May I edit a route but NOT lose any saved Driver Sessions

[JonMyrlennBailey]

associated with it?

I understand that any Session that is edited in Surveyor may be retained following any route edits by selecting "do not save session" when saving the route.

But what happens to any activity saved in Driver following any route editing?

I just spent three hours in Driver before discovering a boo-boo on my route.

What I did in Driver was quite tedious. Setting all the AI schedules in motion. I have 5 AI trains, 10 AI horse wagons, a AI speeder and 1 AI MOW truck. My goal is to have AI driven vehicles evenly spaced all over the map so timing is critical.

I also have 5 helicopters and 7 jet planes on two separate closed loops. The aircraft are in line and follow one another over the loop. These drive continuously but I space them out time wise. The helicopter loop takes 25 minutes to complete 1 lap so I command each bird waiting in line to take off by issuing "Drive" at 5 minute intervals to keep these scenery aircraft evenly spread out. Jet planes are each started to land/takeoff about 6 minutes 43 seconds apart on the jet loop which is about 50 minutes long per lap.

The scheduled AI trains are also started about 15 to 30 minutes apart to keep them spread over the map more or less evenly. I am trying to keep AI-driven traffic from bunching up.
It is more interesting to see a scenery vehicle passing by occasionally as I drive my own train by hand than see too many coming close together one after the other.

I don't want to go into Surveyor and make a minor edit to find out all that time-consuming Driver work I did above will be lost. I just need to re position a blow-horn-once trigger that is right at the switch lever. The loco failed to blow the horn during an AI test run following my initial AI vehicle setup in Driver since it is too close to the junction. The track trigger has to decisively be placed on one track or another instead of the point where two tracks converge or AI gets confused.

All the AI vehicles on my route serve as moving scenery. They are to work passively as I run my own trains by hand in Driver. Of course, I have to contend with AI trains near junctions and signals where my hand-driven trains are running. This is part of the driving challenge and realism. One trains does not make an entire railroad.

Speaking of saving Driver activity, can Driver activity be backed up on CDP as well as Routes and Sessions?
Can Driver activity (the state of the game played in progress) be saved only to the UserData folder?

Driver activity is what you are asked by the prompt for your permission to save upon attempting to close Driver by stating "Do you want to save game?"

 

[JonMyrlennBailey]

Update

Apparently, this won't work as I tried something as a quick experiment.

I loaded up an older route/session from CDP.

I did a quick Driver test. I pulled a locomotive out of the engine shed about 50 feet and saved the game as Test Drive.

I went back and made a simple edit to the associated route. I moved a wheelbarrow from the left side of the track to the right side and saved the route without saving the session.

I went back and opened Test Drive up in Driver.

The locomotive was 50 feet out of the shed but the wheelbarrow was back on the left side of the track again as it was originally.

It seems as when one saves the state of the game, all original route/session content created in Surveyor follows the state of the game.

It seems that once game play is started and saved, the route/session content that lead to it is etched in stone.

Reopening the game in Driver won't reflect any new changes made in Surveyor. :'(

 

[PEV]

If you edit a route that has saved sessions in TANE, the saved sessions, generally, won't work correctly.

 

[JonMyrlennBailey]

If you edit a route that has saved sessions in TANE, the saved sessions, generally, won't work correctly.

I am not sure if a saved Driver game in TS12 works correctly either after an edit to its associated route.
The locomotive was in the correct spot to where I parked it in Driver, but the wheelbarrow was in the wrong place.

Yet, another mickey mouse Trainz weakness.

Trainz is rigid by design and not flexible enough to conveniently edit after you start driving on a route.

Trainz lacks total user convenience. Trainz is not smart.


Case in point, I can drive my car on a highway from San Francisco to New York and stop in Denver overnight to sleep in a motel. A truck might drop a rock on this same highway near Chicago and leave a small pothole. A highway crew might fix this pothole in one hour. I can still continue my trip to New York without having to start all over again in San Francisco on account of this road repair on the spur of the moment.

Not so in Trainz. I have to start my drive all over again from square one should I need to fix a switch frog that is out of position or fix a track trigger that doesn't work for some reason. I just can't stop the locomotive, fix it and continue on.

Trainz lacks "editing on the fly". The ability to make minor route fixes while driving and save everything as I go.

 

[shaneturner12]

Jon - I think you will find that's the case with most programs nowadays. They work on a set of instructions and do not expect things to be changed mid-run like that. Also, in the case of saved driver sessions, one should never expect them to work if the route itself has changed as it can mean structural changes.

Shane

 

[JonMyrlennBailey]

I understand, Shane. A highway in the real world is made of real concrete, not digital data. Road work on I5 northbound might slow down traffic on I5 northbound but not stop every car in the world dead in its tracks. Trains, railroad-wide, on Union Pacific just don't all stop or magically vanish into thin air altogether because one switch is being repaired.

Being human, it is much easier to think in terms of the physical world than think in terms of something abstract like digital data. The human mind does not relate to computer science very well. Computer science is unnatural unlike physics and biology.

 

[Smitening]

Sadly you cannot. It woudld make my life a lot easier too, believe me. The reason you cannot is simple: You cant change a part of it without technically making a whole new route. For example, what if you deleted a piece of track that a train was resting on? Or even just moved it. Then the game wouldn't know where to place the train when you booted up the saved session again, and you'd end up with a lot of larger issues then having to redo your session.

 

[pware]

In TS12 you cannot edit a saved Driver session - imagine the chaos if you deleted a section of track that happened to be occupied by a train at that precise point in time in the saved Driver session.

I cannot speak for other builds of T:ANE but in build 80345 I have been editing the layout (route layers) of a session which has saved Driver sessions then restarting the saved Driver session and continuing on from that point with the alterations in place and visible on screen. At the restart you are given a warning that changes have been made and that the session may not complete or work correctly.

The changes I have been making are mostly to textures and terrain but I have also deleted or moved the odd scenery item. I have not, so far, seen any problems.

 

[JonMyrlennBailey]

In TS12 you cannot edit a saved Driver session - imagine the chaos if you deleted a section of track that happened to be occupied by a train at that precise point in time in the saved Driver session.

I cannot speak for other builds of T:ANE but in build 80345 I have been editing the layout (route layers) of a session which has saved Driver sessions then restarting the saved Driver session and continuing on from that point with the alterations in place and visible on screen. At the restart you are given a warning that changes have been made and that the session may not complete or work correctly.

The changes I have been making are mostly to textures and terrain but I have also deleted or moved the odd scenery item. I have not, so far, seen any problems.

It depends what content you are editing. If one simply wants to relocate a track trigger to sound the horn or bell for AI mode, this should not cause chaos since it does not affect the place, speed and time of train vehicles operating in Drive Session. Same with relocating scenery objects off the tracks like buildings, static cars, people, animals. etc. Changing texture does not affect train operation in any way shape or form also.

Altering or moving a RR signal might affect Drive Sessions since train activity is governed by signals. A sound horn trigger is something AI only reacts to when the AI driver detects it.

It seems as when TS12 saves a driver session, a game, it remembers every detail of the route map as well and intertwines the passive scenery with game play. The map state gets saved along with the train operation state.

 

[Dermmy]

EDIT!! Misunderstood the OP which makes this reply largely irrelevant, see Pware's comment below...

I edit the route while building a session all the time. In fact I stert buiding the basic session when the route is about half done. My experience though is only up to TS10 Build 44088. And it only works if there is only one session associated with the route.

Open in Edit Session. Make whatever changes are necessary to the session or the route. Merge the session into the route. Save using 'Save As'. The only issue you will find is that all trains etc are now on the route layer and you will need to manually change each consist back to the session layer. Same for any session-specific track marks or triggers etc. But you only need to do that once, when you are certain everything - and I mean everything - is ready for release. The session will work fine while you're editting with all that stuff on the 'wrong' layer.

So my procedure is get the route under way. Start a session. Make the 10,000 changes to the route that you only notice once you start driving trains around, get everything on the route and that one session right, and only then start on second and subsequent sessions. Because once there are two sessions, you are pretty much stuck with the route as it is.

I've done every route I've ever released like this. The little tram route I'm working on at the moment has had a working session on it for weeks. I've changed everything from little scenery tweaks to a wholesale re-vegetation from Speed Trees to billboards using 'Replace Asset', I've totally rebuilt about 50 ATLS intersections, etc etc. It works.

But I say again - up to 44088, and with only one session associated with the route. Wheter it works in 12 or Tane I have no idea. Worth a try though...

 

[pware]

Dermmy, either you or I have misunderstood the original OPs question. I think he is talking about changing the layout in a saved Driver session, a saved "game" with trains in motion, not a base session with all the rules and driver commands set at their initial conditions and the rolling stock consists in their starting positions.

From memory this issue has been discussed before - possibly TRS2006 or earlier. The answer, upto TS12, has always been no. There were a few enterprising individuals who had found a "workaround" but I believe that they eventually admitted defeat.

T:ANE is the first version that has allowed edits to a route to be shown in current saved driver "games" but with a warning. Personally I think that making changes to the track or track objects while active games are in play would be very risky - a bit like driving your real car along a real highway when some idiot from the 5th dimension suddenly deletes the bridge you were crossing at that exact instant.

 

[stagecoach]

A driver session and route can not be altered as it is saved separate from the main route and session you create in surveyor. If you select edit route only in surveyor a new session is automatically created but any alterations to sections or assets that have information placed in a previous session will cause the old session to fail. If you just add scenery or texture then the old session will still work, you might need to change the map kuid in the session config to that of the route map which may have been given a new kuid. Any alterations to the route or session in surveyor will not translate to any driver saved route and session.

 

[Dermmy]

Dermmy, either you or I have misunderstood the original OPs question....

My bad
Thanks for pointing that out and apologies for the red herring answer! My original post is edited...