Ground textures not appearing

P

Pendolino

Cab mode weirdo
Hello, fellow Trainzers,

some days ago, I (and other teammates) received an updated version of a route we are developing.
None of us had MKs, so we thought everything was fine, but... only on my PC I saw the route properly.
Three other playtesters reported that some areas of the map only showed the basic yellow grid with the grey background, and sent these images to me:

campi5.jpg


campi7.jpg


We were puzzled, since our Content Managers did not report any missing kuid.

Another playtester added the Mini-Map window to the screenshot, and the empty areas clearly appear as textured areas on the Mini-Map (but not in Surveyor), as you can see in the image below.

campi6.jpg


I opened the route in my TS2010, then I got the KUIDs of the textures covering the two fields with the "Get Texture" tool.

Missing_campi1.jpg


Then, I selected the route, then I tried to locate the two textures among the dependencies: they are not there, and there is no content from that author in the route, according to Content Manager.

Missing_campi4.jpg


I subsequently tried to reverse the issue: selecting the two textures and asking for "Dependant Assets", the route is not listed.

In the kuid-table of the route there is no trace of these (and of other textures not appearing).

Since the textures appear on the map (provided the player has them installed beforehand) and on the Mini-Map the areas appear to be covered with textures (even if the player has not the textures installed) I suppose that something goes wrong when the kuid-table is written. I suppose this happens when the route is saved in Surveyor.

Unlike traincars or other objects, where dependencies are anyway written in the config file of the object, maps store this information somewhere else. Yesterday, I read 13 pages of the forum, looking at all the threads with "texture" in the title. I found some similar cases, but when the cause were missing, faulty or obsolete textures Content Manager always reported that there was a problem. I also found a post from Geophil, stating that texture information for every map node is stored in the GND file, but I am no computer genius and I was absolutely unable to understand its contents (I hoped I would find a nice, ready-to-be-copied, list of the KUIDs contained in the map :D)

Additional information:
- the overall number of textures used in the route is 163, well below the old 2006 limit of 256 texture per route, so I don't think this is the cause;
- all the involved playtesters performed an extended database repair before opening the route in Surveyor;

Can someone please help me to understand how can we solve this issue?

Thanks in advance.
 
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I had that happen once, a texture I used in the route was not in the KUID table. So I opened the route for edit, sprayed the ground with that texture, then saved and exited. Back to content mangler, now it was listed in the KUID table.
 
"It's a known issue - textures are not added as dependencies for a route, so must be checked manually."

What?!

Select a route in content mangler for TS2010, right click, view dependencies, view in main list. Sort the list by type and see how many of the dependencies are "Textures" (Environment)". Aside from that one time glitch, all the ground textures I used in my routes were added automatically to the KUID table in the config.txt.
 
That's the experience I've had so far, with both TS2009 and TS2010. I haven't been able to test it in TS12 yet as it is currently installing.

Shane
 
This is a known and on-going issue with TS10 and silly little 'proofs' with half a dozen textures in no way alter that fact.

TS10 DOES NOT correctly save ground texture kuids to the route config's kuid table.

A little background might be in order: All the actual texture data is saved to the route's gnd file, this is the file that tells the route what texture to use, where to use it, what magnification etc etc.. That info is then supposed to be summarized to the config kuid table. The kuid table is the reference used by Content Manager when comparing available assets in an individual install to required assets in a new route. CM looks at the kuid table to see what it needs, then looks at the installed content and basically ticks things off, then goes looking for the rest.

Now here's the problem. Because the gnd file is perfectly in order the route will display a ground texture already installed even if the kuid is not listed in the table. Say your route uses <Kuid:123:456>. You send the route to two testers. Tester 'A' by chance already has the texture so it displays as it should in the route and all is good. Tester 'B' however doesn't have the texture already installed, shows no missing content, but has grid all over the route. The temptation is to write this off as a 'local glitch' because two out of three ain't bad so the route must be 'right'. It isn't.

The fix is laborious. The final release version of the route MUST be imported into a virgin install of TS10. All content for the route is downloaded and installed. the route must now be manually crawled over and all missing textures identified and manually added to the kuid table WITHOUT EVER RE-SAVING THE ROUTE. That's really important. If you discover a route glitch at this stage you have to do it all again. Why? Because with each save of the route the ground textures included and excluded from the kuid table will be different. This is easily proved. Save a large route half a dozen times using 'Save As'. Go into CM Look at the kuid count for the route. It will be different for each save. The difference is ground textures noted in one save and not noted in other saves and if the kuid count is different then the textures included and excluded in each save must be different.

Once you have decided that THIS is the release version and done the texture thing any new route save means you gotta do it all again.

I did it three times on EVWR because we kept finding little glitches. The final save has 24 textures identified and added manually. Then Doug found a little signal glitch. It ain't fixed LOL - it will be fixed on V2, but it wasn't worth doing the texture thing AGAIN.
 
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Possibly it's something to do with the numbers, I just looked at Chicago Metro 3 and there are only 41 textures listed in the KUID table. Every time I made a new version or updated one I saved to CDP, then imported into a virgin copy of TS12 to test, only had one ground texture that failed to get added to the KUID table that one time.
 
Even going back to TRS2006, Surveyor was dropping textures even off the developer's own working copy (had that with my Mallaig route). It could be memory related as most recently I had a large route I was working on dump most of the textures from a whole corner of the map which I eventually reckoned was down to lack of virtual memory due to Trainz auto-backup having gobbled up all of my HD space.
 
Thank you all for your exhaustive replies!

We have tried all the methods you suggested; unfortunately we got mixed results: the number of dependencies varies from one save to the subsequent one... :(.

We have obtained the best results following this procedure:

Suppose you have a route named "MyRoute" where textures do not appear and are not listed as MKs.

1) Create a route consisting of single, empty baseboard;
2) Merge the route "MyRoute" into the single baseboard route;
3) Save the route created in 1) and enlarged in 2) as "MyRoute-v2"
4) In CM, ask for the dependencies of "MyRoute-v2": the texture not showing in the original map and not listed as MKs shall be there;
5) Select "View config" and copy the "kuid-table" of "MyRoute-v2";
6) Paste the "kuid-table" you just cut in the config.txt of "MyRoute". Now you can send the route to the playtesters.

The issue seems to be related with the size of the map: the route I referred to in the opening post has approximately 130 baseboards, and we also had the same problem with the beta versions of the Donner Pass (which is much, much greater).
 
The 'Merge' thing will work some times. In fact doing anything that makes the program 'focus' on ground textures will get most textures into the table. We have tried merging, large scale texture-swaps and half a dozen other approaches which sometimes get most of the textures into the list but nothing is bombproof.

The other thing you need to do is make sure every new version of the route goes into a clean install of the program. If it isn't a clean install then you have no way of being sure you DO have all the textures in the kuid table. As testing goes on your testers will gradually build up a full set of route textures and the grid will not be visible even if the kuid table is incomplete.....

Andy :)
 
Excellent thread with well-written explanations. Scary that such a fundamental problem still exists and is never talked about by N3V. I'm sort of glad i don't make layouts anymore, it would drive me insane.

Just a side remark, but it's interesting that Pendolino's best solution (involving a merge with a single blank base-board) is the same sort of thing that fixes elevation anomalies such as ridges and trenches that appear along the borders of base-boards in ground formed by merging smaller routes. Again a bug in the .gnd file seems to be at the heart of it.
 
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