Making a realistic Session: how difficoult it is?

PTrains

New member
Hello folks, here to ask some question regarding something pretty much easier to achieve that in Trainz it seems very hard to make.
It is possible to create a realistic session in Trainz (TS2019) and how hard it is to make?

As realistic session I mean something that you have in reality, like several Trains passing on the same route at different times with different trains stops at stations.

Making an example with an outdated sim like MS Train Simulator, the process involves in:

1) Create the Consists;
2) Create each Trains path along the same route;
3) Creating the activity with;
- Starting Time (spawn) for each Trains (including the Player Train);
- Timetables (in which Station the Trains must stop and how long);
- Events like Ending Activity.

Is all above achievable in Trainz? Is the same process or I'm speaking about an utopic process for this "simulator"?

Thanks
 
The process takes time and you need to plan exactly what you want to accomplish. I used a spreadsheet to plan my routes, industries, and other stuff I needed to keep track of. I also divided the large route into multiple "divisions", and used the Schedule Library to house my consistently used driver commands and assigned them to the drivers via the related Copy Commands From driver command.

The process on this 189 mile route took me well over two weeks with one week dedicated to placing consists and setting up the commodities and industries. The other week as spent setting up drivers and troubleshooting the completed session.

Now the process I used was based on my KISS principles. I do everything as easy as possible without a lot of fancy driving commands and other nifty schedule and fancy control scripts. This was also put together before the ITs and other interesting stuff was made available. When all was said, done, and more or less etched into stone, everything worked quite well. This doesn't go without saying, however, that I did have a few misplaced track mark assignments which sent some drivers down the wrong track. It was interesting to see drivers stop at the bottom of a steep grade then renegotiate the rout at that point. The steep hill forced the coal drags to whine, squeal, and grind their way up the grade. I almost left that error in place just for that purpose!
 
Thank you both for the answers, but what I found difficoult is to understand which script/function I have to use and in which order.

Example, if I want that an AI Train is starting from point A at a specific time of the day and is going towards points C, making a stop at point B (which is between A and C), lets say few minutes of station stop, how should I do that?
I've found a tutorial explaing all the functions of the Session Editor but is really tough for me to understand which one can help me to achieve this (also it seems outdated as it was built for T:ANE, nothing for TS2019).

Do you have a sort of tutorial for this particular purpose?

Thanks
 
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There are tutorials on Youtube which explain session creation from start to finish, the N3V ones also go into rules and child rules and how to use them. I would highly recommend downloading a Philskene route like Intencity and go into edit on one of his sessions to see how it is all put together. Trainz has a fairly steep learning curve and making a complex session can seem like some kind of sorcery at first. My first mistake was thinking advanced tools in Surveyor were not for newbies when they are some of the most often used tools in the kit. I've since found out it was only done that way due to low res monitors in the old days. Ask plenty of questions on the forums and someone will help.
 
I still like MSTS but I switched to Trainz back pre-2009 because it is much simpler to set up sessions there. Also, Open Rails does not always interpret MSTS sessions correctly.

Say you create a train at one end of the route. Instead of defining its route as part of the consist, you do what dispatchers do and give the driver orders to go certain places. You can designate those places with trackmarks. Industries and stations are also places you can direct them to. (If the trackmarks you need aren't built into the route, you can place your own in the session in Surveyor.)

You do that by giving the driver driver commands in either driver setup in the session rules, or on the fly in Driver on the command bar.

That's the basics. Everything else is an elaboration of the basic steps, using various assets which you can see if you study other folks' sessions in Surveyor.

:B~)
 
Setting the time to start a consist can be done with a rule called TIMSCHECK. Place all instructions for that run below and indented. Those things only take place after the Trainz clock matches the time set in TimeCheck. A good time based scheduling process remains a mystery. So you have to look at the dozens of rules and try some that look interesting. Do a lot of manual runs on your detected route to expose any faults or odd behavior, An error free route is much easier to schedule, obviously. Of course, you want to use a set-time rule to set the game clock as the start of your set of scheduled runs.

There are other "start at a time" rules but they use portals which remain a problem at times. However, if you can get one to work you now have a way to functionally represent the "outside world".
 
Suggestion. View a session that has 27 scheduled drivers:

Download "Sea Port/Industrial SP4" from the Content Manager. Then grab the session "Ship Yard & Industrial Basic" (both by lewiscc65). The session has 64 industries, 75 consists, 64 products. When it starts go into Surveyor and "edit session." Click on "Driver Setup" and you'll see about 38 Drivers and consists with 27 of them having a schedule of some type. Most drivers are trains but some are ships, aircraft, etc. The schedules are pulling commands from the "Schedule Library." Taking a quick look at things I see movement based on industry levels, time, trains hitting trackmarks, and it also uses portals.

EDIT: Also, I just learned from the author that the Drivers without schedules get assigned a schedule by the Resource Verify rule.

I present this Session only because it's the one I'm currently looking at to learn. It is a great session for learning various types of setting schedules and its a fun route. It runs a LOT better in Tane (it is a Tane route after all) than TRS19. In '19 trains often get "stuck" (at times) and backed up at certain choke points and one or more must be deleted to get things going again. (See "Update" below) I use that as a learning experience to find out why.

I thank lewiscc65 for making it available.

I invite others to list sessions that are on the DLS (CM) that also would be good for learning how to "schedule" by various means. I learn best by looking at examples. I'm sure some others are the same.

Update: Works great Tane. Ran session for 8 hours and had one issue which may have worked itself out but I went ahead and threw a junction to get a train moving. The 38 scheduled drivers kept themselves working fine, even in times of heavy congestion. In TRS19 things go wrong very quickly. Trains seemingly get "stuck" when signal goes from Red to Green. Trains sometimes will not start again on the green signal. Doing a "stop" and "restart schedule" does not help. It just sits there.

Update 2: Started another session in '19 and after one hour all Drivers are happily performing their duties. Go figure.
 
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A lot depends on your design goals for a session. For example, Philskene's sessions have very little automation. Just AI trains for mostly what I call "scenery trains". The session then involves placing consists and creating user objectives. If you make the objectives written, you avoid the balloons and complex nested rules. One of many approaches.
 
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