Ever wonder why your AI engineers do absolutely nothing?

[JonMyrlennBailey]

You command them to go somewhere (a track mark on your map somewhere) and they act like they get brain cramps.

In your troubleshooting efforts, look for missing SWITCH LEVERS on your map. AI can't negotiate them if they disappear.

They, like many other kinds of content, can accidentally be, unbeknownst to you, deleted by you while working in Surveyor, you should know.

We get mouseclick-happy and careless and make an udder mess out of our routes.

A missing switch lever is like a break in the track according to calculations for navigation done by AI. It causes confusion all over the map.

Besides, you don't want a lever-less junction you can't set anyway.

The switch lever is how the junction is given its name in the first place.

 

[JCitron]

Yup I've had that happen more than once.

In T:ANE and TS12 SP1 HF4 it's not as bad, but in earlier versions if you added a spline point to the tracks, the trackside assets would disappear. We'd see this and put new ones in place, thinking they went off to bit heaven somewhere wherever computer stuff goes.

Well that wasn't the case, as we thought...

One day I was editing and fixing an old route I had worked on over the years. As I walked along the route, fixing this, fixing that, I kept finding trackside stuff like signals and bridge abutments out of place. I'd delete them and continue on. When I reached a bridge, there was a signal and a speed limit sign. Hmmm.... I must've placed these too close to the bridge, which I have done more than once, or so I thought. I deleted the signal and another appeared in its place, I deleted that one and then another appeared. This repeated about 4 times then finally the signals were removed... I thought this was a bit odd. The speed limit signs were worse with maybe two dozen all stacked up on each other. The bridge abutments too, there were 3 of them all on top of each other.

After clicking away and clearing the mess, I moved on and found more of the same at each bridge and at one point switch levers out of place along with some bumpers all at the end of a line.

Hmm.... A bit later it occurred to me that when adding in a spline point on the tracks, caused the trackside objects to not disappear, but instead to lose their reference and move to the end of the track spline! The behavior was as if the track was a string of beads and one end was picked up and all the beads ended up at the bottom. I reported this behavior to N3V and the fix got done in the SP1.

 

[cascaderailroad]

I can use trackmarkers, direction markers, and train priority markers; to guide an AI train over hundreds of miles of track, through hundreds of turnouts, through many complex interlockings and slipswitch's, all named: `

A turnout does need to have a lever or switch machine, and it does need some sort of name, ie: `

You can name all your junctions the same name, using the smallest, least obtrusive, KB charactor, the: `

AI does NOT need exact different junction names to know which junctions to throw for a desired path.

You can place a train priority marker, so only passenger trains (priority1), and freight trains (priority2) will go down that priority track (you have to manually set and configure using the ? button, to set what priority a train is ... 1, 2, or 3)

You can place a track direction marker on a turnout leg, oposing a trains path, so that it does not enter an undesired turnout leg

You can give a train a complex list of trackmarkers, like pigeons following a never ending trail of breadcrumbs (but this is least desirable as you trackmarker picklist soon becomes much to long)

Again, use trackmarkers, direction markers, and train priority markers, as the later 2 don't even need names (trackmarkers do need to be named though)

http://www.computerhope.com/jargon/b/backquot.htm

` AKA: Acute, Back quote, grave, grave accent, left quote, open quote, or a push

Alternatively referred to as an acute, grave, grave accent, left quote, open quote, or a push, the back quote or backquote is a punctuation mark (`). It can be found on the same U.S. computer keyboard key as the tilde.

Tip: Although not as common as the above uses, the back quote is also sometimes referred to as a back prime, back tick, birk, blugle, quasiquote, and unapostrophe.

 

[llebrez]

You set one AI consist to run somewhere in the route. Try it and set invisible signals, points and all, close to perfection. And it runs very close to ideal. Now you get carried away and start adding more consists up and down. A horse carriage, a plane, a boat and more trains. When you get to 20-30 consists, the AI acts quite stupid. Definitely not as when you had a few. First thing you think is the power of your computer. Not so easy: I run a quite high end machine (Z170, Lots of RAM, SSD and all), and it does the same. It is the software, period. Leads me to believe that a basic chess program can do better. You are welcome to re-create all this.

 

[JCitron]

You set one AI consist to run somewhere in the route. Try it and set invisible signals, points and all, close to perfection. And it runs very close to ideal. Now you get carried away and start adding more consists up and down. A horse carriage, a plane, a boat and more trains. When you get to 20-30 consists, the AI acts quite stupid. Definitely not as when you had a few. First thing you think is the power of your computer. Not so easy: I run a quite high end machine (Z170, Lots of RAM, SSD and all), and it does the same. It is the software, period. Leads me to believe that a basic chess program can do better. You are welcome to re-create all this.

This isn't unexpected giving the complexity of the program. Remember we're dealing with what are called events in the program which affect each other. When we load up a session, the program is not only keeping track of our AI drivers we've added, it's also watching an tracking the activity of all other interactive-type assets. These assets include switches and their status/position, signals and their events that they trigger, triggers in general and their branches, track markers, direction markers, speed limit signs, interactive industries, the consists including their positions, contents of loads if there are any, and many, many other things such as additional scripts we may add through rules and driver commands.

Our additional rules and scripts add in another layer of complexity because they are outside of the realm of the program developers themselves. Many of these scripts are old and need to be reworked and updated. This too is on the to-do list and hopefully as time goes on these issues will be addressed as well.

Overall this issue isn't going unnoticed by N3V, and the Trainz Dev has been testing some things related to this, though I am not at liberty to release any information on this at the moment. When will these changes be implemented, it's hard to say since this is all in the development stage at this point.

 

[Vinnie264]

You command them to go somewhere (a track mark on your map somewhere) and they act like they get brain cramps.

In your troubleshooting efforts, look for missing SWITCH LEVERS on your map. AI can't negotiate them if they disappear.

They, like many other kinds of content, can accidentally be, unbeknownst to you, deleted by you while working in Surveyor, you should know.

We get mouseclick-happy and careless and make an udder mess out of our routes.

A missing switch lever is like a break in the track according to calculations for navigation done by AI. It causes confusion all over the map.

Besides, you don't want a lever-less junction you can't set anyway.

The switch lever is how the junction is given its name in the first place.

Posting about the missing junctions/self deleting junctions - If this is a layer issue, (which, IMO, it sounds exactly like what I dealt with about 2-3 years ago) keep reading post. If I'm just drunkenly rambling on about nothing, then just never mind me. I am also unsure if this all is the case in TANE, which, IDK if you're using that or not, but I know I had these problems a few years back in tz12.

Some helpful hints:
N3V's idea with the session layer and route layer can sometimes screw with layers. When You throw one down on the session layer, it will delete. Ensure that it goes directly to the route layer.

"How?" might you ask?
When you go into the switch stand, hit the "?" in the toolbar thing. Then click the switch, and it'll prompt up a menu, where you can name it, etc. On the upper right hand corner, it'll say "Session-Layer" or "Route-Layer", unless you've named all your layers, in which case, they'll be in that list as "XYZ-Layer".
Make sure that both of the boxes are set to route-layer.

Personally, I just do all my trackwork, etc. for the time being, and then merge the session layer to the route layer. Warning tho, make sure none of the consists are on the route when you do this, or else you have to go through and do the same thing as I mentioned before with the switches, except with the consists being set to the session layer.

 

[JonMyrlennBailey]

Posting about the missing junctions/self deleting junctions - If this is a layer issue, (which, IMO, it sounds exactly like what I dealt with about 2-3 years ago) keep reading post. If I'm just drunkenly rambling on about nothing, then just never mind me. I am also unsure if this all is the case in TANE, which, IDK if you're using that or not, but I know I had these problems a few years back in tz12.

Some helpful hints:
N3V's idea with the session layer and route layer can sometimes screw with layers. When You throw one down on the session layer, it will delete. Ensure that it goes directly to the route layer.

"How?" might you ask?
When you go into the switch stand, hit the "?" in the toolbar thing. Then click the switch, and it'll prompt up a menu, where you can name it, etc. On the upper right hand corner, it'll say "Session-Layer" or "Route-Layer", unless you've named all your layers, in which case, they'll be in that list as "XYZ-Layer".
Make sure that both of the boxes are set to route-layer.

Personally, I just do all my trackwork, etc. for the time being, and then merge the session layer to the route layer. Warning tho, make sure none of the consists are on the route when you do this, or else you have to go through and do the same thing as I mentioned before with the switches, except with the consists being set to the session layer.

I naturally try to keep everything in the ROUTE layer as much as possible. I see no reason for switch equipment content to be in anything but the route layer. Once, I had an issue with bridges disappearing on my map. It seems as they got assigned to the camera spheres layer for some strange reason.