Paging Midland ( or anyone who can help)

[cathouse]

Hi Nick
I am having immense amounts of aggro with your latest sessions.:'(
'Running In' crashes when I drive into Port Ogden, 'On the road again' crashes when I get to where the consist is waiting ( by Port Ogden), thats if it doesn't crash as soon as I go into Driver, and 'The old switcheroony' has crashed twice going into Driver, once halfway into Port Ogden South and once I managed to complete it and it crashed coming out of Driver.

I have run all three of Phils sessions for this map and they all run perfectly, in 'Logs an Lumber you have to pass through Port Ogden three times and no trouble at all.

I have gone into TO and printed a list of every piece of rolling stock used, placed them on a test board, gone into Driver and had them running round for ages.

I am now at a complete and utter loss.

HELP.

have you used any different products at all?

have you any ideas?

have you got fed up with me asking silly questions?:hehe:

any ideas gratefully received.
cheers
Roy

 

[Midland]

Yes, Yes and yes! :hehe:

(Just kidding)


I am starting to think that maybe I have simply overpopulated the track with vehicles. There are a number of places on the PO&N where I get stuttering in varying degrees of severity; both places you mentioned in your post for a start.

Yesterday I was testing a session with an oil shale train, the SP SD40, the SP Kodachrome, thirty loaded Bethgon hoppers and a caboose. I allowed a top speed of 50 mph and sure enough as I entered the Ogden tunnel from South Pass I got the stutters. (It's worth remembering that the faster your train goes the faster your PC has to process the data and so stuttering tends to get more severe. Try to avoid 120 mph!)

I have found another place is going up the first bridge that leads to Port Ogden South.

Try moving around in Surveyor and you'll see what I mean. When I do it the old caching bar flashes away like a level crossing smash.

I suspect that having a whole bunch of trains hanging around in Port Ogden is simply causing too much stress for our PCs.

You could try eliminating a few unnecessary consists to start with; get rid of everything in the roundhouse for example, but if you eliminate trains you may need to delete the driver and instructions as well.

Rather than using portals to generate trains you'll see I use the "lying in wait" technique. For example in "On the Road Again" the very long mountain hauled train that comes in from South Pass while you're waiting is one of these. It sits just the other side of the Ogden tunnel and waits a period of time before driving on. This technique means I don't have to wait for AI trains to travel the distance from their portal before appearing but it does mean the PC has to account for them when loading up.

In "The old Switcherooney" you have two 0-6-0 switchers at work and they are both poly heavy. When you add the list of instructions the AI drivers have as well the demands on processing power soon gets heavy. Remember too they are working under that first bridge which as I said before is a very stuttery location.

Certainly a missing product will cause strife. The only different thing in "Switcherooney" is the 8ft and 16ft lumber being delivered to the lumber wharf:

Lumber 8ft kuid2:30671:94407100:1
Lumber 16ft kuid2:30671:94407101:1

This is because it's the only lumber that will interact with the industry track at the wharf. I much prefer the look of the built-in lumber but it's not available at this industry track.
Try thinning out the 'scenery trains' and see if that improves things. The big mountain hauled freight caused me a lot of problems initially so I reduced the number of types of cars on it and that helped a lot. I think it's now basically three or four different types of cars but still just as long as it was originally.

Out of interest I'm running an Athlon 64 3000 with 2Gb RAM and a Gforce 6600 GT (and sometimes it just ain't enough oomph!)

The other thing worth remembering is that I tend to favour steam locos and as a rule they are more poly demanding than diseasels!

My advice? Another 10Gb of RAM, a quadruple core 10,000 CPU, and a light-speed graphics card with at least 59Gb of memory! :hehe:

The funny thing is that other games play on my set up easy-ozey and is the envy of my kids. It's that old TRS bottomless pit feature again! :'(

The good news is I am trying to discipline myself a bit more with the extra AI trains but I do like busy busy railways!






Cheers

Nix

 

[philskene]

Hi Roy --

"I have run all three of Phils sessions for this map and they all run perfectly, in 'Logs an Lumber you have to pass through Port Ogden three times and no trouble at all."

That's a tremendous relief !~! It means I can just spectate here, secure in the knowledge that at least it's not my route to blame.

Nix --

I'd be a little surprised if it's a missing product that causes the session to actually crash. Error message, certainly, but a crash and burn?

Too many consists? Again a possibility, but that's never happened to me either.

This thread might interest you - my method of testing before uploading:

http://forums.auran.com/trainz/showthread.php?p=264166#post264166

A couple of suggestions for sessions:
Unlike MSTS which seems to cope with them much better, AI trainz really do impact on frame rates big time. That's why in the sessions I've uploaded the AI trainz are all basically an ATSF loco with a limited number of loaded container flats at ten minute headways on sections of track that are used by the player. The signaling will allow 5 minute headways, but that doubles the number of AI trainz.
Static consists also knock the stuffing out of frame rates.
Try to keep track of the products being used. Use the products that are built into the LARS and ProtoLARS industry tracks with gay abandon. But for those products that are used with the MIN and are NOT used with LARS/ProtoLARS, add their kuid to the kuid-table of the session, otherwise they will not by captured by CMP/Download Helper.

Hope you guys can solve this little problem.

Phil

 

[Midland]

Thanks Phil, I've often wondered how you got this "vanilla installation" that you speak of frequently.

You only way I could manage would be if my son allowed an installation on his PC for this purpose. Even if he did how do you get around the issue of the registered copy etc?



Cheers

Nix

 

[cathouse]

Hi Nick
I haven't tried this on any of the other sessions yet but I thought ' if all the rolling stock is OK what about anything else'
so I looked at the "instantload" command in TO and it has a missing dependency! and it's built-in! and I think it's 06.

I Googled the number and got 1 hit, a PDF of the TRS2006 Content Creation Guide.

I then opened "on the road again, went into the driver commands and unticked "instantload".

I then saved as a custom route, closed Trainz,restarted and ran the session from start to finish ( well nearly, it crashed just as I entered VandenH) .

(pause while I check something)

I just checked the other sessions and "running in" doesn't use it, neither does "The old switcheroony" Damn!!
I thought I was on to something then.

I might hire myself out as a fairground attraction, I'm getting good at going round in circles...
I could try putting the comp in the freezer ;-)

cheers
Roy.



edit next day

I just tried "on the road again" again and it crashed after 3 minutes.
back to square one.
(sigh)

 

[cathouse]

Hi

"snip;

Nix --
I'd be a little surprised if it's a missing product that causes the session to actually crash. Error message, certainly, but a crash and burn?"

Phil
if there's one thing I have learnt it's that a missing product will crash a session to desktop when going into Driver, it's happened to me 4 or 5 times now.

I managed to run "on the road again" nearly to the platform at VandenH, I tried something else, I took the side off the comp case and stood a bloody great fan in front of it.
I got the graphic card temp down from 36.5c to 24.9c.
everything else was cooler too:hehe: .
off to try something else now.

cheers
Roy

 

[cathouse]

Hi Nick
I just ran "steel yourself" from start to finish, no changing anything,as it came. even left the instantload.
and I came out of Driver, then Surveyor without crashing.

what have I done????

the only thing different is, some time ago (last November) one of my Windows updates was for my graphics card.
I was on dial-up then and it was 52 meg so I ignored it.
now I'm on broadband it suddenly occurred to me to install it.

Is this the result, I ask my self?
for a start, moving round in the map view seems smoother.
I'll try the other "steel" one tomorrow and let you know.

cheers
Roy

Oh incidentally, 1hr 22 mins to do.

 

[Midland]

1hr 22min?

Hmmm... sounds like you're dragging the chain a bit there. :hehe:



Instead of a wind turbine directed at your graphics card why don't you just boot the moggies off the top of your PC case. My ratbags perch up there all the time and it can't be good for the poor old machinery. (They get chased off from time to time)







Cheers

Nix

 

[cathouse]

Hiya

yea, sorry it took so long, I must start eating more carrots, you and your sessions in the dark :hehe: .

there's only one cat allowed in in the room with my computer and she's an ancient old thing, she's on her last legs and she sleeps in here to give her some peace from the others.

cheers
Roy ( and the cat)