Help! AI can't find a path to platform even though it's right in front of it...

RobWed

Active member
I'm having some luck using track marks as a way to help the AI navigate a path through junctions. I'm not marking every switch entry and exit, just the mainline and branchline entry and exit points to a junction, a conglomeration of switches/points/whatever they're called. It appears to be working though lets see how that goes when I start to run more than one train...

One thing I'm not making any traction on is getting Kenny to stop at Auringen platform 5a. It's a dead end platform. I had to put a track mark right after the point leading to it in order for Kenny to work out how to get there but as soon as he hits the track mark he throws his hands in the air and says he can't determine a path. Which is pretty funny seeing he's right at the entrance to the platform.

I'm assuming it's got something to do with the platform being a dead end but I have no idea how to resolve this. There's an invisible 'prepare to stop' signal at the entrance to the platform and an invisible signal right on the buffer. No idea how they work. When I bought trainz, trains were something I enjoyed travelling on when I went OS on holiday. Beyond that I knew nothing about them. I've done a considerable amount of reading on German signalling in the last month but still a complete novice. And a complete novice in how to make a layout look prototypical and actually function in Trainz... Finding a guide that does anything more than state the bleeding obvious has been difficult.

Any help most appreciated.
 
Were those JTG platforms working as an industry for you? When I was driving trains around they wouldn't pick up passengers. I replaced them all with AJS invisible platforms.

Could be PEBKAC. I'll load up the original version and see how it goes. If it works then I need to work out why changing the platform impacted the routing.

I'll try and build a dead end platform from scratch. Maybe I'll learn something from that.
 
Well, you're absolutely right. Worked fine and picked up passengers. Most encouraging.

I'm guessing the reason it "didn't work" before is that I was overloading it with driver commands because I had no idea what I was doing. Drive To, Open Doors, Load Passengers, Close doors..... Typical new manager. Micro-managing...
 
Rob,

Place a Wait... command with 20 secs right at the beginning of your driver's schedules. This will give everything a chance to load before your drivers start moving.

Sometimes, it's the placement of the track marks that makes the difference. If the track marks are too close to a station platform, they can be "hidden" by the station script that will kick in even though you are not using the load command and cause weird things to happen.

If you do move track markers, you will have to re-add them to the driver's schedules. For some reason the AI will no longer see the markers after they've been moved from their position once the track marker was added to the driver schedule.
 
Thanks John! I didn't know any of the things you mentioned.

I'm keeping any track marks I add in a seperate route-layer. Trains I'm adding in the session-layer. I'm using driver commands as we go and keeping note of what does the thing (I think) I want. Eventually I'll combine all those notes into a single session. I think I need to learn something about setting signals or points as a lot of my slow running trains are because of an incorrectly set point for the path ahead.

I realised that the reason the JTG stations weren't working for me is that I was trying to use its commands and I have TRS22. The polish site that Stagecoach sent me to says they don't work for my version but that built-in commands do. So far it's going well

Schwaninger Land is a great route with lots of potential and a few oddities. Like the particular line I'm working at the moment has 3 JTG stations and three AJS stations. I like the diversity and fashion sense of Andi06's people and JTG's animated people are pretty cool. I most prefer consistency though so I'll try changing one of the AJS ones to JTG and if that goes well I'll change the lot as most passenger stations are JTG.

I'm disappointed that the xBü series of railroad crossings only seems to work as a static item. Sunk a couple of hours into them before I found a forum post that suggests the project was abandoned by the author before it was properly scripted...
 
As you are finding, Rob Trainz is a complicated program and you've only barely scratched the surface quite well mind you even though you've just started using the program recently. The two tricks I told you are something I learned over 20 years ago from the smart ones in the forums back then.

I don't think the issue is so much too many track marks, but more because some of the track marks are on the session-layer and some are on the route-layer. Technically, they should all be on the route-layer since they are part of the route infrastructure. The only time they become too many or too much of a good thing situation is when they are added to the driver schedule.

Signals are a tough thing, yet easy at the same time. I'm most familiar with North American signaling systems with a smattering of knowledge of UK and Australian systems. Polish and German signals are truly foreign to me, no pun intended.

The problem we're facing now with signals is the recent, meaning SP3 or SP4 script changes with TRS22 and family. These changes ultimately broke signals and other scripted assets and sadly with no warning from N3V other than an oh by the way, you'll find out after you've installed the update. As you know, this leaves everyone scrambling to create, update, or replace assets until the original ones are updated.
 
As you are finding, Rob Trainz is a complicated program
As someone who is a long term gamer but not a railfan, this sim is monolithic and opaque on first approach. If I wasn't blessed with a sort of cussed tenacity, and most people aren't, I would've given it away after a few days. There are some really great things in it but the approach to asset management is more problematic than complicated. Within a few days of me purchasing the sim, one of the packaged routes became faulty in the SP5 update. Routes I've downloaded are unusable because of missing assets and no coherent way to identify them. No meaningful way for a creator to know the origin of an asset once it's installed as far as I can work out. I've not experienced this level of chaos in a game that is explicitly designed to be user modded.

Today was a good day. After being pointed in the right direction by stagecoach I've had great success with these JTG xStations. Simple, quick, works straight out of the box. Interestingly enough, the second time I went to that polish website, the translation was significantly better. That helped too! I've replaced all the AJS stations on the Killerau-Auringen branchline with JTG and done a quick test run. Now if I can work out why my AI driver sometimes drives at half speed for no apparent reason. (I'm sure there's a reason. It's just not apparent to me...) Then, if I can work out how to make the destination appear on the train itself, it'll be a great day! I managed to get all the stations into a destination table but so far just Nicht Einsteigen. Fortunately the passengers ignore that instruction!

I don't think the issue is so much too many track marks, but more because some of the track marks are on the session-layer and some are on the route-layer. Technically, they should all be on the route-layer since they are part of the route infrastructure.
I shall move them there then. I was keeping them seperate as a rollback strategy but there's other ways to do that.

Polish and German signals are truly foreign to me, no pun intended.
You and me both, John! :ROFLMAO: Although compared with a month ago I'm veritably erudite!

The problem we're facing now with signals is the recent, meaning SP3 or SP4 script changes with TRS22 and family. These changes ultimately broke signals and other scripted assets and sadly with no warning from N3V other than an oh by the way, you'll find out after you've installed the update. As you know, this leaves everyone scrambling to create, update, or replace assets until the original ones are updated.
I think N3V are doing themselves a disservice by not engaging effectively with their customer base. They had an opportunity to engage with creators, keep them informed of how changes would impact. They could tell you all what they themselves are doing so assets can be worked on pre-update and disruption kept to a minimum. Communication 101.
 
The German signals are not so bad... if you take the time to translate each line in the signal config menu, and make a notecard for reference.
That's what I did when I was building my KleinStadt MRR layout. ALOT of signals on that layout, LOL.
 
The German signals are not so bad... if you take the time to translate each line in the signal config menu, and make a notecard for reference.
That's what I did when I was building my KleinStadt MRR layout. ALOT of signals on that layout, LOL.
That's funny. It's literally what I did this morning! Same with the JTG xStation assets. I did wonder if it would be quicker to learn the German because it's a pretty small vocab. So far my favourite word is Höchstgeschwindigkeit!
I've even taken to naming my trackmarks in (probably broken) German. Like "Auringen Hbf 5a Regelgleis" instead of 'Auringen track 5a Up'. I think properly the number should come last but I want them sorted nicely...
 
As someone who is a long term gamer but not a railfan, this sim is monolithic and opaque on first approach. If I wasn't blessed with a sort of cussed tenacity, and most people aren't, I would've given it away after a few days. There are some really great things in it but the approach to asset management is more problematic than complicated. Within a few days of me purchasing the sim, one of the packaged routes became faulty in the SP5 update. Routes I've downloaded are unusable because of missing assets and no coherent way to identify them. No meaningful way for a creator to know the origin of an asset once it's installed as far as I can work out. I've not experienced this level of chaos in a game that is explicitly designed to be user modded.

Today was a good day. After being pointed in the right direction by stagecoach I've had great success with these JTG xStations. Simple, quick, works straight out of the box. Interestingly enough, the second time I went to that polish website, the translation was significantly better. That helped too! I've replaced all the AJS stations on the Killerau-Auringen branchline with JTG and done a quick test run. Now if I can work out why my AI driver sometimes drives at half speed for no apparent reason. (I'm sure there's a reason. It's just not apparent to me...) Then, if I can work out how to make the destination appear on the train itself, it'll be a great day! I managed to get all the stations into a destination table but so far just Nicht Einsteigen. Fortunately the passengers ignore that instruction!


I shall move them there then. I was keeping them seperate as a rollback strategy but there's other ways to do that.


You and me both, John! Although compared with a month ago I'm veritably erudite!:ROFLMAO:


I think N3V are doing themselves a disservice by not engaging effectively with their customer base. They had an opportunity to engage with creators, keep them informed of how changes would impact. They could tell you all what they themselves are doing so assets can be worked on pre-update and disruption kept to a minimum. Communication 101.
When you move your track marks, replace them in your schedule because the AI won't find them. I ran into this issue many times because I edited in the wrong place and didn't notice. I noticed the problem when the same track marker was missing in the route editor but found in the session editor. After I got the track markers in the right place, I had all the drivers ignoring the track markers and it was a fraternity party with beer bongs flying about!

The reason why the track infrastructure is kept on the route-layer and edited in the route-editor is due to sessions being dynamic. A session can change, while track infrastructure stays the same. You can edit tracks in a session but that remains valid for that session and may or may not affect the route. The reason for this is to allow different time periods or other variations on the same route. Most people, however, will use a different route because it is really easier that way.

I've been unable to update the destination signs. I tried for a good hour or so one day and gave up.

I agree, N3V has done a disservice by not notifying content-creators ahead of time that these changes were imminent. The lack of communication has always been an issue with many things such as this. Yes, warnings can and will become errors at some point, but when the "some point" comes, let us know it's coming up rather than breaking hundreds of thousands of assets. There's a dedicated team created to update, repair and repost assets to the DLS. This small group of volunteers has waded through several thousands of assets if not more and there is still a gazillion more to go.

This iteration of Content Manager is far better than previous versions. There are many filters available and we can create our own. I only wish we could create finer detailed queries when necessary. One of the things that really helps is enabling all the columns. This will allow you to sort by name, date, type, and so on quickly.

For your route you just purchased, you may want to check for asset updates. There are plenty that came out recently that cleaned up nearly all my purchased routes except for a Russian or Ukrainian one.

To check for updated assets, I created a custom filter.

Out of Date and not packaged.
Installed = True
Out of date = True
Packaged = False.

This will pick up anything that's ready to be updated that's not packaged.

Once I run this, I change Packaged = True to Packaged = False. This will show what DLC and built-in assets are available for updates.

Downloading these is a bit different.
Right-click on these assets and choose show Asset Versions.

A new window opens and shows anything that's available for download.

Some packages may show updates available but cannot be downloaded due to those being updated to another version for the mobile platform and to hide them from the desktop versions.

I agree this is a big program but we can discuss this in another thread.
 
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The reason why the track infrastructure is kept on the route-layer and edited in the route-editor is due to sessions being dynamic. A session can change, while track infrastructure stays the same. You can edit tracks in a session but that remains valid for that session and may or may not affect the route. The reason for this is to allow different time periods or other variations on the same route. Most people, however, will use a different route because it is really easier that way.
Thanks John,
I've been wondering why sometimes when I save it only offers to save the session even though I'm made changes to the route with the route layer as the selected layer. Now I know.
I've been unable to update the destination signs. I tried for a good hour or so one day and gave up.
I worked it out that afternoon!

Add the rule DestSignTable. You can import all the industries on the route in one go. I didn't do this as I don't thing my goods trains need destination markers and my passenger stations aren't industries because I'm using the JTG xStations. There is an option to manually add a destination should I just added my passenger stations there.

Add the Driver Command; Change Destination Sign. Issue that command and you can select a destination from the table made previously. Hey Presto! No more Nicht Einsteigen! On the downside, my DMUs are no longer offering a Sonderfahrt any more... :ROFLMAO: :ROFLMAO:
To check for updated assets, I created a custom filter.
I made one day before yesterday. Essentially the same as yours but without the packaged filter. I then selected the entire result set, right clicked and selected List Asset Versions, filtered out obsolete and out of date from that result, and downloaded the lot in one go. I was under the pump as it was my last day of the FCT that was packaged with TRS22PE!! I did get two payware items that refused to update because it didn't recognise me as an owner. These were freebies on Steam so maybe that's that. Although it just occurred to me that I may have to update them through Steam or the Store... I also had one that gave an error about my registered version didn't entitle me to an upgrade but I was able to download that update later in the day so it must have been some permissions update delay or something.
 
Thanks John,
I've been wondering why sometimes when I save it only offers to save the session even though I'm made changes to the route with the route layer as the selected layer. Now I know.
Actually I just went and tested this.
Opened Edit Session on my test layout, selected session layer in the Layers window, added a switch indicator, and saved. Session was the only option. Opened Edit Route and the indicator wasn't there. Went back into Edit Session and it was there. Moved it to the route layer in the Info window and when I saved I had the option to save both route and session (makes sense!). Back in Edit Route it was there now. So it seems to me you can edit both Route and Session at the one go. You just have to be disciplined in which layer you allocate things to. If you add stuff to the session layer when you opened edit route you are essentially creating a new session.

I'm using S2.0. I think the workflow is a lot more fluid than in S1.0
 
I'm glad you figured out the destination signs. Thank you for the info on that. This will be one of the things I copy off to my Trainz How-to notes folder.

Yes, you can edit in either place, and as you found out you have to be disciplined to remember where you are. S2.0 is indeed a bit more fluid but sometimes there are things that are so much quicker via S1.0. I jump back and forth now as needed and now spend more time in S2.0 than I did before. After more than 20 years of S1.0, leaving the old comfy home is a bit uncomfortable. I work very modally, perhaps because of the old Trainz versions. In some ways it's a bit slower but in others it's more exact and is much like how I do a lot of technical things.

The lack of active layer indicator has been a bone to pick with the N3V. When N3V said they were reworking the interface, that was one of the things we asked for. Instead of looking at the layers-palette, to find out where we're placing objects, all we wanted was an indicator of some kind on the top. A simple active "layer-name" on the top bar would've helped a lot. The issue is all it takes is a phone call or some other interruption and we forget where we are.

There are some things that you need to update via the Content Store. I do that first prior to updating via Content Manager.
 
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