How to establish an NYCTA BVE route, by BStyles

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BStyles:

There are tons of route tutorials around the internet that can teach you how to make a BVE route, but unfortunately it seems that they are overlooked. For the past few weeks I have been hosting route building classes on the backup Teamspeak server, but unfortunately I have been too busy to keep a profitable schedule. So who’s to say that I can’t write one out?

This is going to be long, but at the end of this post, you should have an understanding of how to start a BVE route. Now I’m going to show you how to start it in Notepad, as most of our professional developers do. A route file, either RW (Railway Definition File) or CSV (Comma Separated Values) are the standard formats of BE routes. In the later future, one major accomplishment is extending their capabilities, making routes easier to code, but for now I will teach you how to code in CSV.

CSV routes start off very simple. First you must type in the words “With Route” (without quotes) at the top of your notepad file. This references the route and lays the foundation work for further coding. Under it, various definitive commands, such as “.comment” and “.timetable” should go. The comment command basically credits the route, where it goes and how service operates. There should be no punctuation marks in the comment command.

Ex: .comment The I route from the Empire State Building to the South Street Seaport by *your username*.

It doesn’t have to be NYCTA either.

The timetable command is used to reference a timetable, displayed in the route. I believe this command works best in BVE 4, so don’t type this if you’re making a BVE 2 route. Another command, “.developer” usually references the main author behind the making of the project, but such a command is usually generated if you check the box “Run in Developer Mode” when using BRR.

Under this, your next two commands are very straightforward, and they are “.gauge” and “.runinterval”. The gauge command specifies the width between the center points of the rail heads, and if you’re a model railroader, you should already know this. The current gauge in the United States is 1435 and it applies on some European and Asian routes as well. The run interval command specifies the distance of the train in front of you. In OpenBVE, if you fast forward ahead a few stations, you will see the interval train. The higher the number (600+), the further away the train is from you and the lower the number (600-), then your line is experiencing some serious rush hour problems. :P

Your route should look like this so far:

With Route,
.comment The I route from the Empire State Building to the South Street Seaport by *your username*

.gauge 1435
.runinterval 600

The next part of the tutorial, referencing the train, is one of the most important parts of the route. If you don’t specify which train the route should use, or if you type the name incorrectly, BVE can’t automatically place one and you will continuously get the error message “The Train Is Not Found”. Place a train on the route, whether it is from BVEStation or anywhere on the internet, as long as it works for the right version of BVE you will have no problem at all writing this command. So now type “With Train ” two spaces under the comment command, and under this you will type “.folder” and the exact name of the folder that holds the train. Make sure that the train is not in a subfolder or it will not work. If you wish to include a little description of the train, place a semicolon after the end of the name of the folder and write whatever you like. It should look like this:

With Train,

.folder *specify train folder here*; *short description*

From here on out, your entire file should look like this (I’ll fill in the blanks with examples):

With Route,
.comment The I route from the Empire State Building to the South Street Seaport by BStyles

.gauge 1435
.runinterval 600

With Train,
.folder R142; The R142, built by Kawasaki Industries, is the first Milennium fleet to serve the NYCTA in revenue service. They were first introduced in 1999, and have run the rails for 11 years without serious problems.

In the next part of this tutorial, I will introduce the “With Structure” reference, and that’s when everything will take off!

BStyles

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