How To Alias Cabviews
By Cyndi Richards
OVERVIEW:
This guide
will take you step by step through the process of aliasing your cabviews. There
are two methods to alias your cabviews. The first is to alias one locomotive to
the cabview of another. The second is to alias locomotives to a “Common Cab”
folder. Using a Common Cab folder has many advantages in that you can save a
lot of memory. Another is that if you decide to make changes to your cabview,
you do not have to change the locomotives that alias to it.
You can
alias any locomotive to any cabview. So if you want to spruce up your SW1500 by
giving it the Acela cabview, go ahead. That is a little extreme, but you get
the idea.
The most
important thing to remember is:
MAKE A BACKUP COPY OF ANY FILE BEFORE YOU OPEN IT
METHOD 1:
In this
section we are going to alias an add-on locomotive that you just downloaded to
the default GP38. We will call the add-on GP20.
STEP
1: Open the folder GP20. Inside you will find all kinds of
files that end with names like ace,
s, sd, eng, etc.
Look for the file that ends with .eng and open it.
STEP
2: Now scroll down past the Lighting
section and start looking
For a line named “CabView”. It will look like this:
CabView ( GP20.cvf )
STEP
3: Change the line to read as follows:
CabView (
“..\\..\\GP38\\CabView\\gp38.cvf” )
Your new GP20 will now have the
cabview of your GP38.
QUESTION: What did I just do? What does the new line mean?
The
..\\..\\
means that the cabview line is telling
MSTS that it wants to go somewhere
else for the cabview.
In this case it is being told to go
to the folder named
GP38. It is
then being told to open that folder and open the
Subfolder named CabView. It is
then being told to run
the file named gp38.cvf .
There are several ways to create the
alias path. I use the
method shown because it is also the same path creator
used when working in the black art of
sounds. The use of
quotation marks allows for the use
blank spaces. The
other path creator is:
../../GP38/CabView/gp38.cvf
ALIASING TO ANOTHER LOCOMOTIVE THAT HAS FOLDER NAMED ALIAS:
Some
CabView folders have a subfolder named Alias that will
contain
one or more
.cvf
files. These are usually variations of the main CabView to
make them more specific to one railroad. In this example we will assume our
default GP38 has an Alias subfolder with .cvf files for
other railroads; BNSF, CGW, GN, and MRL. The inside of the Alias folder will look like this:
BNSFGP38.cvf
CGWGP38.cvf
GNGP38.cvf
MRLGP38.cvf
STEP
1: Follow steps 1 & 2 above.
STEP
2: Change the CabView line to read:
CabView ( “..\\..\\GP38\\CabView\\Alias\\GNGP38.cvf”
)
Your GP20 will now have the cabview
specific to the
Great Northern GP38.
If you have
followed the above instructions and your locomotive either has no cabview or a
partial cabview go to the PROBLEM
Once you
are satisfied with your new cabview you may safely delete the CABVIEW folder from your GP20 locomotive folder or move it to your Common.Cab folder. If you move it to the Common.Cab folder be sure and rename it
from CabView to GP20.
METHOD 2:
This
section will deal with using the Common.Cab folder. This is loacted in the TRAINSET folder. If there is no Common.Cab folder, you will have to create one.
Just make sure you name it Common.Cab.
This folder
can be a central location for all cabviews. By aliasing most of your
locomotives to this folder you will save a ton of memory. Cabview folders can
be 2mB or more. So if you have 200 locomotives and alias 150 of them to the
Common.Cab folder you will save 300mB of Hard Drive space. If you 20
locomotives aliased to the same CabView and you make a change to the cabview,
you only have to make 1 change not 20. It is basically the same as aliasing to
another locomotive.
In this
example you have just downloaded a cabview for a SD60 that you want to use in
your GP20.
STEP
1: Open your Common.Cab folder and make sure you have the new
folder named SD60.
Open the folder and look for; SD60.cvf or look in the
Alias subfolder for SD60.cvf
Note the names of the folder and .cvf
file.
Close the Common.Cab folder.
STEP
2: Open the folder for your GP20, then
open the .eng file
STEP
3: Go to the CabView line and change it to read:
CabView (
“..\\..\\Common.Cab\\SD60\\SD60.cvf” )
If Alias subfolder is used, change line to read:
CabView (
“..\\..\\Common.Cab\\SD60\\Alias\\SD60.cvf” )
That’s all
there is to it!!
PROBLEMS:
Now that
you have aliased your cabview, you want to see how it looks. So you start the
sim, pick your locomotive, and your new cabview isn’t there! You may see
needles and handles floating in mid air, or you have a cabview with no needles
or handles. Don’t get frustrated. We all know that MSTS can be rather quirky at
times.
First thing
to do is check the path in the CabView line of the .eng
file. Make sure all the dots and slashes are in their proper places. Then check
your spelling. I have a nasty habit of “fat fingering” the keys because they
are small and close together. It is quite easy to hit two keys at once without
knowing it.
Whether you
have aliased to another locomotive or common.cab folder you will have to create
an Alias folder. Simply create the new folder and copy or
move the .cvf file into it. Sounds simple. Unfortunately there is
a little more to it. The .cvf file itself will have to be edited. If you have
gotten this far, you CAN do it. We will be using the same path creation lines
that we used above. Below are examples of the .cvf MAIN section and a CONTROL
section.
MAIN SECTION
SIMISA@@@@@@@@@@JINX0h0t______
Tr_CabViewFile (
CabViewType ( 2 )
CabViewFile ( GP38Frnt.ace )
CabViewWindow ( 43 0 597 412 )
CabViewWindowFile ( AcWndFrn.ace )
Position ( 1 3.7 6 )
Direction ( 10 0 0 )
CabViewFile ( GP38Left.ace )
CabViewWindow ( 0 0 640 301 )
CabViewWindowFile ( AcWndLft.ace )
Position ( 1 3.7 6 )
Direction ( 10 -77.35 0 )
CabViewFile ( GP38Right.ace )
CabViewWindow ( 20 0 589 430 )
CabViewWindowFile ( AcWndRgt.ace )
Position ( 1 3.7 6 )
Direction ( 10 84.22 0 )
EngineData ( GP38 )
CONTROL SECTION – NOT ALIASED
TwoState (
Type ( HORN TWO_STATE )
Position ( 247 218 29 120 )
Graphic ( horn.ace )
NumFrames ( 2 2 1 )
Style ( ONOFF )
MouseControl ( 1 )
CONTROL SECTION – ALIASED
TriState (
Type ( DIRECTION TRI_STATE )
Position ( 531 386 72 27 )
Graphic (
"..\\..\\GP38\\Cabview\\reverser.ace" )
NumFrames ( 3 1 3 )
Style ( NONE )
MouseControl ( 1 )
Orientation ( 0 )
DirIncrease ( 1 )
)
We
will continue using the GP20 locomotive that aliases the GP38 CabView. We have
moved the gp38.cvf file into the Alias folder. By
doing this we have confused MSTS, it is following the stated path, but there is
nothing there. Now to do some editing.
In
the MAIN SECTION shown above, look for the below lines:
CabViewFile
( GP38Frnt.ace )
CabViewWindowFile (
AcWndFrn.ace )
CabViewFile ( GP38Left.ace )
CabViewWindowFile ( AcWndLft.ace )
CabViewFile ( GP38Right.ace
)
CabViewWindowFile (
AcWndRgt.ace )
If you have aliased to a locomotive folder, in this
case the default GP38, change the above lines to read as follows:
CabViewFile
( ..\\..\\GP38\\CabView\\Alias\\GP38Frnt.ace )
CabViewWindowFile
(..\\..\\GP38\\CabView\\Alias\\AcWndFrn.ace )
CabViewFile
(..\\..\\GP38\\CabView\\Alias\\GP38Left.ace )
CabViewWindowFile
(..\\..\\GP38\\CabView\\Alias\\AcWndLft.ace )
CabViewFile
(..\\..\\GP38\\CabView\\Alias\\GP38Right.ace )
CabViewWindowFile
(..\\..\\GP38\\CabView\\Alias\\AcWndRgt.ace )
If you have aliased to the Common.Cab folder, change
the lines to read:
CabViewFile
( ..\\..\\Common.Cab\\GP38\\Alias\\GP38Frnt.ace )
CabViewWindowFile
(..\\..\\Common.Cab\\GP38\\Alias\\AcWndFrn.ace )
CabViewFile
(..\\..\\Common.Cab\\GP38\\Alias\\GP38Left.ace )
CabViewWindowFile
(..\\..\\Common.Cab\\GP38\\Alias\\AcWndLft.ace )
CabViewFile
(..\\..\\Common.Cab\\GP38\\Alias\\GP38Right.ace )
CabViewWindowFile (..\\..\\Common.Cab\\GP38\\Alias\\AcWndRgt.ace )
Run the sim and you will see that you now have the basic
GP38 cabview but without the various controls. Next we will edit the CONTROLS
section to add the missing controls. The line within each CONTROL
SECTION that we need to edit is GRAPHIC.
If the line looks like this:
Graphic ( horn.ace )
then it has to be changed. If it looks like the below example, it does not need to be changed. It has its own path to somewhere else.
Graphic ( ..\\..\\Dash9\\CabView\\horn.ace )
So if you are aliasing to another locomotive folder, our default GP38 in this example, change the line to read:
Graphic ( ..\\..\\GP38\\CabView\\Alias\\horn.ace )
You will have to do this for each Graphic line.
If you are aliasing to the Common.Cab folder change the line to read:
Graphic ( ..\\..\\Common.Cab\\GP38\\Alias\\horn.ace )
You will have to do this for each Graphic line.
That sums up this guide. Just remember the following:
MAKE A BACK UP COPY OF ANY FILE BEFORE OPENING IT
WHEN MOVING CABVIEW FOLDERS TO THE COMMON.CAB FOLDER
YOU MUST RENAME THE FOLDER FROM CABVIEW TO SOMETHING ELSE.
BE EXACT WHEN CREATING A PATH.
I hope this guide has been easy to follow and informative.
Cyndi Richards
BNSFLADY2081@aol.com
