I got those ole 'three quarters of the way through the route ' blues....again

[dangavel]

All the track is laid, most of the research has been completed, I've completed most of the towns roads and buildings. now its slog,slog slog, putting in thousands and thousands of trees,ground detail and the tricky cliffs that take forever to complete as I have to make new rock splines that really don't work very well in a prototypical setting as I cant really remodel hills to suit the size of a spline. Its the search for items that cant be modified due to restrictions by asset creators,or due to changes the NV3 team have made , its the process of constant referral to google earth images and measuring out sizes of gaps between landmarks and it gets me every time , my body plays up doing this final stretch repetitive work and I find myself being distracted by other things, usually I'll get over the malaise and get my mojo working again in time , but its a real drag when this happens as I would like to get this route completed and then move on.

How many of you get to this state ? does anyone just forge ahead and never feel jaded ....or.....more importantly, how many of us give up ? I've never done this yet, but i have the feeling that if I get another major corruption of a route I've been working on for many months , or if the process of uploading to the DLS produces many unknowns to routes I've updated, i might just jack it in and find another hobby that's less relentless.

 

[pitkin]

I came to the realization that my route building looks like crap. So I enjoy the routes of others, as well as writing rules and driver commands and sessions. Maybe you should just run sessions for a few weeks or months. Relax and enjoy the contributions of others.

 

[dangavel]

I came to the realization that my route building looks like crap. So I enjoy the routes of others, as well as writing rules and driver commands and sessions. Maybe you should just run sessions for a few weeks or months. Relax and enjoy the contributions of others.

Can't really do that, I've never been a person to just sit around, I have to create, but the body isn't really up to it like it used to be. I wish I could create sessions , at least its a shorter process, but whatever talents I have do not apply to this area, its too arcane a process for me to understand.
i think I put this thread up to give me an excuse not to apply more trees, there's a 10 mile stretch of forest that is on either side of west Alpine tunnel and its the hardest section of the route to complete, 3000 feet of pines on either side of the valley. I find it daunting .
I may just have to make a small route as a distraction. Non prototypes are so easy to make, you can more or less do what takes your fancy.

 

[danddhud]

Dan,
When I was working on something like my last Powder River Basin route I found when a certain area got to be a little too much, I would work on another area. Something maybe a little less demanding. That probably doesn't help, but something to think about.

 

[G.M.]

3/4 is quite good and far already for a Route
My main route (my whole country) is never finished, everyday 20000 people work to improve the dutch rail network
no way I can keep up, so its always a snapshot in time.
The fun is in the process and Trainz can do a good job.

 

[JCitron]

Welcome to creator burnout in addition to the obstacles we have to constantly workaround with prototype projects such as the ones you mentioned. It also happens because the mind runs out of energy, and we can't slog through the process to the best of our ability. When I get that, I take a break and do something else such as work on another area or project. This not only happens with Trainz.

 

[Forester1]

Dan, the reason I appreciate the routes you create so much is because you put so much work into making them look real. My efforts at route building tend to start out looking pretty good, but I tend to be so OCD about them that I just spend hours and hours and hours and make very little progress. I have to look through ALL the houses to find what I am looking for, or ALL the dirt roads, or ALL the water towers, etc. I then decide to take breaks, but never go back and start them up again, so they just sit there for years, never getting finished. I had a really good start on a route done by a local n-gauge layout here in the area, only to get stuck on how to manage the grades and getting frustrated and deleting it without backing it up. Now I have gone back and tried to recreate just what I had and find I am having a hard time making it as good as I had done originally. Big mistake with the delete! I like John's idea above, try working on another area for a while, or even another route.
I believe your routes like Uintah and Timber Ridge are true tributes to masterful route building!

 

[dangavel]

I always get like this at this point, I spent a week revamping the Timber Ridge, but I still am getting a bit worn down by the Alpine route, there are some very hard to model scree sections that are frustrating me , mainly to do with the lack of suitable assets , this makes me feel like my work is crud, cant fulfill the vision I have for the project.

I have the Willunga Railway i could work on, but that's prototypical and once again involves precise measurements and there are some key buildings I haven't got and cant find substitutes for , perhaps I'll just play with a new route that's only a few miles long just for fun .... or add an extension to the Timber Ridge .....something that I can let my imagination play with without the restraints of the prototypical route.

 

[pware]

I have the Willunga Railway i could work on, but that's prototypical and once again involves precise measurements and there are some key buildings I haven't got and cant find substitutes for

I think that you may be putting far too much pressure on yourself.

• "Precise measurements"?
• "Key buildings" that you haven't got and can't find substitutes for.

In my prototypical routes I use "rough" measurements, not precise. Google Earth gives me the distances and the bearings between locations accurately "enough" and I use the ruler tool to mark out those locations and directions on the baseboards but if, at the end of 100km of track or so, I am a few kms out then I do not worry. Who is going to take the time and effort to check? A prototypical route I released about 16 years ago had an entire line section of about 140km (give or take) set at an altitude of 0m which was up to 480m below the actual height and no-one noticed or complained.

My yard layouts are sourced from publications that give "not-to-scale" schematic track diagrams so I have to "guess" or infer the yard lengths from other clues, amongst other things. Since I now have access to a vast online archive of historic railway photographs and documents I have discovered that many of those original sources lacked "accuracy", but I am not going to unduly sweat over that.

I have never found perfect building substitutes that matched reality. I re-use the same buildings and scenery items over and over but present them to the track from different angles and use foliage and other structures (again heavily re-used) to act as camouflage. I use a fairly small set of trees, grasses, shrubs, etc. I use only 3 or 4 different road and dirt track splines, and so on.

Keeping the asset count down improves the FPS and system performance and allows me to create "high density" areas (e.g. towns) that would kill the frame rate if I followed reality and made every building, tree, fence, etc different.

Yes, this is all at the expense of historical accuracy but, as I mentioned above, who (apart from the route creator) will know? Who will even care?

For me building layouts was "therapy" from an often very stressful job and it never mattered how long a project took - my current project was started 16+ years ago. Now that I am retired I still find the repetitive mundane tasks, such as sculpting 100s kms of landscape the old fashioned way (with track splines) soothing. DEM data is for wimps!

But I still take time out for other pursuits and not all of them Trainz related.

The important thing is your own well-being. Take breaks, including long ones. Don't give yourself deadlines that can never be met.

My thoughts.

 

[frogpipe]

My latest will be the first (out of many) that I may actually "finish" but it's been very much because of a LACK of information.

I basically have toppo maps, old photos of each end, and a list of stations and mile posts. That's it.

This has allowed me to avoid yge two thigns that have hamstrung me in the past. Having so much info I get bogged down in details OR freelancing and running out of ideas.

There have been moments where I just had to press on, but it passes. Sometimes I just go fall down a YouTube rabbit hole for a bit.

 

[dangavel]

I think that you may be putting far too much pressure on yourself.

• "Precise measurements"?
• "Key buildings" that you haven't got and can't find substitutes for.

In my prototypical routes I use "rough" measurements, not precise. Google Earth gives me the distances and the bearings between locations accurately "enough" and I use the ruler tool to mark out those locations and directions on the baseboards but if, at the end of 100km of track or so, I am a few kms out then I do not worry. Who is going to take the time and effort to check? A prototypical route I released about 16 years ago had an entire line section of about 140km (give or take) set at an altitude of 0m which was up to 480m below the actual height and no-one noticed or complained.

My yard layouts are sourced from publications that give "not-to-scale" schematic track diagrams so I have to "guess" or infer the yard lengths from other clues, amongst other things. Since I now have access to a vast online archive of historic railway photographs and documents I have discovered that many of those original sources lacked "accuracy", but I am not going to unduly sweat over that.

I have never found perfect building substitutes that matched reality. I re-use the same buildings and scenery items over and over but present them to the track from different angles and use foliage and other structures (again heavily re-used) to act as camouflage. I use a fairly small set of trees, grasses, shrubs, etc. I use only 3 or 4 different road and dirt track splines, and so on.

Keeping the asset count down improves the FPS and system performance and allows me to create "high density" areas (e.g. towns) that would kill the frame rate if I followed reality and made every building, tree, fence, etc different.

Yes, this is all at the expense of historical accuracy but, as I mentioned above, who (apart from the route creator) will know? Who will even care?

For me building layouts was "therapy" from an often very stressful job and it never mattered how long a project took - my current project was started 16+ years ago. Now that I am retired I still find the repetitive mundane tasks, such as sculpting 100s kms of landscape the old fashioned way (with track splines) soothing. DEM data is for wimps!

But I still take time out for other pursuits and not all of them Trainz related.

The important thing is your own well-being. Take breaks, including long ones. Don't give yourself deadlines that can never be met.

My thoughts.

Well, some people DO care, I'm making ( eventually as I've left it on the shelf whilst i do this route ) a local railway branch and there's a whole facebook group of 700 people who live locally that are highly critical of any inaccuracies I make ,a lot of model railroaders and railfans are real rivet counters !
I do take some shortcuts, but if its possible to get it close to what it was ( especially grades ) then i don't feel I've done enough to satisfy myself , I've never been totally happy with anything I've ever made in my life, I gave up painting as i knew i wasn't good enough by my own standards, silly really as i probably could have been a fairly good minor artist if I'd have persevered , but its a terrible fault of mine, I cant slack off and just say its near enough, if i can get it to be closer to the prototype ,then i'll probably try to make the attempt.
The old South Park Alpine route is very well documented , which is why i'm having doubts I can model the palisades section to my own standards, It took me months of mucking about trying different strategies to get the Uintah finished as one section was a swine to create, did it eventually but it included a huge degree of invention on my part and it still is pretty subpar in my estimate.
However I have cut out some parts of this route near Buena vista as it was not really very interesting, the problem now is tho, that i don't really have enough room to fit in the section of the old Colorado Midland that used to go next to Buena Vista .Such is life....... take a shortcut, make more work for oneself !

 

[RHKluckhohn]

All the above, but...

Unless you make your own assets, like Tume, "close" is as good as it gets. Trainz will never encompass the universe. Don't let perfect be the enemy of excellence.

Take a break, go run a train on another route (someone else's, preferably) and look for ideas. Victrainz' Healsville has marvelous ditches that you can't do with the terrain tool. I drool. Go fishing (sure, ice fishing's in season). Go to a ball game. Then go back refreshed.

Merry Christmas & Happy Hannukah,
:B~)

P.S. Cut And Paste is our friend.

 

[pware]

Well, some people DO care, I'm making ( eventually as I've left it on the shelf whilst i do this route ) a local railway branch and there's a whole facebook group of 700 people who live locally that are highly critical of any inaccuracies I make ,a lot of model railroaders and railfans are real rivet counters !

My view is that I create routes and sessions for my enjoyment. If the "rivet counters" are not happy with my efforts then they are certainly free to create their own better versions. Let them show us how the "experts" do it.

In my long experience the overwhelming majority of users who will download your route will be more than happy with what you have produced.

 

[frogpipe]

My view is that I create routes and sessions for my enjoyment. If the "rivet counters" are not happy with my efforts then they are certainly free to create their own better versions. Let them show us how the "experts" do it.

In my long experience the overwhelming majority of users who will download your route will be more than happy with what you have produced.

I'll go even further and say those with such tendencies can NOT be satisfied. You bend over backwards til you break your back and still they are unhappy.

Applies to life beyond route building.

 

[boleyd]

I do not create routes. I modify them. I have three routes that I jump between as I make changes or substitutions. I have moved from playing with large routes to more modest 100 miles (longest track) pre-built. Usually I leave the track "as-is" and start with trees. REPLACE is much faster for the forests Then you can fiddle the local stuff as you move around the route. I do not change general elevations. I round off the razor edges of cliffs. Substitute my favorite textures.

I have been messing with several routes from the DLS for years. If I get bored with a route I can easily jump to a "fresh" one. I just modified a route that is large by doing deletions of land and then setting it up for three short-lines to run. Placing 500 houses was done. Placing 50,000 trees was done. Waterways are done. Finally doing sessions but there are always a few "touchups" to be done. So modify existing routes. You can't release the result but that avoids fixing what others find. You are totally independent.


Don't 'Build - Modify

 

[Vern]

I'm even encountering the same thing on Trainz model layouts - get so far, usually dropping the floor level or when I can't get the tunnels to form properly and in the bin it goes.

I guess some of us have been at this so long now, it just got old.

 

[Driver_Col]

I can certainly relate to that "burn out" feeling, and can offer some perspectives which might be of interest.

Perhaps you are being a little too proto-typical oriented. While the precise detailing aspects are admired, are they really necessary? My philosophy in my own Route building (and my Routes are mostly fictitious), is that I want to catch the "flavour" of the area I am modelling. I really believe that 90% of my Route users will not notice that (e.g.) a group of trees is repeated at various parts of the Route. My signaling may not be exactly correct, but who will notice? Of course there are "rivet counters" out there, but they will not impact my Route building, and if too much criticism is displayed (and it occasionally has), then my response is to advise them to delete the Route off their PC.

My bottom line is that the Route must make me happy. Beyond that is rather academic. Getting disheartened is totally counter-productive to enjoying the fruits of your labor.

Another thought is perhaps your Route is just too much to effectively manage? Are their opportunities where the Route could perhaps be split into two, and then you can focus on one part. Completing that part may give you the enthusiasm to complete the other part?

I have read a number of Posts generally around this type of challenge, and so many have just given up. This is rather sad because, not only have they wasted their time if their Route is abandoned, but they have also missed out on an opportunity to really enjoy playing with a Route of their own creation.

Finally, I have one "real" Route on DLS from a few years ago now (Leeds to Sheffield), and there is one part of the route where the main line takes a distinct right turn. It was brought to my attention by one individual that the turn should be a left turn! That route has been downloaded over 25,000 times, but that is the only complaint too date. With that situation in mind, I can only stress that your Route must make you happy. Anything beyond that is simply a bonus.

I don't know whether I have said anything that has not already been mentioned in other responses to your Post, but I sincerely hope that you can find a way through your current feelings and look forward to playing with this challenging Route. All the best. Colin (Driver_Col)

PS. It just crossed my mind that if your Route takes too long to create, then you could well be looking at adapting it to a later version of Trainz which can present a whole new wave of challenges!

 

[boleyd]

Unless you are making the route For Sale then it is strictly a form of art. Image if every artist worried about acceptance. Create to Your Taste And Perspective and offer it as your view of the xxxxx Railroad. It is art!

 

[frogpipe]

Well put.

For myself the ones that didn't survive did serve a purpose. Practice.

Just as Edison, when asked about all the times he "failed", said he discovered hundreds of ways to NOT make a light bulb before he was succeeded.

Just so long as you don't give up.

 

[JCitron]

While prototypical routes are gorgeous, and exciting, they're also a lot of additional work finding the appropriate buildings, in addition to the regular building process, unless we have a great team of content creators making the custom assets for the specific area. On one collaborative project I was working on, this became the biggest issue and when the enthusiasm ran out with the other party, I too bowed out. It was just too much work scrounging for assets to make the route work as it should. The project has been shelved for another day with the route backed up to CDPs and tucked away in my backups.

But this isn't the only prototypical route project I got involved with and each and every time I run into something that doesn't work due to some reason or another and if it isn't the assets, it's something to do with the terrain, or in general the limitations of Trainz itself. It's frustrating when laying tracks adjacent to each other on different grades and retaining walls don't work well leaving gaps underneath and don't fit well no matter how much they're tweaked. There are the height issues required and the limitations of the grid, making this even more frustrating. Sure, we're going to have a better chance with this part with the high-res terrain, but not everyone is going to have it and there are limitations to that too. The track is another issue with how it bends, twists, and divides. Switches too don't form well and Trainz complains about them being too tight, steep, or something that a tiny tweak may fix sometimes. Roads and other splines do weird things with awful floating and burying in the terrain. I've spent the past 20 years, or nearly so fixing roads and track because they float or bury themselves in the ground.

Even with the new terrain coming soon(tm), we're still going to be faced with system limitations. We're still going to have steps and bumps where there shouldn't be any and we're still going to have to deal with texture limitations. Tunnels are still going to be a joke unless we get lucky, and they manage to fit as we expect them to. In all my years of Trainzing, I've had tunnels really work like they should about 10 times. In most cases, I ended up removing them because I couldn't get them to fit in no matter what I tried with dig-holes, splines, tunnel heads, rocks, etc. PBR textures are still going to be a problem, may be less of an issue with the "new" terrain, but we can't use the new terrain everywhere because our computers will melt, so what do we do then?

Let's face it, everything we do in Trainz is a big compromise...

When it comes to running our routes, we still have limitations with dumb AI and have to compromise with our signaling and junction layouts to accommodate the idiots. I find that signaling is a combination of scientific logic and pure art when it comes to getting the AI to cooperate. I got the science part down pat but when it comes to the AI, they still cease to amaze me with their idiocy and the only solution is to put in a signal or two to get them to cooperate most of the time in places where there shouldn't be any. We go through great lengths to herd the cattle I mean AI and even more greater lengths to prevent them from going where we don't want them to go. Track marks, direction markers, path commands, strings, overly complicated interlocking towers, scripts, and all kinds of add-ons and doodads just to make the AI behave.

With that said, I've given up trying to be 100% accurate and instead like Driver_Col I focus on the look and feel. Do my plans make sense? Mostly yes, I think. After a lot of work, I gotten my original Enfield and Eastern, dating back to January 2004 operating in TRS22. With changes in operations, I've run into capacity limitations in some areas and underused ROW in others. Like a real railroad, my management team is eyeing some service cutbacks and removal of some redundant lines. I've already gone through and replaced the track with rusted rails, dirtied up the ballast and removed signals along one of them and there are more to go. On one line, I let the trees grow in completely even though the rails are still there, albeit rusting away as if the line has been railbanked for future use. On one particular line I'll go through and put more trees in to tighten up the overgrowth a bit and maybe turn this one into a tourist operation. I have to admit that the view from the train is quite nice along this one and it would be a shame to turn it into a rail trail. Like the area I'm modeling, abandoned lines are as much a part of the scene as are the active lines. Unlike real life, these lines may see a return to service at some point in the future if I want and Walmart and Home Depot won't build a shopping center across the closed ROW, and the NIMBYs won't come out to protest the line opening because the "riff-raff" will use the trains and the trains might make noise.

Operationally, I've got the route working pretty well. I've got the usual stupid AI but outside of a few troublemakers, most behave. I've gotten some good runs on the route with some operating sessions going on for 6 to 8 hours with an occasional intervention with the few idiots. Last night, I ran the Willows Point line from Eastport. On my route, Willows Point is located far east and has a harbor and good size town. This commuter run ends at Willows Point with the AI passing the station to a bumper then switching directions and returning through the station and back to Eastport. While this driver and his colleague did their turn, I did some switching around the docks and sent a small freight back to Hull yard for transfer elsewhere. This operation kept me busy for about two hours, or until I decided I had enough of it and did some fixing because I found some floating track and a few overly steep grades.

May be, we're trying too hard and we're sucking the fun out of Trainz. Trainz should be fun to use and is a hobby and not a job. When a hobby becomes too much like work, it's time to step away and do something else.