Wheel rotation being out of sync in SP3

[KotangaGirl]

I'm sure I saw a post about this somewhere on the forums, but I couldn't find it. It seems to mostly affect older steam engine models that still have their original engine spec scripts. The tank engine I first saw this with would furiously spin its wheels at 90 mph when only going 20 mph and the engine sound file sounded horribly garbled as well. Fortunately there was a TS2012 3.7 engine spec available that was a good match for this tank engine so I installed that and I thought all would be well.

Only it wasn't. On manual DCC the engine wouldn't move from rest unless I got the AI driver to give it a prod first. I did some checking and I found that the engine had been set up with an insane quantity of water in its tanks. I'd seen this before with engines made back in TS2004 days when fitted with an updated engine spec. Once their old 'little engine that could' engine spec is changed out for one that's been properly drawn up they are incapable of moving due to the weight resting on their driving wheels.
As to the new engine spec it's working fine in SP3, but should you change an engine spec and your favourite steam engine will no longer move take a look and see how much coal and water it's carrying.

 

[G.M.]

Mass is big factor in all of this
its in the config of the loco/engine and a part in the engine specs
https://online.ts2009.com/mediaWiki/index.php/CCG/Steam_Engine_File_Breakdown


If you want the wheels to rotate matching the speed, check the bogeys
each have a parameter called "animdist"
multiply the wheel diameter by Pi which is roughly 3.1416
negative values probably reverses the animation
greetings GM

 

[KotangaGirl]

Thanks for your reply GM, but in this case it was an engine that had been running fine in TS2012 and TANE that suddenly gave problems in TRS19 SP3. Some older engine specs no longer work as they should in SP3 leading to rapidly spinning wheels as well as wheels that keep on slowly rotating when the engine is standing still.
I am aware of the animdist parameter and how to set up an engine's stats in a config file as I've been modding the heck out of the steam engines on my layouts for a good while now. The engine that suddenly had problems in SP3 had always run well in earlier versions of Trainz so I'd never had cause to have a look at its specs more closely.

 

[G.M.]

A little patience, N3v has changed from the old physics to a TNI plugin
and this gave us some weird effects it was not ported entirely 1 on 1
we'll soon have a fix I hope

 

[schnackel]

I changed one thing in the steam-container of old engine-specs in most of german steam locos in buildversions < 3.5 .
The value of "boiler-volume" is wrong in the steam-container, so I divided this value. Maybe it was once messured in litres and now its in cube-meters, so the right value would be a divide by 1000.
I have done that in my own clones of these very old engine-specs. After that I replaced the locos in surveyor and now everything is ok as before in previous versions like Tane or Trs12.
I use the trs19 Europe Edition with sp3. But there is a malus left, now there is no multiplay possible with these locos so I hope N3V will bring me a better solution in sp4.

 

[KotangaGirl]

A little patience, N3v has changed from the old physics to a TNI plugin
and this gave us some weird effects it was not ported entirely 1 on 1
we'll soon have a fix I hope

Yes I'd heard that there had been a change to TN1 physics, - not that I really understand what that is in real terms.
It didn't really hurt for my old TS2004 loco to get a nice new TS2012 3.7 engine spec and a little tidy up even if N3V do sort out some fixes later. All my other engines are running fine and aren't having any problems.

 

[KotangaGirl]

I changed one thing in the steam-container of old engine-specs in most of german steam locos in buildversions < 3.5 .
The value of "boiler-volume" is wrong in the steam-container, so I divided this value. Maybe it was once messured in litres and now its in cube-meters, so the right value would be a divide by 1000.
I have done that in my own clones of these very old engine-specs. After that I replaced the locos in surveyor and now everything is ok as before in previous versions like Tane or Trs12.
I use the trs19 Europe Edition with sp3. But there is a malus left, now there is no multiplay possible with these locos so I hope N3V will bring me a better solution in sp4.

I had wondered if there had been a change in measurement units at some earlier time in Trainz which means that some older locos have faulty specs when they are run in later versions of Trainz.

 

[G.M.]

A smart temporary solution schnackel
but there are few thousand engine files around, not likely they can and will be changed.
if you found clear, reproducable change/error, plz send a bug report.


TNI is Trainz Native Interface, a plug-in .dll (dynamic link library)
so 3rd parties can make additions to Trainz, a promessing development.
But I think implemented a bit too soon, without the option to turn it off and use ingame physics.
Think it has N3v full attention, SP3 fix or SP4 will correct it.


For now I would not worry or change too much, could be waste of time.

 

[RPearson]

The new steam physics, since TS09. uses a new steam-engine format for the engine especs. One obvious change, cubic meters are used for boiler volume (also minimum and maximum volumes) instead of liters as in the old format. Maybe it was an easy way to determine if a new or an old spec was being used since specs often get updated without changing build numbers in the configs. However I would not just divide an old format espec boiler volume by 1000 and use it without changing everything else over to the new format. Too many differences involved. From what I know an old espec is not used directly instead the game generates the required input for the new physics from defaults and input it takes from the old one.

The percent of boiler volume filled is used to determine how much water mass is on board at any instant just like any product queue in the game. Sand domes and ash containers if defined also will add a few kilos. Maybe fuel in the firebox is used in a similar way but only the boiler water is of any practical consequence. And of course fuel and water queues defined for tank locos have significant mass. They all get added to the mass specified in the loco's mass tag to get the total mass (or equivalent weight) of the loco. This also effects adhesive weight that's set with the "driving-wheel-weight-ratio" tag in the motor container in the epsec. Of course adhesive weight affects wheelslip. IIRC Tony mentioned that wheelslip was adjusted a bit in one of the recent updates. [EDIT]Not what I remembered but he did mention "... wheelslip (which we know from other reports is more sensitive in SP3 and being looked at)."

Bob Pearson

 

[schnackel]

Yes, you are right, my attempt was to prevent the wheel from turning too high for the AI mode, for which these one change was sufficient. They are tender locomotives that have never been adapted since 2.4 and that I only use with the "navigate to" command. That is not enough to drive these locomotives yourself. I hope I haven't confused too many with my short term fix. It is probably the case that these old configurations were not taken into account in the new physics. Hopefully that will happen with the next update. Until then, I'll just make do with this easy way.