Automatic update ruins an old asset

[legia]

I have a problem with an asset that has been automatically updated to the latest version and stopped working in the Surveyor.

I was revising an old route in TRS2006 build (version 2.6, build 3092) and after making some minor changes I wanted to archive it. But then I got an error saying that it cannot archive some dependencies, because they are missing. I was wondering how a dependency can get missing all of a sudden by itself. I found that one of assets already used, "Geschaeftshaus4" <kuid2:68787:25023:1>, is shown as located in DS not local. I was quite surprised to see that, as I haven't touched this asset for a long time. I downloaded this asset from DS, but then I found it has some errors and fails to display in the Surveyor. All places it was used are now empty. This new version replaced an old one, <kuid:68787:25023>, which does not have any errors and works fine.

So, my question is how to revert to the old version? I can delete the new version (<kuid2:68787:25023:1>), my route does not show it as missing dependency, but then I have two problems:
1/ The old asset does not show in the Surveyor, so I can't use it.
2/ I can't archive any route containing this asset or I get the same error what above.

It looks to me that once TRS2006 found the new version, it will not accept the old one, despite the new version does not work. In this case it is only a building, which can be replaced with another (although it would take much time to do it), but few months ago I had similar problem with another, build-in asset, Point Motor WH63 <kuid:33572:24000>, which had also been automatically updated to a new version, which forced me to re-install TRS2006, struggle to recover my routes from archives (which does not work 100%, but this is another story) - situation from which I still haven't recovered fully.

I wrote about it on this forum and send request to Auran technical support, but I haven't got any answer that could help me to fix this problem.

I believe that new version is not compatible with my version of Trainz and for this reason fixing errors would no help, but at least I would like to try it, if nothing else works. So, here are the errors; maybe someone already had similar problem and knows how to fix it. I much appreciate any assistance I can get.

Error: Could not load texture 'c:\program files\auran\trs2006/local/content h5yqwwld23\night/int=semitransparent'.
Error: The primary and alpha texture are not the same size for 'c:\program files\auran\trs2006/local/content h5yqwwld23\night/front2-nightalpha.texture.txt'
Error: The primary and alpha texture are not the same size for 'c:\program files\auran\trs2006/local/content h5yqwwld23\night/front-nightalpha.texture.txt'

 

[dragonharh]

its because TRS2006 is no longer supported and out of date

 

[Deano5]

First thing you need to do is register your copy of Trainz.

 

[legia]

I do have my version of Trainz registered, but there is a problem with my accounts that Auran is unable to fix. I opened two accounts, asked to merge them, asked to delete them and open one new account, they can't do it. The one I am using now is not linked, but the other one uses my real name (at the time of registering Trainz I had no idea, the name will be used on this forum).

 

[Dinorius_Redundicus]

Legia

It seems there are some textures which are meant to have transparency effects. This effect relies on a main image and another (known as the alpha) which combines with it to make some areas on the main image transparent. The size of the main- and alpha images (in pixels) must be the same for the effect to work.

I am guessing from the error message that the main images are called front.tga and front2.tga and they both need a nightalpha.tga or (nightalpha.bmp) to act as the alpha image.

Find nightalpha and use a graphics program like Irfanview to resize it to make it the same as front.tga and front2.tga

You also get this error if the alpha image is missing (the message is a bit misleading in that regard). You will either need to make it yourself or find it amongst one of the same author's other assets (quite often the same image will be used in many assets).

 

[legia]

its because TRS2006 is no longer supported and out of date

Does it mean that all my routes I have been creating for five years are rubbish?

I do not need Auran support, I do need Auran not to mess up with the content I paid for. The asset in question, Geschaeftshaus4 <kuid:68787:25023>, is build-in asset, therefore it should work even if there is no longer technical support for the version it shipped with. Auran action effectively changes ownership of its product to merely leasing it over period of time, after which your content won't work. That would be acceptable if I had a guarantee that my old routes will work in a new version. But they won't.

To illustrate this situation using a familiar example - imagine you purchased copy of MS Office to create number of documents. After 5 years all documents get errors or missing content, that cannot be fixed, because there is no longer support for the version of the Office used to create these documents. In my opinion, removing technical support should affect the utility, not the content it has been created with.

It takes long time to make an interesting route with a fair amount of detail. In my case up to few years. If technical support expires after 5 years, who is going to invest time in building virtual railroads that are already deemed to be useless at certain point of time? If Michelangelo knew that Sistine Chapel will last for 5 years only, would he risk painting his greatest masterpieces on its ceiling and the altar wall?

It is time to ask yourself a question - what is more important, Trainz program or the content you created?

 

[johnwhelan]

Do a search on the DLS for kuid:68787:25023 and pull in the original version.

I assume you're running TRS2006, Open the folder and up the version number to kuid2:68787:25023:2 then close it.

It should all work once more.

Cheerio John

 

[dragonharh]

Does it mean that all my routes I have been creating for five years are rubbish?

I do not need Auran support, I do need Auran not to mess up with the content I paid for. The asset in question, Geschaeftshaus4 <kuid:68787:25023>, is build-in asset, therefore it should work even if there is no longer technical support for the version it shipped with. Auran action effectively changes ownership of its product to merely leasing it over period of time, after which your content won't work. That would be acceptable if I had a guarantee that my old routes will work in a new version. But they won't.

To illustrate this situation using a familiar example - imagine you purchased copy of MS Office to create number of documents. After 5 years all documents get errors or missing content, that cannot be fixed, because there is no longer support for the version of the Office used to create these documents. In my opinion, removing technical support should affect the utility, not the content it has been created with.

It takes long time to make an interesting route with a fair amount of detail. In my case up to few years. If technical support expires after 5 years, who is going to invest time in building virtual railroads that are already deemed to be useless at certain point of time? If Michelangelo knew that Sistine Chapel will last for 5 years only, would he risk painting his greatest masterpieces on its ceiling and the altar wall?

It is time to ask yourself a question - what is more important, Trainz program or the content you created?

I know I lost my internet just as i posted I was adding more.

 

[legia]

Do a search on the DLS for kuid:68787:25023 and pull in the original version.

I assume you're running TRS2006, Open the folder and up the version number to kuid2:68787:25023:2 then close it.

It should all work once more.

Cheerio John

I understand you suggested to open the built-in asset for edit and in the configuration file, config.txt, replace line
kuid <kuid:68787:25023>
with
kuid <kuid2:68787:25023:2>

I did so, but after committing, this asset does not longer show in the object view window and it is not longer available in the Surveyor. It looks like since the new version has been automatically downloaded, some irreversible process took place, corrupting the build-in version.

Maybe I am not doing it correctly?

 

[Dinorius_Redundicus]

What about the trainz-build number of the updated asset? I thought it needed to be 2.6 or less for TRS2006 to "see" it as an asset. It too can be manually changed in config.txt

You also haven't said anything about that texture error. What's the story on that? Were you able to fix it?

 

[legia]

It seems there are some textures which are meant to have transparency effects.(...)

I don't think that resizing the images will help in this case. I have another asset of this kind, "Geschaeftshaus2" <kuid2:68787:25021:1>, which does not show any errors, but does not display in the Surveyor. I think the reason behind it is that this new version cannot be validated by the Content Manager Plus, because it has been modified for newer version of Trainz, 2010 or 2010 and it is not downward compatible with the version I use (TRS2006).

"Geschaeftshaus2" is not isolated incident - there are many other assets having similar problem. On one occasion I contacted asset author and I was told that Auran wants to push the new version of Trainz, but because there is little content for it, they modify old assets.

If you search DS for the name "Geschaeftshaus", you should get following results:
Geschaeftshaus1 <kuid:68787:25020>
Geschaeftshaus2 <kuid:68787:25021>
Geschaeftshaus2 <kuid2:68787:25021:1>
Geschaeftshaus3 <kuid:68787:25022>
Geschaeftshaus3 <kuid2:68787:25022:1>
Geschaeftshaus4 <kuid:68787:25023>
Geschaeftshaus4 <kuid2:68787:25023:1>

Note that in this list only the first item (Geschaeftshaus1) does not have second version - this the only one which still works in TRS2006. The others don't.

Anyway, thanks for the advice, as it can be quite useful when fixing errors in a new content.

 

[martinvk]

Since all the older objects you mentioned date from the days of UTC, they are already two versions older than your TRS2006 map. The newer vesions were updated to TC1&2 which naturally will not be recognized by TRS2006.

How did you get the updated versions of the objects? What is your Trainz version?

 

[martinvk]

Does it mean that all my routes I have been creating for five years are rubbish?
...

It takes long time to make an interesting route with a fair amount of detail. In my case up to few years. If technical support expires after 5 years, who is going to invest time in building virtual railroads that are already deemed to be useless at certain point of time? If Michelangelo knew that Sistine Chapel will last for 5 years only, would he risk painting his greatest masterpieces on its ceiling and the altar wall?

It is time to ask yourself a question - what is more important, Trainz program or the content you created?

Why, every version of Trainz will continue to work with its own content as long as you have a computer that can run the program as-is. Auto-updates to Windows or the graphics driver not withstanding. Since Trainz doesn't auto-update, it will not mess up your setup unless you change something.

 

[legia]

What about the trainz-build number of the updated asset? I thought it needed to be 2.6 or less for TRS2006 to "see" it as an asset. It too can be manually changed in config.txt

You also haven't said anything about that texture error. What's the story on that? Were you able to fix it?

The trick with the version, doesn't work. I haven't tried to fix the texture errors, because I don't believe they will solve the problem. There are other assets from this package, that do not have any errors, but they still don't show in the Surveyor (see my last post above).

The only remaining option seems to be to reinstall TRS2006 and if this does not help, remove the content folder and restore my routes from archive. But I already done this few month ago when I experienced similar problem. It took me few weeks to restore routes, because an archive (a cmp file) does not contain nested dependencies and these must be downloaded from their source again.

What makes me really upset is that by modifying built-in content, Auran effectively removes this content from the original installation. Instead of creating new version of an existing asset, they should rename this asset and allocate a unique kuid, so there is no conflict between the two. As long as Trainz do not support version control system, creating new version of the same asset will always lead to more problems.

I could purchase TS2012 and try to convert TRS2006 routes, but after reading so many negative posts on this forum, I'd rather wait.

 

[legia]

Since Trainz doesn't auto-update, it will not mess up your setup unless you change something.

Yes, it does constantly. Each time I open Content Manager Plus it pauses for few moments and displays info box "Updating database". I can't find an option to disable this function.

What happened is that I added few very basic objects to my route and tried to archive it (using CMP). Then I got the message that it cannot create archive, because some assets are not committed. I checked that nothing is to be committed, nothing is opened for edit, but one of the asset is suddenly missing and I need to get it from DS.

If this isn't a part of an update, then why I can't revert to the original asset, using "revert to original" option? Especially that this is built in asset?

I played with TRS2006 a lot for the last few years and I found it to be one of the most bugged software on my computer. I could manage to work around most of its bugs, but not this one. I love trains, but certainly not TRAINZ.

 

[shaneturner12]

It depends on what type of asset it is (built-in or local) of what you can do with it.

This is why TRS2006 users should not be downloading using CMP as there is a fairly high chance you will end up with a Trainz Classics version.

Shane

 

[Dinorius_Redundicus]

Isn't this the same sort of rubbish that happened when N3V introduced Speedtreez, forcibly obsoleting trees on existing, old-version layouts? It sounds to me that Legia has some legitimate reasons to be angry. And as for not using CMP for downloads, wasn't downloading one of the main functions that CMP was supposed to perform? We can hardly blame users if it allows downloads that are incompatible with its own TRS2006 build. That's just bad programming or some other bug in the system.

 

[shaneturner12]

Actually, it's a side effect of the non-support of TRS2006.

Other users have advised using the web-based DLS to search specifically for the older version's KUID, then downloading using the FTP option.

Shane

 

[johnwhelan]

Quote:
Originally Posted by martinvk
Since Trainz doesn't auto-update, it will not mess up your setup unless you change something.

Yes, it does constantly. Each time I open Content Manager Plus it pauses for few moments and displays info box "Updating database". I can't find an option to disable this function.

quote]

This means something different. TRS2006 database was not the most stable and from time to time it would go through the database and try to correct any internal database pointer errors it found. This is quite different to connecting to the DLS across the internet, selecting content that has a new version etc.

TS2010's internal database is a lot more stable and its the way I'd go.

Cheerio John

 

[peghorse]

Yeah... I'm really p'd off that my original win95 doesn't perform like my current win7/64 ultimate too.
Like... come on...
What software license isnt "on loan" or rented for the last ten years?
I'm tellin ya, If I can make the effort to get Anniversary, (and I wasn't even employed at the time), well......
Chide me if you see fit, and all respect to the OP, but that is the very nature of software industries.
Steam and any other wanna be's, pale in signifigance compared to TS.
I am constantly amazed just how far ahead of the pack Auran was with their model of delivery, security & licensing.
Nothing else comes even close.
Well done, well done indeed. I for one will continue to pay to play in this current model.