TOPSIG iPortaling

JIb228

Multiplayer Guru
The original post has been deleted on grounds that MP is bugged right now.

Idea:
The new idea is simple.The basic idea behind the non mp iPortal is that of a modular railway. I have module A, you have B, some one else is C and lastly another person has D. A train going from module A to module C must run across module B. this means that each member gets to interact with the train, adding or removing cars as it works is way to each of us.

Now we would have a set time and day(s) of the week that we would all hop on and send trains. I'm thinking Tuesday and Thursday around 6 or 7 pm est till when ever. But in the event that say the player with module B is unavailable for what ever reason, we would not skip them. Any trains would just be held until next session.

And yes, we are building a loop. D>A<>B<>C<>D<A Any time we get a new person, we just add them to the loop. And we will assume that the entire network is an East to West railroad, even if some routes are North to South. In that event, West bounds would be going South and East bounds would be going North. If a train enters your route as an East bound and is not your locomotives, it must continue to be an East bound. But you can remove or add as many cars as you like to it. But it must continue to be a East bound. If a train arrives at your route and is your power, then you can terminate the train and end its trip right there.

If a train comes onto your route and is under powered, needs more locomotives. You can add your own locomotives but they must be behind the ones that came into your route, and the train is still on its heading. When this train terminates at its home road, your power stays there. That user can then add your locomotives to a train as trailing units as extra power or a power move. (Please, no sending of just locomotives.) If a train that is not yours but has your locomotives in it arrives, you can pull out your locomotives.

Rules:
-iPortal IDs are your railroads reporting marks, followed by an E or W. This means that if your iPortal is on the West end of your railroad and you are BNSF your portal ID would be BNSFW, and BNSFE for your East portal. (You can have an In and out portal. Just point your out portal at the next player, but give it no ID. And set your in portal to have an ID but don't point it at any one.)

-Railroads. Each player may represent one and only one railroad. And each railroad my only be represented by one player. Meaning that if player A claims BNSF, no one else can be BNSF. But Burlington Northern and Santa Fe are still up for grabs..

-Equipment. Every player is allowed 4 locomotives, and 6 cars of their choosing. All this must be on the DLS. I might allow 3rd party locomotives, but ask first.

-Trains. As said above, trains are east or west bound. They must continue on their heading through your route, unless of course it is your own train. If a train comes to your route, and it is under powered to get over your hills, you may add more locomotives. These locomotives can be yours, or other locomotives that have come to your route. If you do add more power, add it be hind the lead locomotives. Trains with other players locomotives are considered through trains.

-Taking or adding cars to through trains. You may add as many cars as you want to a train. And you may remove as many cars as you want from a train. But if you do remove all cars for a train, you must add cars back to that train and send it on its way.

-Sending trains. Trains should have a minimum of 20 cars. There is no limit to how long a train can be. But please not that not every one can handle a 200 car train. So try to keep the car counts between 20 and 50.

-iPortaling times. Of course doing it this way means that we will have to be online to send trains to each other. I recommend Tuesdays and Thursdays starting 7pm est and lasting until we call it quits. (Sessions should last between 2 and 4 hours. But each player should save their session and pick up where they left off the next meeting.) But you can run your route any time before this time.

-Very important! Do not skip players. If you need to send a train to player A, but player B is not online, you can not send your train to player A. You must wait for player B to be online. If a player miss's to many sessions, they will be removed form the loop. and you can start to skip them.


The "Route"
This lists who is what road, and how their portals should be set up. Players will be added to this as we get more. Who ever is at the end of the list, will link with the person at the start of the list.

<-CSXW Jib228 with CSX CSXE-><-PRRW Kenruof with Pennsy PRRE-><-GNW GN1996 with Great Northern GNE-><-UPW Jamesfaa With Union Pacific UPE-><-ATSFW Danny5 with ATSF ATSFE-><-DRGWW Charles34 with D&RGW DRGWE-><-NSW Trainsim with NS NSE-><SPW MidnightWilde with Southern Pacific SPE->

Links
These are some of the important links you'll need. First up the to produce/consume list. This list shows the order in which trains travail, as well as who produces and consumes what.

HERE

The next link is to the Load requests document. This lists how many cars of what load you need. So if you need 10 car loads of coal, put it in there.

HERE

Last like is to the location of the consist files for content. (Big thanks to Ken for taking this over for me!) Youll need to download and install these files, then make sure to download all the content that goese with them. Ken will also make one fore you when you send him your locomotives and rolling stock.

HERE
 
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Hi jib,ben1987 sent me a train the other day. i open my session today for about an hour and didn't get it. So i not sure that one can receive one if they are not online. I know i got a train while in a MP session
from Apache62 but dont think anybody could see it but the host.(me at the time)
I can't remember just what happen cause i was the only one on,and was having problems with 12 and had to reinstall it sents.
 
It will be interesting to test the iportals and see if it will work. The last comment from danny5 isn't very good news. I'll be ready for the next session or iportal connection test.
 
Jib and I did some testing and concluded that trains can not be recieved by offline players. There was also some other testing we did, but I have forgotten what it was. :p
 
Ive updated the OP to keep up to date with who is what railroad and where said railroad will interchange with MRL.
 
Ran though more iPortal testing with GN1996. Little warning: they aren't exactly 100% reliable. Kept getting script errors and not consuming trains. Hope this doesn't hinder operations for the session. Easy fix though, just exit driver and re-enter driver again. Might be more challenging for the MRL MP session.
 
I think if we have multiple portals to go to each route and one or two to recieve from each route, we should be fine. It seems like each portal can only send maybe five trains per driver "session."
 
And we learned that there is no limit to the length of trains iPortal can handle. But at the same time, the longer the trains, the more problems that will occur. Under 100 total cars is a good goal to shoot for.
 
Another thing is that when a train coming out of the portal derails, the portal continues to produce the train, but only to a certain extent. It eventually will cause the bug icon to show up and the portal is broken until you restart the session.
 
I see you tested this at 3 in the morning is there a time that i could join you? Somewhere between 7pm
and 12 pm any night.
 
I have I portaled to my own routes, on my own PC using 137 cars, and 4 head end locos, and 2 more rear end shoving.

The thing about Iportal is that all persons involved, need to have the same cars and locos downloaded, in the consist, or a train will not come out.
 
I have I portaled to my own routes, on my own PC using 137 cars, and 4 head end locos, and 2 more rear end shoving.

The thing about Iportal is that all persons involved, need to have the same cars and locos downloaded, in the consist, or a train will not come out.

And thats why if you read near the top I stated that I will have consists on MRL that people should copy and save to their routes. This way we know every one has the same content.
 
There is one small problem with your copy/paste idea Jib. If any of the cars are configured to load something that is not in the default queue, that information will be lost when pasted onto a personal route.
 
Thats why I am setting all in industries on MRL to load and unload what is default on the cars. Or I find cars that by default load or unload what is on MRL. This way, dont have to edit cars at all.
 
Another thing, I need jhuravitch, Jamesfaa, and Charles34 to PM me a list of their locomotives. I lost the PMs and forgot which ones you guys wanted.
 
I have sent the list for Charles34 and myself (he had forward me a list for oour testing purposes when we where messing with iPortal setup.
 
I have an idea that will allow a prototypical load cross MRL. Is anybody willing to have ONE of the following on their iPortal route: an aluminum plant, a bauxite mine, or a Boeing 737 fuselage manufacturing plant? Contact me on iTrainz later if you're interested.
 
Anybody that would like to pratice and fine tune their iportal procedure, I will be on Trainz all day. On iTrainz chat I've started a channel for the testing. Its #mrl iportal . Plus an avantage to this is we can start downloading each other's content so when MRL v3.0 is ready it won't be as long to download everything.

Testing has been concluded for today.
Remember that when Jib is ready with MRL v3.0 everyone who participated in today's "simulation of MRL operating" to change their portal IDs and author to the correct ones on the real MRL.

Thanks everyone, practice before will make everything run smoother for all of us when we finally run the next TOPSIG session.
 
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Just to get it right My out iportal should be set for MRL route?
user=jib228
Dest.ID=huntly or Huntly
 
Yes an no. I will not be hosting as Jib228, but as Kazick. And the portals are just named MRL1-8.

I believe the Huntley portal is MRL2. But Ill have to double check latter today.
 
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