Working on 1 route on 2 systems?

[gfinney56]

When we last saw our intrepid hero (I've always wanted to start a story that way), the current Trainz version was 2006. Been off doing other things for the last *cough* years and decided to get the latest TS2010EE. Installed fine, everything ducky.

I find that the directory layout is quite different now. The game used to save routes/sessions by name and everything was obvious. Now it's all named "hash-xx" instead. Having been a software developer in a previous life I can understand the desire to make things canonical. As a user, though, I'm always dismayed when software makes it hard to see what's going on.

I'm working on a new route from scratch but sometimes I'm obliged to work on my laptop instead of my desktop. Ideally I'd like to use something like Dropbox so I can work on it anywhere I have Trainz installed.

Once I've found the directory containing my new route (it's the only one with a .gnd file in the hundreds of KB), can I simply copy that directory to my laptop? And maybe keep it synced with Dropbox?

 

[itareus]

The easist way would be to create a CDP of the route and relevant sessions (using Content Manager) and just transfer that between PC's.

 

[wholbr]

Hi There
I am no computer expert just a Trainz fan but would it not be possible to hold the complete Trainz 2010 on an portable external hard drive with a shortcut to that drive and Trainz exc on both computers.

If you picked on the shortcut on either computer when the drive is not connected it would just come up with the error warning. If it was connected then it should launch Trainz in the normal way.

As stated I am no computer expert and others may prove me wrong but it could be worth a try

Bill

 

[JIb228]

Hi There
I am no computer expert just a Trainz fan but would it not be possible to hold the complete Trainz 2010 on an portable external hard drive with a shortcut to that drive and Trainz exc on both computers.

If you picked on the shortcut on either computer when the drive is not connected it would just come up with the error warning. If it was connected then it should launch Trainz in the normal way.

As stated I am no computer expert and others may prove me wrong but it could be worth a try

Bill

It works, thats how I do it. Though I only keep trs on one system. I have used my external hard drive with other programs installed to it from one PC and run them on another PC.

 

[BigThing]

Thats a very good idea!, although none of the computers at work are nearly powerful enough to run trainz 2010 on, i will keep that in mind for the future... I may even install it on an external hard drive just for less risk of accidental destruction

 

[JCitron]

I did that when my PC stuffed. It worked, but was much slower because the interface was a lot slower. It was great though being able to work in Surveyor even though my own machine was AWOL.

John

 

[RRSignal]

One of the coolest aspect of Trainz is, due to a lack of DRM, it really doesn't need to be "installed"; it can be run from anywhere from any computer AFAIK. That makes running it and backing it up a breeze. Wish more modern software was like that; in an era where portability is becoming ever more important, the software is actually becoming less so.

 

[wholbr]

Hi Everybody.

I did that when my PC stuffed. It worked, but was much slower because the interface was a lot slower. It was great though being able to work in Surveyor even though my own machine was AWOL.

John

Agreed John, that is the one drawback with regard to speed You definitely need a top of the range external hard drive and two really hi spec systems to get a reasonable performance.

However, I was thinking (it does happen occasionally) with memory sticks (I know that's not the proper name) now gaining gigabyte capacity would it not be possible to have Trainz on one of those. You would then be able to carry Trainz around on your key ring rather than humping about a heavy external hard drive

Just another thought

Bill

Blimey, two thoughts in a week, I think I better have an early night to avoid brain damage.

 

[Richarde57]

With GTR2, GTRE (racesims) I always had a 1 to 1 copy on another drive.
When I did some huge changes, building tracks, painting cars etc, I copied the whole game directory to another drive.
This afternoon I have tried it with T2010EE game directory and renamed the original game dir to be sure the game was not go back reading in the old one.
I started from the other dir just by dubbel clicking the exe.
And everything was running fine.

So it should be no problem to have Trainz running on different computers.
I don't know what happens to the login, serialnumber and download section if you start it on a second computer.
That information is often in your LocalSettings/ApplicationData on C: but I could not find much from Auran or Trainz.

When Trainz saves it's changes only in the gamedir then you can make a save copy.

I will try tomorrow to copy the whole gamedir through our network to my wife's computer and then start it up from there.

Oh, By the way, I bought a SSD (Solid State Drive) and imaged my old C: and put it back on the SSD.
Man, you can't believe the difference!
I run still WinXP and on my old drive the boot took several minutes but now it loads the same stuff in just seconds.
It gives your computer a really BIG BOOST becouse EVERYTHING you start from that drive is on screen in just a second.
So I decided to buy another one to put Trains on. Only Trainz becouse my gamedir is already 12 GIG and loads for the first time very slow from a turning drive.
Also when auto-saving every 15 minutes in building mode the screen feezes a few seconds.
With an SSD is that also history.