[TOOL]Excel Track Layer

Drexer

L2: Junior Member
Jun 23, 2009
66
42
So, i've been experimenting alot of track layouts in a map that I'm currently working on; and in a specially tricky bit I had to change the positioning of the track props various times so as to experiment with its aspect. It was getting kind of annoying so I created this to streamline the process at least a little bit and take some stress out of the work regarding laying the track. I could have created a program with this and made it a more automatic and complete tool; but I would waste more time regarding opening and locating the relevant data in the file than anything else; so I decided upon this method which only requires simple actions from the user.

Basically it lays a track 31 units bellow the path_track(so as to make the track fit with the ground if the path_track is 32 units above ground), and it changes the angle of the track to fit the slope between the previous path_track and the one it lays the piece in. It has some bugs, but they are easily corrected.

traintracks1.png

So here we have the test track.

traintracks2.png

We just copy all the track entities.

traintracks3.png

And paste it into the input page. Care must be taken on the paste definitions; separation by Space must be activated as well as adding separation by " in the other option. The text delimiter should be changed from " to ' .

traintracks4.png

And here is the result, not pretty but it works. Note that on the top right near the entity id on row N you should add the number+3 of the top entity that you saw when opening the vmf. The numbers will be updated thus for all the props_static created.

traintracks5.png

Changing to the output page, we just need to select all the cells that contain the needed data.

traintracks6.png

And paste them into the vmf once again. Now, here due to the formations of " in cspreadsheets, an extra care must be taken in replacing “ with ". Or else hammer will crash when you try to open the file.

traintracks7.png

And here it is. As you can see some bit of tracks are turned around 180 degress due to the direction of your angle variation, but that is easily fixed. All the bits laid down are 64 straight bits, but seeing as it's easy to just replace them with curves or anything else needed, no problem there.

Hope this helps anyone who gets as annoyed with laying down the track as me.

Download Here
 

A Boojum Snark

Toraipoddodezain Mazahabado
aa
Nov 2, 2007
4,775
7,669
I'm really at a loss trying to figure out how you actually used this. Track models and path_tracks usually are never 1:1 in number and alignment. :/
 

Drexer

L2: Junior Member
Jun 23, 2009
66
42
I'm really at a loss trying to figure out how you actually used this. Track models and path_tracks usually are never 1:1 in number and alignment. :/

True. And that's exactly why I would have preferred to do a proper program was it not for the time-wasting bit. It serves mainly as a way for me to lay down a quick bit of the track for perception purposes, but mainly to get the correct angles for a slope(which is perhaps in my opinion the most annoying thing when puttting down some tracks).

Like I said, it's not that very useful, but seeing as it might help someone who gets as annoyed as me when laying down tracks, it might just be worth it for them.