How to back up homemade routes.

[MetroNorthFan]

Hi everyone;

Since I got Trainz 2006 SP1 sometime earlier this year, I have been working on and off on a fantasy-world Surveyor route for about 6 months. Currently, it is called Halsiburg, named after the route's main city.

However I have no idea how the software organises data of this kind.

I may need to reinstall Windows at some point soon, and of course there is the standard worry of power surges, virii and whatnot, and for that reason, I keep all documents, music and videos, and other important data archived on CDs DVDs and flash cards.

I would like to commit a copy of my Trainz route to an optical RW disc or flash card. I also took a couple of bits and pieces from the download station to use in Halsiburg, I'd like to include those with any backup.

Where should I expect to find the custom route stuff on my hard drive and how can I extract this data for the purposes of making a backup?

I also have another problem.

Recently, the track direction markers and track priority markers have disappeared from my track objects menu and I cannot lay any new ones no matter what I do, though ones I laid months back appear to still be there.
Any way I can recover them?
It's important because the route uses direction-dependent double line almost universally.

Thanks in advance.

 

[AJ_Fox]

I can say what I do. I back up frequently to a pocket drive just to be on the safe side.

Cheers

AJ

 

[MetroNorthFan]

Yeah, but where are the files? I looked through my Trainz folder and couldn't seem to find them!

 

[ntesdorf]

Backup

Dear Metro North Fan

The files of your route are in the 'local' folder in your Auran folder. They can be most easily found by doing a bit of work on the route and then looking in the 'local' folder to see the 3 or 4 most recently modified files. Otherwise what you see is an incomprehensible list. Backup atleast three or four of the top files in the list as the route is held in more than one file (for some reason).
You can also go into Content Manager Plus and call up the route name that you want. When it is highlighted in the list, save it to CMP format , with a right click, putting it onto your back up media. Do both, you can't have enough backup.

As for the track business, try backing up and then re-importing the files repeatedly. Replacing your file in this way can uncorrupt some routes. The Trainz programme is large and unstable and easily corrupted by using the úndo' button. This button seems to have been included in the programme to assure that Trainz Users have sufficient grief in their lives.

Regards

ntesdorf

 

[Snec]

I was fast running out of space on my HDD so, only last week, I moved my TRS2006 from the old drive to the new one complete with all my work and additional material from the DLS.

The steps I took were as follows:

1- Copied the Auran folder, from the programs folder, to an external drive.
2- Carried out a fresh installation, to the new internal HDD, of TRS2006 using the original DVD.
3- Following installation I then dragged the Auran folder from the external drive to the programs folder now installed on the new internal HDD and allowed it to overwrite the files already installed.

VIOLA! Everything is 'as was' and works perfectly. This way you do not have to worry about saving the right files, just do the lot.

Hope this helps.
Roger

 

[MetroNorthFan]

Thanks for all the info guys

 

[MetroNorthFan]

Oh brother, I've REALLY done it this time.

Hi everyone

Since I last wrote I screwed things up big time. Well partly me partly this overly complicated setup TRS uses.

About a week ago while messing around in the Content Manager, I put something out and now every time I start TRS proper, I get told that some of my content is not committed and am asked if I'm sure I want to start Trainz.

But that's nothing.

Today I had to do a system restore as an attempt to fix another game screwed up my system. The system restore worked and so does my system but the main project I was working on in Trainz is gone - i.e. in the Surveyor Menu it's still there but when I try to load it I get an error message saying something like "you tried to start Surveyor or Driver without a map" :'( Noooooooooo

The last backup I have is an old copy of the map (the project had started out as something else so I saved the contents into a new, now damaged route and session) but that's at least two weeks old and I did a lot of work on it since then.

I also tried to reload the route from a CDP file, only to realise I had saved the session instead of the route.

Is there anything I can do to A) recover my damaged route, if sys restore didn't delete it, and B) make that stupid "content not committed" message go away?

 

[Captain_Collins]

Hi,:wave:

To commit uncommitted assets, go into CMP and click on the open for edit tab. The select all that is there and hold down CTRL and press M. This ill commit all your uncommitted assets.

System restore should not affect your files. I recommend trying this: go to (default location) C:\Program Files\Auran\TRS2006\ and delete the file called assets.tdx, then go into the cache folder and delete the file called assets.bku (this may not be present, don't worry if it isn't). Then open CMP and allow it to sit and rebuild it's database, as the files you deleted are the database files that tell CMP where all the content is. This process may take a while.

If this does not fix your problem, then you should be able to undo the system restore, recover the files, and redo the restore.

 

[MetroNorthFan]

Once again, the Auran user group to my rescue

Thanks Captain Collins, your solutions fixed both problems: not only do I have my route back, but a whole bunch of alleged faulty/missing dependencies are gone

 

[Captain_Collins]

Once again, the Auran user group to my rescue

Thanks Captain Collins, your solutions fixed both problems: not only do I have my route back, but a whole bunch of alleged faulty/missing dependencies are gone

Glad to be of service.

 

[MetroNorthFan]

Ok guys, just a couple more bugs I need help squishing then I can get on to some content questions. Apologies in advance for the long-windedness of this post.

Bug 1: I still haven't figured out where the Track Direction Markers went: I'm missing all the logical track objects Direction Marker, Priority Marker, Trackmark, Trigger and anything else of that kind is probably missing too.
I went into some other maps that came with it and have the same issues - objects are there but cannot be "grabbed" and are not in the list.
If anyone with a bug-free copy could get those and save them to .cdp or tell me where to look in download station I'd try and put them back in.

Bug 2: "Ghosts" on the route. Here there are two problems.
The first and most serious bug here is noises and sounds from things I've placed elsewhere in the route being audible in places they shouldn't be - the most common culprit the Swedish level crossings, followed by my Coal fired power plants, followed by the Airport. In some places such as quiet residential suburbs, it's really very inappropriate.
The 2nd bug is much more trivial - sometimes when I'm racing through the route in Surveyor at very high speed (which I have to sometimes because it's very big) I will see glimpses of buildings appearing randomly throughout - though only for a second or so and it disappears when I slow down or anything.

Now I'll ask for some help with the actual content of the route if I'm not being too much of a pain, apologies if so.

I'm looking to build a tram system in one of the cities at the end of the routes main line, the plan is to build the tram system on the sides of the Boulevards, the traffic lanes at the edge of the boulevard where cars don't go (they use the centre lanes). There are only two (built in to TRS) train stations that I consider appropriate for tram use - Don Station and Port Hope, but the Don station uses a curved track (so I can't use it on the boulevard) and the Port Hope station is twin track (so I can only use it off road). Is there anything in the Download station that might help?

The route is designed to be a modern, Western European style route, very well developed with the best of everything, nice buildings, electric trains and Metros, top class infrastructure etc. I don't know if I've really accomplished that, but I've definately tried and one of the things I decided at the start was to use the mgreen48 road set (the one with the dark-ish gray road, plentiful sidewalk and zillions of junction and transition types, of which I think I've managed to use virtually all of at some point or another).
But for long stretches of road connecting towns and cities that are very far apart I've found my options limited, I use a lot of boulevards but they all have sidewalks so they're not realistic for interuban use, nothing outside the mgreen48 set really "fits" even the Motorway1 set. As a compromise I use the various road with no sidewalk from the mgreen48 set. But for a region that's supposed to be wealthy and well developed that's not optimal.

I would be grateful if someone who knows how to make/modify assets could take the Boulevard with Centerline Barrier spline and make a Dual_Carriageway out of it by simply replacing the sidewalks with a yellow dash marked hard shoulder, if it can be done easily and without Intellectual Property issues. I could then use that with existing splines and junctions to add a very nice long distance road network.

3rd question: How can I tell the session which train to start with? When I go into driver, either straight in or doing a quick drive from Surveyor, it always starts over a toy train engine belonging to an experimental single-block Pine track layout that I'm probably going to cut out from the final version.

I'd like to make track switching automatic - so far I can do this for computer-driven trains (obviously) but for user driven trains, keeping to a 'drive on the left' principle, I'd like to set it up some way so that the user never/rarely has to throw a switch themselves.

Final question: In a few of months time, I will have a fully developed route: most of the tracks are laid out right now, I just have to build a couple of small cities and towns as well as quickly finish up the main city which is absolutely huge. At that point I will have done all I can with it.
But the freight system will be very underdeveloped (I've got a coal mine, two coal power plants and trains running between them, but that's about it, one airport and one seaport primarily for scenery and passenger use) and there might be other things that could use some examination like a landscape that's kinda dull in some places, logical track objects etc.
If I were to publish my final version on download station or wherever and make a collaborative project out of it, would anyone be interested in making derivative work with it? Add a freight system, tweak other things etc?

Would anyone like to see screenshots or other descriptions right now?