Why don't certain buildings work?

I love John Tacketts 'eaterys and restaurants' and have tried using the In Out Burger in Marias Pass, and now recently Canton. Also the newly discovered 'Roy's Warehouse'. These buildings work fine in Route Editor, but when I run an activity I get all these error messages such as 'Cannot load In_Out_Burger.sd Continue?', 'Cannot load Warehse.ace Continue?' and so on. At first I thought 'Ah, the Activity is in Winter, and I didn't copy the .ACE file to that folder!', but no luck after the transfer. Then I thought 'Ah, maybe it's the apostraphe's and '_' symbols in the titles?' So I went and adjusted every .ace, .s .sd and Ref line accordingly for them. Still no go? So is there any trick, or utility I can use to make these buildings compliant in Canton and elsewhere? On Marias Pass, the buildings would appear in some activities, and other activities I'd have to hit ENTER repeatedly to clear these error messages and keep the train moving.Thanks in advance.

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RE: Why don't certain buildings work?, sniper297, May-13-04, 01:54 PM, (1) RE: Why don't certain buildings work?, calr, May-13-04, 02:15 PM, (2) RE: Why don't certain buildings work?, John Westwood, May-14-04, 08:18 PM, (3) RE: Why don't certain buildings work?, John Westwood, May-15-04, 03:16 PM, (4) peek poke push pop jump?, sniper297, May-15-04, 09:38 PM, (5) RE: peek poke push pop jump?, John Westwood, May-15-04, 10:40 PM, (6) RE: peek poke push pop jump?, sniper297, May-15-04, 11:11 PM, (7)

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Not familiar with those buildings, but it sounds like an error in the .sd file.
http://www.train-sim.com/cgi/dcforum/dcboard.cgi?az=show_thread&om=5862&forum=DCForumID6Open the .sd file in wordpad, check for ESD 256, and if it is 256 change it to 0, or (if it has a night texture and you want to keep it) change it to 257 and copy the main texture to the snow folder.

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It sounds like maybe you didn't install the files correctly. The .s and .sd files go in your route shapes folder. The .ace file(s) go in the route texture folder. Lastly, there are entries to add to the route .ref file but if you got the objects to show in the RE, you probably got that right.Cal Rasmussen
Beaverton, OR
(My email is in my profile)Columbia Gorge Route (Phase 2-- Started)

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Thanks guys! I'll give your advice a shot Sniper, I'm not up on any programming stuff - but you made the instructions pretty easy there. And that's just it Cal, all the components are in their respective places and REF file entries are correct. I've learned the hard way about making mistakes there. But strange that they do appear in RE with nary a problem, and I can even use +/= to see them at night and watch their lights come on (if any?). But when I go to run certain activities, or all activities - all the error messages?And that's another question I wondered about if I may? How come some building files come with just a .S, .SD, and a .ACE but seem to cover all seasons and night? Other buildings have umpteen .ACE's for numerous transitions? I think Sniper kinda answered that above as well. That - and what causes .THM's to be created on some buildings in the Shapes folder? Sometimes a building will come with a .THM which I include, other times MSTS seems to generate one after I install and use just the supplied .S and .SD components?Sorry for being such a Curious George, just some things that always made me scratch my head. Thanks again guys!

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Just to say THANKS again Sniper! Did the trick wonderfully, and all works like a charm now.

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Hee-hee, see, you know more about programming than you thought you did!"How come some building files come with just a .S, .SD, and a .ACE but seem to cover all seasons and night?" If it has ESD 0 in the .sd file, that's "no alternative texture", so a single ace file in the main texture folder is all it needs. If the ESD says 252, that means it buds in the spring, turns brown in the fall, sheds leaves in the winter, and has fluffy white stuff on it when it snows, and therefore needs an ace file in all the seasonal subfolders.There are some other oddballs, ESD 1 for a normal shape means main texture plus snow, but no night or other seasonal textures. Now take a look in the global\shapes folder at the track sections - track has a regular texture plus a snow texture and no night texture, so logically it should be ESD 1, right? Open any track section, a1t10mstrt.sd for example, in wordpad and take a look."and what causes .THM's to be created on some buildings in the Shapes folder? Sometimes a building will come with a .THM which I include, other times MSTS seems to generate one after I install and use just the supplied .S and .SD components?"In the placement window, click on "more" and the object selector window comes up. There's a checkbox for "show thumbnails", most people turn that off (it's on by default) since the RE is such a memory hog, you get less crashes with thumbnails off, and the thumbnails are worthless for seeing what an object looks like anyway. If "show thumbnails" is checked on, it will generate a THM file in the shapes folder if one doesn't already exist. "just some things that always made me scratch my head", don't do too much of that, you'll scratch all your hair out, end up looking like this:

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- But I shouldn't laugh, as I almost look like Cal myself now. Very insightful stuff Sniper, and thanks for tackling all my questions. I do use thumbnails all the time, and find them somewhat helpful to get an idea of what building I'm choosing for an area. But didn't know it was detrimental in RE? So far, all has been smooth for me, aside from this ESD line stuff - which thanks to you, I know how to remedy tout sweet now. As for all the Microsoft peculuraties, I have a hard enough time getting Car Spawners going in the right direction! But I'm glad you and others are on top of all these 'weird things', 'cause I'll no doubt be coming back with more problems in future if I keep mucking about. Thanks again.

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Thumbnails might not be an issue anymore. When I first bought trainsim, I had a 450mhz computer with 64mb RAM, now I have a 2.66ghz computer with 1024mb RAM. The lockups and crashes from the route editor lost a lot of hours of work back in the early days, and as I upgraded they became less and less. Worst trouble with the summer of 2001 (and I just looked, Port Ogden & Northern was extracted in the geo extractor on 7/7/2001) was that we had nobody to ask, because nobody knew anything. Lots of questions, but no answers. http://www.railpage.org.au/steam4me/trainsim/tutorials/There's a lot of free info there, but also scroll down to Mike Vone's "Step by Step Guide to Building Routes" link, probably be the best 20 bucks you ever spent.

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