Ponv6 i'm lost

downloaded and installed ponv6 per read me.portogden6.rdb and portogden6.rit are missing but if the route has no roads they are not needed. I am also missing 6 files each weedsml1.ace,weedsml2.ace and weedsml3.ace. I have deleted and installed pon twice and look for these files but no luck. I hope someone can tell me what i'm doing wrong. I have searched the forum with no luck. thanks paulP-4 2.26GHz processor w/512K Cache, 533FSB 512MB DDR Sys. Memory 80GB ATA/100 (7200RPM) hard drive 32MB GForce2 MX200:-)

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RE: ponv6 i'm lost, heffed, Apr-25-03, 09:11 PM, (1) RE: ponv6 i'm lost, heffed, Apr-25-03, 09:11 PM, (2) RE: ponv6 i'm lost, sniper297, Apr-25-03, 10:10 PM, (3) RE: ponv6 i'm lost, hd1945a, Apr-26-03, 09:44 AM, (4) RE: ponv6 i'm lost, dejoh, Apr-26-03, 04:40 PM, (5) RE: ponv6 i'm lost, sniper297, Apr-26-03, 05:03 PM, (6) RE: ponv6 i'm lost, hd1945a, Apr-27-03, 11:48 AM, (7) RE: ponv6 i'm lost, heffed, Apr-29-03, 00:47 AM, (16) RE: ponv6 i'm lost, MikeSimpson, Apr-27-03, 06:29 PM, (8) RE: ponv6 i'm lost, philskene, Apr-27-03, 07:41 PM, (9) RE: ponv6 i'm lost, MikeSimpson, Apr-27-03, 09:35 PM, (10) RE: ponv6 i'm lost, sniper297, Apr-27-03, 10:03 PM, (11) RE: ponv6 i'm lost, philskene, Apr-28-03, 01:11 AM, (12) RE: ponv6 i'm lost, MikeSimpson, Apr-28-03, 06:22 PM, (13) RE: ponv6 i'm lost, hd1945a, Apr-28-03, 06:57 PM, (14) RE: ponv6 I'm FOUND!, sniper297, Apr-28-03, 07:30 PM, (15) RE: ponv6 I'm FOUND!, MikeSimpson, Apr-29-03, 06:27 PM, (17) RE: ponv6 I'm FOUND!, sniper297, Apr-29-03, 06:57 PM, (18)

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I don't know about the .rdb and .rit files, possibly your download was corrupt?As for the .ace's, did you run the installme.bat in the Port Ogden 6 route folder? And do you have all the default routes installed? If those .ace's were supposed to be copied from a route you don't have installed, it obviously can't copy them.
-Jeff

Union Pacific is my drug.

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>I don't know about the .rdb and .rit files, possibly your
>download was corrupt?
>
>As for the .ace's, did you run the installme.bat in the Port
>Ogden 6 route folder?
>
>And do you have all the default routes installed? If those
>.ace's were supposed to be copied from a route you don't
>have installed, it obviously can't copy them. -Edit- Yes, the route has roads.-Jeff

Union Pacific is my drug.

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edit- no it don't. At least not real roads, the ones you see are merely terrain textures, roads painted on the ground. The difference is real roads can run cars on them from carspawners, and the run on the road database (like the track database, except for moving cars), which would be the .rdb and .rit files. Since there ain't any roads, there ain't any .rdb or .rit, don't hurt a thing.The missing textures are a problem tho, to save space in the zip I left out a whole bunch of ace files that are magically created by some of the manual hacking I did. (That's why so many people are surprised how big the PO&N is in comparison to the small size of the zip file, efficiency in packaging.) In order for the ace files to be created and shuffled around;1. All six default MSTS routes (Europe1 & 2, Japan1 &2, USA 1 &2) must be installed.
2. The \Portogden6\ folder must be in \Train Simulator\Routes along with the six default routes.
3. The installme.bat must run without errors.Inside the zip is ponV6.exe, which is a winzip self-extracting executable. So the easiest way to install the route is to double click on ponV6.exe, then follow the prompts, and if you have your trainsim installed somewhere other than C:\Program Files\Microsoft Games, you should repoint the extraction to wherever your train simulator is.There have been some reports of the batch file not running automatically with some versions of WinXP, if that happens go to the \Train Simulator\Routes\Portogden6 folder, find and run the installme.bat file. You should get a DOS window for a few minutes;On Win98 it will say "XCOPY32" instead of "CMD.EXE", either way you should get a scrolling list of files being copied. If you get a scrolling list of "file not found, 0 files copied", then you have either the \portogden6 folder or one of the default route folders in the wrong place.Just to clear the record for those that don't like automatic installs, since this is a winzip executable rather than clickteam or something, it does absolutely nothing to the system registry, does not use the installshield "wizard", all it does is extract itself to the path specified in the screen, then starts the batch file. Those of you still paranoid about any exe file, since it's made by winzip, you can open it with winzip as if it was a .zip instead of .exe:And then install it manually.

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hi sniper296. thanks for your reply. did the following.
1-all MSTS defaults routes installed
2-ponv6.exe extracted-OK
3-opened portogden6 folder in routes and ran install bat OK
4-ran heavy bat OK
5- no roads no problem
6-except for time of year all the files read. texture file winter\weedsml1.ace referred by weedsml1.s is missing from your route,no alternative is available in the default routes.
7-texture file snow\workman.ace referred by workman.s is missing from your route, no alternative is available in the default routes.
8-there are a lot of bat files in the portogden6 route file.do you run all of them are gust the heavy like the install says. also did heavy activities.
thanks to all for your time and help.
I am a computer dunce so i have to follow the installs. when something is wrong i'm lost so please bear with me. thanks paul
P-4 2.26GHz processor w/512K Cache, 533FSB 512MB DDR Sys. Memory 80GB ATA/100 (7200RPM) hard drive 32MB GForce2 MX200

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Hey route designers...
Why not offer ALL routes on CDs? Have an item in the forum listing when, where, and how to purchase them. I had little trouble with the PO&N route, but that was the exception, what with all these mega file routes, most missing one thing or another, it gets a little bothersome spending hours downloading, only to not get it up and running.
I have dial-up modem, and don't see that changing in the near future. (cable modem not available in my area). I've had very good outcomes with purchased routes. Another idea, Learn how Snipe can fit such an excellent route. into a simple download that worked smooth. (at least for me). But the idea of route designers to work together,
As Nels once said, is like rounding up cats to heard into a corral. It just does not work.Dejoh

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Hmm, let's see if we can clear this up.>hi sniper296. thanks for your reply. did the following."Sniper296"? Hee-hee, if you're using the Rich Garber counting method, maybe you oughtta try the East Metro route, formerly known as #11 even tho it was really #10!

>1-all MSTS defaults routes installed OK, that works.>2-ponv6.exe extracted-OK Good, download wasn't corrupted.>3-opened portogden6 folder in routes and ran install bat OK Shouldn't have needed to run installme.bat if the checkbox was checked to run po6instl.bat, which does nothing more than go into \portogden6 and run the installme.bat. Only reason you should have to run installme.bat is if for some reason it didn't run automatically.>4-ran heavy bat OK Don't need to do that either, it defaults to heavy scenery when it first extracts.>5- no roads no problem I've been thinking about putting in roads and moving cars and trucks since V2, I might never do it. My thinking is this is about railroading, so if I'm gonna eat up CPU clock cycles and video RAM with things that move, it's gonna be lots of AI trains rather than putt-putts. >6-except for time of year all the files read. texture file
>winter\weedsml1.ace referred by weedsml1.s is missing from
>your route,no alternative is available in the default
>routes.
>7-texture file snow\workman.ace referred by workman.s is
>missing from your route, no alternative is available in the
>default routes.Egad, Watson, I think we're beginning to get to the bottom of this!
Mike Simpson keeps adding bells and whistles to Route Riter, and the error checker don't always work correctly in some versions. weedsml.s and workman.s both have ESD zero in their .SD files, don't need snow textures. So which version of Route Riter did you get that error from (Mike will want to know)?For future reference, this is important so I'm going to spell it out in all caps.IF A ROUTE HAS A FILE NAMED INSTALLME.BAT IN IT, THAT ROUTE WAS PROBABLY PACKAGED WITH ROUTE RITER. IF YOU DOWNLOAD A ROUTE THAT WAS PACKAGED WITH ROUTE RITER, YOU DO NOT NEED TO USE ROUTE RITER TO COMPACT THE ROUTE. IF THE ROUTE WAS PACKAGED CORRECTLY WITH ROUTE RITER AND THEN CUSTOMIZED, COMPACTING THE ROUTE WILL NOT GAIN ANY SPACE, AND MAY IN FACT SCREW IT UP.The only time it may be desireable to run Route Riter on a downloaded route is when you get one that was NOT packaged with route riter, and used my obsolete EZstuff batch file for the installation.
>8-there are a lot of bat files in the portogden6 route
>file.do you run all of them are gust the heavy like the
>install says. also did heavy activities.That's covered in \Portogden6\Maps&Docs&Hacks\readme.txt, most of the bats are for changing assorted things in PO&N6, or fixing the envireonment textures after installing Sky Conductor. The bats are for swapping back and forth between heavy and lite vegetation (heavy.bat and lite.bat, defaults to heavy), in case somebody's Celeron 350 gets 2FPS with full scenery, and for cheating on gravity (grav07, 08, 09, and full.bat, defaults to full) if you like doing wierd stuff like hauling 100 loaded coal hoppers up the South Pass with an 0-4-0 switcher and no helpers. If you hack the PONconsists in conbuilder or something to replace engines and cars, consists.bat will restore them back to the originals that came with the route.

>thanks to all for your time and help.No problemo, I needed a break from working on PO&N7 anyway, so you gave me a perfect excuse!

>I am a computer dunce so i have to follow the installs. when
>something is wrong i'm lost so please bear with me. thanks
>paul That's the whole point of all that screwing around I did with the install, I've been a model railroader since birth (Dad was a rabid trainfan), and since I've been playing with computers since they first came out, my goal was to make everything as easy as possible for all the Model Railroaders who are crawling out from under the benchwork and buying their first computers to run trainsim.If MSTS is on drive C in the default path, installation should be as easy as 1-2-3. If it's in D:\Dad'sGames\TrainGames\ (or whatever), then in window #2 you need to click on the Browse button and re-direct the extraction to D:\Dad'sGames\TrainGames\Train Simulator\Routes\ .So the question here is, if you go into \Train Simulator\Routes\ and delete the \Portogden6 folder, then run the ponV6.exe again, do you get error messages in the sim, or only with Route Riter?I just tried it (deleting and reinstalling PO&N6 takes about 2 minutes on my machine), no error messages in any season.>P-4 2.26GHz processor w/512K Cache, 533FSB 512MB DDR Sys.
>Memory 80GB ATA/100 (7200RPM) hard drive 32MB GForce2 MX200 Good rig, fast processor, plenty of high speed RAM, but that GEFORCE 2 MX200 has gotta go, that's your bottleneck. Replace it with a GEFORCE 4 Ti-4400 or 4600 (NO MX anything, the MX series is for 2D business applications, the Ti series is for 3D games), try www.pricewatch.com for good prices, and just replacing that anemic video card will triple your framerates on that machine.

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hi again. thanks for taking the time to reply to my problems. i have been able to explore the route a little and i love it. i deleted it and reinstalled per your pictures.i'm really good with pictures. when it was done closed all the windows and opened MSTS ran pon everything OK then opened train store and ran pon everything OK then restored everything except pon. did not touch engmod,conbuilder,or routeriter. my next question is since i like to make up my own consist using UP power and being the dunce i am will never build a route or paint a engine do i really need any of these. well maybe conbuilder? since i have 80GB do i need train store only use computer for net and MSTS? hopefully soon i will be able to pickup and dropoff around the route. I am going to update soon to the gforce Ti as soon as money is available. thanks again for taking the time to straighten me out on pon6. can't wait for pon7. paulP-4 2.26GHz processor w/512K Cache, 533FSB 512MB DDR Sys. Memory 80GB ATA/100 (7200RPM) hard drive 32MB GForce2 MX200:-)

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>since i
>have 80GB do i need train store only use computer for net
>and MSTS? Absolutely. Train Store doesn't actually save any disk space. What it does is make sure MSTS only loads the essentials of the particular route you are wanting to run. Since MSTS scans everything when it's loading, after a few route installs MSTS can take quite a long time to load. Train Store ensures a speedy load regardless of how many routes or how much rolling stock you have installed.-Jeff

Union Pacific is my drug.

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Hi Jim,Yes, he has definitely checked the route with Route-Riter. RR does report the fact that there is no portogden6.rdb and portogden6.rit, with the caveat that if there are no roads, then they are unnecessary.2. weedsml1.s does need a winter and seasonal textures, because it is called in the forest.dat file, thus defaults to an ESD of 252.3. workman.s when used as a hazard (spotter.haz) was added to the list as someone reported an error if hazards did not have a snow texture. However this might be an incorrect, I never use hazards and have not fully checked this.On a different matter, I was wondering why one route gave missing textures when run in the snow. I have now discovered that RR was not checking transfers - if a user has a transfer texture, then this also needs a snow texture in the same manner that terrtex textures must have snow textures or errors occur. Next version of RR detects this.Mike

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Mike –Can I ask two questions about Route-Riter, which I think is a tremendous product and I must complement you for the time and effort you have put into developing it.I’ve been revising Dogskill over the past several weeks, leaving the route basically as it is between stations, but modifying the station areas to incorporate industries that generate considerable rail traffic and adding reversing wyes for operational ease. Removing redundant scenery has also increased the frame rates dramatically. It’s now a kind of “Short line with Attitude”, a bit of a diversion form large routes and railroading.Roue-Riter compressed the whole shooting match down to a shade over 34 MB, a great result.But for those of us tied to a dial-up modem I wanted to split it up into more manageable downloads.Using R-R to divide it into 4 resulted in files of 15, 14, 3 and 3 MB.With 5 files, the largest file size was 16 MB, which kind of defeats the purpose.Is there a way of equalising files sizes?Secondly, for some reason the “Explore Route” became corrupted in the compression and decompression process – at Zappa Plains for example, I had set the initial Explore location adjacent to the platform; after Route-Riting the start point was adjacent to the ACME plant .Is there a reason for this?Otherwise, it all works perfectly and as soon as I hear from the original author of Dogskill I plan to upload the revised route as “DragonRail”.Phil Skene
Adelaide, South Australia

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Hi Phil,1. I have now replaced the whole .zip option and it gives better results. The original version you have actually divides the number of files in the route by 4 and zips them accordingly. However because .sd files are about 300 bytes and .ace files up to 1 meg, this gives somewhat inconsistent results.I should have a new version out in a week or two depending on some more testing.2. I can see no reason why using RR would move the start point of an explore route option, RR does not alter any of the files in the route, just deletes those which are not used. I would have thought the activity starting point is listed in the .act or .pat files and RR does not even look at them?Mike

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"...Route-Riter, which I think is a tremendous product and I must complement you for the time and effort you have put into developing it"Hear hear! About 25 people over the first year came into the route design forum with a loud blast of trumpets announcing they were going to make a universal route packaging tool that would do away with my clumsy and complicated EZstuff method, Mike just quietly came in and did it - and for FREE too! If it ain't perfect, that's life, it still makes everything a hell of a lot easier on both the developers and the end users."Secondly, for some reason the “Explore Route” became corrupted in the compression and decompression process", I would suspect something else, since RR don't muck around with the service paths. I just moved my RE start tile to the new area I'm working on, and noticed the blasted geo extractor had changed the distance display in the track monitor to kilometers. The MSTS editors do some really funky things sometimes, so you gotta watch them. Can't answer your other questions, cuz I dunno.Yeah, Mike, I remember when we were beta testing RR and had all those forest.dat and carspawn.dat missing this and that errors, and I noticed the latest versions are leaving in all the default .s files in the zip.
One thing you might try, take a look in a world file;Forest (
UiD ( 1588 )
TreeTexture ( US2autofir1.ace )
ScaleRange ( 0.9 1.1 )
Area ( 1000 623 )
Population ( 32 )
TreeSize ( 12 22 )
StaticFlags ( 00100000 )
Position ( 184.818 60.4375 -869.297 )
QDirection ( 0 0.0396309 0 0.999214 )
VDbId ( 4294967295 )
StaticDetailLevel ( 0 )
)Note that it starts with "forest" object, so ESD 252, and lists the name of the ace file in the third line. The weedsml.ace was in the forest.dat file, but since it got placed as individual objects (ESD 0 in the extended shape file), and never got used as a forest region, it don't cause any errors if all the seasonal textures are left out.If you could come up with a routine to check the .w files for "forest", then grab the name of the ace file, you could ignore the forest.dat file completely.
I dunno about hazards, seems to me that they're hard coded to the same thing as the track sections, ESD 2, which looks in the \Global folder for the shape and the route for the textures. Too wierd for words. By default the workman, female hiker, and the deer are in \Global only (Jim Steven made them into static objects by copying the shapes & textures into the route and adding them to his ALL_OBJECTS ref file, which is one of the ones that stuffit.ref was compiled from), but there ain't no snow folder in \Global\Textures, and all three of those hazard shapes are ESD zero. Theoretically you shouldn't need the shapes & textures for any of them in the route if it's used as a hazard and not a static object. If you look at Marias, for example, it has plenty of deer hazards, but no shape or textures for the deer. It does have .s, .sd, and ace files for the female hiker tho, since it's listed in marias.ref as a static object. No snow textures tho.Hmmm, looking back over that, I noticed it's all in Geeklish, sorry. hd1945a , if you're still awake after all that;I can't tell you about trainstore since I haven't tried it yet, but conbuilder seems to me like a very easy and user-friendly program for those who like to change to their favorite add-on engines and cars, but are intimidated by the MSTS consist editor, which is inside the even more intimidating activity editor. One thing to be aware of, the AI traffic is a nervous little thing. I found that out by changing some of the consists I included with PO&N6, just changing the engine in PON15oil.con with a different SD40 causes the silly thing to come to a dead stop about 3/4ths of the way thru it's run. Quick and dirty fix if you get that, open the culprit up in conbuilder again, and either remove some cars or add another engine to get the tonnage/horsepower ratio lower. If you screw up the PO&N activities beyond repair in the process, just run \portogden6\consists.bat, that will copy the originals back into your \trains\consists folder.Best advice, make a new folder named "backup", copy the entire \Trains folder to it, that way if you get your trainsets and/or consists all cattywampus you can just delete the \Train Simulator\Trains folder, and copy and paste the \Trains folder from your backup folder into \Train Simulator.

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Sniper –While you are on-line:Some time ago I seem to recall an exchange between you and Hank S about signalling, and Hank provided a screen grab of a train order signal that he was working on. It was non-operational, intended as a static object only.Train order signals, as you probably know, are a semaphore signal with two arms. In the vertical position the loco engineer can pass on without stopping, if the arm or arms are horizontal the engineer has to stop to pick up train orders.Train order operation and train order signals were introduced to the South Australian Railways in the 1930s by Commissioner W A Webb, who was recruited from the Kansas Railroad to rehabilitate the SAR. SAR changed dramatically from a British based system to one with more similarities to US railroading, with big locomotives hauling long trains. But in the process Webb trod on many toes, made a few too many enemies, and was forced to resign and return to the US. However his legacy lived on.I’ve searched in the file library for a train order signal with no avail and tried to contact Hank but with no response.Do you have any leads. I would have dearly loved to have used them on DragonRail and another project that I am contemplating.Phil

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Hi Jim,I must admit I was doing the Forests the easy way, I just read all the Forest.dat items and check to see if the .ace files have an associated \Snow texture.One day I will do it properly, I am doing a lot of rewriting at the moment and the more I delve, the more problems I find Mike

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thanks to all for your help and comments. had to work today so it took a little longer to reply. but a special thanks to sniper 297 for taking the time to explain and send pictures and advice so i could figure out my problems. paul
P-4 2.26GHz processor w/512K Cache, 533FSB 512MB DDR Sys. Memory 80GB ATA/100 (7200RPM) hard drive 32MB GForce2 MX200:-)

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Hee-hee! You're welcome, no trouble at all. Phil, I currently have Hank slaving away in the sweatshop with no food and no sleep until he overcomes all the limitations of the MSTS signal logic and comes up with a perfect PO&N signalling system, that's probably why he missed your email. I sent him a heads up about your question, but if your semaphores require any work still, you're gonna have to wait until I let the poor guy out of his chains.Mike, I do remember all that. I suspect the carspawn.dat still has to be read directly, since you can place a carspawner in a route, then replace the carspawn.dat file with a different one and it will run the cars listed in the carspawn.dat instead of the ones you started with. Provided the shape and texture files are in the route, that is!The forest.dat is different, you can replace the forest.dat file or ref file with a different one, or even delete them altogether, since the sim does not read either one of those files, only the route editor does. Once the object is placed it's written to the world file, and swapping ref files or forest.dat files don't affect the route in the sim.One thing that's still puzzling me is the error for the "Texture file A1t500r5d.q is missing from your route" for the GM&O, as far as I can see there's no stray Xtracks section in there, and why ".q" instead of .ace for a texture file?

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Hi Jim,I do not have the GM&O, so can not comment on the 'Texture file A1t500r5d.q' missing error. This looks like there is a garbled file somewhere. RR only looks for textures ending in .ace so one ending in .q should not appear in that error message in any case.In fact, I have just had a look at the A1t500r5d.s and .sd files and there is not a single letter 'q' in either.2. Yes, you have to read the carspawn.dat file, the cars are not listed in the .W files (unless they are static models).3. I have modified RR to check the .W files for the TreeTexture items, and am testing it now. 4. I am also modifying the Compact Route section to make sure it deletes unnecessary .ace files in the Seasonal folders. Sometimes a modeller has placed the .ace in all the folders even when the ESD is only 0 or 1. This is a bit complicated as of course more than one model may be using the same textures.5. My version of PortOgden has things like the jp1moped.s having an ESD of 257 - Why would a moped need a snow texture?Mike

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LAST EDITED ON Apr-29-03 AT 07:04 PM (EDT)

Because it has a night texture. ESD 256 is SUPPOSED to be main texture plus night, but unfortunately when people started uploading things with night textures but no snow textures, we found out why KUJU didn't use ESD 256 - yet ANOTHER buggy subroutine. That's the primary reason I haven't compiled a list of known MSTS bugs yet, there are so many that I've been working on it since July '01, and haven't gotten halfway thru yet! http://www.train-sim.com/cgi/dcforum/dcboard.cgi?az=show_thread&om=5862&forum=DCForumID6The short answer is, if an object needs a night texture, then it also has to have a snow texture, since ESD 257 must be used instead of ESD 256.One oddball thing that has to be considered when doing a forest region or single object with ESD 252 is that the ace needs to be in ALL the subfolders except night. Often people package with the ace for a tree in everything except \Night and \Snow, figuring with \Wintersnow, \Autumnsnow, and \Springsnow, they got it covered. But sure as god made little brown coconuts, if you pack it up that way some kook is gonna select season: summer, weather: snow, just because he can, and then get the send/don't send screen.

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