Does the earth move for you?

[rhban]

Even going back to Trainz, if you did major earthworks in one part of your route, there was a chance that it would affect the ground elsewhere. Now in trs22, it seems much worse, but still, we can cope with roads and track buckling upwards or downwards. What seems worse in 22 is the effect on tunnels and bridges. It seems they are affected not just by earth movements, but also be changes in effect levels. Now, when a tunnel loses its roof, it's not a major issue to cover it up again, but when you have a long viaduct over ground of varying height and over a river or two, the correction is quite major. What makes it worse, it often happens hundreds of kilometres from where you have been working, so you don't notice it till you start following you trains again
Bit of a pain.

 

[JCitron]

It is a pain. What you need to do is lock the splines, meaning roads, tracks, fences, and their ilk into place by clicking on the adjust height tool and then clicking on the spline point.

The spline point, in Classic Surveyor will turn from white to yellow. I'm not sure what happens in S20. Once you lock track and roads into place, you many need to adjust the terrain to ensure that these objects aren't floating above, or sometimes buried under ground where they're not supposed to.

 

[rhban]

It is a pain. What you need to do is lock the splines, meaning roads, tracks, fences, and their ilk into place by clicking on the adjust height tool and then clicking on the spline point.

The spline point, in Classic Surveyor will turn from white to yellow. I'm not sure what happens in S20. Once you lock track and roads into place, you many need to adjust the terrain to ensure that these objects aren't floating above, or sometimes buried under ground where they're not supposed to.

Adjust Height tool? Is that Surveyor 1? It took me a long time to adjust to S2, but I don't think I'll be going back now.

 

[JCitron]

Adjust Height tool? Is that Surveyor 1? It took me a long time to adjust to S2, but I don't think I'll be going back now.

Unfortunately, with S20 it's difficult to see whether your tracks or roads have been locked in place. If the spline nodes were bigger and changed color, that would be a big help. You could try doing something in S20 to do the same thing, so good luck with that.

 

[Tony_Hilliam]

Ground, tracks and bridges should only move when you expect them to (e.g. using a "smooth under selected" tool etc). If it happens, it's definitely a bug. If you're able to reproduce the steps that cause things to move when you're not expecting it, please submit a bug and we'll fix it. Please include ALL the steps required.

I should note that is highly unlikely that doing something in one area affects something hundreds of km away as that data isn't loaded at the time (so can't be updated, even accidentally). A more likely explanation is something that was edited in the local region, but we'd still need to understand all the steps required to reproduce the problem.

I realize things may appear mysterious, but I can assure you there will be a pattern involved. The challenge is to eliminate variables until you find the pattern. This may include things like moving your camera to another location and then coming back, or possibly working in different layers and saving changes in a session layer, then reloading the route layer (which would then be missing the session data changes).

 

[rhban]

Having looked into it a bit more, it mainly seems to affect bridges over water after I have changed the water effect level somewhere, but often quite a long way away. Nevertheless, water level should not affect tunnels, so the whole thing is a bit weird. Doesn't happen all the time - just enough to be annoying.

 

[JCitron]

Having looked into it a bit more, it mainly seems to affect bridges over water after I have changed the water effect level somewhere, but often quite a long way away. Nevertheless, water level should not affect tunnels, so the whole thing is a bit weird. Doesn't happen all the time - just enough to be annoying.

Are you using splines as I initially thought or are you using fixed-track bridges (scenery items)?

The scenery-type bridges will move if you adjust the ground under them because they sit right on the ground unlike splines which can be adjusted to float using a locked spline height.

 

[rhban]

Are you using splines as I initially thought or are you using fixed-track bridges (scenery items)?

The scenery-type bridges will move if you adjust the ground under them because they sit right on the ground unlike splines which can be adjusted to float using a locked spline height.

It's not the bridge that moves but the ground under them - the space fills up - I rarely use Scenery Object bridges and certainly not in the route I am currently working on. Of course, the supports do move upwards too, and unfortunately I have to add supports under most bridges as there are almost no bridges currently available that will span any valley more than a few feet deep and have their "feet" touch the ground. But what really gets me me is the covering of tunnels disappearing, leaving the "tunnel" in a deep trench. These tunnels are vaguely near affected bridges, but not exactly close to water and certainly above the water level.

 

[rhban]

I have discovered that I do, in fact, have at least one bridge that is not a spline, and the bascule bridge not only moves whenever I change the water effect level, but also moves quite alarmingly when I use the track smoothing tool - went from level 10m to 21m and I'm not even sure why. All adds to the fun or headaches.

 

[JCitron]

I have discovered that I do, in fact, have at least one bridge that is not a spline, and the bascule bridge not only moves whenever I change the water effect level, but also moves quite alarmingly when I use the track smoothing tool - went from level 10m to 21m and I'm not even sure why. All adds to the fun or headaches.

The bridge moves because it's really no different than a building or some other scenery object. Raising or lowering the terrain, will cause the bridge to move.

You are saying the new goopy water will cause fixed objects to move? That's not good but good to know!

 

[rhban]

Not only moves things, but because my route is more or less based on a long river that doesn't start changing height for a long distance, a slight change in effect layer water level affects object at a great distance away. Quite disconcerting when I thought it was earthworks that was doing it.

 

[n3v_laurence]

Water Effects Layer are the same as TurfFX or Clutter, there is no connection from it to the ground height. Adjusting of the water height in Water Effects Layer should have no bearing on the ground or scenery assets.

Be sure that you are not accidently adjusting Ground Height instead of Water Effect Height when using S20 tools.

If you have repro steps of water effect edits impacting the ground, please submit a bug report https://n3vgames.typeform.com/to/xRdryu

 

[pware]

Just to add my 2c to the above. I am having no problems in moving or shaping the water layer in S20. The ground height and other objects are not affected in any way.

 

[Paulsw2]

Are you using splines as I initially thought or are you using fixed-track bridges (scenery items)?

The scenery-type bridges will move if you adjust the ground under them because they sit right on the ground unlike splines which can be adjusted to float using a locked spline height.

Yes John, this is such a pain! Am I right in thinking that even scenery assets in a locked layer will still move if you change the terrain? A pity we can't lock their height like we can we can with splines!

Unfortunately, with S20 it's difficult to see whether your tracks or roads have been locked in place. If the spline nodes were bigger and changed color, that would be a big help ...

Only up to a point John - the great thing about S2.0 is that we've escaped the 'spinning spline circles of hell' that made detailed adjustment of high spline areas so difficult!

Paul

 

[rhban]

Water Effects Layer are the same as TurfFX or Clutter, there is no connection from it to the ground height. Adjusting of the water height in Water Effects Layer should have no bearing on the ground or scenery assets.

Be sure that you are not accidently adjusting Ground Height instead of Water Effect Height when using S20 tools.

If you have repro steps of water effect edits impacting the ground, please submit a bug report https://n3vgames.typeform.com/to/xRdryu[/QUOTE

I was assuming it was the effect level, but I suppose I do water and ground at more or less the same time - obviously not in the same movement, but with my oceans, for example, I use the brush to set ground level at -15 and water level (previously at -9, but now) at +2 to get rid of the "cliff" at the edge of the boards. So, I see now how I was confusing effect level and ground level. Even so, the bridge thing and the tunnel thing has been happening at a very large distance from where the level changes were made, and occasionally while I have been "repairing" one bridge another gets re-"done". I still don't understand how tunnels have their roofs removed.

 

[rhban]

Just to add my 2c to the above. I am having no problems in moving or shaping the water layer in S20. The ground height and other objects are not affected in any way.

OK, I think I have finally got to the bottom of the problem:
Yes, water does affect a lot of my bridges, but not as I thought. This is because rail and road bridges have not been updated as they were towards the end of TANE, so that most of them only have footings suitable for very shallow valleys. Since I am not competent enough to know how to change the settings, I have to supplement the short footing by adding "legs" - usually the most useful Misc Support Tower. When I change the Ground Level under my rivers (which I usually do when I change the water effect layer level), my added supports are moved.

The real reason I was getting the land under bridges or over tunnels affected was selection:
whatever part of Surveyor 2 does the selecting, whether with eye dropper or just clicking on it, it obviously hates scenery spines and, to a slightly lesser extent, track and will do its level best to choose the underlying grass or ballast that is underneath. Consequently, when trying to make changes to roads or rail, one is tempted to multiple click on them to try to get them to light up. What I never realised before is that double clicking on road or rail will select an immensely long piece - multiple sections, perhaps even the entire length - and so sections of road or rail get ground placed under them in places I didn't want. Is this feature even documented? I only noticed it by accident.

 

[pware]

One of the "issues" with using the eyedropper to identify and select objects is that in a typical scene the area under the dropper will have ground textures, splines, possibly effect layers and even some scenery assets that can have a larger than normal effect radius. So you have no way of telling what the tip of the dropper is actually pointing at.

However, there is a solution. The Asset Palette has filters which can restrict the dropper to only "seeing" certain objects.

See https://online.ts2009.com/mediaWiki/index.php/How_to_Use_S20_Palettes#The_Assets_Palette