Expansion routes and trains
===========================

The BVE route-designing community is quite extensive, as the original
Japanese (free as in beer) "BVE Trainsim" has been around since the
1990s.  The basic route text-based file format has been flexible to
allow adding extra detail (models and textures) in line with computing
power increases.

BVE (and OpenBVE) are particularly popular in Britain and Japan; therefore
the highest-quality BVE routes tend to features real or fictional locations
in these two countries.

Via the web
===========

There are several main issues with finding expansion routes/trains:

1.  Virtually all BVE routes are free-as-in-beer;  but come with
    restrictions preventing distribution, except via the original authors'
    homepage.

2.  There is no consistent/central download location.  When you do find a forum
    this may require registering and a new login to get the link.

3.  The downloads are not consistently formatted; They can be '.zip',
    self-extracting '.exe', MS Windows Installer '.msi' or '.7z'...
    .msi files can normally be unpacked using Wine's 'msiexec' and
    then copying the files from ~/.wine/drive_c/somewhere.

4.  Most routes were created on MS Windows, which has case-insensitive
    filenames.  It may be necessary to rename them to lowercase.

Websites
========

These websites may be a good starting point for locating additional files:

    http://www.uktrainsim.com/
    http://www.trainsimcentral.co.uk/ (Birmingham "Cross-City")
    http://www.trainsimstuff.org/ (Network West Midlands, Nothern Line)
    http://www.eezypeazy.co.uk (Tyne Valley)

This beautiful Italian route is designed for OpenBVE:

    http://fevf.altervista.org/

There are excellent Japanese routes available at:

    http://gri.s60.xrea.com (Joetsu Line)
    http://ec207.tea-nifty.com/blog/2008/07/atssnp_275b.html (ATS-Sn/P Test Route)

Extracting
==========

Once you have succeded in finding the promise of a route, or train and
managed to unpack it sufficiently to get at the actual files. What you
need to look for are the directories:

(a) For railway routes:

 .../Railway/Route/my-first-route.csv

This will often refer to 'Object/...' stored in directory above, or
textures/models assumed to be available with the original 'BVE'
program's default route.  As such you will need to keep this directory
structure intact.

BTW, you can open the '.csv' file with a text-editor or spreadshet; See below.

(b) For cab and train descriptions;  For an ABC locomotive, this might be:

  .../Train/Abc123/train.dat

Where 'Abc123' is the directory that is loaded with OpenBVE.  The required files
should be all inside this directory.

Format
======
The route file format can only follow a pre-defined journey.  This is
defined in the '.csv' (Comma Separated Value) file.  Each point of
interest (model) or change in the track is measured in metres relative
to the starting point.

The first column is the distance, and remaining columns change what
happens, or begins or ends at that point.

Multiple parallel tracks are very easily designed in BVE format as they
are simply defined as a horizontal/vertical offset compared to the first track
that the train is taking.

Points are modelled (although cannot be taken) by moving a parallel track
closer the the main track and then stopping it.

If the train is required to "cross over" to the "other line", the
track the train is on is actually slewed across, with a new empty line
started straight ahead and an old empty line stopped when train's
route has moved across.

In addition to the source code, full reverse-engineered documentation
from analysising the original free-as-in-beer BVE Trainsim program
is available in English at:

  http://trainsimframework.org/develop/

Some documentation of the formats is available in Japanese at:

  http://mackoy.cool.ne.jp/index4.html

Author
======
This text document written by Paul Sladen <openbve@paul.sladen.org>
for Debian/Ubuntu and released into the Public Domain.  List of
suggested download addresses contributed by Anthony Bowden
<anthony-b@railsimroutes.net>.
