This is why this sim is so frustrating to me

Yes. Is good to have a break as it clears the ole brain from frustration and disappointment when things are not running to plan.

I am also taking a break. I have been learning "WikiSpeak" to update and add to the Trainz Wiki and I am about to start learning Blender - the new version 2.8 interface actually looks understandable. But, I have no doubt, I have simply swapped one set of frustrations for another - but a change is as good as a holiday.
 
Okay, I'm going to swallow my pride and follow the forum again. An BTW, I was not leaving because I hoped N3V would drop everything and fix my problem. I'm a little more in touch with reality than that. I was feeling bad and wanting everything to go smooth as silk and peachy keen.

Besides, after another week of trying to fix "my" problem, I about decided it was just this one train (my Monorail engine, actually) that refused to budge. All the other A.I.'s were continuing on their merry way. So I just deleted the offensive consist and went back to messing with my route.

Doesn't "AI" stand for "Artificial Idiot?"

Sorry for all the trouble and bawling on my part.
 
Doesn't "AI" stand for "Artificial Idiot?"

:hehe:
Sometimes they do have a mind of their own, but us humans can over rule their power of being an idiot :Y:

Good to hear you sussed out that it was the troublesome monorail. That rang a bell of something very similar happening to myself a very long time ago with a loco.

Shaz
 
Welcome back Dave :)

I've had a few bad days with AI this week on a large route, ignoring stations, going against track direction markers, generally being a stroppy thug!

I opened my config file and looked at the 'string table'.
Every train vehicle or industry I had tried and kept or removed was listed in there!
So I backed the route up and cleared the table of all assets listed and submitted the edit.
I opened the route to check that it looked OK.
Closed and then did a database repair.
Started route, started the quick drive and let it run, a well behaved AI was the result, all 10 portals worked fine and no stupid drivers.

Might be worth a try, but back-up first.

This was in TANE SP4
 
Here goes my grain of salt:

An often complain on AI is that a train overshoots a passenger station. There are many reasons or variations for this ot happen. My observation is about the length of the platform. Using AJS 50 mt station, you instruct a long train to stop on it, and it may overshoot, more so if the engine has a longer ballistics in the config of the engine file. If you replace the station with a 110 mt one and make the train shorter, there is a good possibility that the train will stop all the time. BUT, I have had stances when exhaustive testing did not agree with all of the above: A train overshoots a shorter station (50 mt), so you create an exact replica of that train with same number of cars, you instruct it to go to that station and load, and it does! but the original train does not (??).

A second fastidious thing is when you configure everything properly and it works for 10 hours. It works satisfactorily. Now you save the session and open it again tomorrow. Or close and open a few times. Good chances are that after several saves, things will not go as easily as the first time, and locos will start to go happily to oblivion or take wrong turns, or would be unable to change a set of of points right in front of them, but would continue if you change them, or you have to take control of the train manually because the points ahead have a lock set to the wrong direction. I am sure we all have experienced these and more aberrations.

Leads me to believe that the only ones seing al this are we, and N3V does not. If you see no faults, why fix it?
 
I rarely use AI at all, and when I do, I place yellow track directional track markers, pointing toward the loco, blocking all crossovers and sidings, so AI can not devise it's own self made up, errant shortest path. My trains drive on Track1 all the long distance of my route, and can not throw their own turnouts, as I have locked them, and blocked any unintended secondary tracks usable for AI. Trains on the adjacent Track2 can not collide with opposing trains on Track1, as trains can not throw their own turnouts, as I have locked them with opposing yellow directional track markers pointing at the loco, and blocked any unintended secondary tracks usable for AI.
 
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There's a quirky thing that occurs occasionally with splines now that I've come across the hard way off and on. Track marks and other trackside objects can end up connected to a nearby grass splines, fences, catenary wires, or other track-type splines such as roads that are now classified as tracks.

The problem is twofold:

1) The track object, marker, etc. is not associated with the driver's route even though it is in place.

and

2) It's bloody difficult to find because of the close proximity of the said splines and these objects look like they're where they're supposed to be.

I've spent hours troubleshooting why an AI driver would take the wrong route, or refuse to go to a track mark I had placed in the driver's command queue. This drove me crazy as I checked things out in the session and they were fine and the objects were in place where they appeared to be. After many, many hours going in circles, I found there was nothing else to do but relay the track in those locations. I figured that something was weird there, and by removing the tracks I could start from scratch as we've done off and on to fix other un-explainable weird things that occur from time to time with this program.

It was then and the only way I found the problem because the track mark remained in place when I deleted the tracks. The same thing occurred with a direction marker in another problematic area, and the same with some signals that remained red no matter what I did. Grrr! Now with that on the radar, I'm extra careful of splines close to the tracks.
 
That is interesting about the tm attaching to another spline close to the track. Personally i have not had this issue (yet), but is something good to remember and watch out for.
 
I managed to add a signal to a fence spline without realizing it. When I moved the fence I didn't see the signal move (but it did). Only when I noticed the signal was always red did I investigate. Took me ages to figure that one out.

Bill
 
Evening Sir Dave, Glad to hear your not going anywhere......

@JCitron, I know all to well about how Items of one thing can connect to another errant object without you knowing it even happened, but the Signal to the Fence, that is one for the record book........Good info to know........

I have had other folks Routes where there were so many Circles with connecting Assets, Roads, Fences and who know's what else, I would end up cloning the Route and systematically skillfully dissemble the multitude of parts, till I could figure the menagerie, and why would I do this, and drive myself near crazy, well, a couple of things were out of eye alignment, and it bugged me till I could fix it.......And you know I did fix it.........Just took a while.........

If I couldn't fix it, I might just removed the whole portion of the Route and did it a different way.....OCD gets me again.....LOL

Quotes"It was then and the only way I found the problem because the track mark remained in place when I deleted the tracks. The same thing occurred with a direction marker in another problematic area, and the same with some signals that remained red no matter what I did. Grrr! Now with that on the radar, I'm extra careful of splines close to the tracks. Quotes"

My hat is off to you JCitron, your tenacity paid off, that's for sure..........
 
Evening Sir Dave, Glad to hear your not going anywhere......

@JCitron, I know all to well about how Items of one thing can connect to another errant object without you knowing it even happened, but the Signal to the Fence, that is one for the record book........Good info to know........

I have had other folks Routes where there were so many Circles with connecting Assets, Roads, Fences and who know's what else, I would end up cloning the Route and systematically skillfully dissemble the multitude of parts, till I could figure the menagerie, and why would I do this, and drive myself near crazy, well, a couple of things were out of eye alignment, and it bugged me till I could fix it.......And you know I did fix it.........Just took a while.........

If I couldn't fix it, I might just removed the whole portion of the Route and did it a different way.....OCD gets me again.....LOL

Quotes"It was then and the only way I found the problem because the track mark remained in place when I deleted the tracks. The same thing occurred with a direction marker in another problematic area, and the same with some signals that remained red no matter what I did. Grrr! Now with that on the radar, I'm extra careful of splines close to the tracks. Quotes"

My hat is off to you JCitron, your tenacity paid off, that's for sure..........

Tenacity or OCD myself! :)

It comes from years of working out problems while practicing the piano. Seriously doing that builds critical thinking and stamina for problem solving!

Anyway... Yeah I've done the same with routes. One route used a crossing gate of some sort that had so many spline points there was no way to determine which side was for roads and which was for tracks. I did what you did and disassembled the lot and put in something simpler. It worked too where the other thing did not. It makes me wonder if the original author got confused as well.

The other thing that annoys me is floating splines such as roads and tracks. I will go through great lengths to tamps things down even if it boils down to relaying track and the roads. It's a pain the you know where, but in the end the results are more satisfying.

But yup. Those signals attached to the grass floored me because they were close enough to the tracks to appear to be associated with the tracks and not the grass.
 
I am with John and Blue on the floating splines and difficulty working with multiple spline points. And lets' not talk about floating spline shadows !

At some point I posted a suggestion in the 'Suggestion Forum' for an expanded coding for spline points. Colour code the spline points for the currently selected spline in two colours (one for floating, one for height fixed), with the other (non selected) spline points in yellow and white as currently implemented. Or perhaps the selected splines could be yellow and white, and all others something else (indigo?). Anyway, another brilliant idea floating away in the ether :).
 
Spline point confusion? Easy put the non track splines on a different layer and turn it off when working on track. ;o)
 
I am with John and Blue on the floating splines and difficulty working with multiple spline points. And lets' not talk about floating spline shadows !

At some point I posted a suggestion in the 'Suggestion Forum' for an expanded coding for spline points. Colour code the spline points for the currently selected spline in two colours (one for floating, one for height fixed), with the other (non selected) spline points in yellow and white as currently implemented. Or perhaps the selected splines could be yellow and white, and all others something else (indigo?). Anyway, another brilliant idea floating away in the ether :).

I'm 100% with you on this.

This helps whether there are layers or not setup for spline-assets. When there's a sea of spline points, it becomes confusing when they're all the same colour.
 
Some time ago (years) I posted in the Suggestion Boxcar that access to a spline point might be added to the "question mark". This way, one of the fields in the popup could be a color chart allowing you to color each spline the way you want, or leave it as a default white/yellow. When I'm working in a tight area filled with rotating splines, and about to add yet another, I always add the spline outside the grouping and slide it into the middle. If I was able to alter the color using the "?", then i could adjust the height easily and not "capture" a different spline.

Bill
 
Some time ago (years) I posted in the Suggestion Boxcar that access to a spline point might be added to the "question mark". This way, one of the fields in the popup could be a color chart allowing you to color each spline the way you want, or leave it as a default white/yellow. When I'm working in a tight area filled with rotating splines, and about to add yet another, I always add the spline outside the grouping and slide it into the middle. If I was able to alter the color using the "?", then i could adjust the height easily and not "capture" a different spline.

Bill
Of course that assumes you could grab hold of that specific point. Where you have several in close proximity that can be a problem unless you resort to putting things on separate layers. And you realize that you should be doing that before you get too much stuff on the ground. Make use of layers from the start as you build it. I think clam1952's suggestion falls in there somewhere.

And once they implement something like FootplatePhil suggests:
At some point I posted a suggestion in the 'Suggestion Forum' for an expanded coding for spline points. Colour code the spline points for the currently selected spline in two colours (one for floating, one for height fixed), with the other (non selected) spline points in yellow and white as currently implemented. Or perhaps the selected splines could be yellow and white, and all others something else (indigo?). Anyway, another brilliant idea floating away in the ether .
We can then ask for a way to cycle thru a series of nearby items to select - maybe tapping the alt key to highlight the next one. A lot of cad program use similar methods to get to the selection you "really" want to pick.

IMHO TS19 is one of the worst for picking on just 1 item in a nearby cluster and hanging on to it regardless of where you try to pick from. At which point you can start moving things out of range 1 at a time or adding/binding them to layers to hide - 1 at a time.

Bob Pearson
 
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At least having a different colour or colours for non Track splines would help, they added red for an incorrectly set up protrack junction so I would assume it should be possible.

Using Layers needs to be done at the start of creating a route, would get a bit tedious moving things to different layers half way through a project!
 
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