TRS2010---->TANE SP2. Worth the struggle to fix assets?

I run mainly older assets from as far back as 2004.
Like you I stayed with 2010 up until Tane SP1 came out and have had very little trouble getting things to work in it.
I still take things back to 2010 to repair them as it suits me to do that.
I don't intend going to SP2 until maybe HF4 as with SP1.
It means I can't run the latest routes, but who cares. I have more than enough things to run until it is sorted.
Cheers,
Mike

No, delete them and carry on. You could invest a lifetime trying to fix.

Nux_Vomica said:

You could invest a lifetime trying to fix.

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Too late, I already did. I'm hoping to spend only half a lifetime this time around!


I haven't been consulting documentation much, but I have noticed a couple of trends with the conversion process so far, could I ask the greater expertise here again for their opinion on the following matters?


Commodities have not been faring well at all. Few of the ones in my collection seem to have updates, and many of them are showing faulty. And just a cursory visual survey as Content Manager runs through them while it is importing seems to indicate that most of the faults are texture related. Most of the faults with non Commodities assets also seem to be texture or texture config related. I haven't looked into it yet, but are these generally fixable in Commodities?

I confess to not consulting any documentation so far and just doing this mass conversion off experience, but it seems to be that Content Manager is carrying out some minor config file error fixes as it goes, and leaving the asset "open for editing". I am then periodically "submitting edits" of these assets that have been left in the editing folder by Content Manager. Is this the correct/best procedure to follow?

Also, I have noticed some assets now have the UserID in their kuid of -25 which I haven't seen before. I'm aware of the older -3 UserID as belonging to Auran. What exactly doe this new(?) user ID indicate?


Content Manager itself is doing a fine job so far in this process, and it is much improved over previous versions, so hats off to N3V for providing one that is stable at long last. If only Content Manager worked this well in previous versions the Trainz community might have less grey hair.

anathoth71 said:

Content Manager is carrying out some minor config file error fixes as it goes, and leaving the asset "open for editing".

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That suggests that the imports are overwriting assets you already have. The existing versions are probably OK. Save them all off to a temporary .cdp file, and then delete them from within CM. See if that restores the original.

Content Manager is not doing any edits, but it will not commit an asset, overwriting what you already have, until you confirm it.

A lot of texture related issues can be fixed in AssetX. AssetX has the ability to insert a pixel of a very similar colour into textures that show as a uniform colour.

AssetX can also convert .texture files to TGA and create a texture.txt file although those are two separate actions. You need to check the content of the texture.txt file to ensure it is correct for the relevant material type.

BuilderBob said:

That suggests that the imports are overwriting assets you already have. The existing versions are probably OK. Save them all off to a temporary .cdp file, and then delete them from within CM. See if that restores the original.

Content Manager is not doing any edits, but it will not commit an asset, overwriting what you already have, until you confirm it.

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Ok, maybe understand what is happening now. The route+assets+sessions+assets method I am using to import everything will result in a degree of duplication, especially with commodities and traincars. I guess that's ok if it is exactly the same asset being overwritten. Very many wagons have modified config files (load queues, username, mass etc), or added textures for repairs etc etc, so hopefully all these mods will be preserved this way. I am assuming your advice about saving to a .cdp file is for backup purposes only? - that concern is covered by other means.
Thanks for the input.

pcas1986 said:

A lot of texture related issues can be fixed in AssetX. AssetX has the ability to insert a pixel of a very similar colour into textures that show as a uniform colour.

AssetX can also convert .texture files to TGA and create a texture.txt file although those are two separate actions. You need to check the content of the texture.txt file to ensure it is correct for the relevant material type.

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Awesome, so they are not fatal flaws particular to commodities that can't be fixed. I'll get onto the repair phase in due course as discussed, thanks Paul.

anathoth71 said:

I am assuming your advice about saving to a .cdp file is for backup purposes only?

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You would save to CDP so you have one file that contains only the assets that are in error. That will be useful if it turns out that some of the assets you are deleting because they weren't committed were not duplicates after all, and you want to try again to import and repair them. That should not apply to many - if an asset is open for edit after an import then the reason is that is was already installed, and you want the original one, not the new one.

May I ask a newbie style question of anyone still watching this thread?

In the process of transferring my asset collection from TRS2010 over to TANE (ongoing project - I am in the middle of a 4 day work block), I have discovered many assets that have no DEPENDANT ASSETS. I don't recall needing to do such a search in the past, so I am lacking knowledge in how to search in Content Manager for assets that have this particular trait. For clarity or the benefit of new Trainzers who read this, an asset with no dependant assets is a loco, traincar or object that is not referenced in any route or session. Neither TRS2010 or TANE Content Managers appear to have an obvious search filter for this.

Has anyone carried out such a search and is inclined to share the method? Thanks in advance.

In TANE CM, you can right-click on an asset and select 'List Dependants.' However, my understanding is that this is not 100% reliable. If dependants show up, then you know that the asset is being used; if none show up, it is not guaranteed that the asset is not being referenced somewhere. For tangible assets such as scenery or rolling stock you are probably safe; less so with things such as session rules or driver commands - at least that is my limited understanding. Others with better knowledge than me may be able to provide more specific information.

Hth,
John

I'm about 80% through transferring 85,000+ assets from 2012 to T:ANE, and have roughly 525 hours invested so far. I found it's easier to fix them in 2012 because Pev's software doesn't seem to want to trawl in T:ANE (or at least I haven't figured out how to make it work.) I've also found that many times after I import a defective asset into T:ANE there's an updated version on the DLS that fixes it. So many of them don't need to be fixed; just updated.

I've extremely grateful for Pev's utilities. Considering how many of the older assets I have use images in stead of TGA files, if it weren't for Pev's ImagesToTGA utility I probably would have given up on Trainz and taken up knitting, or something.

anathoth71 said:

In the process of transferring my asset collection from TRS2010 over to TANE (ongoing project - I am in the middle of a 4 day work block), I have discovered many assets that have no DEPENDANT ASSETS.

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AFAIK it can't be done. It is, in effect, a difference between two lists: the list of all assets and the list of all dependencies. If you can create asset lists and you have a utility to compare lists, then you could create that difference. Note, of course, that some assets such as routes could not be a dependency.

BuilderBob said:

AFAIK it can't be done

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Thanks Bob, I feared as much. Maybe that search filter will be added one day.

nfitzsimmons said:

I've extremely grateful for Pev's utilities. Considering how many of the older assets I have use images in stead of TGA files, if it weren't for Pev's ImagesToTGA utility I probably would have given up on Trainz and taken up knitting, or something.

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Hehe, thanks for the tip. It does seem to be the case that the vast majority of faulty content after transfer/update in TANE is cause by texture related issues. Annoying, but at least they are fixable in due course.

Keep your TS2010 installation around for a while. It's easier to fix things there and export the CDP's than to try to fix textures one at a time in T:ANE. If somebody knows how to fix ImageToTGA to trawl in T:ANE....

nfitzsimmons said:

Keep your TS2010 installation around for a while. It's easier to fix things there and export the CDP's than to try to fix textures one at a time in T:ANE. If somebody knows how to fix ImageToTGA to trawl in T:ANE....

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Yup on both. I kept my TS12 install intact until my old drive corrupted by then I hadn't touched it in nearly 6-months.

How to fix the trawl thing.

1) Download and install the latest Images2TGA from Shane's website.

2) Create the batch file using notepad or some other text editor. Notepad++, UltraEdit, Context, etc. will also work. Just don't use Word or Open Office.

Using PEV's own helpful document, I pasted this line in a text file and modified for my own use. The difference here is I need to close the Images2TGA window after running, but that's not a big deal. For some reason I could not get the application to work when the window closed afterwards. That might be a Windows 8/10 thing, but anyway it is what it is and works okay.

"C:\Program Files (x86)\PEVSoft\Images2TGA\Images2TGA.exe" -trawl "F:\TANE_DATA\editing\%1%"

Change the part in bold to match your own T:ANE data location. Remember to keep the quotes!

3) Save as a .cmd (command batch)

4) Open up your asset(s) for edit in Content Manager

5) Run the application as admin.

Note: If your data is located in C:\Users\{profile}\App Data\Local\N3V Games\TANE\Build xxxxx, you may need to unhide this directory first in order for the batch to work. Since I put my data on it's own drive away from the OS, I never dealt with that issue.

Wow, all really good info, thanks for all the info and tips. I'll be rereading this thread many times - every time I do I notice another gem from the grand masters here on the forums.

The big transfer and update process into TANE is complete now. The broken asset figures are not as bad as I expected, as JCitron originally prophesied early the thread. The total is 2800 Faulty Assets (not including obsoleted or missing dependencies) out of about 87000 total, so roughly a 3% failure rate. Still a high raw number, but manageable over the medium term.

The repair effort will start soon, but just doing a visual observation as Content manager slaves away indicates that errors VE165 and VE168 are by far the most common errors. Hopefully these two error numbers appearing together mostly indicate the compressed-texture error that can be fixed with Pev's software. The general procedure used to import the asset collection into TANE was the "whole folder" method, rather than the "CDP" method, a process which can reduce the incidence of these errors (if I interpreted the explanation on the N3V wiki correctly).

I know N3V have taken a lot of stick on these forums over the years, but I have to say that both TANE SP2 and Content Manager have been very impressive so far, at least in my case. The SSD probably helped a lot, especially with the time requirement of moving bulk data around, but I threw the kitchen sink at Content Manager over the last week or so, and it didn't miss a beat for the most part. Previous versions might have cried in agony and tried to erase themselves if they had their shoulder to the wheel as hard as this version has so far. So well done N3V - this product can be worked with!

I do highly recommend installing TANE to an SSD if any readers are able to do so, they make an amazing difference. Even Trainz2010 had a barely noticeable asset-call delay on the SSD, and TANE SP2 is even quicker.

May I consult the grand masters here on the forums with a repair question??

I have come across a faulty commodity asset I would like to repair in which the main mesh ( .im type) is calling a texture with a ? in the texture name. Of course, this character is not permitted in filenames, and I can't figure out a way to repair this without altering the mesh itself. Does that sound right? I haven't started using AssetX yet for repairs, but I can't see anything in it's tutorial pdf that indicates I can fix this.

Is there a solution to this problem that I am unaware of?

anathoth71 said:

...

Is there a solution to this problem that I am unaware of?

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If you can use a hex editor, such as those used by programmers, then it may be possible. i.e. you edit the IM file and change the texture name. The name has to be exactly the same length as the old. You would need to change all IM files that use that texture, as well as the texture name itself and the texture.txt files.

I tweaked IM file like this for other purposes and it worked ok.

pcas1986 said:

....use a hex editor, such as those used by programmers

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Hmmm, that might be overkill for a 3rd party asset that has newer equivalents available on the DLS that look just as good. Might let this one go then.....

I'm glad it wasn't an overlooked easy solution. Thanks for the tip.