I havent had any experiece with PEV's tools and dont have them downloaded yet. This problem is interesting in that If I go to the config files for the 'a,stoker' missing problem, they are showing in the file despite the fact that the 'errors and warnings' say they are missing. They just dont seem to be recognised. I checked another USRA loco file and no problem, but they are just not recognised in the two kuids mentioned.
The other three are all bogey file so perhaps these locos are not ready for 2010 and need to be dumped? I emailed Ben Neal to the address on his website early last week but received no reply so perhaps he is no longer about? I havent had to run anything in compatability mode and if it doesnt work Im afraid I'm a bit like Mrscri and dump them. They should either work in native mode or they are not suitable to run in 2010. However I know there will be people out there who have solved these problems so hopefully they will respond. Cheers
There's no need to use PEV's tools for any of these errors and while running in comp mode can hide a few problems I've been able to get Ben's locos working in native mode by fixing the few errors that cm flags.
The a.stoker problem is a missing attachment point in the mesh file not the config. While PEV's programs can add attachment points to models for this I don't think it would work as the new attachment points are actually added as new attached mesh assets.
The missing point is used only as a reference for the stoker engine sounds and an existing attachment point is available in the mesh quite near to where the missing point would be located.
Edit the config.txt file by changing a.stoker to a.limback. It will now reference an existing point, Trainz will be happy and you won't notice the sound is coming from a point a few feet from where it should be.
While some may not want to be bothered fixing the few errors in Ben's models I personally think it's shortsighted. For the most part the errors are easy to correct and if you're new to the game you'll learn a few things about how these assets get put together to function correctly in Trainz.
Ben's still around and is out there doing something. He just released his latest steam loco - N&W J clalss 601 - a few months ago. I suspect he may get back to you on this but maybe not as these problems have all been hashed out in the forums many times. I don't know if he's finished school yet but I hope he does have an active life outside Trainz although with all the locos he builds I can't see where he gets the time to do anything else.
To fix the bogeys:
Hopefully you didn't mess up the bogey config file trying to add the texture data. A delete and reinstall might be advised. The bogey config.txt files don't need to be touched at all. When Bob refers to notepad he means the text editor (notepad.exe) that comes with windows. It works with ascii text files and leaves no special characters embeded in the files. You can use it to edit any of the .txt files Trainz uses.
You already created the image and texture.txt files so all you have to do is to open the asset for editing in explorer using CM. This puts all the asset files in an editing folder and opens it up in a window so you can access them. jpgs are acceptable now for image files (and for this texture, image quality is not an issue). With earlier editions only uncompressed tga and bmp should be used. The main thing to verify is that the image pixel size height and width are both a power of 2 (2,4,8,16,32,64,128,256,512,1024 ...). 16x16 or 32x32 as per Bob's instruction is fine.
Move your new image file (drag or copy and paste) into the open editing folder. The new engine_black.texture.txt file that Bob's instructions have you make also gets added to this open folder as a separate file. DO NOT try to add it into the config.txt file you see there. You should how have 2 new files in the open folder in addition to the ones that were already there.
Commit the open asset in CM and check if you get any errors.
If you want to verify things you can right click on the bogey asset in CM and click view dependent assets to see which locos use it. Then you can check the loco to see if it shows any errors or missing dependencies and then right click and view it in railyard and see if it shows up with wheels attached.
Make the same changes to the other 2 bogey assets.
Good luck,
Bob Pearson
