Prangles Industries. ["Shovel" map prop update]

I have completed more work on the shovel prop. Last post I was only half finished with the clamshell, and had the Face Shovel and Crane modeled. Now, I have the all five:

• Face-Shovel
• Backhoe
• Crane
• Dragline
• Clam-Shell

Modeled, texture mapped, grimed, and have one skin as of right now. I plan on making 7-8 more skins, including my own fictional company. All skins will be fictional, but most will be of my friend's and those I have asked from my steam group. The first skin I have slapped a "Prangles Industries" logo onto, it works.

I can't wait to see these props finished, it's going to be swell, especially if some other mappers decide to use them. The Pump-jack needs to have 5 more skins made, and the Grain Silo and IBC tote need to be mapped and textured too.

Not much to talk about in this post, so here is some images.

A dirty face-shovel, looking lean and mean as ever.

The humble clam-shell, sitting still and closed for the moment.

Don't mind the clutter in the background, this is the crane, and it's idling like a crane, nothing fancy.

The dragline, grimed up and showing it has worked!

The Backhoe attachment, as it's called. With quite a bit of grime.

A bit of an older image, no grime on the attachments, but it shows them all together.

Work continues on the "shovel".

(UPDATE: I have done some more work on the LYR class 27/28 and the cab is now done. Just need to do valve gearing and the such, and I can texture it and get it out. But this isn't my focus as of right now.)

I took a couple days off of working on the models I am making. Generally couldn't focus, and that's a thing I need to get stuff done, we all need it.

I put quotes around shovel because it is no longer just a shovel, I have moved forth into making other attachments. If you are a fan of older equipment, you'd probably notice that what I am modeling is a bit similar to Bucyrus-Erie's 15b/22b line of "shovels". Though entirely my design when I am modeling, I do look at them for some points on how they would function. You wont find internals in my models or extreme detail, after-all, these are just map props. But I do my best in creating with what I know, and putting my own wist on things, and for the most part, these should work mechanically, if they were to be replicated in real life. 

Back to the "shovel" thing, there is now going to be the following attachments:
• Face-Shovel
• Crane
• Clam-shell
• Drag-Line
• Backhoe

These attachments as I call them, were quite common for many pieces of equipment, and could be changed out with one another, without needed a dedicated main machine. This allowed for a good amount of versatility in work with what they had. Nowadays this really isn't done anymore, there is either dedicated machines for the task, or the use of an excavator which can do a large variety of tasks, is used. The modern day equivalents would be quick-changing buckets/attachments we see on wheel-loaders and excavators. Hydraulics really changed the game as far as how machines worked, and the ways they were designed.

However hydraulics are new(well, not really, around the 50's they came into use for machinery.) and I am focusing on the old currently. So far, I only have the Face-Shovel and Crane modeled and texture mapped, and most of the Clam-Shell modeled. What's left is the Drag-Line and the Backhoe attachments.

Currently I have 6-8 ideas for fictional companies to be textured, and  I am thinking of doing a few simple animations. Remember that this is for map makers mostly, to be placed on a map as a prop, these aren't scripted, nor are they operational vehicles like my trains. They can be placed in game though, for scene making and such. And have bones.

Here are some pictures I have so far. Remember, the textures aren't complete right now.

Face-Shovel attachment.

Crane attachment, holding an example IBC tote.

Clam-Shell attachment, not completed as of yet.

A lot more work to be done.

A preview of an old Face Shovel I am modeling.

This is gonna be fun.



























Just a preview image of a face shovel I am modeling. There is no real-world basis for it. This is based on what I know and what I see, though I do sometimes refresh my mind to understand how some things work. For instance, I had to peak at a video to see and get inspiration for how a dipper works(Video here). So far, this has been quite fun to model, and I can't wait to model variants of this.

A shift in focus.... (Map props)

Where's my mind at? 

After over 2 years of modeling, you can tell that I love modeling trains, and I enjoy all things railroading. However, I also enjoy many other topics and industries that exist in our world. The allure for me about railroading is the industriousness of it, partially why I enjoy freight so much more than passenger. Railroading isn't the only industrious thing I like to look at, or read into, and they can't exist without what feeds them. Construction, oil, farming, consumer products, ect, they build and determine what a railroad does to operate, without this supply, we wouldn't have millions of miles of track around the world.

Industries, more specifically non-consumer industries like Construction and oil, have peaked my interest for a while, construction being an interest my whole life. Garry's Mod maps have a lack of props centered around filler props like you would see in everyday life (depending), like cranes, excavators, and various containers.

I have noticed a desire for certain railroad maps to fill their scenes with more things previously discussed, and a desire to model these things I enjoy so much, is something I have in plentiful amount.


(For now)I will be shifting my focus from railroading to "General Industry", and most models coming from me wont be able to be interacted with like my trains. These will be props used in the background of maps, and maybe the foreground, a foreground to any scene, especially railroad related, is always accompanied by an interesting background, and in Gmod, we tend to focus too hard on the central object and forget what's around in the world.

(Gosh, I talk too much and ramble on for so long, don't I? My English teachers would be disappointed, heh.) 


I hope you enjoy my move and shift in focus, as I do.

Now, onto what I have thus far.

So, what do I have to show so far? I have 4 props (only two of which textured at the moment).

• A pumpjack, used for oil fields and extracting oil from a well. 
• A drilling derrick tower. No drill but does fill up a scene nicely.
• An IBC (Intermediate-Bulk-Container) tote. Used in more modern applications for (generally) fluid     storage. 
• A set of small Grain Silos.

What do I want to make after?

• A custom Face Shovel/Drag-line/Clamshell/"Backhoe" equipment, similar to a Bucyrus-Erie 15-b.
• A highball signal. A request made to me by a mapper JoeConqueror .
• More variants of the small silo.
• A larger silo?


Now, this is all for Map pack "Phase 1". There will of course, be progression past that phase, alongside with my current railroad projects. 

I will be busy for a while. Also, keep note that I am entering adulthood so time has to be placed into work now. Hopefully I can keep my production much higher than it has been in the past few months, and focus on IRL things for now.

Are you a Mapper and have a request for industrial-related props? Contact me and I will see what I can do. (No promises now :p)


It is really nice to get back in the swing of things, now let's hope I stay here this time.

Work on a new method of railcar coupling

What's that? A new post after four months of pure deadness? You bet it is! I just seem to have lost motivation and time to maintain this blog, although it really shouldn't be too difficult, it just seems to be.

Anyways, the focus of this post is my new method of coupling railcars/locos together. Nothing on your end will change, you still push railcars together for them to couple, then space them out a bit and press E near their couplers to uncouple them. However behind the scenes is a different story, it used to be, on this base, that each unit would have one or two (so far all have had two) coupling position, and a rope would connect both units together relative to those points on the model, depending on which were closest to each other.  This can be seen below.

25Ton Brakevan(left) and Percy(Right)

As you can see, the Brakevan on the left, and Percy's rear on the right have coupling points close to their couplers/hooks, and they couple between them. Also, notice the height difference between the two, if Percy was strong enough, or a jolt powerful enough came thru the line of cars, it could lift a railcar off the tracks!  The new way is handled instead, as shown below.

The rope here is only shown for visual reference, in use it wont show up.

The coupler rope is now placed at the bottom of the bogeys! Why is this? Simple really, torque. Torque is defined as "a twisting force that tends to cause rotation", and that's exactly what it does wrong when it comes to train stability.

The couplers right now, are placed above the rails, and in GMod, with its map limits, we must have smaller and tighter curves to accommodate this limited amount of room. This it not a mappers fault, this is not Garry Newman's fault. This is the fact that Source Engine is, while still being updated, rather old, and can only support 15 bits in maps for values, causing a small 32749 x32749 amount of space to be available.

To visualize the torque caused by having the couplers above the rails, I've made a small illustration

If you have used my trains in GMod for any length of time, especially on Sunset_Gulch(Great map), then you'd know that the S curves and yards can be deadly at any speed. While speed does have a factor, speed doesn't cause railcars to be ripped off of the rails, torque does that. Imagine hauling 40 railcars with 3 engines, that's a lot of power on the front drawbar, and all that force, like electricity, wants to follow the path of least resistance, on straights, that's easy enough, just follow behind, but when you hit a Curve, or it's devil of a variant, the 'S' Curve, then things become hectic. As seen below...



The path of least resistance does not follow the curve, instead, it tries to cut corners, just like one would do on a small path to save half a second, a train will try to do the same. However it has one thing stopping it, the rails. But the couplers, that string that pulls everything with it, is above the rails, its low enough to not cause issues, but if you have enough power, and a tight enough curve, they will adhere to the least resistant path, and roll cars over the rails, this is the torque I am talking about. This is what causes railcars to derail inward on a curve, rather than outward.

With the coupling now below the rails, the railcars can no longer --given enough force-- roll over the rails. You would now need much more force for them to be pulled out of the rails, or meet one of the many Source Engine physics glitches that causes the cars to bounce out of the rails.

Reducing the torque on the railcars isn't the only thing this fixes, it also rectifies the issue of railcars that are long, and have some distance between the bogie(which the railcar body pivots around) and the coupler, to rip other cars off the tracks. This was most notable with the 73 foot railcars on the small and tight curves of yards, the railcars would pivot so hard that there would not be enough slack, and would pull other railcars together and off the rails.

Now, the railcars coupling points follow that pivot point, and thus there is no way for a railcar to turn enough to pull another off of the tracks.

This update also makes the coupling system more efficient, as well as function correctly. Railcars connect to one another then they collide, however this collide call is called on both railcars at the same time, there is no way of it only happening on one. This lead to a double coupling, where two ropes were spawned in the same places, and thus I had to surmise a system that would uncouple a railcar twice, and that only worked half the time. There is no longer any issue with this, because I added a simple check; if this railcar was spawned newer (ent:CreationID()) than the other one, it would connect, and thus the other one had to be spawned older, and would not run any code. One railcar is always going to be older than another, so this works well! And to think I was going to have some form of long overthought 'handshaking' process to deal with this.

The simplest solutions are the best ones.

Next up, will be my continued work on the J94, and some texture progress. As well as adding support for Diesel Mechanical locomotives.

Until next time on CBH.

Meow~