A small challenge to Sniper and Phil

[hminky]

Hee-hee, in the first post you said "I want to love Trainz", unfortunately there's a lot about it that's hard to love.

But Trainz is so lovable. How many times when playing or attempting to work on the "other" sims does the thought, "wish I could do that like I do in Trainz"?

The more I play with Trainz I realize how much Trainz exceeds the other "sims" in functionality. Makes up for the warts. Gotta love real "Portals".

Besides it is "funner".

Harold

[sniper297]

Well, as I've said before, Auran's bankruptcy gets no sympathy from me - Microsoft abandoned MSTS less than a year after release, from 2002 to 2007 Auran had the field all to themselves, all they needed to do was make it a GOOD train simulator to dominate the market. At a train show in 2003 I saw a demo of TRS2004 running on a 1.5ghz system, state of the art at the time. It didn't look as good as MSTS and at the same time was a chronic jerk-jerk-jerk-jerk display with not much in the way of eye candy to justify the low framerates. That hasn't changed, 2009, 2010, and 12 require way too much horsepower for what it delivers, low quality can be excused if it runs smooth, jerky animation can be excused if it looks ultra realistic, but low quality images combined with poor performance is just sloppy programming from trying to turbocharge ancient code.

Why I'm here at all;



Is because of the AI traffic. If either of the other two had even close to the intelligence and versatility of Trainz AI traffic I'd change back in a New York minute, if Trainz ran even a little smoother and looked a little better the other two would be history. One of the competitors already had the best looking AND smoothest running trainsim on the market, but with hopelessly lame AI traffic and uselessly complicated tools - so rather than fixing what was broken they spent all their resources making it LOOK better at the expense of smoothness and stability.

So in my book Trainz is unlovable, but since it has no serious competition at the moment it really doesn't need to be.

Irritating stuff, today I deleted all non built in content from my TS2010 test version, been downloading Chicago Metro 2.2 and the CTA session to test Joe's gripe;

1.jpg

Missing dependency icon after downloading, view dependencies and none are missing, but most of the dependencies have missing sub dependencies.

2.jpg

So view in main list, try downloading again and again until you eliminate all the missing dependency icons. Download helper is a brilliant idea poorly implemented, sometimes it gets sub dependencies most times it don't and there's a lot of manual screwing around involved even when everything is on the DLS.

I really can't love it until they improve it, but I can live with it because it's better than the alternatives. It should be MUCH better than the alternatives, and could be if they put some serious work into it.

[Gecko]

Sorta off subject, Love the markers on DLS, beats an old hotel ar tree any day

[sniper297]

I asked the Three Blind Mice, they say they don't see any markers in this scene.

Actually got that idea with MSTS, made a special shape file to replace the 10D automatic switches so when I was working on the route I could instantly tell if I had an auto switch where I wanted a manual, or vice-versa.



Advantage to Trainz, don't need to worry about manual vs automatic switches, can run an AI train practically anywhere on any route. Still tough hunting down ittybitty bushes or dwarf signals, so I use the replace assets tool, delete the stray cats, then replace back again to restore the dwarfs or speed signs that are where they're supposed to be. Sometimes I want to get rid of built in assets, so I replace with the marker towers, then go to content mangler and delete the marker, then back to surveyor to delete missing assets. Finally went ahead and uploaded them because if I forget to import the CDP from the backup after deleting I end up with a duplicate KUID for something else.

Anyway, back on topic, duplicated Joe's gripe in a virgin copy of 44088, haven't chased down the exact culprit but I got a suspect;



Got KUID2 replacements for some of lotharlake's driver characters recently, with the usual fiasco about the game refusing to load the one it has since it knows it's obsolete but doesn't know where to find the replacement. I got another *%#&@$#! thread going over at Auran about that. I'd post a link, but the Auran forum is down again at the moment. I still can't love it.

[drjoe]

Well I got things fixed. Hovering the mouse over the error message showed a missing kuid thing. It was on the DLS and named "Call At". Downloading that fixed things.

[sniper297]

Yeah, not used in that session but checked on in the command rule list for some reason, and having it checked on is enough to make driver look for it - why surveyor won't add those automatically to the KUID table is beyond me. I'm still getting the problem in the 44088 build I'm testing it in even after downloading call at, what build are you running?

[drjoe]

Build 49933

[sniper297]

Okay, I'll try it in that, I'm currently testing the latest version of the route created in TS2009 SP4 and getting unknown KUIDs, possibly the 49933 patch addressed some of that. You definitely hit me on the wrong day for selling the wonderful virtues of this piece of junk, most of my spare time over the last week has been troubleshooting problems the developers should have caught long before it ever hit the shelves.

[sniper297]

Okay, having sorted out one problem by eliminating a lot of the interactive junk that has its own script errors, put my Trainz salesman hat on again. One of the best unadvertised features is something no other trainsim has at all, a "mini dispatcher" mode.



Stop my train in a single track section, wait for the AI trains to show up. This is a typical standoff, the AI train takes control of the switch in front of him and won't let go - I can't throw the switch for the other track since he has it locked. Usual fix is for the player to back out of the stalemate to the previous double track section, but what if a following AI train comes along before you can clear the single track? Let's wait here for the following train and see.



Here he comes, set the switch for himself and locked it, leaving no place for the player to go. In other trainsims this is game over.



In Trainz you click on an AI train then right click in the F6 commands, order him to stop his train, interrupting the schedule.



That causes him to release control of the switch, now I can throw it for the other track and drive through.



Once my train is clear I go back to his and order him to continue schedule. He doesn't move yet, because;



Whatever decides priority has flipped the coin for the AI train following me, he goes first;



Once he's clear the opposing AI train moves on.

The sheer freedom of that has to be experienced to be appreciated, it removes so many limitations you can set up almost any railroad operation you can think of with a lot less trouble.

Even this;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bp46-PBsuSM

A double sawby with the player train interacting with the AI train.