Currently in Beta release, AdvTrains Livery Tools is an extension for Advanced Trains that adds APIs for mod developers to support more livery options for their wagons and locomotives. It also adds a livery designer tool that can be used by players in-game to view and customize the liveries of their wagons and locomotives from participating mods. The Classic Coaches mod, the TfL S7 Stock Modpack, the Advtrains Japanese Tram TLR0600 mod and the DlxTrains modpack are examples of participating mods.
Included mods
Please see the README file in each of the included mod folders for detailed information.
- AdvTrains Livery Database - This mod provides an API for AdvTrains mods to register their wagons and associated livery information with a non-persistent in-game database for sharing with other mods. Other mods can then use this data to preview, manipulate or apply livery designs to registered wagons.
- AdvTrains Livery Designer - This mod provides an in-game tool that enables players to view and modify the livery of their wagons. The wagons must be from participating mods that register their wagons with the AdvTrains Livery Designer and that have livery information added to the AdvTrains Livery Database.
Design Goals
This modpack is the key component of a livery customization system for Advanced Trains designed to benefit both players and mod developers. The design goals for the livery customization system included the following:
- Provide an Advanced Trains specific alternative for the commonly used bike painter tool that offers more in-game wagon livery customization options for wagon owners. The new designer tool should be able to work interchangeably with the bike painter tool in that the new tool should be able to customize wagons previously painted with the bike painter tool and the bike painter tool should be able to paint wagons previously updated with the new designer tool.
- Develop a livery sharing mechanism that allows mods to share and extend livery customization information.
- Support some of the livery customization features found in some existing wagon mods by providing for optional callback functions that can be used by those mods can handle their particular implementations.
- Implement support for a "livery pack" concept in which mod developers can create mods that extend the livery customization options for wagons that are defined in other mods that participate in this livery customization system.
- Support mods that add tools and nodes that can interact with a wagon's livery and appearance.
- Allow for easy extension of livery customization options. In other words, it should be relatively easy to extend the number and type of customization options that can be included in a livery template. It is not assumed, however, that updating the livery designer tool to accommodate such additions will necessarily also be as easy.
Note that fully achieving and maintaining all of these goals could require some trade-offs that might limit some of the customization options that can be supported. Those will need to be evaluated as they arise to find the right balance between ease-of-use and capability.
Definition of key terms
Appearance - The overall appearance of a wagon or locomotive can include several factors, including it livery, its loads (if it's a freight wagon), its apparent age, service information (display boards, line number, etc.), its unit number, etc.
Livery - The paint/color scheme of a wagon or locomotive, including logos and other decorative markings. A livery typically represents the brand or identity of the railway organization that owns the vehicle. A vehicle's livery is not the only factor that can affect a wagon's appearance.
Loads - Freight wagons can have items in their inventory that affect their appearance. These items are sometimes referred to as loads in this context. Wagons that have loads can require alternate models and/or textures to be used in constructing their appearance.
Texture - An image file that is used in constructing the appearance of a wagon or locomotive. More than once texture can be used to construct that appearance.
Recent Changes
[0.8.3] - 2023-10-18
- Use current Minetest internationalization system
[0.8.2] - 2023-10-13
- Minor code cleanup
- Fix database API function to return proper template values (Thanks to y5nw)
[0.8.1] - 2023-04-08
- Add mod version utilities
- Minor code cleanup
- Add missing parameter needed for a callback function
[0.8.0] - 2023-02-01
- Initial Beta release
Author's Notes
1) The included AdvTrains Livery Designer is a livery designer, not an appearance designer. Other factors that impact the appearance of a wagon or locomotive are handled separately by other tools, other nodes, or by special code in their respective mods.
Licenses
Copyright © 2023 Marnack
- AdvTrains Livery Tools code is licensed under the GNU AGPL version 3 license, see LICENSE.txt for details.
- Unless otherwise specified, AdvTrains Livery Tools (images, textures and sounds) are licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 Unported.
Blows everything that came before it out of the water
AdvTrains Livery Tools fulfills the brief for just about every discussion put forward so far about livery features for AdvTrains, and does so in such an intuitively designed, user-friendly way. Marnack has achieved here what many have discussed but not actually gone and done.
Before Livery Tools, the best we had was doxygen_spammer's Multi-component liveries (part of doxy's Minitram). That involved the use of the external dependency on Bike Mod, and an arduous process of memorising and recalling a few "special" numbers on the Bike Painter to apply special painting functions. No more! With Livery Tools, it's all laid out in an intuitive formspec with so many presets to help you along and an instant preview.
Livery Tools is survival-friendly, with a crafting recipe provided for Minetest Game (the only really support game for AdvTrains) to craft its core item, the Livery Designer Tool. The Designer Tool has four tabs:
Livery Tools brings us the ability for in-depth customisation for those who want it, plus the ability to make templates to inspire. It's a creative breakthrough, and I can' t recommend it enough.
Exactly what AdvTrains needs!!
As if being able to set the train color wasn't enough, as if being able to set the colors for multiple areas on the train wasn't enough, as if being able quickly apply identical liveries wasn't enough, as if having the option of multiple different presets wasn't enough, as if packing it all into one user-friendly formspec wasn't enough, on top of all that there's an instant 360° 3D preview!
Seriously though. This mod is extremely thorough, well-thought-out, and easy-to-use! From a player's perspective, the tool is simple to use and everything is laid out in a clean and orderly fashion. The Update/Save/Apply buttons are the tiniest bit demanding, you have to remember to push them in the right order before you exit the formspecs. However the temporary template save feature is very nice; it enables you to save the current livery settings and then apply them to other train cars, for customizing large trains. The 3D preview is awesome, enabling you to view what the customizations will look like on your train before actually applying them, and it can be rotated in all directions!
From a developer's perspective, it has a little bit of a learning curve (partly due to lack of detailed documentation, which is still in progress). However its overall design makes sense; once you figure it out it's easy to add more customizable areas to your registered train cars.
So I definitely recommend this mod! It offers almost limitless livery customization to Advanced Trains, and packs it all into an organized, functional, and fancy UI! Well done Marnack, I admire your work!
Incredibly versatile!
Just insane how many options there are to customize the livery of just a single wagon!
What I found particularly useful was the 3D view of the wagon. I'm not sure if that is possible with formspecs, but if it is maybe the mouse cursor could change when hovering over the 3D view to indicate one can actually drag/rotate the wagon view. The only other little thing where I was/am a little confused is the difference between the Livery Template in the Editor's tab and the Predefined Liveries tab. What I believe it to be is that a Predefined Livery is a customized version of an existing Livery Template. I'm not sure about it though.
All in all this is probably the best way to make trains extremely customizable in a simple and player friendly way. Additionally it enables modders and train creators to include multiple predefined liveries for their trains from which players can choose from in-game.
Personally I 100% recommend it!