Ridiculous amounts of problems with Trackdesigning. Need help.

Hello Trainz community,

I am a old newcommer to Trainz 2019. I had previously spend hundrets of hours modifying and making my own map that I could then play with a friend, however I stopped completely about one and a half years ago because the vast amount of problems that I had to deal with got to me. Now I want to come back and of course I am once again flooded with new problems that I have no clue whatsoever to on how to solve them. I will list all my problems that I have as of now but I know for sure once I got these problems after me that I have more to come that I need help with. The problems right now completely hinder me on even starting to work on my map again. I will list my problems here:

1. After downloading my map from the DLS and trying to test it again with "Drive Session" I am met with an error message "The session could not be loaded because it and/or some of its dependencies are not locally installed or are not up to date. The missing content shown below must be downloaded before the session can be joined. Woudl you like to download these assets now? CN GP9 phase II (zebra)." This asset tells me it cannot be downloaded from the DLS because it is an asset however in the content store window in the launcher I already downloaded and updated all my DLCs fully. How do I get this asset downloaded?

2. Upon trying to simply edit that session, deleting the missing assets and saving it as a new session to the corresponding route I am met with another error "The session could not be loaded because it and/or some of its dependencies are not in an installed conent package and are not available on the Download Station. Click the 'Details' button below to show the full list of unofficial assets." Clicking the details button it shows me the session I just saved. What I get from this is that I cannot locally modify my own map anymore for some reason. How can I edit my own routes and sessions I downloaded from the DLS again?

3. With the help of the Content Manager I can get my map to work in the Driver mode with filtering for "My Content" and then Rightclicking>Open>Open Asset in Driver. Doing this and testing I am met with two problems. Nr. one being that all the grass effects that I believe are NVidia Turf stuff are gone and secondly the bigger problem: None of the industries on my map want to work. All that despite me editing all the processes, queues and so on. How do I get my industries to be able to load, unload and process stuff?

Once I can finally go back to editing my map I just know of one more problem that I had in the past which was that I couldn't use a specific NVidia Turf Brush that was used in the official Canada DLC however I can't recall any specific details of how these things even worked nor why that specific brush didn't work. It would be heaven already if I'd find a way that the game lets me modify my own stuff.

Thanks in advance
Yuko

Update: After lots of testing I have gathered some knowledge of the problems and of course gathered more problems too.

The first problem I had talked about still exists. I am completely unable to get that asset even though in my knowledge I bought it with the Trainz 2019: North America edition. That completely softlocks me from everything with that map except editing it and uploading a new version to the DLS. That is exactly what I did. I went ahead, deleted all missing assets and took the time to go through the uploading queue and violà: I can now at least open my map in driver mode.
That brings up the following problems though:

1. Despite there being drivers for each train in the editor when I try to play the map in driver mode there are no drivers and with that I can't test the map at all.

2. [SOLVED] NVidia Turf effects now stay in the map!

3. Upon trying to edit that newly uploaded version I am still met with the error I've quoted on 2. in my first post.

4. I've seen that some of the railroad crossings don't lower their barriers, others do though.

5. I've found out again what my problem with the clutter effects was. My problem was the ultra limited asset amount I can use. I inspired myself by the official Canada DLC for trackside detail but all these assets are locked for me when editing other maps and for the love of god, there are thousands of assets to manually place. Why can I only choose between like 20 to 30 assets in the clutter effects??

Maybe I am really unknowing but is that the intended official way of modifying your own maps once you can only download them? By doing minor changes and then uploading them and waiting days for them to go through the queue?? I am unwilling to go through all that waiting time for one minor change to then find out after days it didn't work. Why can I NOT locally modify my own map on my Computer?!
This is getting frustrating.

WOW I'm surprised nobody has stepped in to offer you help. I'm sorry I can not help as I don't really understand the things you describe. I am not at all familiar with using the DLS. I bought a DVD version and installed it and have just been modifying built in routes , and building my own routes. 90+% of the stuff in post I read on this forum I don't have a clue what their talking about. That is the reason I never go online and use the DLS, and I never have updated or upgraded to a newer version or game of Trainz.
I read through the entire user manual, and there is Nothing in it that relates to the things I read on this forum. The Trainz games are NOT user friendly. And the forum is way too complicated and technical for me to understand. When people try to explain something they automatically assume you know what their talking about. Like getting directions from someone who assumes you live in the area and you've been there a 100 times.

I totally agree with TimBurr there. It is quite difficult trying to make routes as a newbie and some of the advice, although very good and well intentioned, is a fair bit above my pay grade. I am sorry I am no help here but someone should be along and give some help soon. Just keep trying, as you say when you try and work through some problems another crop turns up, it is never ending. Meanwhile, back to route making.
craigdon

Can you post a pic off what your trying to do . It would help us help you .

Matt

Update: Together with the help of the german Trainz community I've had some major breakthroughs. Two of my biggest problems are fixed now which almost fixes it completely. I'll list the solutions to my problems here:

1. Problem: I couldn't play my session because of missing assets and I couldn't remove them with the editor because after saving the game wouldn't let me join a session with changes. Solution: Remove the Multiplayer Rule from the Session, that will make the edit a locally installed version and doesn't require the DLS anymore. Only add the Multiplayer Rule when the map is final.

2. Problem: The Industries just didn't want to load and unload from and onto railcars. Solution: Copy the area around the industry including the industry and just paste it in the same position. When you rotate or move a Industry the invisible triggerzone for the loading/unloading doesn't move with the visible industry. So essentially placing any industry and moving or rotating it to your needs makes it unusable but when you copy and paste it onto the same position the triggerzone resets to where the industry actually is.
I assume that this problem causes the railroad crossings to not work, I will test that and report on it when i found out more.

Unfortunaltely I am still lacking a way to place many assets for trackside decoration fast. I had hoped that the clutter brushes would help me with that but I am so limited in the assets i can use with clutter that it would look bad. Does anyone know how I can either add more assets to the clutter brush or any other option to place stuff like treetrunks, bushes, cattails and so on with random rotation relatively fast?

That's great.
I'm really glad you you listed the problem and how you fixed it.
On problem 1. I'm confused. you say you had missing assets and couldn't remove them. If they are missing then they are already removed, correct?
And I now know why you had to use the DLS to play the game. Yeah, I didn't understand that because I have never used the Multiplayer Rule.

The solution to problem 2 is something I didn't know about. I've never had that problem. But it is great to learn about it. thanks.

What is the "clutter brush" and is it in TS12? When ever I have to place a lot of assets like trees & grass, I first make a spot or section off to side and build it up with all the stuff I want to place. Then I copy & paste it over & over until I have the area filled in.

My biggest problem is finding the assets I need. in TS12 you can only have 1 favorite asset save list. It gets filled up and becomes useless. I spend WAY too much time scrolling through the objects library.

The thing about the missing asset. A locomotive, the GP9, got updated by N3Vgames i suppose. So the last digit in its kuid changed from [...]:1 to [...]:2 which makes it a new version of that asset. Since it's a payware asset it cannot be updated through the DLS and in my DLC list everything was fully updated so I had literally no way to download that asset. The [...]:1 version of the asset was still in my map though so on startup of that map I was told i need to download the updated version of the GP9 first before I can play the map. Since I didn't have any way to download it I just simply wanted to remove it in the editor which as I stated in previous posts led me to more problems which are all fixed now.

For the clutter brush. Since TRS2019 there are NVidia TurF and Clutter effects which you can apply to your map with the advanced tab of topology. Previously to that you need to make an Effect Layer in the pen and paper thingy which I don't know how it's called in the upper left corner. You click on edit effect layers there and you're met with a new window where you can customize your own effects.

There you can choose between a turf or a clutter effect. Turf mostly is used for grass or more genereally non static assets that move and clutter for bulkplacing detail stuff. I've already placed grass with the turf brush on my map.
So when you click on the "+" you make a new clutter effect and basically are met with this. Here you can add mesh-assets and this is exactly where my problem lies: In the object menu there are maaaaany nice assets I'd love to use for riverside decoration to make the edges look more pleasant, assets such as "Bush CatTail 1 - Seasonal" and "Bush CatTail 2 - Seasonal". However when you click the "Add asset" for mesh-assets you're met with a super limited and frankly not nice list of assets you can use. I'd love to know a way to either add more assets to that list, preferably the ones from the Object tab or get any other way of placing random trackside scenery.

I did try the copying of a certain area and pasting it but that brings one problem: If i get too close to already existing Objects such as trees they just get overridden and replaced with that approach.

With the GP9, if it has previously been a DLS asset, in content manager right click and "Download this version" is used to download obsolete "old" assets.
When using copy/paste, you can click the blue "add" button on the flyout and you will not lose any existing assets when pasting.
cheers

TimBurr said:

What is the "clutter brush" and is it in TS12?

Click to expand...

The clutter brush was introduced in Trainz 2019 and is not included in TS12.