My Trainz TRS22 Ground ZERO moment

RoysTrainz

Rembrandt van Trainz
BB damage ground zero.jpgBB horrific scene.jpg

dear fellow trainzers.
As if it is not enough to cope with the daily obstacle course and pitfalls of trying to work on my Calgary route!
I make backups everyday but as we all know useless if you not see this one coming (see pictures).
Massive failure of baseboards keeping their original heights and setting them to zero.
I have to go back 7 versions of my backups to find a normal looking and 'working' version with no damaged baseboards on first sight.
5 days completely lost but worse is the fear it creates of what else hidden or partially visual where things go downhill.

Yes I am at a loss and probably take a brake from trainz....... after 18 years.
There is a point were it is fighting odds and mishaps that makes my trainz experience unbareable to say it careful.

If yesterdays discovery was to happen in the route at places I work or work recently I understand things could go wrong for the wrong reason BUT I work already for quiet a long time on the other 'healthy' looking side of the route so no immediate danger if doing things wrong on my behalve if that is possible with BB.

Really long time ago I had a few times a BB went south but saw it luckily immediately but this is so massive and at a place nothing has been done for a few month.

Last evening I tried to cut out the good looking part of my route with the latest work not lost.
Than I went to do the same on the older 1 week older version where the section was (visually)still healthy and cut that out of that route.
Doing a merger of the 2 should normally at least give me the BB back from the entire route in visually good shape.
merger gone wrong blue blop.jpg useless merger appeared.
Only (understatement)have to cope with scars where you merge 2 routes and like a masking tape V shape 'damage' where baseboards meet from merged part.
Next torture is trying to fix tracks, roads, rivers, lakes and missing(gone) assets replace along the merger line along the entire route.

Never a dull moment, yes I take it as calm as possible as the real world problems outside makes one so humble that this is peanuts and is what it is.

Again anybodies guess or tips and tricks to repair maybe the damaged original not merged route and revive the darn baseboards.

Bye for now

Roy
 
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Something similar happened to me in TANE , I had to cut the collapsed section out , delete the rest of the 80 mile route and patch the two together with a merge , I saved the route, but I didn't work on it for over six months afterwards . I sympathise, this can be a severely compromised program, and it's especially heartbreaking when damage occurs on sections of the route you aren't working on, as it may be weeks before you realise that the route has suffered damage . In my case it was due to me not realising I'd nearly filled up my hard drive , so can't really blame nv3 , but if the program had given a warning ( like Some Programs do ) that there wasn't enough disc space to save, I could have avoided the issue.
 
Morning Dan,

first of all thank you for the heartwarming post .
To be honest I not expected any reply or just from those close trainzers I know for years. For me the forum is zombieland for most of my post be sharing pictures of progress of routes, or trouble left and right but the one hit me this time is what I call massive like a real tsunami. Not just one or not even a handfull but a complete part of the SE Calgary route ALL the baseboards(better call them bash boards) got hit fully to zero or have their infamous edges survive like a walking path between .
Anyway over the weekend until yesterday evening I tried to figure out what might happen and could cause this.
For sure i know water TRS22 and water TRS19 are bug generators and should be classified as high risk warning but it is up to N3V to make that call.

I do everday more than once for every TRS22 start a DBR and every morning or when gutfeeling tell me run EDBR (5 min) at least feel like all I could do like taking ALkaselzer or Eno for heartburn. hahahaha.
Now we have here mountaineous terrain and lots of water and T storms and of course the power glitches for a nanosecond or 1 or a few hours.

I not sure if when running EDBR and the computer goes down suddenly ,this might screw the route dbase somehow/somewhere not seeing not knowing.


Enough said and taking a brake until i hear something positive from down under how to get me out of this swamp/quick sand.

Thanks again Dan most appreciated you posted.


Something similar happened to me in TANE , I had to cut the collapsed section out , delete the rest of the 80 mile route and patch the two together with a merge , I saved the route, but I didn't work on it for over six months afterwards . I sympathise, this can be a severely compromised program, and it's especially heartbreaking when damage occurs on sections of the route you aren't working on, as it may be weeks before you realise that the route has suffered damage . In my case it was due to me not realising I'd nearly filled up my hard drive , so can't really blame nv3 , but if the program had given a warning ( like Some Programs do ) that there wasn't enough disc space to save, I could have avoided the issue.
 
I not sure if when running EDBR and the computer goes down suddenly ,this might screw the route dbase somehow/somewhere not seeing not knowing.

If you crashed during a db repair, then it is quite likely something could be left in an incorrect state.

The process is to start up again and allow the next db repair to complete.

Manually doing db repairs is generally not required - the game will run a db repair when one is required. The exception to this is if you've manually moved data around, in qhich case you need to manually run the repair.

Other than a failed db repair, other possibilities would include manually copying files from one local folder to another and not having a complete copy of the data.

Other than that, without a repro it's unlikely we'll be able to identify the cause.

My other suggestion would be to keep a 7 day rolling backup.
 
Roy,

I understand your reason for taking a break. It was a similar situation that prompted me to want to throw it all away into the trash and empty it too. I said at the time I had music projects, which was true, but the bigger reason was too many things kept crashing. Eventually, I came back but now I tread lightly as if I'm walking on ice cubes all the time and waiting for everything to end up crashing. The various things left a bad taste in my mouth and after my 19 years at it, I no longer have the passion I once did for the program. I still use it but it's not the same.

I have a feeling that we become too comfortable with technology and when it crashes now it takes by surprise. We need to stay on guard as I used to say and ensure our backups are done diligently in case something goes wrong. Being caught between backups is the scary part, and there's not much you can do about it except pick up where you left off and restore the most recent backup you have. There is that built in backup mechanism which allows us to return back to where we left off, but you need to know where and what and when in order to find the file and restore the route back to where you left off.

I do recommend taking a break for any reason. Sometimes, just stepping away does a lot for one's soul and rebuilds the creative part as well.
 
morning Tony,

thanks for the reply.
The crash while edbr was long time ago. I only mention it if there is anything there that could cause hidden trouble.
I intuively do a DBR every start of trainz and now at least once a week EDBR unless something fishy going on.
It's like people take paracetamol for a headache looming thinking it solves the problem and less stress in the ead.
I never have headaches luckily only Trainzaches more than before.:hehe:




If you crashed during a db repair, then it is quite likely something could be left in an incorrect state.

The process is to start up again and allow the next db repair to complete.

Manually doing db repairs is generally not required - the game will run a db repair when one is required. The exception to this is if you've manually moved data around, in qhich case you need to manually run the repair.

Other than a failed db repair, other possibilities would include manually copying files from one local folder to another and not having a complete copy of the data.

Other than that, without a repro it's unlikely we'll be able to identify the cause.

My other suggestion would be to keep a 7 day rolling backup.
What do you mean by 7 days rolling backup?
My next best guess is the basemaps or base boards get hit by another buggy feature like TRS22 water and likewise the old TS19 water.
If you ask me this has to be examined I talked already to Paul about it.
 
Hi John,

funny long time ago I pulled you out of the swamp and now you grab my hand and pull me out of it, sort off.
To be honest when i posted my debacle I did sort of take a brake but my brain was working overtime trying to identify possible scenario's where thing could gone wrong.
The brake, a few hours allowed me to think clear and calm and found some ways to get closer to the cause which might be a mix of glitches and maybe hidden bugs.
Ever since first I did was save my existing work which I absolutely not want to do again as they are tricky repairs and fixes in the city and around.
I had to cut out the still healthy looking part of Calgary downtown etc and than go back to the oldest version backup which was about a week earlier where i could cutout the healthy (now) damaged basemaps part.
This said sound like easy job but the work to be done after I merge (if lucky succesfully ) the 2 or 3 parts back to a working model is painful and full of tricky edges and corners. Missing track,roads etc is doable but time consuming and cannot see if the tracks had markers signals etc on it. That has te be verified too.
Next is all the UTM baseboards i made which are gone because of the cutout have to be identified and replaced. arrrgh.
Next find houses industries trees etc caught up in the fire of cutting of boards and the worst is what you not see to find.
What I did find though is that when merging the healthy cutouts that a blue blob appeared and when i made 3 cutouts the blobs where different but consistent on 1 cutout healthy part. It was each time related to water and apparantly only screwed up the minimap but I absolutely not trust WYSIWYG as hidden trouble in the 3D model could still hit me massively again.
So I deleted ALL water related TRS22 AND TS19 too on rivers,creeks and ponds just to make sure I could make sure (99%) my route was waterproof.
I carefully reassembled the now waterfree parts and merge them 1 by one to see if the blue blob appeared and if not merge the next one.
1 day trial and error monday and sundaynight finally gave me some positively looking results with no blobs anymore.
Of course not to forget I have to REDO all over again ALL the water done so far which with the TRS22 feature no fun and buggy with edges pointing to zero on the map. These zero points gives me the impression this could eventually cause a basemap problem if the water edge zero point coincides with the edge of a basemap or cross 4 basemap edges in the worst case.
Now I am in the proces for at least the rest of the week to clean up the visual mess and try to repair redo what i can see or remember and than go ghost hunting for missing not visual assets called collateral damage recovery.
Sorry for typos etc my eyes not follow me anymore like before(tired) and my age is not helping in this regard.
Thanks again John






Roy,

I understand your reason for taking a break. It was a similar situation that prompted me to want to throw it all away into the trash and empty it too. I said at the time I had music projects, which was true, but the bigger reason was too many things kept crashing. Eventually, I came back but now I tread lightly as if I'm walking on ice cubes all the time and waiting for everything to end up crashing. The various things left a bad taste in my mouth and after my 19 years at it, I no longer have the passion I once did for the program. I still use it but it's not the same.

I have a feeling that we become too comfortable with technology and when it crashes now it takes by surprise. We need to stay on guard as I used to say and ensure our backups are done diligently in case something goes wrong. Being caught between backups is the scary part, and there's not much you can do about it except pick up where you left off and restore the most recent backup you have. There is that built in backup mechanism which allows us to return back to where we left off, but you need to know where and what and when in order to find the file and restore the route back to where you left off.

I do recommend taking a break for any reason. Sometimes, just stepping away does a lot for one's soul and rebuilds the creative part as well.
 
Roy,

That was messy! Recreating something accurately is a difficult task and with this you also need to ensure that the tracks and roads are reconnected as well along with the track markers, direction markers, and all that stuff that goes with it are in place as well. I haven't tried the new water fully and plan to when I have more time. My quick test of it wasn't satisfactory and I put it away until I can focus on the task a bit more.

Part of your problem is the size of the route. This has nothing to do with the data so much as it has to do with the physical size and you keeping track of all the details at hand. The problem is you can easily have an error occur many kilometers from where you are working and never know there's a problem out there until many saves later and you happened to go through that area. That is exactly what happened to me.

I had been thinning some of the forested areas and replacing trees and went through the bulk update process with different percentages of trees being deleted or added. I thinned my pines and spruce trees in one area to my satisfaction then unknown to me deleted a complete spruce forest because I forgot to uncheck the delete box while I was supposed to be replacing some other trees. I didn't discover this until months later and I felt my heart hit my shoes only to be followed by my stomach!

I had backups of the route, but they were a few weeks old and had nothing of the new changes I had made. I just sat there for a few minutes then closed the program and walked away. It was then I was ready to ditch everything because this was a route I had worked on for years, nearly 20 years, and it was all gone in a single mouse click! After you pulled me out of the swamp, for which I thank you a lot for and I'm glad to see you only put your toe in instead, I assessed the situation but didn't have much luck fixing anything immediately. About 6 months later, I came across another backup, a bit older than the one made immediately before the big mix up. I took parts of that backup and brought in and trimmed what I didn't want and deleted what I didn't want on the original and merged the two. The results were okay with a lot of do-over parts and remembering my nice tweaks I had done. This route isn't as accurate as yours, so what I didn't wasn't critical, but I still wanted to get the kit and caboodle back together again as I had it.


Hi John,

funny long time ago I pulled you out of the swamp and now you grab my hand and pull me out of it, sort off.
To be honest when i posted my debacle I did sort of take a brake but my brain was working overtime trying to identify possible scenario's where thing could gone wrong.
The brake, a few hours allowed me to think clear and calm and found some ways to get closer to the cause which might be a mix of glitches and maybe hidden bugs.
Ever since first I did was save my existing work which I absolutely not want to do again as they are tricky repairs and fixes in the city and around.
I had to cut out the still healthy looking part of Calgary downtown etc and than go back to the oldest version backup which was about a week earlier where i could cutout the healthy (now) damaged basemaps part.
This said sound like easy job but the work to be done after I merge (if lucky succesfully ) the 2 or 3 parts back to a working model is painful and full of tricky edges and corners. Missing track,roads etc is doable but time consuming and cannot see if the tracks had markers signals etc on it. That has te be verified too.
Next is all the UTM baseboards i made which are gone because of the cutout have to be identified and replaced. arrrgh.
Next find houses industries trees etc caught up in the fire of cutting of boards and the worst is what you not see to find.
What I did find though is that when merging the healthy cutouts that a blue blob appeared and when i made 3 cutouts the blobs where different but consistent on 1 cutout healthy part. It was each time related to water and apparantly only screwed up the minimap but I absolutely not trust WYSIWYG as hidden trouble in the 3D model could still hit me massively again.
So I deleted ALL water related TRS22 AND TS19 too on rivers,creeks and ponds just to make sure I could make sure (99%) my route was waterproof.
I carefully reassembled the now waterfree parts and merge them 1 by one to see if the blue blob appeared and if not merge the next one.
1 day trial and error monday and sundaynight finally gave me some positively looking results with no blobs anymore.
Of course not to forget I have to REDO all over again ALL the water done so far which with the TRS22 feature no fun and buggy with edges pointing to zero on the map. These zero points gives me the impression this could eventually cause a basemap problem if the water edge zero point coincides with the edge of a basemap or cross 4 basemap edges in the worst case.
Now I am in the proces for at least the rest of the week to clean up the visual mess and try to repair redo what i can see or remember and than go ghost hunting for missing not visual assets called collateral damage recovery.
Sorry for typos etc my eyes not follow me anymore like before(tired) and my age is not helping in this regard.
Thanks again John
 
2 outages in 1 hour want some?

John,

I just recovered from 2 outages with 1 hour no T storm or rain or whatever someone's tree you know. I feel blessed with so much luck to get it all maybe in one day and than up to the next hurdle.:confused:

v112 85MB.jpghonu is comin.jpg

Actually the size is not the issue 84.7 MB left from 92MB before the perfect storm hit me a few days ago.
The problem is I found a bug in the bridges roads and intersections stuff alike where suddenly the S20 allowed me to click not only the road end point as usual and move or change but also the child asset which is the road spline.
This creates hillarius situations where you desparately try to click the parent and not the child which zooming rotating not help just click until lucky.
I took me a while to convince Paul I had something for dev to check and yesterday finally they acknowledge its a bug.
Now when you look at the intersections the following unfortunate situation as I cannot use really the d key but advice is to use the s key and make T moves from there. I not tried it yet until this bug is fixed.
Moreover I found that when you use the r key and select a road and than use the d key and say replace all seem to be fine and work but..... BIG but!
In the videos you see the child splines in the intersections not stay as simple red or purple spline but become the full street spline i choose as replacement. OUCH.
I did report thsi already a while ago 2 month I think that child splines became road type spline fully dressed to go to the bug party.lol
So clearly you see the dilemma i had and still have to repair things as long as that nasty bug is not fixed besides quiet a few others like kuids in the bottom list of the config.txt are not updated automatically to the latest version.
This on top of the existing misery creates horrible refresh graphics times from 5 to 10 min and it refreshes a lot when you work downtown on streets and intersections that have wrong old kuids eg:2 i.o. :3.
The error log shows exactly which one and why but only N3V can update fix this one too.
I found a trick to circumvent the refresh waiting time and programmed my G hub keyboard G1 key into ctrl F1 and G2 in ctrl D so could instantly swap to driver and had a refresh in 1 second than go back to S20.
Discomfort is the menu's are than also reset and I always click the d key asset i.o. the w key texture whixch is always first in line very annoying.
Does my english still make sense.lol
So see how far i get now trying to repair 1 St SW intersections and see how long it last.
 
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Your English makes sense. The crashes and then the bugs made the mess worse. The good news is the bugs have been confirmed and the mess has been fixed for now.

I do recommend looking into a UPS. This small investment is worth it in the long run because this device will prevent hardware damage from lightning and from sudden power outages, surges, and brownouts. This is a battery backup system that will allow you to shut down your computer safely if there's a power outage. You add up your total VA (Volt-Amperes or Watts) and then add a bit on top for overhead to determine the size of the UPS you need. I went for a 2000VA (2kW) unit. I plug in my external backup drives, my computer, two displays, and my Roland LX17 digital piano. With this equipment running, I get about 20 minutes on battery so there's plenty of time to shut things down so there's no data loss.



John,

I just recovered from 2 outages with 1 hour no T storm or rain or whatever someone's tree you know. I feel blessed with so much luck to get it all maybe in one day and than up to the next hurdle.:confused:

View attachment 2375View attachment 2376

Actually the size is not the issue 84.7 MB left from 92MB before the perfect storm hit me a few days ago.
The problem is I found a bug in the bridges roads and intersections stuff alike where suddenly the S20 allowed me to click not only the road end point as usual and move or change but also the child asset which is the road spline.
This creates hillarius situations where you desparately try to click the parent and not the child which zooming rotating not help just click until lucky.
I took me a while to convince Paul I had something for dev to check and yesterday finally they acknowledge its a bug.
Now when you look at the intersections the following unfortunate situation as I cannot use really the d key but advice is to use the s key and make T moves from there. I not tried it yet until this bug is fixed.
Moreover I found that when you use the r key and select a road and than use the d key and say replace all seem to be fine and work but..... BIG but!
In the videos you see the child splines in the intersections not stay as simple red or purple spline but become the full street spline i choose as replacement. OUCH.
I did report thsi already a while ago 2 month I think that child splines became road type spline fully dressed to go to the bug party.lol
So clearly you see the dilemma i had and still have to repair things as long as that nasty bug is not fixed besides quiet a few others like kuids in the bottom list of the config.txt are not updated automatically to the latest version.
This on top of the existing misery creates horrible refresh graphics times from 5 to 10 min and it refreshes a lot when you work downtown on streets and intersections that have wrong old kuids eg:2 i.o. :3.
The error log shows exactly which one and why but only N3V can update fix this one too.
I found a trick to circumvent the refresh waiting time and programmed my G hub keyboard G1 key into ctrl F1 and G2 in ctrl D so could instantly swap to driver and had a refresh in 1 second than go back to S20.
Discomfort is the menu's are than also reset and I always click the d key asset i.o. the w key texture whixch is always first in line very annoying.
Does my english still make sense.lol
So see how far i get now trying to repair 1 St SW intersections and see how long it last.
 
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