SCS2006 Progress

[thackalane]

After almost a year in development, SCS2006 is getting towards its release. Thanks to very valuable input from a great team of beta testers, the feature set is way beyond what I ever dreamt it would be.
SCS2006 is a single rule for Trainz 2006. It contains all of the commands you ever thought you needed to create a scenario and then some more.
In Surveyor it is a powerful scenario editor that, with the aid of drop down lists or simple click selections (and a minimum of typing) allows you to create very complex scenarios.
In Driver, your uses will see how your masterpiece of a scenario performs.
You may never need another Trainz rule again!
Commands vary from simple weather change commands to the very complex Path Setting command. In all, there are over 100 commands at your disposal.
You may run as many trains as you like. Each one has its own command thread so that it will run independantly of what any other train is doing. Accidents are prevented by the permits system. You need not worry about permits, SCS2006 takes care of them for you within its path setting command.
Should you find that there are not enough commands, you may add your own by creating libraries (if you have the knowledge to create gs code). Those with the knowledge will be able to make their libraries available via the dls so that others can share their extensions to SCS2006.
You have a variety of ways of adding consists to SCS2006 scenarios. You may add a Consist in Surveyor as you would in a normal driver session. You may use a command to add a train at a trackmark at any time during the scenario. This has the advantage that you can add trains when they are about to be seen by the user of your scenario. That way you can save precious CPU power by not having trains sitting on the route when they are not needed. Thirdly, at any time during the scenario, you may place a randomly generated consist at a trackmark.
User feedback during the scenario is available via a simple message box, your own customisable browser or user instruction pages.
Fed up with the way Auran's autopilot drives your trains? Don't worry, SCS has its own (configurable) autopilot that knows about the fact that the third signal down the line is at red so it can start to reduce speed in plenty of time. It can also see upcoming speed limits and will always get down to the posted limit before ithe train passes it.
Do you want to start your scenario with loaded trains? No problem, you can load or unload some or all of the vehicles at any time and any place on the route.
Have you ever wished you could couple and decouple the same consist many times as you would in a real life shunting job? With the clever but simple to use couple/decouple commands you can go about any shunting task as a real train driver would.

If you want to read more, download the pre-release version of the Commands Reference doc and see what you can do with SCS2006. Unzip the file to a temporary folder and double click on 'SCS2006 Commands.htm' to view the commands in your browser.

[thackalane]

This is a view of the editor. The commands are for a shunting session.
A tender loco with some freight wagons arrives, goes to the turntable to turn around, couples back to the wagons and then performs some shunting operations.

[johnm]

Mike this is terrific news. I can't wait. I assume as there is no mention of it, SP1 has not thrown up any wobblies so far.

[thackalane]

So far, so good.

[Capt_Scarlet]

Ive been looking forward to this for quite a while. Ive heard elsewhere that there is a problem sometimes in sp1 playing a sound during a session or scenario. Is this true ? I have to say that for me the sound generally is improved and sp1 works well.
Keep up the good work.

John

[thackalane]

Have not had a chance to try it yet.

[Max Moire]

I thought SP1 with return of TrainzMap was prerequisite for SCS2006. If not even better. Looking forward to realize some new scenrios then.

Cheers
Max

[cohearn]

Mike,

Before I read your excellent description above, I posted a message in reply on one of Auran's forum, where I told them to just wait a bit and SCS2006 would take care of any problems they currently face. Based on your comment about spreading the word and causing the user community to drool, I gave out some of the information above, including that you were the creator and inspiration for the rest of us, but I didn't really do justice to it the way you did. Anyway, any time a thread starts with a problem which SCS2006 will overcome or help solve, it is an opportunity to sell SCS2006 to the Trainz community. If this can be done, it will make this work more valuable to many more users than the original SCS.

Great job,

Charles

[IamKJVonly]

As a long time Trainz script writer I just want to say that SCS2006 is everything that Trainz script should have been.

It's really easy to use and you can be up and running in no time at all.

Beside all the great things mention above by Mike, SCS2006 has some great troubleshooting aids for when things don't go the way you thought they should.

Some of these troubling shooting helps are watching each command execute to see which one is failing, having SCS2006 check for missing vehicles at start up and being able to temporary disable individual commands or even whole threads.

Another time saving decvice is the ability to copy and paste commands within SCS2006.

For those of you who remember the old "StopGap2" Code Block command, the SCS2006 Library call does the same thing.

Some other aids that SCS2006 has is the ability to get a hardcopy of your scenario and a hard copy of all the kuids of the vehicles used in your scenario.

In addition, This system has a great help system in which you can get on screen help for each command as you enter the command.

Also there are some great video tutiorals as well as several demo scenarios to get you up and running in a short time.

But the best feature of all for me is the ability to have random consists along other random commands that let you play the same scenario over and over without it becoming boring.

Add to this the ability to have the scenario player choose how the game is played and I believe you have the best Scenario/session/activity system around.

Dave

[Gary_Evans]

Mike:
Sounds like what we scenario creators have been waiting for. Now if we can get SP1 to behave we can create and run some first class scenarios.
Good work.
Gary

[Smileyman]

[thackalane]

It was a bit like Topsy, it just kept growing

[Gary_Evans]

Smiley:
I'm sure most of the TPR gang remember the great creation systems you produced. Kudos for those. But I do wish you would stop drooling on my screen.

Gary

[Trainz002]

WOW!!...Can't wait fro this release,this unsupasses anything I even considered doing,The Best Trainz Asset anyone could have...Waiting patiently for the day it is released...What a way to go!!!

Derek...

[thackalane]

We may be taking on more testers in the next week or two so keep watching this thread. The idea is that all of the current testers have got used to how SCS2006 works. We would like to test it on a few new guys to get an idea of how it will be received in the big wide world.