Thomas & Friends: Hero of the Rails (Wii)

Thomas & Friends: Hero of the Rails
Developer: Silverball Studios Publisher: Barnstorm Games Platform: Wii Released in EU: August 20, 2010 This game has hidden development-related text. This game has unused graphics. This game has unused cinematics. This game has unused music. This game has unused sounds.

To do: There seems to be some unused stuff from a prototype version of the game.

Thomas & Friends: Hero of the Rails is a licensed game based off the TV movie of the same name. Most of the game is just FMVs from said movie.

Unused Graphics

Legal Screen

Legal.tpl from the billboards folder is an unused legal screen that has copyright dates from 2009. The legal screen that is used in the game has copyright dates from 2010 and the link to HiT Entertainment's website was removed.

Unused Characters

To do: Rip the graphics.

Graphics exist for Billy from Season 11 and Stanley, which possibly means that they were intended to make an appearance somewhere in the game.

Unused Videos

Tempfile.tmp

Tempfile.tmp from the video folder is actually the first three seconds of the Season 12 intro. Judging by its filename and length, it was likely used as a placeholder.

Unused Sounds

To do: Finish documenting the sounds from the Music folder. There are many placeholdersǃ

Activities

Rinse.brstm		A placeholder for one of the rinsing activities.
Welding-old1.brstm		A placeholder for the activity where the player has to fix Hiro.

Languages

American.brstm		A generic placeholder for English dialogue.
Danish.brstm		A generic placeholder for Danish dialogue.
Dutch.brstm		A generic placeholder for Dutch dialogue.
French.brstm		A generic placeholder for French dialogue.
German.brstm		A generic placeholder for German dialogue.
Italian.brstm		A generic placeholder for Italian dialogue.
Spanish.brstm		A generic placeholder for Spanish dialogue.
Swedish.brstm		A generic placeholder for Swedish dialogue.

Unused Music

Theme.brstm is the original 1984 theme song. It's unknown what purpose this may have served (besides some nice fanservice). Another version of this music also exists titled Theme_Banner.brstm meaning at least the second one could've been used for the Wii Menu banner.

Unused Text

Developer Documents

Download HerooftheRails_DeveloperDocuments.zip File: HerooftheRails_DeveloperDocuments.zip (info)

Two game documents are present in the milestone folder. Journey info.rtf is a list of track tiles along with a brief description of what they correspond to. Wrong Cams.doc contains a blank table that would have listed scene names and camera numbers. The latter document also has metadata that states it came from Broadsword Interactive Limited, a game studio that was possibly involved in the game's development at some point.

Batch Scripts

Some batch scripts used for generating various game assets are leftover.

Convben.bat

@echo off
dir *.tga /s/b > datalist.txt
convRGB5A3.py datalist.txt

Runme.bat

..\BuildLanguageSamples English

SetLoops.bat

LoopWiiStream "menu.brstm"
LoopWiiStream "Music 10 -glock.brstm"
LoopWiiStream "Music 10 -melody.brstm"
LoopWiiStream "Music 10.brstm"
LoopWiiStream "sponge_.brstm"

Game Scripts

The game uses uncompiled lua scripts, many of which contain comments left by the developers.

American.lua

data.STR_TEST = { "(american) Here is some text", "sodor_24", "100", "0", "0", "50", "50", };

beautySpots.lua

This script contains a reference to a development directory in a comment.

-- ------------------------
-- C:\development\Thomas2\data\trackData\beautySpots.lua

OrigionalProgressscript.lua

The game was in development as far back as January 2009 according to this script.

-- This is to specified progession as of 23/01/2009. It jumps after 'all other track tests' to enable stanley
-- as the parents to that path require more information to be fully implemented - hcf

--	introspeech
--	    |
--	tidmouthsheds    fatcontroller    stanley        trackwork             Minigames
--	    |
--	washing    ----------------------------------->basic driving
--	    |                                            |
--	painting                                    repair tutorial
--	    |                                            |
--	whilstle        activated<------------------time limit track testing
--	                    |                            |
--	                All Games                    up hill                        
--	                                                |
--	                                            points
--	                                                |
--	                                            bends
--	                                                |
--	                                            all other track tests
--	                                                |
--	                                            .........
--	                                                |
--	                                activated<--Docks---------------------->Cranky
--	                                    |            |
--	                                All Games    .........
--	                                                |
--	                                            Others places-------------->Races etc
--

progressscript.lua

-- This is to specified progession as of 20/02/2009 - hcf , b_d
--  power and speed tests moved back to behind points, hills and bends so they can be used in the tests
--  see UnlockSequence.docx