Historical RT2 Mod

[jeffryfisher]

Building on my RT2 v1.56 mod^* from an old modding thread, I have "fixed" (I think) a few problems with locomotives. Modern high-speed pax engines are now reliable, a couple of "super engines" (e.g. F9) have been brought back to reality, and a variety of other nagging discrepancies have been "corrected".

I am not sure that everything I've done is right, but I did invest several hours researching some of my changes. If I misunderstood something (like were some of the diesels powered and priced as if they were working tandem?), then I could be convinced to make further changes. Please try it out and tell me where I messed up.

The zip file uploaded here contains four files:
1) RT2_PLAT.EXE.j7x2 (the modded game executable)
2) default2.lng.x2 (a modded game-text file)
3) EXE Data.ods (multi-sheet open desktop spreadsheet roadmap to modding v1.56)
4) LocomotiveData.ods (Engines in the modded game; keep this handy while playing)

To use this mod, you must already have installed RT2-Platinum from a CD. Back up your working EXE and LNG files, then put my EXE and LNG files where the originals were (and strip off the extra extension from each one's name).

The spread sheets are for info purposes. If you're not interested in the how-to of modding, then EXE Data will be interesting only for its "alt" sheets showing mods in red-on-babyblue. On the other hand, if you installed the game from an online vendor like Steam, then you might use the EXE_Data.ods spreadsheet to get you started mod'ing a copy of your own exe (and then upload it for other Steam client players)

Locomotive data will be helpful to have on a second screen or paper when playing.

* The mod already had enhancements to industry. For example, chem plants can convert oil into synthetic rubber starting in WWII, and T&D factories can turn "rubber" (plastic) into goods starting after the war. Therefore, you should keep an eye on your industries when playing with this mod.

EDIT: Files updated 28-Oct-2012

EDIT: Updated EXE Data spreadsheet added 3-Jan-2013 (with new managers tab)

RT2_PLAT-201210.zip

EXE Data20130103.zip

EDIT: Files have been updated further and are now kept with the US History Map.

Edited February 16, 2019 by jeffryfisher
Files have been moved (merged with map zip)

[GuineaPig]

Wow. This looks great. Didn't even know mods like this were possible with this game.

[Gwizz]

I detected a bug in the historicMod. I'll see if I can clean the mod.

[jeffryfisher]

I detected a bug in the historicMod. I'll see if I can clean the mod.

What was the symptom?

The one minor glitch I found so far was some text that did not fit where it was displayed.

[jeffryfisher]

Wow. This looks great. Didn't even know mods like this were possible with this game.

The two areas I can mod are text and "data". The text resides in default2.lng so that the language of the game play can be translated from English into whatever some foreign licensee cares to market. The data covers a many things, including all locomotive performance and all industry conversions (except ports).

There are still some mysteries. For instance, I don't know why the TGV still displays "1955" on its picture when its stats are called up inside the game. I have changed its intro date as a loco and as a "car", yet the 1955 still creeps in from somewhere.

Another mystery is why all three station types can be built at any time even though the "station buildings" data specifies an intro date for each size. Apparently, the game only checks the intro data for a station size when you try to upgrade from inside an existing station's "buy" function. I'm still looking for the data on stone and steel bridges. Maybe the stations have dates there as well, and those dates may limit what can be built when on the main map.

[Gwizz]

I use AVG to scan everything and it gave me an option to remove the bug. I checked, do it and nothing shows up now.

[Etra]

I bought the game on Steam. My computer is Windows Vista with all the Service Packs.

• I took the LNG and the EXE original and I moved them out of the RRT2 folder.
  
• I downloaded, unzipped, and then dropped the new LNG and EXE files into the RRT2 folder.
  
• I double clicked on the new EXE file and an error message popped that I needed to put the CD into my computer.
  
• I replaced the old EXE and double clicked, and it said that it failed to find Steam.
  
• I then set everything back to the way it was, and I was able to play the game as it normally was. So what should I do to get this mod up and working?

Thank you in advance if I cause any headaches!

[jeffryfisher]

I bought the game on Steam. My computer is Windows Vista with all the Service Packs.

• I took the LNG and the EXE original and I moved them out of the RRT2 folder.
  
• I downloaded, unzipped, and then dropped the new LNG and EXE files into the RRT2 folder.
  
• I double clicked on the new EXE file and an error message popped that I needed to put the CD into my computer.
  
• I replaced the old EXE and double clicked, and it said that it failed to find Steam.
  
• I then set everything back to the way it was, and I was able to play the game as it normally was. So what should I do to get this mod up and working?

Wow, I've never worked with "Steam" before, but it looks as if they've found a way to replace the CD requirement with a connection requirement. I'm not sure I can help you (except to express suspicion toward any software modded to "call home").

If you know somebody who has a copy of RRT2 Platinum on CD, then you could burn a simple drag-drop copy of all its files and it would suffice. You shouldn't feel like it's piracy since you bought a license to the game (I hope Steam is selling it legally).

[Superchief]

Not working for me. I am using a no-cd exe right now because my RRT2 disk shattered into a thousand pieces a few weeks ago. I bought this game when it came out and now it's in a landfill somewhere.

So, if I need the CD to run your mod I am sunk.

Anyone know where I can buy a copy?

[jeffryfisher]

I mean Mod in the sense of Modify...

As Mr Burns would say, "Exxxx-cellent!"

I hope you will glance at the spread sheet.

[Drewski]

As Mr Burns would say, "Exxxx-cellent!"

I hope you will glance at the spread sheet.

Wrong thread me thinks ;) , but nevermind. I had a look at your .ods file, excellent source of information.

Unfortunately, I too bought the game online off steam, and have therefore no CD. (I've bought several games off steam e.g. Napoleon TW, Empire TW- many new games even have its as a mandatory requirement e.g. Napoleon TW, Civ V)

Your right in that it replaces a CD with a connection requirement (well not exactly, it calls a steam game ID to launch the game you want to play-I'm not exactly sure of the process, never really investigated it ), but anyways, the shortfall of this, is that I haven't figured out a way to use your modded .exe file. It looks for a CD which doesn't exist. I'm not keen on searching the net for crack files, even if I do legitimatly own the game, and not even sure they would work in this case...

[RSimpkinuk57]

Sounds like the answer must be to take the Steam-supplied .EXE and repeat the mods to that.

[pcopa]

Hallo and a happy New Year to all! :)

Back to the topic of this thread

@RT2 v1.56 mod

I've downloaded the zip file (the spread sheet too) and I've checked the content.

Jeffryfisher, you’ve done an extraordinary and a fantastic piece of work, congratulations!

I didn’t suppose that this kind of modification is possible (without an access to the source code).

How on earth did you find it out? :O I am really very impressed.

I'm sorry, but I have to express some criticism too. 8)

There is no readme file (!), no date, no version number and to be honest, it's really not funny (for me)

to look for changes that you've made in the game playing it or editing the exe file.

In my opinion, it would be fine, if you could write a detailed readme file with exact listing of ALL changes that have been done.

Furthermore, it would be nice, if the the file would also contain some explanation and reasons for your choices. Why a building is possible in a particular year, why other supply/demand, why a bigger acceleration for an engine... and so on.

As you can imagine, I don't agree with all modifications (that I discovered).

This criticism should not obscure my respect for your work! :)

I've briefly tested the mod. A bug related to the changed demand of housing – even in small villages (single house) there is now demand for goods! (expert level)

[jeffryfisher]

I've thought about documenting everything, but that would be a lot of work, and I am not being paid enough to follow through.

However, I have created a couple of "as modded" (altLocos and altCargo) pages in my working copy of the work sheet. These pages have my new numbers and show them in red. I am approaching a new, better tested release of my US History map, so I will upload new versions of the game mod and spreadsheet at the same time. Then you can better see what I've done.

As for timing certain buildings, I made the military buildings available early enough to factor in the Civil War. Indeed, that was the driving force that got me into analyzing the EXE file in the first place. A few other industries needed to exist in time to supply the military, and a couple others were historically significant earlier than the game allowed, so I added them too as long as I was already tinkering with the data.

In my mod, individual houses do demand goods, and supplying goods increases mail production slightly. This is intended to simulate mail order business that blossomed in the late 19th century largely as a result of railroads connecting manufacturing centers to rural areas (villages). It's a way to make something other than pax and mail relevant, and a way to make not-yet-towns relevant.

Interestingly, delivering goods to a village will wipe out its demand, and the demand won't recover until the village reaches town strength. I am not yet sure how demand recovers.

As for engines, we had a discussion in this forum last year about some inexplicable engine parameters. I had an earlier mod of the game in another thread, and it's still out there (I think). When I created this mod to incorporate more historical (but possibly less entertaining) engine values based on researching more than just Wikipedia, I created this new thread to separate it from the earlier mod that mostly left the engines as is.

The two biggest changes to engines:

1) The F9 has been demoted to its historical 65 mph speed. I have no clue as to why it came out of the box with the super-powers that it had. I can't find any diesel of that era that had numbers anything like what it had been given. My best guess is that it suffered a data entry error.

2) The GP18 of 1958 has been transformed into JT56ACe of 2005. This solves two problems. First, the GP18 was not nearly as powerful as the game made it, and simply correcting that would have made yet another diesel like so many others of that period. Second, the game as finished in 1998-2002 did not have a representative of the newest super-powerful diesels (they were being developed, but were still highly unreliable). The JT56ACe is manufactured for China by GE, and GE seems to be working out the bugs that plagued the previous super-powerful diesels. I thought that anyone who plays all of the way to 2005 would enjoy receiving the most powerful (yet reliable) diesel in the world as a treat.

If you have any other specific gripes, feel free to ask about them here.

[pcopa]

jeffryfisher, I've read many of your posts not only in this thread and I must admit, I truly admire your passion for RT2

(14 years after its release)!

Thanks for the quick replay.

Yes, I am very aware of the fact that the detailed readme file would cost a lot of work and I'm not going to urge you to do it.

I was just wondering, you haven't done it from the beginning.

The corrected locomotive data are not a big problem, it's quite easy to find out the changes.

On the other hand, as I belong to the generation that used to read (printed) game manuals,

I enjoy to learn some information like your explanation to the GP18 and F9 engines for example .

It's been my conjecture that the mod was created in connection with a specific game scenario.

Imagine, I'm a player who designs and very carefully plans his own very hard to win map, where the number

and kind of industries and especially their placement are crucial to win.

Suddenly, I find my weapon factory demands lumber instead of rubber (now from my textile mill needed), my “barracks village”

starts to demand weapons and to supply passengers instead of troops (they are now in military depots) and so on.

The entire planning lies in ruins and I have no idea what more is going to happen in the future and no manual to learn something.

I think, my point of view is much clearer now.

---------------------------------------

Some other aspects on the historical mod (I should rather say a game patch) I think about:

1.Velocity and weight units in the game (probably the most painfull of my gripes)

I'd better will not comment the fact of neglecting metrical units in a game for an international market.

For more then one and a half century all trains in (continental) Europe travel in km/h,

but in RT2 (RT3 too!)one is forced to cope with mph and that because of a half line of additional programme code!

I'm sorry, but this ignorance simply makes me really angry!

Since I've found jeffryfisher's work, there is a little hope that I finally will be able to play my game with trains running in km/h.

Thanks to jeffryfisher, it is possible to change the speed of the engines. Unfortunately, if I adjust the values to km/h,

then the trains will run accordingly faster. There is a possibility in the game editor to change the speed from four times slower

to four times faster (!) as an effect of a game event, but it doesn't solve the problem too.

My conclusion, little hope, assumption is, there is possibly a changeable factor that affects the actual train speed

but not the displayed values. It would be great to find where and then set it permanently to 0,6214 (for the US-mile?).

Maybe my dream comes true?

A short question to the weight of cars (trains) in the game:

Which tons are actually meant? Short, long, metric, imperial or republican?

(Sorry for being sarcastic)

2.Barracks and military depots

It's very irritating when these buildings suddenly disapear. It would be fine, if we could buy them

(we could call it e.g. a supply agreement) to prevent them from disappearing.

3.Alcohol car

As a consequence of being first added in TSC, the weight of this car from the very beginning throughout the whole game is 50 tons. Especially in the early stages, when a passenger car weighs about 15 tons and the most powerful locomotive is the John Bull,

it could be quite problematic. It would be fine, if we had a gradually increasing value like other cars.

As far as I can interpret the spreadsheet, no chance for that (?).

4.Geocore plant

Why is this plant aviable from 1800? I have no idea, but does a geocore plant need chemicals

and produce hazardous waste?

5.PK2 files

I know, it is possible to edit (and manipulate) the content of the older PAK files from PopTop and there are also tools

to modify the RT3 compressed files. How about PK2 files, is there any news?

6.TGV-prototype

I'm not an expert, but I've researched a little and I assume, the game disigners meant not the TGV- prototype from 1972 (TGV 001) but the BB9004 or CC7107 locomotive from 1953.

Aviable in french and german only, but quite informative:

[de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weltrekordfahrten_der_SNCF_am_28./29._M%C3%A4rz_1955]

There are few strong discrepancies:

• the original TGV-prototype (TGV 001) was also orange painted!
  
• the speed record of BB9004 from 1955 fits the highest speed of TGV-prototype in the game
  
• the graphics of both engines in the game are identical (except the skin)
  
• two very similar electric engines at the same time in the game don't make much sense
  
• there is a huge gap in the game concerning electric locomotives in the 1950s
  
• the original TGV 001 was not a “pure” electric train
  

By the way, the TGV-prototype was a diesel in the sens of diesel engine in the game,

but it had a gas turbine engine as primary drive.

7.Demand for milk

It would be nice if the abrupt cease of the demnad in the cities could be fixed. It's definately a bug.

[jeffryfisher]

It's been my conjecture that the mod was created in connection with a specific game scenario.

I confess that I did the modding while designing and testing my US History scenario. My work may therefore suffer from some amount of tunnel vision.

Imagine, I'm a player who designs and very carefully plans his own very hard to win map, where the number

and kind of industries and especially their placement are crucial to win.

Suddenly, I find my weapon factory demands lumber instead of rubber (now from my textile mill needed), my “barracks village”

starts to demand weapons and to supply passengers instead of troops (they are now in military depots) and so on.

True -- You wouldn't want to play such a scenario with my version of the game data.

neglecting metrical units in a game for an international market

For more then one and a half century all trains in (continental) Europe travel in km/h,

but in RT2 (RT3 too!)one is forced to cope with mph and that because of a half line of additional programme code!

True -- It would be easy to change the text to display km/h, but the numbers would be wrong unless an arithmetic conversion were programmed into the game.

BTW, I think the F9's ridiculous speed was a km/h number that should have been multiplied by ~0.6 to bring it into line with the mph numbers in the game.

A short question to the weight of cars (trains) in the game:

Which tons are actually meant? Short, long, metric, imperial or republican?

Take your pick. It's just a label, so you may imagine them to be whatever pleases you (probably metric).

Alcohol car

As a consequence of being first added in TSC, the weight of this car from the very beginning throughout the whole game is 50 tons. Especially in the early stages, when a passenger car weighs about 15 tons and the most powerful locomotive is the John Bull,

it could be quite problematic. It would be fine, if we had a gradually increasing value like other cars.

As far as I can interpret the spreadsheet, no chance for that (?).

Each version of each car is actually a separate car in the data. I do not know how to insert data; I can only overwrite some of it. If there's a car data record that for some reason isn't being used, then maybe it could be usurped for use as a light alcohol car.

TGV-prototype

I'm not an expert, but I've researched a little and I assume, the game designers meant not the TGV- prototype from 1972 (TGV 001) but the BB9004 or CC7107 locomotive from 1953.

Interesting story. It's just like the Mallard in the game (the Mallard was a one-of-a-kind Pacific 4-6-2 that destroyed itself in setting its speed record). However, those locomotives in 1955 were BB-9000 series engines, nothing like the sleek TGV.

By the way, the TGV-prototype was a diesel in the sens of diesel engine in the game,

but it had a gas turbine engine as primary drive.

Correct. I thought the diesel fuel and high speed made for a very interesting combo

It would be nice if the abrupt cease of the demand in the cities could be fixed. It's definately a bug.

That's not a bug. Certain commodities (like coal and produce) are directly deliverable early but must be processed later. It may be annoying, but it's by design, and the transitions are even announced.

On the other hand, it is a bug that milk demand in cities fails to recover after a delivery. My next mod fixes that (I think).

[pcopa]

On the other hand, it is a bug that milk demand in cities fails to recover after a delivery. My next mod fixes that (I think).

That's what I actually meant.

I've read the thread "Modding RT2" today, quite interesting reading matter.

I've had a look at all trains (by cheat) in my game with the your moded exe too.

There is still something wrong with the TGV trains. The gray TGV- prototype is still shown for 1955

and the orange one for 1971 (as diesel!).

[jeffryfisher]

Having just replaced my US History map upload, I'm working on my mod today. I'll look at the TGVs. Maybe I've already fixed it but haven't uploaded the fix yet.

Edit: Research shows the early TGV being orange c1973. A later TGV Atlantique is grey with blue trim c1988. Therefore I am attaching the prototype stats to the orange, the later stats (actually sud-est, introduced in 1981) to the grey.

[jeffryfisher]

There is still something wrong with the TGV trains. The gray TGV- prototype is still shown for 1955

and the orange one for 1971 (as diesel!).

The yellow "1955" text in the engine image is creeping in from somewhere, but I don't know where. The engine becomes available in 1981, and I call it TGV (not prototype).

The prototype in 1971 was designed just before the Arab oil embargo and was indeed a diesel (diesel turbine-electric). Soaring oil prices prompted the switch to all-electric (pantograph) tech in later designs. I think it's cool to have a high-speed diesel engine in the game, even if it's not very reliable.

[jeffryfisher]

I have uploaded a new zip with revised exe, lng, and ods files in a revised OP of this thread (qv).

[pcopa]

I've tested the last exe file version yesterday, at first by cheat . The TGV (gray) has appeared exactly as before

with displayed 1955 year between GP9 and E69 on the train buy list.

I exited the game and started it again without cheating to make shore, there was no any unwanted influence .

Then I've run the game normally from 1920 to 2022 paying particular attention to the upcoming new trains.

All trains with changed data have seemed to be correct...

with the the exception of the TGV.

It's appeared as usual in 1955 and has remained till 2022.

The conclusion: the changed entry date for the TGV definitively does NOT work.

An idea, please try to change the speed (or something else) of the TGV to ensure this is the right data block.

I also viewed the exe data. What does the column S (free weight) actually contain?

In the game, if you check with right-click a train in the list box (without cargo cars),

there appear really odd and curious weight values and they do not meet the table data at all.

[RSimpkinuk57]

Jeffry, just a minor point of historical interest. Yes, Mallard's speed record was a one-off specially-staged event in which the engine was driven hard enough to break down on its way home. The engine itself, though, was a standard production model: one of the LNER's A4 class, of which 35 were built 1935-38 (following on from 79 engines of classes A1 and A3, 1922-35). A further class (confusingly reusing the A1 designation) after WW2, when the emphasis was on slower trains with more passenger cars, controversially tinkered with the design for allegedly cheaper maintenance and/or better reliability. Two of the other three main British railways at the time (LMS and Southern) had roughly equivalent designs also put into series production in the 1930s and 1940s (respectively).

The LNER DID have a one-off experimental engine built in 1929, no 10000 (never given a name), with a ship-building firm's boiler giving double the steam pressure of conventional railway designs. The experiment was abandoned in 1937, after which the engine, rebuilt with an ordinary boiler, looked and behaved like an A4 except for retaining its 4-6-4 wheel arrangement. ..regards, Richard

[RSimpkinuk57]

PS - as for the TGV, I cannot see the point of having the "1955 electric TGV prototype" in there at all, given that we already have the Shinkansen Bullet train from 1966. What were the game developers thinking? A French BB9200 (1957: dc) or BB16000 (1958: ac) electric locomotive would have been nice, with its ordinary service top speed of about 100mph (equal to the game's GG1 performance: was the latter really that good that early?). A British HST125 as the diesel contemporary to the TGV-Sudest would also have been nice.

[jeffryfisher]

I've tested the last exe file version yesterday, at first by cheat . The TGV (gray) has appeared exactly as before

with displayed 1955 year between GP9 and E69 on the train buy list.

I exited the game and started it again without cheating to make shore, there was no any unwanted influence .

Then I've run the game normally from 1920 to 2022 paying particular attention to the upcoming new trains.

All trains with changed data have seemed to be correct...

with the the exception of the TGV.

It's appeared as usual in 1955 and has remained till 2022.

The conclusion: the changed entry date for the TGV definitively does NOT work.

Yikes! This is very alarming. I hadn't noticed this behavior because I have been playing my US History map, and it tightly controls the intro of each high-speed engine according to player choices made in events. That control masked the 1955 appearance, leaving only the mysterious 1955 text in yellow on the engine description.

I just fired up the Heartland map starting in 1955, and sure enough, the TGV appeared in June that year. I'll have to go hunting in the EXE to find out where else there might be a 1955 in the data to override the intro year in the locomotive table.

I also viewed the exe data. What does the column S (free weight) actually contain?

As near as I can tell, "free weight" is the amount of weight that an engine can pull before it suffers a speed penalty (a drop below its maximum speed). I think that a train's max speed drops by 1 mph for each free-weight amount of weight of the whole train (engine plus consist).

In the game, if you check with right-click a train in the list box (without cargo cars),

there appear really odd and curious weight values and they do not meet the table data at all.

Engine weights are given in the data table for cars (where cars also have both loaded and unloaded weights). In the train scheduling screen, the train weight shown is only the weight of the current consist as loaded. However, when right-clicking a train in the train list of the main game screen, the total train weight is shown. The difference should be the weight of the engine.

[jeffryfisher]

Well, I am truly stumped by the TGV. I've poked and prodded and searched, and what I found is that I can control parameters like price, acceleration and reliability using the engine record nestled between some very early steam locomotives. However, the intro year stubbornly refuses to change, and I have no idea where the 1955 value is coming from. It's not in the rail-car data. There are a handful of occurences of the byte pattern scattered across the executable part of the EXE file, but I have no idea which (if any) might be the offending number, and I am not about to go changing bytes in that part of the code (worse than crashing, the program might do something truly unpredictable and not immediately apparent).

I guess this loco is going to appear in 1955 or not at all (except in a few scenarios that explicitly control its intro via an event). That means that I need to drop back ten yards and punt...

The baseline recourse is to revert to baseline, out-of-box data. That means that it (the grey TGV) goes back to being the TGVx of 1955 with a reliability of 4 (at high speed, that's a death trap). Can anyone think of anything better to do with it?

The orange TGV (what I called "TGV-Prototype") would need to be adjusted to compensate. Sadly, we will probably lose the very interesting high-speed diesel (turbine) so it can become the modern "TGV-PSE" (Sud-Est).

Suggestions?