Faulty assets no easy fix

I downloaded a small route called Cape Mae Scenic Railroad and it has a bunch of faulty items that have texture issues and obsolete build number issues. If I try to up the build number it creates more errors that I don't know how to fix. All the faulty assets are invisible in game because of the errors. What can I do about it? Why would a third party site release deps with errors? I'm using TRS19 SP5 the latest build. The route is supposed to be 2019 compatible.

Don't up-version the assets.

The assets were not "faulty" for the version they were created for, or they were faulty and that version of Trainz didn't see the errors. Let me 'splain.

Up until TRS2006, Trainz had little if any error reporting and faulty assets could be installed without warning. For the most part, TRS2004 and below would chug along okay. While these assets appeared to work okay, their internal unreported errors, caused internal problems that could cause the program to crash suddenly, or crash on exit. These hidden errors also caused substantial performance problems due to the program having to parse through the errors and skip over them in order to read and use the parts that worked. Some of the errors were simple typographical errors in the config.txt files.

It was common to see such errors as missing quotes, or tabs used to space out the text, causing weird errors later on in TRS2006 and up and assets to load slowly. Other outright typos were common such as desicription, or local spellings such as colour instead of color, among many other things. Other errors were missing textures, or wrong-sized textures. While the asset may load up, there were blank spots, or the assets would load very slowly due to the textures being too big. These are only some examples of what was there for Trainz to slag and slug through to operate.

When TRS2006 came out, error checking was introduced. This was pretty calm and mild compared to what we have today, but it was the start of what was to come later. As subsequent versions of Trainz came out, the error catching and reporting became stricter, causing what appeared to be so-called good assets now becoming faulty.

To allow older assets to run in the modern versions of Trainz, such as TANE, TRS2019, TRS2022, and whatever is come, older assets are allowed to load at the version they were created at without errors unless they really have something that's really, really bad. There are also methods that are deprecated and no longer supported in new builds but are ignored in older builds. By updating the asset to a new build version, these older methods now cause a fault. The reverse is also true if a new build is down-versioned. There are things that new builds are capable of doing that are out of the question for older builds causing outright errors there as well.

If you can tell us what the errors are, perhaps we can help you. The older assets, though have to remain at the version they were created in, otherwise, they can fail to load.

There's a whole bunch. These guys released a small route with a dependency pack that has faulty assets with the wrong build number for TRS2019 and the route is not compatible with older versions so I'm stuck with invisible assets unless someone can help me fix the errors. I don't know how to fix the obsolete build number because when I change it in the config, it breaks the asset even more with more errors. I can fix texture.txt errors with the pev tool. But the wrong build number errors I'm stumped on. I'll tell you what John, try downloading the deps yourself into your Trainz 2019 and you can see the faulty assets for yourself. There are a couple hundred assets in the pack and there are over 20 faulty ones. https://sites.google.com/view/trksidetrainz/cape-mae-scenic-railroad And there are some assets marked as payware. That means I would have to buy a dlc route which I don't know what it is in order for a freeware route to load all assets properly. This guy took assets from older versions even built in assets with texture.txt files and somehow used them in a 2019 only route. If they don't work for me, how could they work for him when he built the route?

Is the build number really a fault (red icon) or just a warning (yellow icon)?

Normally, the only asset builds that are incompatible are those that have build numbers higher than that associated with the Trainz edition you are using. I think TRS19 SP5 has a build number of 5.0, so any asset of build less than or equal to 5.0 should be compatible with it.

If there are other faults, not related to build compatibility, then that's another matter. If you got these assets from some non-DLS website, then there is no telling how slack their quality control is. Copy the text of some error messages and paste them into your next post and maybe someone can unscramble what the real problems are and perhaps advise on how to fix them. And regardless of the outcome you might consider telling the owners of the 3rd-party websites about the trouble their asset packs are causing you.

rwk said:

There's a whole bunch. These guys released a small route with a dependency pack that has faulty assets with the wrong build number for TRS2019 and the route is not compatible with older versions so I'm stuck with invisible assets unless someone can help me fix the errors. I don't know how to fix the obsolete build number because when I change it in the config, it breaks the asset even more with more errors. I can fix texture.txt errors with the pev tool. But the wrong build number errors I'm stumped on. I'll tell you what John, try downloading the deps yourself into your Trainz 2019 and you can see the faulty assets for yourself. There are a couple hundred assets in the pack and there are over 20 faulty ones. https://sites.google.com/view/trksidetrainz/cape-mae-scenic-railroad And there are some assets marked as payware. That means I would have to buy a dlc route which I don't know what it is in order for a freeware route to load all assets properly. This guy took assets from older versions even built in assets with texture.txt files and somehow used them in a 2019 only route. If they don't work for me, how could they work for him when he built the route?

Click to expand...

He has the assets installed and are built-in or from old DLC packages. He most likely exported them to a 1.0 GB CDP and that presents a problem. The TS12 built-ins and DLC have compressed textures that can't be extracted from the .texture files making the assets useless because even PEV's Images2TGA can't fix those. (I downloaded the route and dependencies to look at later).

Your best bet is to delete the dependencies and reinstall as many of them from the DLS if possible. This will give you a better chance of finding out which is which and what is what. The remaining assets then can be sourced elsewhere rather than his 1.0 GB CDP file.


EDIT:

I installed the route using the method I outlined above.

Installed the route and then downloaded dependencies. Anything that was missing I searched for separately in the very large CDP file using VVMM's CDP Explorer. Where I extracted the missing assets I needed to install. There's a whole lot of built-in assets as I suspected and some DLC, but there's also a lot of assets from the DLS such as Dave Snow's buildings and houses among other things.

I don't know what y'all are doing wrong. I installed the deps into TRS19 Platinum SP5 and other than some items that needed to download dependencies from the DLS I ended up with just one item with a missing dependencies which was CGIZ 2018 RI Oklahoma V3 HD. Since it was by Cloakedghost275 and track, I took an educated guess that it was on his website.

https://www.cloakedghost.com/freew.html

I downloaded both tracks and installed them and the missing dependencies error when away.

John is right, there are a whole lot of assets that are built ins and many I know for a fact they do not have permission to redistribute. Please sure to revert to original the hundreds of open for edit items. My install of TRS19 Platinum doesn't have a lot of DLC installed it as I mostly use TRS 19 Standard from Steam.

Well, I ran the route. It is pretty to look at but boring as heck. One end is a small village with a passing siding and the other end is a large town with a passing siding, coal siding and an engine house. Hundreds of buildings, cars and trucks and trees but just about 5 minutes of run time from end to end. Looks like a tourist line to me.

Yes, it is a fictitious tourist line set in Maine. I wanted to try it out because I like preserved tourist railroads with historic coaches, steam and diesel locomotives. But it's short, like Strasburg short. I have a better route from a now defunct site called Muskanippee Valley Railroad and it's much longer, with a shorter route to the south from the main station and a longer route to the north through the mountains. I also have a payware route from the same site which is a section of the former Maine Central in New Hampshire which is now operated by the Conway Scenic Railroad. I was going to extend it by hand to North Conway and Conway by adding basseboards and measuring distances of the track in Google Maps. I had TransDEM but don't have access to it right now, I would have to buy a new version from Roland. And as a stand in for the North Conway station until this Paul makes it, I will use his Wolfeboro station that I would recolor to the colors of the North Conway station. The Wolfeboro station was my idea, and he made it. The late Jeff Weaver had one on a payware site over several years ago, along with other northeastern US stations, but it's vaporware now. You have to buy or download content when it is available and back it all up on a small external hard drive in case a site closes or the content is no longer available. Jadebullet just made his GP30's available again on The Erecting Hall, for example so there is an example where dead content comes back to life. I wanted to buy some 2-8-0 steam locomotives from the Greencoast Studios guys since their site closed, but their facebook messenger tells me to go to their discord but that doesn't work. K&L is more reliable and will probably never close, but the Greencoast WM 734 looked better than K&L's with shiny textures.

The route is nicely done as a tourist line which it depicts. I was thinking of merging the route into my New England amalgamation and do a bit more with it by adding in some industries or maybe extend the line past the end to a portal. It's at zero elevation or close to it which presents a bit of a problem, but I can work in a grade down to the coast where I want to merge it in.

I found another route on a defunct site through wayback called Haven Beach which is a similar tourist railroad with a beach, and none of the assets have any errors, but I'm missing several assets by RoysTrainz. Google can't find them, and neither can kuid index. I have no idea if they are houses or what. What do people do in that situation? I could replace them, but I need to know what type of assets they are. Here is one kuid for example. <kuid:122860:102039> Is RoysTrainz still active? He had a site with payware routes of western Canada but the site is gone and I believe his routes are now distributed by N3V as payware. If you can only get his routes through N3V does that mean you can't merge them? You can't merge built in 19 routes, only edit them. I suppose the routes from his site were mergeable.

Roy is still around as far as I know. The last I heard he was getting another Canadian route ready for release so he is likely very busy.

I generally don't mess with missing assets much. I turn on show missing assets in surveyor to see if I can figure it out what the items were but it the track appears complete then most of the time I just delete missing assets.

Any route with payware protection activated will not merge regardless of where it available. Jointed Rail are just fools for selling unprotected routes on their site IMHO.

I think you likely went wrong with the Cape Mae route but trying to commit the Open for edit assets. Any assets that are open for edit after installing something should always be reverted to original.

<kuid:122860:102039> House Sears Bungalow 02 seasonal is packaged in al three of the Canadian routes that I currently have, so my guess is yes, that is where your missings are. If you want to post the list I may be able to tell you what they are, then you have the job of finding substitutes and where they go.

It seems that some of the faulty items fixed themselves. I deleted some faulty ones, redownloaded, and clicked on something else and back on the faulty asset and it fixed itself. I now have the RoysTrainz houses to deal with, but they appear to be by other creators like Dave Snow but with Roy's ID. If the original houses are on the DLS I could substitute them in the config. I can substitute kuid's in the config and it replaces the asset with a new one. Here are some unknowns. Some of the houses appeared in the dependencies list but are faulty and say payware. So I know what those are to substitute them. But there are a few that are unknown. Forester can you check your installed assets and tell me what these are? I can just substitute them with the original Dave Snow ones. But, I need to know what the file names are first. Just kuid numbers won't help me. And I think even kuid index can't find these. So, I need a fellow Trainzer to help me out and you have Roy's routes installed. These are for a route called Beach Haven which is a short tourist line similar to the Cape Mae one. I hate when route creators use payware buildings, roads, and track in their free routes. It means that the routes are incomplete unless you buy a payware route from N3V or wherever.

<kuid2:122860:100009:1>
<kuid2:122860:100032:1>
<kuid2:122860:100601:1>
<kuid2:122860:101729:1>
<kuid:122860:102039>

Here they are, although not very descriptive. Don't know why they don't post in order:
<kuid2:122860:101729:1> house 10B seasonal -- This is actually called "Georgetown Twins", a pair of sandstone brick storefront buildings.
<kuid2:122860:100601:1> House Sears Dutch Colonial 02 seasonal
<kuid2:122860:100009:1> House Classic Revival 04 seasonal
<kuid2:122860:100032:1> House 6, Frame, Old Brown Siding DES seasonal
<kuid:122860:102039> House Sears Bungalow 02 seasonal

I don't know what was wrong with my Trainz, but something got messed up, I have two installations of 19 with some of my important files on the old one, I started over with a new install because the old one would make my computer sad face (reboot) at times when I went into a Trainz route after a while. Now, I scrubbed the new install (deleted the files) and reinstalled it again and reinstalled the routes that were giving me problems. Now, the Cape Mae route has no missing assets or errors, and I didn't check the Beach Haven route yet. I also rebooted my PC. The missing assets that were by RoysTrainz don't even show up in the Cape Mae route now, it's like they aren't even needed. That must have been a bug.

I went into the route and exited and now some errors are back. I have to delete them and redownload them then click on them so the window shows up then the error goes away. Also, there is a road missing at some places, like the circle in the center of Cape Mae and all over the other town at the other end of the tourist railroad. John, can you check your route to see what that road is and tell me? Is it a texture or a spline? On my route it shows grass texture where a road should be. There are white and yellow lines for the road which suggests the creator used a plain road spline or something. I already have one downloaded in the dependencies but that isn't the file.