Transferring Routes and Assets

In order to transfer a Route/Session from say TANE to Trainz 2019:
I find them in TANE Content Manager and create a CDP file.
I go into T-2019 and import the CDP.

That leaves a whole lotta Unknown Assets and Available for DownLoad.
First addressing the Available for DownLoad:
Instead of re-downloading all the items for each Route, can I just make a CDP of my "Installed" items and "My Content"? Or is there some other way to move all this from TANE to T2019?

As to the Unknown Assets, I realize that these are old items that have not been brought up to T-2019 standards. But, how does one find and replace them?

All suggestions are welcome and appreciated.

It was mentioned that Tane assets will be made available as the early access progresses. Tane built-in will be updated to 2019 and put on DLS, so some of these might already be there, so download to avoid errors. Unknown means they are built-in with Tane but not transferred to 2019 or DLS yet.

ecco said:

As to the Unknown Assets, I realize that these are old items that have not been brought up to T-2019 standards. But, how does one find and replace them?

All suggestions are welcome and appreciated.

Click to expand...

After importing a route via cdp from TANE, the 'unknown' assets are shown on a list in TRS2019. These can be easily identified by sorting your TANE Content Manger by kuid number order and looking through it.

When you do locate it, create a separate cdp for each, which can then be imported into TRS2019. Depending on how many there are, it could be a long job in getting them all, but at least you will have all the assets that were on your TANE route.

Cheers,
Roy

Why a separate CDP for each? Why can't I just take all my TANE "Installed" items, except Routes and Sessions, put them into one (or two or three) CDPs and import them into T2019?

I can't imagine for a second that could be possible? How would it separate each into individual components? A CDP surely can only be for a single item but I'm sure others will confirm one way or another.

You can create a cdp for as many assets as you like up to ~800MB in size.
BUT builtin content will not export in this manner as it will not include the textures.
You will need to download the Builtin content from the DLC packages we provide or from the DLS .

I had a similar situation when moving assets from SP1 to SP3. Luckily I have 2 screens.
I loaded both CMs and then copied the missing kuid from SP3, using ctrl-c. I pasted it into SP1 using ctrl-v. This brought up the asset that could be saved as a cdp. I then imported the asset into SP3.
Slow but worked.
Cheers,
Mike

Full dependency injection

ecco said:

Why a separate CDP for each? Why can't I just take all my TANE "Installed" items, except Routes and Sessions, put them into one (or two or three) CDPs and import them into T2019?

Click to expand...

This is because one item can depend on another item, which in turn can also depend on another item. In Trainz you can make only a 'shallow' copy of the top level assets without their dependencies. I believe the reason behind it is to avoid redundant dependencies, make CDP files smaller and download time shorter, but then the time and effort spent on chasing missing dependencies largely offsets any savings. The only solution to this problem is full dependencies injection, but with duplicate dependencies copied only once.

obirek said:

In Trainz you can make only a 'shallow' copy of the top level assets without their dependencies.

Click to expand...

If by 'copy' you mean 'create a CDP' then that's not true. A CDP can contain as many items as you want. All that is required is to get a list of KUIDS for the items you want to copy, using the 'Asset KUID' filter in the custom search in CM. Then create a CDP for all the items listed. It doesn't matter whether the assets are dependencies of others or not, and assets will not be duplicated.

SailorDan said:

If by 'copy' you mean 'create a CDP' then that's not true. A CDP can contain as many items as you want. All that is required is to get a list of KUIDS for the items you want to copy, using the 'Asset KUID' filter in the custom search in CM. Then create a CDP for all the items listed. It doesn't matter whether the assets are dependencies of others or not, and assets will not be duplicated.

Click to expand...

What I (and I think the author of this thread) meant is that Trainz will not create a dependency structure which is the most useful thing when copying or backing up a complex asset object. Yes, you can pack as many assets in a single CDP file as you want, but Trainz will not tell you which ones and finding it out requires much time, patience and most of all - machine like precision.

For instance, say, you want to back up asset A with some dependencies:
A with sub-assets B and C
B with sub-assets D and E
C with sub-assets D and F

When you restore asset A from a CDP B, C, D, E, F will be missing, unless you traverse all dependency tree and add the missing assets manually. I did it once for a medium-size route. It took me several hours and many mistakes, so, no, thank you, I am not going to do this ever again.

But I hope that in one of the future versions of Trainz (TS25 maybe?) this will be fixed by full dependency injection:
1/ Copy tree structure
2/ Copy assets A, B, C, D, E, F.
3/ Restore assets A, B, C, D, E, F in correct structure
4/ If target system has already asset F, do not restore it, to save time.
5/ Treat different version of the same asset as different asset, e.g. F1, F2, etc.

This method has been used for ages in various software development frameworks and I don't see a reason, why it cannot be used in Trainz.

I transfered all not built-in assets to TRS19 from T:ANE. My process took my about 5-days including some repairs which were pretty easy. I used a batch file I created that calls up TrainzUtil to do the work at the command prompt.

C:\Program Files\N3V Games\Trainz Railroad Simulator 2019> ./trainzutil installfrompath E:\TANE_DATA\editing

1) Opened assets for edit in T:ANE - I did this alphabetically by author and worked with anywhere between 1000 and 35000 assets or more at a time, depending upon the file sizes.

2) Ran script to import assets from T:ANE to TRS19.

The scripted turned out to be faster than the gui, which imports and submits. This only imported and once the command prompt returned, I submitted the assets in TRS19.

I reverted the content in T:ANE at the same time since the content was already imported into TRS19.

Any built-ins were reverted to original. For 295K assets, the process took as I said 5 days to complete.

I cheated, I copied the Tane build folder into 2019 and used Solway's plain backup to copy all newer files from 2019 build folder into it. Redirected 2019 to that folder and with some additional work for the odd error it all worked, this was Tane SP3 HF1 beta that I moved, time about 3 hours.

obirek said:

What I (and I think the author of this thread) meant is that Trainz will not create a dependency structure which is the most useful thing when copying or backing up a complex asset object.

Click to expand...

T:ane supports a recursive dependency listing, for as many assets as you want, so there is no need to wait for TS25. You can duplicate this in TS12 by simply listing dependencies in a new window and adding the new KUID list to the existing KUID list, repeating as often as new dependencies keep appearing. There will no be duplicates in the final list even if the KUID list in the filter includes duplicates.

stagecoach said:

I cheated, I copied the Tane build folder into 2019 and used Solway's plain backup to copy all newer files from 2019 build folder into it. Redirected 2019 to that folder and with some additional work for the odd error it all worked, this was Tane SP3 HF1 beta that I moved, time about 3 hours.

Click to expand...

I did it that way the first time around. The process took about the same not including the EDR which took forever.

stagecoach said:

I cheated, I copied the Tane build folder into 2019 and used Solway's plain backup to copy all newer files from 2019 build folder into it. Redirected 2019 to that folder and with some additional work for the odd error it all worked, this was Tane SP3 HF1 beta that I moved, time about 3 hours.

Click to expand...

I think that's the method I used to get TANE SP2 stuff into TANE SP3 Beta. But what is "Solway's plain backup"?

Thanks for all the comments and ideas.

It is in N3V's best interests to get people to upgrade to the latest and greatest. You'd think they would provide an easy way to do it.

ecco said:

But what is "Solway's plain backup"?

Click to expand...

Look on the internet, its a free copy programme that allows new files to be copied/backed up without older files being recopied. SP2 to SP3 is fine because it is the same programme but be careful with 2019 as it is a different set up to Tane.

https://www.download.hr/software-solways-plain-backup.html

Same issues follows us around with Window OS and other Software, can drive person Batty sometimes!

I personally am saving all the content I modified to CDP files and everything else I will just re-download. It shouldn't take me too long anyway, especially with an FCT. 3rd party stuff doesn't take long either. At least that is what I am doing now. I might change to copying the files from my file browser instead. The one problem I see with that though is I have a crap load of empty folders with nothing in them which are deleted or broken content with just the config file, the wrong one, sitting in it.

Thanks again for the feedback.