Based on previous work for InterCity/Nightline carriages originally made for LinuxForks Moretrains, Marnack presents us with a whole new world of customisation in this mod which is the first to have support for his AdvTrains Livery Tools mod. Unlike most carriages, which at most offer the ability to change a single colour, this set is customisable in-depth.
Classic Coaches also comes with a great set of features that are better than many AdvTrains mods: Door animations, crafting recipes, livery customisation and internationalisation support.
I recommend Classic Coaches to anyone who wants a quality set of diesel/electric locomotive-hauled passenger carriages that stands well on its own, and enthusiasts who want to customise their rolling stock. Players could create customisations on this solid foundation to add company logos to their rolling stock easily and use them in a variety of colour options.
I can't recommend Classic Coaches in a few niche scenarios. First, drawing these coaches is more computionally expensive than using flat textures due to the number of overlayed and colorised textures present on each wagon, so maybe avoid them if you are playing on a potato, or a tightly constrained server (the server must calculate the texture strings to apply when a carriage pops into viewing range of a player). You can use the mod without AdvTrains Livery Tools if you want.
Thanks, Blockhead. I appreciate the in-depth reviews that you typically write and this one is no exception.
Your comment about niche scenarios raises a valid point to keep in mind. I do want to underscore your last statement though that you can use Classic Coaches without AdvTrains Livery Tools. Doing that or limiting livery customization to at most one color override per livery will mean that its performance will be no worse than other mods that support the bike painter tool. In fact, it's not possible to distinguish a wagon that was customized by the bike painter from one that had the equivalent customization applied with the Livery Designer Tool. (Unless the color is pure black, #000000 since, as noted in the README, the bike painter can't apply that color to Custom Coaches while the Livery Designer Tool can.) Internally, both tools update the wagon data identically when only the first overlay is modified. In short, color overrides that are set to "None" do not increase computational load.
On a side note, AdvTrains Livery Tools currently limits the number of overlays to 6 per livery template. I added that limit specifically because of this potential performance concern and want to do more testing before changing it. So far, I have tested a single player game hosted on a computer from circa 2010 (2.8 GHz CPU, 6 GB RAM) with 108 highly customized wagons (6 color overrides for each) in very close proximity (that is, in a train yard) and did not observe a serious performance issue. It took less than 2 seconds to render all 108 wagons when moving into their vicinity. The wagons then performed similarly to other wagons once rendered. Of course, smaller or more wrinkled potatoes may have more noticeable performance issues.
Based on previous work for InterCity/Nightline carriages originally made for LinuxForks Moretrains, Marnack presents us with a whole new world of customisation in this mod which is the first to have support for his AdvTrains Livery Tools mod. Unlike most carriages, which at most offer the ability to change a single colour, this set is customisable in-depth.
Classic Coaches also comes with a great set of features that are better than many AdvTrains mods: Door animations, crafting recipes, livery customisation and internationalisation support.
I recommend Classic Coaches to anyone who wants a quality set of diesel/electric locomotive-hauled passenger carriages that stands well on its own, and enthusiasts who want to customise their rolling stock. Players could create customisations on this solid foundation to add company logos to their rolling stock easily and use them in a variety of colour options.
I can't recommend Classic Coaches in a few niche scenarios. First, drawing these coaches is more computionally expensive than using flat textures due to the number of overlayed and colorised textures present on each wagon, so maybe avoid them if you are playing on a potato, or a tightly constrained server (the server must calculate the texture strings to apply when a carriage pops into viewing range of a player). You can use the mod without AdvTrains Livery Tools if you want.
Thanks, Blockhead. I appreciate the in-depth reviews that you typically write and this one is no exception.
Your comment about niche scenarios raises a valid point to keep in mind. I do want to underscore your last statement though that you can use Classic Coaches without AdvTrains Livery Tools. Doing that or limiting livery customization to at most one color override per livery will mean that its performance will be no worse than other mods that support the bike painter tool. In fact, it's not possible to distinguish a wagon that was customized by the bike painter from one that had the equivalent customization applied with the Livery Designer Tool. (Unless the color is pure black, #000000 since, as noted in the README, the bike painter can't apply that color to Custom Coaches while the Livery Designer Tool can.) Internally, both tools update the wagon data identically when only the first overlay is modified. In short, color overrides that are set to "None" do not increase computational load.
On a side note, AdvTrains Livery Tools currently limits the number of overlays to 6 per livery template. I added that limit specifically because of this potential performance concern and want to do more testing before changing it. So far, I have tested a single player game hosted on a computer from circa 2010 (2.8 GHz CPU, 6 GB RAM) with 108 highly customized wagons (6 color overrides for each) in very close proximity (that is, in a train yard) and did not observe a serious performance issue. It took less than 2 seconds to render all 108 wagons when moving into their vicinity. The wagons then performed similarly to other wagons once rendered. Of course, smaller or more wrinkled potatoes may have more noticeable performance issues.