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"Beware the Wye"

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sniper297 (276 posts)
Aug-17-01, 07:17 AM (EST) "Beware the Wye" Just got my first stutter report from version two, and he pinpointed the location for me so I could find it, and I replaced the WYE switch coming out of the engine house in Stevens Point with a regular 10d manual switch. That cleared it up so nicely I got 40 FPS until I crossed the trestle, when it dropped to 25. Going thru the long tunnel over the coal mine I got another one, again within a mile or so of a wye switch, so I replaced ALL the wye switches with 10d's. In case you're confused, you don't actually have to have a wye switch at the point of a wye, as long as the triangle shaped turnaround is there it don't matter what kind of switch is at the corners. Something about those wyes was always causing trouble, and I think the sim doesn't actually have a problem with the track path itself, I'm pretty sure now it just doesn't like the wye switch. Mind you, I still have a few places where the framerate take a little dip, but it's not like the wye switches, which seem to cause a severe case of video hiccups. I'm also working on balancing the number of objects in each quad, because I'm almost positive that approaching a blue line from a tile with 100 objects and going into one with 600 gives the game program fits too, so there's a whole bunch of stuff that can cause these things. Create test activities early on, and playtest, playtest, playtest. Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
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Subject Author Message Date ID RE: Beware the Wye jkcooney Aug-17-01 1 RE: Beware the Wye sniper297 Aug-17-01 2 RE: Beware the Wye jkcooney Aug-19-01 4 RE: Beware the Wye sniper297 Aug-20-01 7 RE: Beware the Wye jkcooney Aug-18-01 3 RE: Beware the Wye sniper297 Aug-20-01 5 RE: Beware the Wye Hoppy504 Aug-20-01 6 RE: Beware the Wye jkcooney Aug-27-01 8 RE: Beware the Wye sniper297 Aug-27-01 9

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jkcooney (433 posts)
Aug-17-01, 03:04 PM (EST) 1. "RE: Beware the Wye" I just downloaded V2 at 2:45 Eastern.......are the wye switches changed or do we wait for a patch in the tdb???? Will this affect an "Explore the Route" operation?
Joe Cooney Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
sniper297 (276 posts)
Aug-17-01, 03:52 PM (EST) 2. "RE: Beware the Wye" Wye switches are still in version two. Don't really hurt anything, but it's yet another one of those annoying things that cause framerates to stutter, so I yanked them all out for version three. You like mountain railroading and wanna help me out, I'll see if I can get my cranky buggy email thingie to work and send you a beta of what I'm working on now, extension of mountain division, no scenery yet in new quad. Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
jkcooney (433 posts)
Aug-19-01, 03:41 PM (EST) 4. "RE: Beware the Wye" In starting my own route ... question Could I use the Batch File in your version 2 or is it specific to your route. I understand the .ref file would need to be copied and renamed. Since this batch file seems to work so well and gives you so many more objects to choose from I'm wondering if the batch utility would work in my route file??? It would surely help!
By the way. A neat trick. I'm installing some streets in Stevens Point and when you use one of the Japan paved streets series and place it over the track it creates an automatic crossing with only the rail showing. Wow! I won't have to mess with those crossings. Dirt roads, I notice don't have the same effect!. Also, I see you switched track styles and got rid of the OE or Settle & Carlysle track. I think that track profile actually looked better...more detailed tie plates and ballast than the USA2 style. I'm considering doing my old hometown RR (NYO&W) and they had cinder ballast. I read a post where you can change the texture parameters so the texture actually covers most of the rock ballast. this would be a blessing for building secondary routes and little used branches.
Might it try out on Kalispell branch. I wonder how this will affect frame rates?
Joe Cooney
jkcooney@hotmail.com Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
sniper297 (276 posts)
Aug-20-01, 12:39 PM (EST) 7. "RE: Beware the Wye" LAST EDITED ON Aug-20-01 AT 12:40 PM (EST)Yes, No, and Maybe, not necessarily in that order. If you use instalv2.bat, which is an edited version of ezstuf2 specific to that route, you'll have all the objects in comboref, which is what the ref file for that route is. I was trying to keep the finished size down, and if you look at the batch it only installs the \terrtex files that I actually used, which by itself saves 120 megabytes. I use stuffit2.bat (don't use either of the originals, they have typos that leave out the season textures) along with combined.ref, and before I posted I edited the batch file to try to cut out some of the excess, and gave it a different name. I explained in another post somewhere about the track textures, but I forget the thread - essentially you take stuffit2 or ezstuf2 and open it in wordpad, click drag cut all the references to europe1 or 2, and paste them underneath USA2, which will overwrite the track textures with the european track. I've done some experimenting with trying to create my own track textures, cuz I like the euro ties, but not the ballast color. Unfortunately I don't think there's any way to make the game program reference more than one set of ACLEANTRACK1.ACE textures, so the only way I can think of to use two would be to hack the tunnel floor ace to the second texture, and then don't use any tunnels. that would be rather complicated too, cuz you would have too remake the ace for the tunnel wall so it's invisible. Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
jkcooney (433 posts)
Aug-18-01, 11:56 AM (EST) 3. "RE: Beware the Wye" Jim......Just sent a message that didn't go through.....here it is again ... I've been getting two "Faled to Find SMS File" error messages at the south end of the new trestle leaving Stevens Point. I note that the two forest area rectangles outlined in red extend over the track. At that point, the program looks for a sound file.... yes, believe it or not sound is connected to the forest area rectangles (I checked the objects file under sounds) and the program calls for an SMS file at any point when a forest area infringes on track. In this case, since you have placed two forest areas on that hillside it calls for two SMS files. Haven't tried the obvious fix yet but I hope this helps in future revisions........ didn't upgrade the program to fix the Wye stutter yet.....hasn't been posted as of ll:00 eastern Saturday.
Cheers. jkcooney@hotmail.com Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
sniper297 (276 posts)
Aug-20-01, 00:34 AM (EST) 5. "RE: Beware the Wye" Well, I haven't completely eliminated any stutters, and from the threads I've seen it's possible the only way to eliminate them entirely is buying a geforce 3. I went out and got another stick of ram today, so I'm up to 512 megs, and that don't do it either. Moving or deleting the trees in that quad didn't change anything at all, and of course there's still a persistent one inside the tunnel, and who knows what it's loading when it does that. This got me so irritated I quit working on the mountain division expansion in the southeast, and I'm currently adding a connection to a short line railroad west of stevens point. (If you look behind the enginehouse you'll see there's a tunnel construction project there) All that is to get the number of objects in that quad up to around 400 or 500, so there's not a big jump going from one to the next. Seems to be working so far, I used to start at 60 FPS and get that sudden drop to 20, and about 23 in the johnsburg area the other side of the coalmine, now I'm starting around 47 FPS and the transitions look a little smoother. Watch that object window on your route and keep the quads balanced, cause I think this may finally be it. Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
Hoppy504 (24 posts)
Aug-20-01, 04:55 AM (EST) 6. "RE: Beware the Wye" Sniper,Thanks for your route, I still have both versions on my HD { I like coal city}.I have to tell you that a Gf3 {I am running 512 cs2 mem also}will not get rid of all the stutters, I still get them at times have to accept them. Perhaps I should try lowering graphics details.thanks again,Hoppy Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
jkcooney (433 posts)
Aug-27-01, 01:53 PM (EST) 8. "RE: Beware the Wye" How do you get such great frame rates? I am usually in the teens at that point? Is it the video card (graphics card) or the speed of my hard drive that is slowing things down?
Woudl upgrading to a 7200 rpm from a 5200 rpm make a difference.
Joe Cooney Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
sniper297 (276 posts)
Aug-27-01, 11:06 PM (EST) 9. "RE: Beware the Wye" LAST EDITED ON Aug-27-01 AT 11:17 PM (EST)Made a post about "stop stuttering" on the MSTS forum that finally explains the problem the way Jim Stevens explained it to me. And yes, I spent about 130 bucks on a 40 meg WD caviar Ultra ATA-100 drive, and that plus turning down the visibility slider a little clears it right up. Makes playing the game a lot nicer, but don't help much when you're trying to make a route that everybody can play on slower systems.
Forgot to mention, I dunno if I told you before, My system is a homebuilt one:
ASUS A7V motherboard, KT133 chipset
AMD Athlon Thunderbird 800 MHZ
512 MB PC-133 SDRAM
Creative Annihilator 2 (Nvidia GEFORCE 2) 64 MB AGP video card
Western Digital WD400 Caviar Ultra ATA100 EIDE hard diskCurrently I don't have anything overclocked, cuz I got disgusted with the instability problems when I had that crappy Voodoo 4-4500, and haven't tried overclocking with the NVIDIA card, altho I've had it almost a year now. I don't reccomend overclocking anyway unless you're so disgusted with your CPU that you're considering buying a faster one anyway, and you don't care if it goes up in smoke as long as it goes faster. Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top

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