Route Disappeared!

[boleyd]

Made several edits saved and made more and saved. Did this several times. The Save was done within the GAME. Opened the route after a Save and all but one section GONE. Route and Session level gone. All Elevations, except for one section, gone. Since moving between Route and Session only offers a Save to the BUG Laden internal save mechanism the only safe way to use this product is to save to CDP. Since that is not an option, within the editing process, it is all too easy to get "caught-up" in making edits and fail to save to a CDP. Some unwitting customer who makes an hour's worth of changes is exposed unless they remember to stop periodically and do a save to CDP. Not a good way to run a railroad!

 

[Tony_Hilliam]

Let's try and deal with some specifics here. Bullet points describing the ACTUAL ACTIONS TAKEN are so much better than generic paragraphs and commentary so we can get to the bottom of things.

1. Made several edits saved and made more and saved. Did this several times.
>> Was this using Edit Route, or Edit Session? (Or perhaps your "edits" where done using the Train tab in a Driver session?).

2. The Save was done within the GAME.
>> So you clicked System Menu > Save then chose to Overwrite? Did you save session or not?

3. Opened the route after a Save and all but one section GONE. Route and Session level gone.
>>
Did you open this by selecting in the Routes Menu and using Edit Route?
Or using CM and Edit In Surveyor?
Or something else?

4. All Elevations, except for one section, gone.
>>
Select the ROUTE in Content Manager and then Open > Edit in Surveyor. Does the route load correctly?


5. Since moving between Route and Session only offers a Save to the BUG Laden internal save mechanism the only safe way to use this product is to save to CDP. Since that is not an option, within the editing process, it is all too easy to get "caught-up" in making edits and fail to save to a CDP. Some unwitting customer who makes an hour's worth of changes is exposed unless they remember to stop periodically and do a save to CDP. Not a good way to run a railroad!
>>
Sorry, no idea what you are talking about. The system save tools are working as expected afaik and a .cdp is really not even needed for a backup (just backup the data folder).

It is possible that the act of saving to .cdps, reinstalling, switching between Trainz versions or some other actions you haven't included in your description are the problem.

Pleae provide as much detail as you can and we'll see what we can do to assist.

 

[boleyd]

Let's try and deal with some specifics here. Bullet points describing the ACTUAL ACTIONS TAKEN are so much better than generic paragraphs and commentary so we can get to the bottom of things.

1. Made several edits saved and made more and saved. Did this several times.
>> Was this using Edit Route, or Edit Session? (Or perhaps your "edits" where done using the Train tab in a Driver session?).
Edits done at the Route Level.

C:\Users\Dick\AppData\Local\N3V Games\trs19\build 0v2qsgvk1\editing\kuid 371377 100034 3New England Coastal
All files in this location have the exact same date and time. It is the relevant date/time of the event.

2. The Save was done within the GAME.
>> So you clicked System Menu > Save then chose to Overwrite? Did you save session or not?
I chose to overwrite when leaving Surveyor.

3. Opened the route after a Save and all but one section GONE. Route and Session level gone.
>>
Did you open this by selecting in the Routes Menu and using Edit Route?
Or using CM and Edit In Surveyor?
Or something else?
I used Save from editing routes


4. All Elevations, except for one section, gone.
>>
Select the ROUTE in Content Manager and then Open > Edit in Surveyor. Does the route load correctly?
Same issue when opening from Content Manager


5. Since moving between Route and Session only offers a Save to the BUG Laden internal save mechanism the only safe way to use this product is to save to CDP. Since that is not an option, within the editing process, it is all too easy to get "caught-up" in making edits and fail to save to a CDP. Some unwitting customer who makes an hour's worth of changes is exposed unless they remember to stop periodically and do a save to CDP. Not a good way to run a railroad!
>>
Sorry, no idea what you are talking about. The system save tools are working as expected afaik and a .cdp is really not even needed for a backup (just backup the data folder).

It is possible that the act of saving to .cdps, reinstalling, switching between Trainz versions or some other actions you haven't included in your description are the problem.

Pleae provide as much detail as you can and we'll see what we can do to assist.

I apologize for the lack of specificity but at my age the shock of loosing even an hours work can be traumatic. At the time of the event you do not know how widespread the problem is. An hour when you are young is trivial (been there). When you enter the finite years of life they become more precious.

Saving to CDPs is, in my view, the safest process. It is done entirely within the command structure of the program. The process is simple and also automatically places the CDP in the same folder as the last save. Then it opens that folder to show you that the save has actually occurred. A close to foolproof process that is not in the volatile mainstream route/session editing code. Saving a folder requires that you leave the program and step through Windows to perform the save.

The elevation data appears to have been deleted with the exception of the open-for-editing tile. Accepting the edit did not help.

I spent 39 year messing with all kinds of computers and operating systems. My mind is locked to grab the listing of a program when an error occurs and start checking some data-points in a dump. Perhaps install a breakpoint w/log to gather data. The error may never occur again is also a possibility. While computers in the dark ages were less reliable so are the consumer PCs we have now. Some small portion of all errors are inevitably caused by hardware.

I have been in your position when an operator 1000 miles away calls and tells me of a problem. Getting an accurate, and detailed report, is problematic.

Since this is likely a one-off (for now) I am going to my beloved CDP backup. I will try to remember to make them more often. In the meantime, I do like the product. It is addictive and at a point of development that offers almost everything the technology of the day can supply. I expect I will be upset again in the future. It is inevitable.

 

[Vern]

The only time I have encountered something similar is when TRS2019 crashed or locked up during a route save. On restarting and accepting the prompt to accept the unsubmitted edits found a complete mess with terrain etc. missing. Seems the save process runs through the whole route not just any changes so if it crashes half way through then your data goes AWOL. The best option is to accept the reversion which at least puts things back as they were at the last good save. Not sure if that is your problem Dick, but it might point the technical people in the right(ish) direction.

IMHO the option to accept unsubmitted edits after a crash needs to have a warning appended that you may not get your route back in a useable state.

 

[JCitron]

IMHO the option to accept unsubmitted edits after a crash needs to have a warning appended that you may not get your route back in a useable state.

This ^ ^!

I've been lucky so far... Knocks head with knuckles.

 

[JCitron]

Dick,

That route... Is that the old WW from George Fisher?

There's something about that particular location which has problems. I once merged this route into another one and then that route crashed. I recently found my old CDP, yes I too make CDPs and archive them, and brought the route into TRS2019. Besides looking really dated with cardboard trees that looked so good in TRS2006, there were really awful performance issues in and around the same location then it crashed. Thinking back about the problem, I ran into the same issue back in TRS2009 or TS2010.

I'm not saying that TRS2019 doesn't have some bugs, but I think there's a bit more to your problem which is bringing the best features out of TRS2019. (snark).

 

[Tony_Hilliam]

C:\Users\Dick\AppData\Local\N3V Games\trs19\build 0v2qsgvk1\editing\kuid 371377 100034 3New England Coastal

All files in this location have the exact same date and time. It is the relevant date/time of the event.

Thanks for the update. This is the most interesting part...

Firstly, there is seldom any need to go into your editing folder. The program does everything it needs to do without you going into Windows folders.

It sounds like you are saying there is more than one copy of an editing file here with the same name? This is puzzling. Please provide a screenshot of the folder if everything is still there.

When editing a route, there will be a route file and a session file in the Editing folder. The timestamp will update when you save either the route or route and session.

For future reference, if the game crashes, you are presented with an option to use or discard edits. If you select "use changes" and the map is corrupt, then don't save it and exit. Then select the revert changes option.

 

[boleyd]

I did not go into any folder. The CDP is saved into a folder on a a USB solid state disk. Tried clicking everywhere, with nothing to loose because I had a CDP backup, hoping for that magic click. While I am presented an option to save when leaving the Surveyor, the depository is the very area that was corrupted. I have had other errors in the long past where reloading the program showed that the "backed up" data was corrupted. I may be unusual but I prefer to be totally removed from any code in the program other that the Content Manager. The Export to CDP is the safest backup for my purposes.

The route is a creation of MGSAPPER. I have been messing with it through several iterations of Trainz/Tane/TS19. By now it is likely that most of it is changed in some way.
Given I am the only one with an event such as this I am going to point toward the computer. Having some knowledge of how the darn things work, some fairly simple things can become very nasty and hide within their intermittent nature. If you listen to a radio you can actually hear noise. That same kind of stuff is in your PC case but at a stronger level. If a component gets a little off specification and lets some noise into the wrong place - corrupted data. It either crashes the computer, or shows up later as a corrupted instruction for the computer to stumble across and do something very stupid. The user may see weird problems only once every 2 years or every 2 hours. You will never find the primary problem. In the case of the poor little PC that ain't gonna happen it may outlive its owner.. In a larger data center they do the analysis and pop out the suspect board with the possible issue and scrap it. If that doesn't fix it they scrap another board.

Could this have happened in my case? Something told the program to not store/save elevation data except for the active section. Chasing a one-off, is a waste of time/money. It might occur again and hopefully the victim will have a memory of preceding events superior to mine. These problems are much like the "cold case" TV programs. Somebody takes the program listing (cold case file) home every night and searches for a programmatic reason - volunteers?.

As a further aside I worked an intermittent problem once that caused payroll for several manufacturing plants to be rerun and pay to be delayed. The union was making nasty threats. With a trusty oscilloscope and a listing of the program instructions several areas of the computer were checked. Finally one check showed that the computer was looking for one of those tiny data pulses at a specific time. Most of the time it found it, but computers are impatient so it only looked for a few microseconds and temperature could change conditions. Leaving a door open behind a specific area made it worse. The solution was to change the computer hardware so the pulse was looked for in the middle of the "look time" and not, as I discovered, on the very edge of the time slot. Your home PC could have the same problem. Good Luck.... I was almost fired for making a change to the customer's computer without going thru proper channels.