Questions about tidying up Trainz data on the HD.

[Lataxe]

After a lot of mucking about with CMP I have managed to reduce the list of faulty assets to around a dozen (still looking for ways to fix them) and I have deleted missing assets from routes/sessions I can't find on the DLS or elsewhere, replacing those assets with an alternative where the gap is obvious, when running a route/session.

I have also done as many updates to out-of-date content as I can, although there are currently 57 assets shown in CMP as having an update available but which don't appear to have such an update on the DLS.

* My first question - how can an asset show the "update available" status in CMP when there is no such update on the DLS?

I also notice that there are 1885 "local" assets with the status "obsolete" shown in CMP. When I ask CMP to show all versions, there are indeed newer versions of those assets in my Trainz database.

* My second question: can these local-obsolete entries in CMP be safely deleted and will this shrink the Trainz data stored on the HD where my Trainz data is kept? Is it worth getting rid of these obsolete assets; does such a tidy-up help Trainz to load/run a bit faster, for example?

The O/S I use is Windows7 64bit. It seems to have an automated HD defragmenting process built in. The Windows Disk Management application is reluctant to let me instigate any defrag process myself and tells me it is done in the background so I needn't bother.

* My third question: is this Windows7 auto-defrag sufficient to keep the 200,000 assets in my Trainz data store well-ordered enough on my HD to make Trainz load/run processes as efficient as they can be? Is it worth using a 3rd-party degrag tool to order the data on the HD even better than does Windows7?

I have downloaded routes/sessions in the past then deleted them again when I decided they weren't for me. As I understand it, this leaves most of the assets downloaded as part of the route in the Trainz local database on my HD.

* My fourth question: is there a way to detect assets that are not used by any still-extant route/session in my Trainz database, so I can delete them? Even if there is such a detection method, is it worth deleting such unused assests?

Thanks for any advice you can give.

Lataxe

PS Apologies if answers are already out there in the forums - I can't seem to get much sense out of the forum search engine.

 

[JCitron]

Don't worry about forum search. It stinks and doesn't always find what you're trying to find!

I can answer some of your questions.

For narrowing down results, you can use filters in CM3.3.

Click on Search, and fill in paramenters. I for example, have setup a couple of filters, which I find very useful. One of them is for local assets that are obsolete. I filled in location=local and obsolete = true. I then saved this new filter and it became a tab in CM.

My other filter is for searching for assets on the DLS for the current date. I usually have to change the date for the day before, but this is simple enough to change the parameters.


Now regarding the updates that aren't there.

Sometimes the DLS gets out of synch with what is in your local computer's database. Give your local database a chance to catch up and it will. There was some downtime on the DLS over the past few days, and your computer may not have caught up yet. You can also try right-clicking on the asset, choosing view asset version, clicking on the DLS icon'd item, then choosing view in mainlist. This will show the DLS version, which should download. The asset may or may not download. Don't worry about it. As I said they will happen eventually. For the longest time I had 10 items that wouldn't budge, then one day they downloaded. It didn't make any difference.

To determine if a route uses your assets, view dependencies for the route. Right-click on the route and choose Asset dependencie, or something like that. My trains computer is not on now, so it's hard for me to look at the exact message. This anyway will give you a list of what's installed. You can hightlight the list, copy and paste it into a doc-file such as Word or notepad for reference.

Regarding obsolete items, deleting, etc. This is your call. if you can ensure that nothing is using these items, then you can safely remove them. I suggest that you save these items first, perhaps to a CDP before removing them. This is just in case they are somehow removed from the DLS and never retrievable again, and some route builder used them, or you find out after you've removed them, that you actually need them.

I commend you on your efforts. The cleaning up of assets is a pain, but worth it in the end. At the moment my assets are clean, and like you if I download anything that I can't get a dependency for, I delete the item right away. I don't want the hassle of looking for the bits anymore.

Anway, I hope this helps somewhat. Others will most likely pitch in and help too with even more suggestions.

John

 

[Lataxe]

John,

Thank you for those pointers and tips.

I'm already part way through checking which of the obsolete assets are, in fact, still used by what routes/sessions. I'm using your method but given that there are 1800+ apparently obsolete assets, it will take a good while to check them out one by one. I must admit, I was hoping for some kind of global search method via the CMP search facility.

Presumably Trainz CMP is talking with two tongues when it tells us that various assets we have downloaded are now obsolete? Updated assets to supplant the obsolete versions do seem to appear in my database (same name, author, etc).... But checking (as above) which route/sessions still use an obsolete asset seems to be revealing that (for that route or session, at least) the "obsolete" version of the asset is not in fact obsolete but being loaded......?

This gives rise to yet another question: how does one get a route/session to load an updated asset instead of the obsolete one? Or...

Is CMP just telling me that the asset being checked is being used by a route/session but "not caring" whether I query using the obsolete or the up-to-date version of that asset to perform the check? That is, is the route/session actually using the newest version of the asset? I suppose I can check for myself.....

As to the out-of-date assets - I have performed the "reveal asset versions" then "show the ones on the DLS" routine to find & download the updated versions; but I still have 57 assets marked "local/out of date" in CMP but showing no newer version on the DLS for download. As you say, every now and then a new version does appear and can be downloaded. But what is causing the "out-of-date" status if there is currently no newer version visible on the DLS?

To be honest, the terminology and functioning of the DLS is somewhat ambiguous and even obscure in parts, which makes it something of a Curate's Egg.

Lataxe, puzzling the maze of Auran database designs.