do the second, then you are. ~chris

• Possibility to create a real vertical rock terrain or better some over hanging rock terrain. - Sister

I hear you! I'm also a big fan of this concept. Unfortunately, this won't be possible in the TS2009 timeframe. ~chris

• More a feature than a tool - change LOD from % of screen to distance from. This will fix LOD issues with assets that have varied profiles (e.g. long but narrow stations), and will make creating the LOD file alot easier and more consistent than what is currently is. - Natvander

I think you'll find that the example you gave doesn't actually change LODs as you spin it, as the bounding sphere is used for the screen-space calculation. But you're right, this request doesn't belong here. ~chris

• Have 20m 40m and 80m Square boards for use at greater viewing distances allowing Trainz to have a greater viewing distance for minimal resource use. perhaps even have these boards have no objects and simpler textures added to them. Surley you have the tech developed for joining the 5m to 10m boards surley its a simple jump of the same tech to allow greater board sizes. - Lots Trains

View distance has nothing to do with resource usage. Also, please do not put requests directly into the shortlist. ~chris

• This time around when you change the interface skin colours from Maroon to purple polka dots can you have somebody check that both black and white text are actually legible in the default browsers? ~Andi

We can't guarantee you any particular default color, so if you're going to use a defined RGB value, you should always provide a defined background color as well. We will be making sure that the default text color is legible, and also that color schemes used by built-in rules are legible. ~chris

-Historically authors have used black or white without setting a background since the background in TRS was always a mid grey. The problem in TC is that legacy content with black text built on this assumption and which is never going to get updated is illegible, that's the issue I'm raising. Assuming you stay with almost black, how easy would it be to check for this and change their text colour to something else?

We can't really do much for the existing non-Auran assets, however the TS2009 color scheme is unlikely to conflict. ~chris

• Could you make it so when an object is missing and the system asks if we wish to delete it, it lists the KUID of the item? Maybe records it somewhere like an error log so we could track them down if we need to? - Chad

Why is this necessary? Doesn't CMP give you all this info already? ~chris

Not exactly. I mean something in place of the "delete missing assets" pop up. Something that would tell what type of asset it is, Eg: Structure, Road, Spline, Etc. As well as the country of origin of it.

We don't necessarily have that information if the asset is missing. If you want the full details of any (known) missing assets, CMP provides all the functionality you should need. ~chris

• When a section of track has been "straightened", it should not flex when a curve or turnout is added to it. -BG

Track needs to smoothly transition - you can't connect two straight tracks at an angle. That said, I'm not really sure what situation you're referring to here. Could you provide an example? ~chris

Rejected due to lack of updates. ~chris

• More diversive traffic. Currently street traffic only contains simple cars and vans. Why not extend that to have higher detail trucks, busses, motorcycles, and tractor-trailers. (The latter could, and would probably need to be, two part to allow it to track properly around curves.) - Chad

This isn't a tool requirement. You can simply download/create more road traffic and add them to the map/region's traffic list. My route has plenty of era/location specific cars and trucks (the articulation of semis would be a nice feature). - Natvander

• Could road traffic turn not only to the left? I think will be good to make it proportional to roads' carrates -Mike

This isn't a surveyor tools request. ~chris

• I really don't expect this to happen. It has been a problem since the first issue of Trainz. I would like to see the rain and the snow stop falling when a train enters a tunnel. Having it rain or snow inside a tunnel, is, at best, silly.

Hoping -sjacks

This isn't a surveyor tools request. ~chris

• Not sure if this is scripting or not, but could automobiles (traffic) be made to obey stop signals at intersections? Maybe include this in the object so a car stops, waits, and then drives on. Possibly include them turning off onto side streets, etc. (I know the latter has been done to some degree by third party users.) - Chad

This isn't a surveyor tools request. ~chris

• Make Junction Controllers work again. Back in 2004 (and UTC I think) someone came out with this neat little tool that when placed in surveyor, would allow one switch to control another. Usually used in a crossover, it meant that when you opened one switch, it would open the opposing one, and when you closed one, they both closed. The object was obsoleted by a junction control rule. Problem is not all users know how to, or are willing to do those. This little object did it for them though. The Kuid was kuid2_31293_23003_1. - Chad

This isn't a surveyor tools request. A content creator would need to take this task on, and liaise with Auran if they find any game bugs or problem. ~chris

• Pedestrian traffic. Similar to roads, perhaps include a series of sidewalk splines and genraters that produce pedestrians at regular intervals. Major help for those urban streetcar lines. - Chad

This isn't a surveyor tools request. ~chris