User:Stwalkerster/railways

Railway map markers allow us to map out the route of railways within the world.

To do this, we need to deploy two types of sign across the rail network. The first type of sign is the #[RAIL] sign, which is used to mark every corner that the railway takes. The second type of sign is the #[RAIL STATION] sign, which is used (once per station!) to mark the location of a railway station. The #[RAIL STATION] markers also act as #[RAIL] markers to map the route of the railway.

The format of these signs is very particular, and it's important to get it right otherwise the markers will show something odd on the map. If we get it badly wrong to the point that Overviewer can't handle it, Overviewer will just ignore that marker entirely and skip to the next one.

#[RAIL] signs

These signs describe a waypoint for the track. Overviewer will draw straight lines between each waypoint, so these are best placed on corners in the track.

Line	What to put there	Explanation	Example
Front Line 1	#[RAIL]	Must be this, exactly.	#[RAIL]
Front Line 2 and 3	Name of the railway line	You can split this over both lines, or keep it on one line if you prefer. Whatever you choose, it must be consistent across the entire railway line.	Green Line
Front Line 4	Four values separated by /	Configuration information for this point.	10/// or 4000/0/1/0
Rear lines 1-4	Unused	Do what you want with it.

#[RAIL STATION] signs

These signs describe a railway station, and also act as track waypoints.

Only one station marker should be used per station per line, even if the track is bidirectional. If there are multiple lines terminating at one point (eg, Villa KFP), use one station marker per line.

Line	What to put there	Explanation	Example
Front Line 1	#[RAIL STATION]	Must be this, exactly.	#[RAIL STATION]
Front Line 2 and 3	Name of the railway line	You can split this over both lines, or keep it on one line if you prefer. Whatever you choose, it must be consistent across the entire railway line.	Green Line
Front Line 4	Four values separated by /	Configuration information for this point.	10/// or 4000/0/1/0
Rear lines 1-4	Station name	These lines are rendered as sign text on the Overviewer station marker.

Waypoint configuration information

The first value is a sequence number of the sign. All signs for this railway line must have a numeric sequence number that increases over the length of the line. This sequence need not be monotonic nor positive - it is simply to make sure Overviewer knows what order to put the points in to draw the line. It's recommended to leave a gap between numbers for later expansion or rerouting - for example 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 or -20, -10, 0, 10, 20 instead of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.

As a special case, exactly one sign should specify a colour here instead of a sequence number. This should be a CSS colour name (eg fuchsia) or hexadecimal colour code (eg #8000FF). This sign will always have a sequence number of 0.

The remaining three values are entirely optional and can be omitted if desired. However, the separator characters must always be present. The remaining three values are x, y, and z-axis offsets for the location of the waypoint. This means that if it's not aesthetically pleasing or appropriate to put the sign exactly where you want the route to show up on the map, you can put the sign nearby and set an offset. All three values default to zero if omitted. A good example of where this might be used would be on bridges - the sign can be placed between the blocks the track sits on, with a Y-offset of 1 to draw the line at the correct height.

Example

Let's assume the following simple railway layout with stations at B, D, G, and H, and the main hub station is station B.

     A---------B------------C
    /                       |
   /                        |
  /                         D
 /                          |
E                           |
|                           F-------G
|
H

• At position H, place a #[RAIL STATION] sign with a configuration line of -30///
• At position E, place a #[RAIL] sign with a configuration line of -20///
• At position A, place a #[RAIL] sign with a configuration line of -10///
• At position B, place a #[RAIL STATION] sign with a configuration line of #FF0000/// (with a colour instead of sequence 0)
• At position C, place a #[RAIL] sign with a configuration line of 10///
• At position D, place a #[RAIL STATION] sign with a configuration line of 20///
• At position F, place a #[RAIL] sign with a configuration line of 30///
• At position G, place a #[RAIL STATION] sign with a configuration line of 40///