Trainz/Content Creators Guide

The Content Creator’s Guides (CCG) in whatever format and era, are designed to assist 3rd party content creators design and create functional content for the Trainz Railroad Simulator of the day. Since the advent of TS2009, the CCG's role as official reference document has been chaotically replaced by the incomplete TrainzOnline Wiki's distributed reference pages.

The purpose of today's Trainz Wiki as was that of the several seminal CCG documents is to detail the way in which 3rd party content should be designed and built to be compatible with Trainz^{[note 1]} and to describe the use of the new functions in its Trainz (i.e. that Current 'New' era start), the Content Manager and the Content Creator Plus. These are and have been moving targets, for the content details of the data configuration's details required by an asset of type X of KIND Y have evolved from the initial Trainz 0.9 Beta release; sometimes obsoleting a former legal keyword and related group of related values, sometimes replacing them requiring a translation step or substitution, and other times generalizing a data type into a main Kind modified by other keywords into taking on a suite of attributes. Tip: This is in fact the general case for spline objects, which are now all defined to be track kinds of one degree or another, whilst kind track itself morphed into a Stitched spline technology incorporating LOD meshes.

The Content Manager module manages content on your computer, communicates with the Download Station and uploads or downloads content more easily than in previous versions of Trainz.

The Content Creator Plus module assists in creating model assets that are compatible with the Download Station requirements, and incorporates error checking that should assist in the creation of successful models. The module creates the config.txt file for the model asset, the entry of data is by means of templates for each model asset Kind, and dialogue boxes that filter and check the data.

This document provides the standards and procedures for a content creator to enter data for the model asset, using Content Creator Plus. It also provides advice on the creation of the model mesh using 3dsmax, and the creation of correct texture files for the model.

Scripting is an integral part of model creation, however details on script code and usage are included in a separate document. Only brief references to Scripting are made in this document, as far as they effect the creation requirements.

New content creation features added to TC include:

ability to vary track sounds on track for tunnels and bridges and for bogeys (tracksounds)
basic animated turnouts
ability to create backdrop objects
control of invisible track display (visible in minimap)
third-party configuration tags, in an extensions container
use of asset thumbnails, replacing art files and other picture files
new coupler performance tags and wheelslip functions
a new kind steam engine and kind texture group.

List of published CCG versions

CCG's were issued contemporaneously^{[note 2]} with the major retail releases in the Trainz evolved software system. The below are listed most recent to oldest.

Auran's Trainz Classics Content Creation Guide in PDF format, the last official CCG was put up by the user community on the Trainz Wiki, where it is still answering questions left murkey in the Trainz Wiki official reference pages. Here on the Trainz Wikibook, we hope to fill in such knowledge gaps.

Downloadable PDF copy page
TRS2006
‌ download TRS2006 CCG
TRS2004
‌ TRS2004CCG download
Trainz UTC
‌ UTC_CCP_COMPLETE.zip — UTC in French UTC_french_creation.zip
Trainz 1.3 — like several of the links documented above the earliest Trainz CCG published as HTM files were seen to become disconnected links during the Summer-Fall of 2014 as Auran and N3V reconfigured it's websites and brought new servers online in preparation of the release of TANE (T:ANE). A complaint and service ticket including a direct appeal to Tony Hilliam was made.

See Also: — Trainz Wiki Modeling guidelines

Notes and references

↑ that is, it's current matching Trainz release version, for each different CCG was the bible reference benchmarking new technologies that might be coded into a Config.txt file of compliant assets, while conversely also defining which practices would be illegal.
↑ in actuality, often prepared for release ahead of actual software coding as being definitions, both users and software must needs either provide or interpret the data as the model allows

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[1] that is, it's current matching Trainz release version, for each different CCG was the bible reference benchmarking new technologies that might be coded into a Config.txt file of compliant assets, while conversely also defining which practices would be illegal.

[2] tuality, often prepared for release ahead of actual software coding as being definitions, both users and software must needs either provide or interpret the data as the model allows