Re: [Rails-devel] A question or two about the Rails XML interface.

[Erik V. <eri...@xs...>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: John David Galt [mailto:jd...@di...]

> By the way: is there a capability to spell out that certain tiles must be
laid in
> specific orientations?  (The "preserve existing track" rule is not enough
to
> limit the brown upgrade of Wien to the right way.)

Yes, in TileSet.xml an 'orientation' attribute can be added.  It's used for
the brown Hamburg tile in 1835.

> > The general rule is that for 18xx games where xx is numeric we use xx
> > for the thousands range.  For 1837 that would be -37001 and following.
> > Preprinted tiles that look generic may get a low negative number; in
> > particular, preprinted tiles that exactly duplicate existing layable
> > tiles often get the id of the latter with a minus sign prepended.
> >
> > You can leave actual tile creation to me if you prefer (unless you
> > want to add artwork, like mine symbols; TileDesigner cannot handle
that).
> 
> I've gone ahead and done Tiles.xml and TileSet.xml, but haven't messed
with
> TileDesigner.  How would I do the mine art?  I'm set up to create .gif or
.jpg
> images of any reasonable size, but I have no idea of where or how rails
stores
> image files.

Rails uses .svg (XML) files, and I'm not too familiar with that format
myself.  
The only way I can handle it is by creating a tile with TileDesigner.  And
calling that messy is almost an understatement.
The process I'm using is reasonably well described in the comments in script
CombineTiles.pl (included in the Rails repo).
Anything that TD cannot do must be dealt with manually (in a text editor) or
possibly with Inkscape (with which I have had mixed results).  
That may include modifying colour names, copying fragments of SVG XML from
other tiles, or perhaps created/modified in a text editor or with Inkscape.

> I'm going to treat the mines as offboard destinations for calculating
runs,
> which means I need a way to specify that the G trains must start
"offboard"
> and all others can't go there.  Graphically, I intend them to look like
the actual
> board (which means that the coal company's token, which will exist for
> calculating runs, needs to be invisible).

Not sure how to handle inaccessibility based on train type (or train class).
I guess Stefan will have to write some special code for that.  A way to make
it generic would be fine, as other games need this feature as well.

Erik.