I’ve just started enjoying Trainz 2006. First, let me thank all the knowledgeable users on this forum. By searching the forum, I was able to resolve issues with getting my First Class ticket to work (activation, and “re-setting” password at Planet Auran and in CMP). I am interested in just sessions. When I first began using CMP, I began selecting any items that were showing “Update Available”. Later, I discovered that I didn’t need to select these items. (Being new to CMP, I had mistakenly assumed that these updates were for items already installed in my TRS2006.) I also appreciated the instructions to wait while CMP loads when it doesn’t seem to be responding; it just takes awhile sometimes as it rebuilds the assets.tdx database file. I am now running CMP and downloading with no problems. However, I do have a few issues that maybe someone can help with.
- Over 97% of the sessions I’ve downloaded have missing or faulty dependencies. Will these sessions run properly, or is it a “hit-or-miss” situation? I can see if there’s a faulty house asset, it might not impact the session, but if it were a loco, what would be the results? Does anyone have experiences with loading sessions with faulty dependencies? As I start running these sessions, I will do further research to locate the missing dependencies. I did run across the tutorial for fixing faulty dependencies and will do this on a case-by-case basis where possible as I begin to explore sessions.
- In my list of Download Station sessions, a name appears twice (e.g. “Red Hen Run”), with different dates. I’ve later noticed that when downloading these, a message appears that the asset is obsolete and has been replaced by a newer version. Does Auran do any database maintenance to remove these obsolete assets? Is it possible to remove these obsolete items myself from my Download Station filter?
- CMP sometimes reports that it could not find an asset due to a missing URL. I’m well aware of the “Error 404 – page not found” as web pages cease to exist. Should I just delete those sessions where this appears?
- It appears that CMP downloads .cdp files into the TRS2006/Cache/Internet folder and does not delete these files after downloading. I wondered where all my free space was going! I moved these to a USB drive and deleted them with apparently no impact and re-gained a lot of free space on my hard drive. Are there any other “clean-up” tips that I should be doing?
- Disaster strikes. After downloading over 200 routes and sessions, I was looking at a list of over 100,000 assets in CMP and accidentally clicked on either name or author-ID and CMP “froze” on me while it was sorting these 100,000+ assets. Instead on waiting, I shut CMP down and on re-starting, CMP attempted to show me the results of my last search. Well, since this was the “broken” search, CMP would just hang there forever. I discovered that CMP uses the Windows registry to store all saved CMP searches (not good – why didn’t Auran save these search parameters in a file in the TRS2006 folder; each time I save a search, the Windows registry is updated). I edited the registry key for the current search to reflect another shorter search, saved the registry and attempted to load CMP with no luck – it still hung. So I began the mammoth task of backing up the \local folder to my USB drive, uninstalling TRS2006, cleaning the registry using ccleaner (thanks to a forum member’s mention, eliminating all references to Trainz, Auran, ContentManager and cdp, cdpa), re-installing TRS2006 and the SP1 patch. All went well, though time-consuming. I then started TRS2006 and ran Content Manager. After connecting, I saw that only 32,000 items were in CMP. But after waiting awhile, Download Station did update the CMP database to show over 111,000 assets. Impressive! I then copied my \local folder back onto the desktop computer, deleted the assets.tdx and the assets backup in the Cache folder, then started CMP, left the computer alone for about an hour. When I returned, CMP had correctly updated everything and I was back to my original place prior to the disaster.
- Patience, patience, patience. Having worked extensively with database packages, I know that it is not wise to have two processes updating a database at the same time. Therefore, when downloading assets from DS, I do not archive or do anything that updates the assets database file. Also, when archiving, I always wait until this Archive button is not grayed-out before proceeding with my next action.
- Asset Details – I accidentally overtyped a name in this box and discovered that the change was saved. Fortunately, I was able to find this asset and retype the correct name. But what’s also interesting is that I can add my own comments in the description area to help me remember something about this asset.
- The Vampire Archive - First, I fixed missing/faulty dependencies and then archive the route and its sessions. I then un-archived it on my notebook PC to validate that all assets are contained in the archive. In some cases, CMP did not pick all the dependencies since they appear to be more than one-layer deep. So I called up the old archive in CMP on my desktop PC, added the missing assets and re-archived. Then I validated the results again on the notebook PC. The missing dependencies are now fixed. But I noticed that faulty dependencies appear after un-archiving, even though I had cleaned up these faulty dependencies on the desktop PC prior to archiving. Is there any way to avoid these “vampire” rising-from-the-dead situations where I have cleaned up the errors only to have then reappear when I un-archive on a different machine? Or is it just the way that CMP operates? Also, I’ve noticed that some of the un-archived assets are now open-for-edit and have to be committed. Huh?