[TRS2004] Top ten routes

[ostkamp]

Hello,

I'm new to the simulation (recently bought a copy of TRS2004 deluxe).

Now that I got an additional first class download ticket, I'm wondering whether there is a kind of top ten or most recommended list of routes?

If there is no such top ten list, could you some of you please share your favorites?

Unfortunately it seems that in the Downloadstation I cannot sort by file size and the list is quite huge - but most of it seems to be small stuff.

Thanks

Best regards

Guido

 

[Euphod]

Take a look at this thread:

http://forums.auran.com/trainz/showthread.php?t=9437

When you download a route from the DLS, the program should download all the dependencies as well.

 

[meatloaf747]

Guido,
Welcome aboard. You don't mention what sort of computer you have. Eg; low spec, medium, or high spec'ed PC. Some of the more detailed, larger routes require a meduim to high spec'ed PC with 3 - 4 gigs of RAM & a good graphic's card to run smoothly.
If your computer is medium spec'ed or better I would recommend any of Phil_Skene routes to start cutting your teeth in on. They are all on the DLS and they come with some great sessions. (downloaded seperately); Austral Bay 5a, Urban Industrail 8a, Port Ogden & Northern, Yard Switching Co, Riverside Railroad.
They are a good place to starts. Try the first couple to see if they are your style. Being from Europe, you may prefer European routes.

There are also some very good payware routes avaliable as well. Check out the payware forum; http://forums.auran.com/trainz/forumdisplay.php?f=21
Cheers, Mac...

 

[ostkamp]

Hi Mac,

thanks for your help. Please read on ...

You don't mention what sort of computer you have. Eg; low spec, medium, or high spec'ed PC. Some of the more detailed, larger routes require a meduim to high spec'ed PC with 3 - 4 gigs of RAM & a good graphic's card to run smoothly.

I have two. My mini tower bought in 2005 has an Athlon 3700 with 3 GB RAM and Nvidia Geforce 6600 running 1280x1024, and just in case there is also a Notebook bought end of 2006 with a Core 2 Duo T7200 running at 2 Ghz with 4 GB dual channel RAM (well, ~3.2 available) and a Nvidia 7900 GS with 256 MB RAM running 1920x1200.

The mini tower seems to handle TRS 2004 reasonable well at the moment and the notebook will even be faster.

Does TRS 2004 or maybe later TRS 2009 take advantage of a second CPU core, by the way?

If your computer is medium spec'ed or better I would recommend any of Phil_Skene routes to start cutting your teeth in on. They are all on the DLS and they come with some great sessions. (downloaded seperately); Austral Bay 5a, Urban Industrail 8a, Port Ogden & Northern, Yard Switching Co, Riverside Railroad.
They are a good place to starts. Try the first couple to see if they are your style. Being from Europe, you may prefer European routes.

Thanks. I've some trouble with getting the stuff to run as TRS 2004 always tells me that some parts are missing even for Austral Bay v5a even if the download station helper had no problem.

If within TRS 2004 I choose downloading missing stuff automatically, it comes up with the message "trainz was unable to locate the necessary custom content on the download station. Check with the author of the item for its location. (For asset with)" but it does not give any details what is missing.

I already tried to use TrainzObjectz but it says
##################################################################

MAP NAME: Austral Bay v5a
MAP KUID: 69871:10730
==============================

NO UNKNOWN OBJECTS

I do have unresolved objects for other routes though.

Also I cannot find any entry in Surveyor menu for Austral Bay v5a, just one in Edit mode. Is this correct?

I also tried "Niddertalbahn" which seemed to be a famous German railroad in Trainz. Unfortunately there is some content that I am unable to locate. The KUID do not exist in Downloadstation and google did not show up anything.

Do people sometimes remove their content from Downloadstation?
This will render many other stuff useless.

Is there a way to uninstall stuff from Trainz again, once I have found out that it does not run due to missing objects?

There are also some very good payware routes avaliable as well. Check out the payware forum; http://forums.auran.com/trainz/forumdisplay.php?f=21

Thanks, but for TRS 2004 I do not want to spend any more money. I will rather buy TRS 2009 when it is complete and stable.

Regards

Guido

 

[jimisham]

Razorback Railway is a very good one.
http://www.razorbackrailway.com/cms/
If you're interested in Scenarios, they have over 20 for TRS2004. They also have a utility called Janus which will help you find missing assets for their scenarios.
What are you misssing from Austral Bay V5? I've downloaded it to TRS2006 and the only thing that's missing is kuid 39730:60002, for a Semaphore, which I've never been able to find. It runs fine without it. Have you tried to load it anyway, even though it says there are missing objects?
You should be able to delete any unwanted layouts, or anything, by using Trainz Objectz. Highlight what you want to delete, right click, scroll to Selection, left click, and click on 'delete selected objects'.

 

[Napalm]

Does TRS 2004 or maybe later TRS 2009 take advantage of a second CPU core, by the way?

TS2009 is the only version that has Dual Core support, not totally sure how it uses it but I think when you are in Driver all AI trains will be controlled by the second core.

Nathan

 

[ostkamp]

What are you misssing from Austral Bay V5? I've downloaded it to TRS2006 and the only thing that's missing is kuid 39730:60002, for a Semaphore, which I've never been able to find. It runs fine without it. Have you tried to load it anyway, even though it says there are missing objects?
You should be able to delete any unwanted layouts, or anything, by using Trainz Objectz. Highlight what you want to delete, right click, scroll to Selection, left click, and click on 'delete selected objects'.

When I try to go into edit mode of Austral Bay v5 TRS2004 just comes up with a message that something is missing, but does not give any details and TrainzObjectz did not see anything missing as already shown in my earlier posting. This I don't understand. Should there be a more detailed message what it is attempting to load?

Is there any chance that it does this check also for routes that I am not attempting to load at this time?

Also, if you are running Austral Bay v5, can you confirm that you don't get any entries in Surveyor mode for it? I found an entry just for the Edit mode, but I have no idea how to proceed in order to drive trains.

I've downloaded the whole stuff from DLS using their download helper and I though this would get me all dependencies automatically or at least list some error, but it just completed ok.

Thanks for the link of that other project btw, I will give it a try.

Regards

Guido

 

[jimisham]

I downloaded Austral Bay V5a into TRS2004 to see what I would get.
In Surveyor I also get the black screen telling me that assets are missing. Clicking on 'download missing assets now' did not work for me and never has on any layout where this black screen appears.
Clicked on 'Load the map Anyway', and it loads OK and there doesn't seem to be any problem with it. I added an engine, saved it , and loaded it in Driver. The black screen showed up as expected, but I 'Load The Map Anyway' and it ran OK.
I looked at it in Trainz Objectz and it also showed no missing objects.
I don't understand what you mean by the 'Edit Mode' in Surveyor. The only reference to Edit I see is in the Menu in the upper left hand corner. There's 'Edit the Current Session' and 'Edit Route'.
What version of TRS2004 are you running? That will appear in the lower right hand corner after you click on 'Launch Trainz'.

 

[ostkamp]

Hello.

I downloaded Austral Bay V5a into TRS2004 to see what I would get.
In Surveyor I also get the black screen telling me that assets are missing. Clicking on 'download missing assets now' did not work for me and never has on any layout where this black screen appears.
Clicked on 'Load the map Anyway', and it loads OK and there doesn't seem to be any problem with it.

thank you for trying . It appears you got the exact same behaviour and as you said TrainzObjectz could not find any missing parts for you as well. Very strange, isn't it?

I added an engine, saved it , and loaded it in Driver. The black screen showed up as expected, but I 'Load The Map Anyway' and it ran OK.

I have yet to find out how to add an engine. I had expected that a huge package like this would automatically include entries to the 'Driver' section.

I don't understand what you mean by the 'Edit Mode' in Surveyor. The only reference to Edit I see is in the Menu in the upper left hand corner. There's 'Edit the Current Session' and 'Edit Route'.

I'm sorry. It seems I mixed up the terms as I have the German translated version of TRS2004. I just found some english screenshots in my German manual and with 'Edit mode' I was simply referring to 'Surveyor' (in fact I mixed up 'Surveyor' and 'Driver', so when I was talking about not being able to find entries I meant those usually expected in 'Driver').

So, is it quite common not to include Driver entries in complete route packages?

Or do you think the driver and other entries are in a separate package that I might have missed?

What version of TRS2004 are you running? That will appear in the lower right hand corner after you click on 'Launch Trainz'.

The initial installation of this German TRS2004 Deluxe package came with version 2200 and I installed an additional patch that pushed it to 2388. That should be Service Pack 4, the latest one for TRS2004 as far as I know.

I was a bit puzzled about the 'Deluxe' content. As far as I remember, the third CD was nearly empty (only ~22 MB) and the fourth just included Paintshed. There was so much unused room on those CDs that could have been perfectly filled with great freeware routes and stuff.

BTW: Meanwhile I followed your hint and spent several hours on downloading and installing Razorback railroad stuff. The Janus tool worked great, I could find anything that was missing, but had to download and install manually. It seems that it just creates a list but not automatically downloads dependencies. But anyway this is fine. Now I have to start it up and see whether it works.

Regards

Guido

 

[john259]

Hi Guido,

I have yet to find out how to add an engine.

In Surveyor, load a layout, then open the bottom tab (the one with a spoked wheel). Select a loco, then click on the track in the main part of the window and it will appear. Click the Quick Drive button near the top left and you can start driving. (Apologies for all this being in English.)

I had expected that a huge package like this would automatically include entries to the 'Driver' section.

Driver has a list of layouts, and pre-made driver sessions for each of them.
Scenario has a list of scripted interactive activities. Although these use the same game engine and the same internal programming language, the way they are created and the way you use them are both very different.

So, is it quite common not to include Driver entries in complete route packages?

Yes. A route may or may not have associated Driver sessions and scenarios, and usually they are downloaded separately.

The initial installation of this German TRS2004 Deluxe package came with version 2200 and I installed an additional patch that pushed it to 2388. That should be Service Pack 4, the latest one for TRS2004 as far as I know.

Yes, that agrees with the information I've recorded about build numbers.

The Janus tool worked great, I could find anything that was missing, but had to download and install manually. It seems that it just creates a list but not automatically downloads dependencies.

That's right. We'd love to automate the entire procedure but it's just too complicated.

Now I have to start it up and see whether it works.

If you have any problems with our material, please use our forum and we will try to help you if we can.

John