Placing roads.

[Craig H]

I have been placing roads (2l freeway sections) on my route.

In the process, I got a vector - end/no end error followed by send don't send. After a reboot, I went back into the RE and the offending road worked fine. Unfortunately, I now have found several track sections that gave the vector end/no end error. These were good track sections before.

I was able to recover by deleting the TDB and RDB, entering the RE and deleting the track sections, and doing a rebuild.

I've placed a lot of track and roads and had no problems except when using the freeways that come with Newroads.

Anyone else run into this?

Is it possible that there could be a problem with the road files or, that placing roads in general can corrupt the TDB?

Craig

[calr]

It has been my experience that TDB rebuilds are not "road friendly". A TDB rebuild can complete successfully (all tiles visited) and leave corrupted road sections around the route. I am wondering if this is because generally all track is connected together in a route but this is not true of roads. Typically, roads are built in small segments for visual appearance and for support of carspawners.

I have dozens of short roads on my route. The only road that runs the entire length of the route is the I-84 freeway. Even that is broken up in a couple spots.

Anyone else want to chime in on my theory of multiple short road segments causing problems with TDB rebuild.

Anyway, Craig, after nearly a year of failed TDB rebuilds, I finally got all the track problems fixed and get "all tiles visited". I have not inspected the entire route for road problems (I'm still adding roads!). I just fix them as I encounter them.

Cal Rasmussen
Beaverton, OR
cal.rasmussen@verizon.net

Columbia Gorge Route (Phase 1 80% Completed)

[Steven]

I agree with Cal on the rebuilds not being road friendly (or track friendly at times).

Corrupted shape? Possible, the corrupted shapes I've had myself killed the RE whenever I got close to them. You say that exiting out of RE and reloading fixes road/corrupts track - I wonder if that might be a long RE session/memory issue. Before I upgraded my memory, the RE would crash alot on me, hasn't crashed once since.

[Craig H]

Guys, I've had problems with roads during TDB rebuilds on another route I played with. My problems started while placing road sections, not after a rebuild. I didn't rebuild the TDB until after I started having trouble. I did a couple of new blue poles after the rebuild but was able to stop them by eliminating one of the freeway lengths I was using and replacing it with two shorter ones.

Might be coincidence but I've noticed that I only have problems when using Fwy4l2wa200L (or something like that). I was using them for longer straight stretchs but have switched to the 100 ft pieces and have not had any trouble since. I don't know enough about shape files to figure out if there is a problem with that particular one.

Cal, I also keep my road sections short. I do have one that runs about 10 miles but, it uses standard road sections and is broken in a couple of places. It's been there a while now and has survived my TDB rebuilds. I haven't gotten a clean rebuild for a long time either. There are four track pieces attached to switched in a yard that always end up with blue poles. It fixes fine by selecting and deselecting the sections followed by a save. I'm thinking of rebuilding that yard to see if it helps.

As far as memory goes, I always dump everything I don't need, including disconnecting from the Internet and shutting down my virus scanner and firewall. I have worked for an hour or more without saving (foolish I know and I don't make a habit of it) and been able to work for 2 hours without hitting an error.

The EndItAll utility frees up a lot of memory. I was blowing up all the time before I found that little gem.

Anyway, thanks for the info, I'll guess I'll press on from here.

Tanks again,
Craig

[Hawk]

One thing that you might want to consider is checking to see if a long road (or track) section crosses a corner of a tile and actually lays across 3 tiles. I think it confuses the sim and it can't figure out which of the 3 tiles it should list that section in, so it just goes bonkers; hence a corrupt data base.
Just a thought.

Hawk

[Craig H]

Took a look and that's exactly what was happening.

Thanks, Hawk

Craig