Has anyone solved the severe Surveyor hang problem?

[HiBaller]

I am currently running build 61388 (TS2012SP2HF4). Over the last few days, I have been plagued by severe hanging in Surveyor. Previously (say, a week ago) I had no hanging at all. Now, Surveyor hangs badly - sometimes up to 30 or 40 seconds at a time. There doesn't seem to be any disk activity during this period, though. According to my network monitor, all of the activity is between the game and Auran/N3V servers. I simply cannot fathom just what the heck is so important that it completely hangs the game until finished. In some cases, a query of some sort goes out and then the game hangs until either an answer comes back or the query times out.

As I said, this just started happening in the last three days, and to the same route I've been working on all along. Nothing has changed content-wise as I am simply working on terraforming terrain. My wife has been sitting next to me with a stopwatch in her hand and this is roughly the chain of events for a time period (in seconds):

Work----------------hang for
_________________________
37--------------------12
73--------------------38
52--------------------42
91--------------------39
14--------------------33
71--------------------129 (this was an auto-save)
44--------------------18

and on and on and on. Extremely frustrating as I barely get started when another freeze occurs.

There used to be a thread (I think) that discussed at length the various reasons why the entire game froze while background processes ground away. Is that still around, or have the participants given up --- as I am about to shortly.

When a game becomes such a unstable platform that it almost unusable, then it's time to kick it off the system and go read a book.

Bill

 

[jkinzel]

TS12 build 61388: I have recently had some of the same issues in surveyor, however I never documented any of it. A few days ago I was running/driving trains and noticed a lot of jerky movement, i.e. about every 5 to 15 seconds the game would freeze for a second or two. A few times I thought the blue screen of death was coming. Normally my computer does a good job in surveyor and running trains.

Regards,

Edit: I'm running Windows 7, 64 bit.

 

[Vern]

It's a strange one as it doesn't necessarily seem to be dependent on route size (same as terrain whiting out when you move position and not always coming back). Must be some sort of memory leak, had it happen yesterday while trying (unsuccessfully) to wire up some Russian points. This happened three or four times and on each occasion I had to Ctrl-Alt-Del out as Surveyor wasn't coming back. (And yes this was running 61388).

 

[JCitron]

Run Windows 10 Pro Insider Preview build 10074. The overall disk access speed is so much fast it's hard to believe that TS12 6138 is the same program I was running on Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 previously. Let's hope this continues as the OS is refined for release. The different buttons and categories pop open and access is quite nice. There is still a pause as TrainzUtil completes its scripts and TADDaemon reports the action, but it really is a lot faster.

John

 

[HiBaller]

Not sure it is a memory leak, Vern, as the OS (Windows 7, 64-bit) doesn't seem to be affected. If I wait long enough, the game eventually comes back. So far, there have been no 'whiteouts' and the pop-up telling me that Trains has stopped communicating with Windows, so some part of the game is still working with the OS. This appears to be some type of communications issue between my computer and N3V's servers. If I pull the network cable out, the freezing continues, but my monitoring software then tells me there is an increase of "Are you there?" packets, which still kills the game as everything stops while the requests time out.

I've done a lot of programming, especially multithreaded programming, and all I can say is that Trains is the very worst at handing threads that stall for whatever reason. This is evident when CM is started. When you do a search, or click one of your tabs, then the message that "filters are being applied" appears. Then, if you're lucky, CM will come back eventually and you get the page of info you requested. If you aren't so lucky, then you get the OS message that Trainz has stopped functioning. But, I am mostly concerned with Surveyor as that is what I use all the time.

The freezing seems to come in waves that last around a week, and then they back off for a bit. But, they always come back, hanging the game repeatedly.

Bill

 

[sniper297]

Internet connection?

 

[HiBaller]

Nope. All my other computers run just fine - as well as anything I have going in the background behind Trainz. That was my first thought also, but none of the other programs are affected. While this was going on, I set up PING to check the IPs that Trainz was trying to reach. Results were inconclusive because most of the time there are delays of up to 150-170ms to those specific servers. I really think that N3v has hitched their systems to a really rotten server farm that sometimes goes on the blink and drops packets like crazy.

Bill

 

[sniper297]

AT&T DSL, the cheap one that gets 4 megs per minute max.

That's what I have, I should rephrase the question "What type of internet connection do you have, high speed cable broadband, low speed DSL, 56k dialup?" My theory is they tested TADDaemon.exe with high speed cable broadband and never tried anything slower to see what the effect would be on the game or surveyor.

 

[HiBaller]

Ah. That makes a difference. I am on an ADSL connection through AT&T and UVerse. My download speeds are right about 15/17 Mb/sec and my uploads around 1.5 Mb/s. Speed of the Internet is not a concern as I can get to most sites in seconds if not faster.

I tend to agree with you as most up-to-date programs (and Trainz is anything but that) will run samples when started to find out just how fast the connection actually is. Mine do that anyway. If one of my programs has a downloading (or uploading) task, then I continually sample the speed and attempt larger and larger packets until max speed is reached. For a short "hi, how are you" exchange, that shouldn't be a problem. If the distant end doesn't respond right away then STOP and try again a few seconds later. What I think that Trainz is doing is holding on to the connection, even though it may be blocking, until hell freezes over, or it gets a response or times out. My timeouts run in the one to two second range as most modern sites will respond in that time frame.

The secret to multitasking a game with running checks of the Internet is to completely separate the two tasks and institute an internal flagging system to indicate that more traffic can be sent or received. In Trainz's case, it requests something from an N3V server, and waits - blocking any further operations - until it get it or fails with a timeout, which can be many seconds. Meanwhile, your poor player is sitting there twiddling their collective thumbs waiting for their game to unfreeze so they can get on with it.

Bill

 

[JCitron]

Bill,

Sorry for not getting back to this. I believe you've been a victim of the validation going on. This will cause TS12 to completely lock up as it tries so hard to operate while a background process is validating the content. Sure Mr. Windwalkr says we can do this fine, but I wonder if he every tried it. To me it's like the old video terminal days running at 110 baud. You could type and then the response would echo on the screen, eventually.

With the system so busy checking content, the process is no longer running in the background and interrupting the rest of the program operations. To me this is a bad bug that was introduced with TS12 SP1. What is supposed to be a background process is now given a higher priority which means you can't change a menu in Trainz without the display whiting out or the program freezing. In CM if you change categories, everything freezes or appears busy until the results show up a half hour later. In your case, you are also running on a bit faster than cup-on-a-string DSL. This slower connection coupled with the long validations only makes matters worse.

When there have been reports of DLS issues, before I found out the hard way myself, I've actually disconnected from the network before starting TS12. This allowed me to work unimpeded by the long validation. As luck would have it though, I'm usually not this lucky and get hit with the big validations myself.

John

 

[HiBaller]

You are probably right, John. Now, when I get ready to work on a route, I start everything up and then pop the TADDaemon open and watch it. If there is heavy activity going on, I just grind my teeth and go to my other computer and write or edit a while. I've gone back and seen as many aw seven or eight validation windows sitting there on the taskbar. Not a good sign that Trainz will run smoothly. One evening I just left the damn game running all night. In the morning it was STILL validating.

This is not the way to run a railroad.

Bill

 

[pdkoester]

here's an idea, try this... if you think it is internet related, or NV3 servers/whatever have you, unplug the cable to the network, before you launch it, and see if that makes a difference. You should be able to disable anti-virus/Windows Defender while unplugged, too.
If using WiFi, disable it.
Give some feedback, if this improves it.

Paul

 

[HiBaller]

I have tried that, Paul. What happens is that the delays are a bit further apart, but they last longer - along the order of a minute or two. Obviously, a request has been made for a server response and then it waits, tapping its little electronic feet, for an answer, which won't be forthcoming. Removing my username and password from the "internet" tab doesn''t work either because then the game pops up and asks me for it.

There just doesn't seem to be a solution to this except wait for a few days and hope that the validations go away.

Bill

 

[JCitron]

I have tried that, Paul. What happens is that the delays are a bit further apart, but they last longer - along the order of a minute or two. Obviously, a request has been made for a server response and then it waits, tapping its little electronic feet, for an answer, which won't be forthcoming. Removing my username and password from the "internet" tab doesn''t work either because then the game pops up and asks me for it.

There just doesn't seem to be a solution to this except wait for a few days and hope that the validations go away.

Bill

This is definitely a problem too because the program is checking and testing for a connection repeatedly which causes that pulsating, stopping and starting performance when not connected. I tried using a proxy, a fake one at that and it only delayed the problem for a few minutes longer because of the retries. This has been something we've asked for fixing to no avail. What should be done is simple. Check for a network, retry once or twice then give up, or better yet. Have a check box option for the user to set for "Do not check for network connection" or something like that. How difficult is it for a simple option like that?

John

 

[pfx]

I've experienced this issue in TS12 for a long time now. I'll start by saying I'd be surprised if it is anything to do with my internet connection. I have a very reliable 50Mb fibre optic connection at present and this has not changed at any point since buying TS12. I suppose that if TS12 is constantly trying to connect though, this would start to show.

I have 2 separate installs of TS12, one of which is SP1. The SP1 free version is on an internal SATA HD and hangs when I change tabs in surveyor and especially badly when switching form the spline to scenery object menus. There are also hangs when I'm moving around a route or selecting a new object from the asset menu.

The post SP1 still suffers hangs but the delays are vastly reduced, though still very frustrating, despite the fact this install is on an external drive with USB 3 connection. I have also encountered a new issue where selecting the scenery tab is crashing Trainz. I have a separate thread open in the support section for that.

 

[pdkoester]

wouldn't it be nice if there was something you can set in trainzoption text or registry to fix it? don't suppose anyone on the support group is paying this much attention as the focus now is on next Friday release of something else.

 

[HiBaller]

Hi, PFX.

The tab-changing delays are a different thing entirely. I have them too, and expect them. Mostly those delays are because for some idiotic reason Trainz reads your complete database each and every time you change a tab, or change the current content from one item to another. The bigger database you have, the longer the delay.

John: I doubt seriously if any further patches will be coming along for TS2012. T:ANE is forthcoming and every ounce of effort will be put into that, which leave their other products lying in the dust. A simple check box telling Trainz not to even try looking for an Internet connection is a simple, easy to implement, patch. But it isn't going to happen.

We will just have to struggle along with what we have - or kick Trainz off the system and go without.

Bill

 

[clam1952]

Or forget about SP1 and stick with 49922 or miss it out and go to T:ANE, what I have noticed though on checking what Tad in 61388 is connecting to is this:
taddaemon.exe 3344 TCP 49286 192.168.1.101 80 http 74.125.136.138 www-google-analytics.l.google.com <<<<<<<<<< and what is that doing there? I killed that TCP connection and Trainz was still running. Presumably something to do with the in game browser?

 

[HiBaller]

Interesting reveal, Clam. The first IP address is probably your own computer on your local network. The second is definitely a Google address. For some reason, loads of sites have jumped on the Google Analytics bandwagon. All that does is accumulate tons of statistics about where you browse and what you search for. These, in turn, are used against you to pop up ads and guide your searches to what they want you to see.

On my browsers, I have Ghostery installed on all of them. That lets me block requests to Google Analytics so they can't follow me. I doubt that would work with the in-game browser, though. I wonder if there is a way to keep that browser from doing anything.

What might be interesting is to put 74.125.136.138 into your 'hosts' file and give it a loopback to your own computer. That way, you'd only be talking to yourself and not getting out of the box, so to speak. I wonder if that would keep Trainz from waiting so long.

Bill

 

[HiBaller]

Small breakthrough. I set up my firewall so that TADDaemon had very limited access to the Internet by creating a new set of rules for it. This seemed to keep the freezes at bay for much longer periods of time. When they came, they lasted barely three or four seconds. Next, I went into 'Options' for the game (not in CM) and cleared my username/password. Although they use the same pop-up to store this info, I think it is handled differently as Trainz itself didn't complain I had no username/password - it just told me I was "offline" on the button menu.

CM starts up and immediately demands a username/password. If you ignore it (Cancel) then the red band at the bottom informs me I was in offline mode. As long as you don't click on the red band you won't be bothered by the pop-up. Of course, you cannot download anything in this state either. But, if all you want to do is work on content, then this is the best way to go.

Shutting down my network to keep Trainz from accessing the Internet is a bad idea as I have lots of little programs that need to connect to other computers in my home LAN. Killing the connection upsets them. At the moment, I can't think of a way to have my LAN remain, but stop Internet access on just my gaming computer. Windows obviously know how to do it, because it tells you 'local or local & Internet', but That is apparently a secret to us lowly users. i am sure there is some sort of flag in the Registry that does this, and I'm not afraid to mess with the Registry, but I don't know where to look.

Bill