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How to Place a Car Spawner:

A car spawner is a marker shape that can be placed and moved along roads in Microsoft Train Simulator to indicate the path road traffic will take in the game. Car spawners can be placed like any other shape in Microsoft Train Simulator. Either select the 'Place Item' icon or press F5 to bring up the placement cursor. Press the 'New Object' button on the Object Select window and select the shape from the 'Vehicle' category. Car spawners can only be placed on a road; if you miss a road you will have to reselect the object from the object selection list. The car spawner shape that you have successfully placed consists of two inwardly facing blue arrows connected by a blue line that strobes white. Either of the two blue arrows can be selected and dragged along the lane of the road, the line connecting them will stretch and follow the road. If you drag the arrow onto another lane of that road, the markers turn red, indicating this is not valid placement and the car spawner will not function in the game. Flow of vehicles from the car spawner is opposite to the direction of the white strobing. Set up a car spawner on each lane of the road you wish to have traffic on, bearing in mind the side of the road traffic would usually drive on in your country's route. Traffic can flow round bends but not around corners; therfore it is not valid to have traffic turning down a T-junction road piece or turning a corner on the crossroad road piece. The frequency and speed of the traffic spawned can be altered from the defaults within the properties window. Select either end of the car spawner shape and either press the 'Properties' icon or F6. If a car spawner is placed on a road that crosses the track, it is recommended you place a level crossing down which will automatically halt the flow of traffic in the game (see How to Place a Level Crossing Document). The type of traffic spawned is not set up within the Route Editor, but in a file called carspawner.dat which is located in the root directory of the route you are editing. This is a simple file that can be edited in any Unicode text editor. This file is basically a list of shapes you wish to have generated as traffic. Determine the name of the shape you wish to have as traffic (there are many cars, mopeds, vans and trucks supplied within the various routes of Microsoft Train Simulator) and add it to the list. The number at the start of the file is the total number of lines of shapes you have added. If you want a certain shape to appear more frequently than another shape, give it multiple entries, updating the number at the top of the list. Bear in mind when placing car spawners that the vehicles they produce will just appear in the world. Therefore, try to keep the start and end points of a car spawner hidden from view.

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