Tren Layout P&E: Intermediate Walkthrough

A slightly trickier set of lessons now. We’ll look at some more complex elements, as well as navigating levels of Scope and another look at Groups.

Yenning for Tren#

Let’s start by turning on Snap Points. Go to Guides and select Snap Points to make them active. Now have a look for the most important element in the game - Tren!

Hit Search. The pinned collection has a sub-collection called Vehicles. Grab Tren (P&E) and stamp it in. Then head into Play Mode and use Square to swap from Small Popter to Tren.

Freeze!#

We don’t want to accidentally edit Tren as we progress, so let’s take this opportunity to look at a cool tool (see what we did there?) - Freeze.

Open the Tools menu and select Freeze. Everything’s gone blue! This is because any element that’s frozen will appear blue, and most of the P&E scenes are frozen to prevent accidental edits while you’re doing lessons.

Hover over Tren and press to freeze it. A switch gadget will appear. Now exit the Freeze Tool by pressing Circle. Now flip the switch by pressing (the switch just confirms that you’ve frozen Tren, because we can’t detect that action).

Freeze prevents all edits to Tren apart from Undo, so if you make a mistake in the following lessons be careful not to undo the stamping of Tren! It's good practice when using Undo/Redo to look at the feedback messages at the bottom of the screen to check you’re undoing/redoing the correct edits.

Abandon scope#

Groups are not just for editing convenience - they have functionality in play as well, particularly for object movement. An element like this powered Extendable Pillar is made up of Groups nested within Groups. If you want a static object to move with a moving one, the static object has to be in the same Scope as the moving part of the moving object. “Scope” refers to which of these nested Groups a given object is in. It’s quite a tricky concept at first, but an important one.

So let’s get the track piece into the correct Scope. Pick up the highlighted track with , and keep holding throughout. Now, hover the track over the pillar and press +. Notice that the bottom part of the pillar is in focus while the rest of the image is not. That’s because you’re in its Scope. But that part doesn’t move, so we need to Scope In again, to get into the Scope of the moving part, indicated by the dotted outline.

Press + again and you’ll notice the bottom part goes out of focus, while the top part comes into focus. You should also get a message telling you that you’re in the correct Scope. Switch to Play Mode and the track piece should move up and down with the pillar.

Note: It’s recommended that you have Visual Feedback set to ALL in My Preferences/DreamShaping, particularly when you’re learning things like Scope.

Lazy Susan#

Turntables are really fun for creating multi-directional tracks. Combine them with barriers or One-Way Doors if you want to control the player’s progress through the junction.

Search in the pinned collection for the Turntable Element. Snap Points should already be on, but there are lots in this area, with all the different directions, so it might be a bit more fiddly than usual to get it in the correct position.

Use the left stick and motion to snap and then stamp with . If you’re struggling it can be helpful to just stamp it anywhere with then pick it up and try again.

Watery towers#

Simple stuff - just stamp in a couple of Slosh Towers. You’re looking for Slosh Tower (P&E) in the pinned collection.

Snap and stamp two Slosh Towers in as guided. Switch to Play Mode and drive your wagons under the nozzles. Slosh Towers are set to fill by default and will detect and fill the empty Slosh Wagons automatically.

Running on empty#

Slosh Towers are set to fill by default, so if you want them to drain you need to flip the Fill/Drain switch. Switches are just on/off toggle buttons, a simple gadget with a myriad of applications. Here they’re used to switch logic from filling to draining as required.

Hover over each switch and press to flip them. Head back to Play Mode and drive under the nozzles. The towers will detect the full wagons and drain them.

In-Cren-ible#

Time to give Cren a go. Let’s use it to unload these Slosh Wagons. Cren has a built-in swap dock so you can switch control from Tren to Cren and back. Often you’ll want to move it to make it accessible to Tren. It's inside the Cren group, so it’s time to Scope In again.

First off stamp Cren in. Then hover over it and Scope In with +. Grab the dock with and move it over to snap it on the end of the track. In Play Mode, drive up and dock, swap to Cren with Square, and get those wagons unloaded.

Button down#

Find a Track Button in the pinned collection and snap and stamp it in there.

Hover over the Just Pressed node and press to create a wire, then move your imp to Spawn Container and press again to connect it.

Meet your quota#

We looked at freezing things to stop accidental edits. Let’s look at unfreezing so you can edit something on purpose.

In Edit Mode, go to the Tools menu and select the Freeze tool. Hover over the Cargo Quota Barrier and press to unfreeze it. Press to exit the Freeze tool.

Now let’s use the directional buttons to tweak the slider. Hover over the slider and press the button to increment it down to 1. This is really useful when you only want to nudge the value of a slider up or down a little. For bonus points get the Freeze tool again and re-freeze the barrier. Back in Play Mode the gate should let you through, as it only needs 1 cargo container now.

Weigh-hey!#

A Weighbridge can be used in conjunction with a barrier to create a mini quest.

Search in the pinned collection for the Weighbridge. Snap and stamp as guided then connect the Success node’s output to the Open node’s input.

The key thing with the Weighbridge is setting the requirements sliders. What sort of wagon is it looking for and how many does it need to trigger success? Notice the sliders - you can change the type and the quantity of cargo using those.

We’re not going to do that just now though. Just head to Play Mode and find yourself that other wagon so you can get past the barrier.

A bit of a stretch#

The Tren Set has been designed to be as modular as possible. Most of the big complex pieces are made up of smaller pieces. This allows you to easily extend elements to accommodate longer Trens with more wagons. Let’s have a go at that. We’ll be making another Trak-2-Trak Cargo Transfer unit beside the first.

Firstly, hover the imp over the cargo transfer element and press + to Scope In to its Group. Now pick up the little rail end piece with R2 and snap it into the outline to the left.

Now hover over the bottom (rail) part of the existing transfer unit and use + to clone it. Keep holding to hold the clone and move it left to snap into the space we created. Then repeat for the cargo arm part.

There’s no wiring needed to make this work as a double transfer unit. Lots of elements can be extended in this way. Return to Play Mode and let the machines unload your cargo.

Side-by-side#

Here’s another element that can be extended, both in length and in the number of tracks they can slide between. For now though let’s just stick one in. Find a Parallel Slide Track: Medium in the pinned collection and stamp it in.

Head back to Play Mode and get on the bridge. Use the left stick to slide right and reverse in to drop the wagon off before carrying on.

Pump it up!#

This is just a FUN element. They can also be extended in length. Find yourself a Seesaw Pump Lift and stamp it in.

Head to Play Mode and drive on. Drive to the end, then reverse to the back, then repeat forwards and backwards to “pump” the lift up to the top.

Gimme a boost#

Boost pieces are excellent for giving Tren or a wagon a boost of speed to get up a slope or over a jump. Like you just failed to do here. Sorry, that was mean of us.

Search the pinned collection for the Boost piece. Snap and stamp it as guided. Notice the original Boost is set to 0 speed - no wonder it didn’t work! Hover the imp over the slider and use and drag or the directional button to increase it to bigger than 0.6.

Repeat yourself#

How did you get on with repeat-cloning in the first P&E? Let’s have another go. Clone the highlighted track with +. Release but keep holding . Move the clone slightly to the right till it snaps. Now press the right directional button 3 times. It should copy the snap and fill the helix perfectly. Release to stamp it in.

Popter parent#

Let’s go out in style. Find yourself Big Popter in the pinned collection. Snap and stamp it in.

Drive on in there and press Square to switch control. Take off and land on the big box to complete this P&E.