Rather Irritating Bug

So working on my route with CMP downloading PBR textures in the background.

Laying track splines TRS19 Jarrah Procedural Seasonal. However the selection window keeps snapping back to TRS19 Jarrah Procedural (No Ballast) Seasonal. In fact this even happens when not downloading and with other assets - I've had it with the DMT 2ft narrow gauge where the selection keeps dropping to the rusty version. It is an extremely annoying and irritating bug, why can't the selection box remain fixed on the item I've chosen to use. Makes no difference whether "Default To Last Item" is selected in options or not and in any event that should only be effective when switching to the pullout for a different category of asset.

This rather irritating bug, I could think of more than a few choice sayings for that but I have to be nice here, has been with us since TRS2004 at least. In those days I used Grass 01 or something similarly named. It was that generic green-grass that covered 99% of the routes in the early days. There is also a similar grass named the same way, however, the similar grass has a not so subtle difference which isn't obvious until later. You see this second Grass 01 had the early beginnings of vertex painted grass, meaning little supposed grass clumps would appear after the fact and only within a few meters of view. These little wormy things once placed, were pure 'ell to remove. It was like a virus of some sort had invaded the route and I spent many hours removing them only to have them reappear because I hadn't covered enough of the area. Remember this was back in the days before the bulk replace tool was available so it was a matter of hunting and killing.

These weren't the only assets. There are so many others including your track, PBR and non-PBR textures of similar names, and so on. The only way to get around this is to rename the offending asset to something else if we can, but unfortunately we can't because they are usually built-in or DLC.

Glad I'm not the only one.

If you spot it quick enough then you can just reselect the correct item. However I had a quick look at one of my narrow gauge layouts before coming off for the evening and sure enough, a few sections of the main line had ended up being laid as old rusty DMT 2ft track, rather than shiny. A quick replace took care of the problem but the downside to that, is if you the unwanted track type in places where it is needed (e.g. sidings and old goods yards etc.) then you have to start messing around with the selection box when doing a replace, rather than the quick global command.

If the bug has been there since 2004, I suspect it must have gone in the too difficult box at an early stage, or the original coder(s) didn't leave enough notes for the current programmers to risk trying to fix it (we know what a basket of spaghetti code Trainz is, anyway... ).

Working fine here. Which build number?
What steps are required to get it to change? (e.g. does it change when closing then reopening the track window? Or do you need to do several steps?)

Latest stable N3V build - 105096.

I pretty much described the issue in the OP. It will jump to a different track type after laying a spline, without any further interaction after a few seconds. This happens without closing and re-opening the track window. Note I was working today with the No 6 TS19 Jarrah and that track doesn't exhibit the same tendency. BTW it's the No 5 Jarrah that was jumping around, I should have mentioned.

I accept it could be a difficult one to reproduce, would definitely advise having CMP doing a bit of downloading in the background as that increases the tendency for the situation to arise though as I said not exclusively.

I have experienced the same issue with 106618 as well. It's not just track either and occurs with all categories except for consists and railcars.

There was a bug fixed in Dec (so pre SP1 I think) with the list scrolling and resetting while downloading items. Tested now in 105096 an 106618 and it's working fine.

So unable to reproduce any item becoming unselected while downloading. There must be another step involved.

I have been able to reproduce this (touch wood). Here is what I have been doing.

I am in the process of changing some short segments of the track on an established route from one type to another in the same track set but with no ballast and rusty rails replacing ballasted and shiny rails. The Bulk Update and Replace tool is not suitable for this task as the track to be changed cannot be easily enclosed within a set area without also changing parallel running track which I do not want to change. So I use the following procedure:-

1. with the track tool (F5) open and the track objects mode selected, I move any track objects (switches, signals, speed signs, buffers, etc) off the track onto a nearby but separate section of track - either the same track (next spline) or another track.
2. I switch to track mode and delete the current section of track to be replaced
3. I use the picklist to select (double click) the correct replacement track and the correct track is highlighted
4. I add the replacement track
5. I switch back to track objects mode and move the track objects back into position
6. I switch back to track mode and note that a different track type (one in the same set but with ballast and shiny rails) has been selected

I will submit a bug report.

QA have replied saying that they are unable to reproduce the issue as I have described it. I have since repeated my steps with the same result - the original track selection has changed. Reply sent.

Thanks for your input on that pware, hopefully something will come out of it. The code which controls the menu/lists and processing mouse cursor movement within that box would seem a good place to start looking as to why it jumps without input, to another item.

I am having an ongoing discussion with QA on what to do next. They have given me some suggestions that I will try over the weekend (nothing else to do these days).

pware said:

I am having an ongoing discussion with QA on what to do next. They have given me some suggestions that I will try over the weekend (nothing else to do these days).

Click to expand...

It'll be interesting to hear the details on this one. I had the issue last night as I was placing houses and other buildings.

Progress Report 1:

1. created a clean install of TRS19 Platinum - no DLS or DLC, no content of my own creation. Tested using the steps I described in my earlier post and no problems detected.
2. installed all the DLS track (Protrack 42in set by higgikay) and the picklist that contained the subset of this track that I was using when I noticed the problem. Tested again and no problems detected. I think this means I can eliminate the track as the cause.

Progress Report 2:

Installed (from CDP backups) the two routes and sessions that I am currently working on, installed the rolling stock (reskins of my creation) required for the sessions from CDPs, downloaded all the DLS dependencies (844 of them!!!), still no DLC or third party content. Ran tests and issue has reappeared. So something in those assets is *probably* the culprit.

In the process I discovered a number of assets that I have used that are "unknown" in the clean install of TRS19 Platinum but are all built-in in TRS19 SP1. In my previous working install of TRS19 Platinum they were not missing. In the one case I investigated in detail, the asset has been updated to ":3" and unknown in the clean Platinum edition but is ":2" in the SP1 version.

Progress Report 3:

I have sent to N3V QA (at their request) a list of all the DLS assets where we suspect the problem may lie, together with a list of assets that CM lists as "Installed payware" even though I have not installed any payware (or DLC) into my clean install. I am also working to eliminate another issue that I have noticed that *may* be related - some of my track and track objects have somehow found their way into the session (which may be my fault). A merge to route layer did not work so I am in the process of manually finding and moving each item (a real pain).