Message Areas - "My Route is ready for beta-release. How to do it?"

Train-Sim.Com Message Areas

"My Route is ready for beta-release. How to do it??"

Email this topic to a friend
Printer-friendly version of this topic
Bookmark this topic (Registered users only)
Previous Topic | Next Topic Conferences MSTS Route Design (Protected) Original message
Woelferl (4 posts)
Jan-12-02, 05:23 AM (EST) "My Route is ready for beta-release. How to do it??" Hi Folks,finally i've made it. Got grey hair because of all those Editor's Probs.Anyway: What do I have to do that:1) reduces 190 MB to an up- and downloadable size?2) Do I need to include something like an "Installer-program"?
3) What's to be done now (and later) to release some updates in the future?Are there any Tutorials or SIMPLE-TO-USE tools??Any help welcome!But: make it EASY 'cause I'm no M$-Programmer, just a poor user!Thanx: Woelferl Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
Table of Contents

Subject Author Message Date ID RE: My Route is ready for beta-rele... akochan Jan-12-02 1 RE: My Route is ready for beta-rele... Woelferl Jan-12-02 2 RE: My Route is ready for beta-rele... sniper297 Jan-12-02 3 RE: My Route is ready for beta-rele... Woelferl Jan-12-02 4 RE: My Route is ready for beta-rele... sniper297 Jan-12-02 5 RE: My Route is ready for beta-rele... LawrenceKellie Jan-12-02 6 RE: My Route is ready for beta-rele... sniper297 Jan-13-02 7

Lobby | Topics | Previous Topic | Next Topic
Messages in this topic
akochan (353 posts)
Jan-12-02, 08:37 AM (EST) 1. "RE: My Route is ready for beta-release. How to do it??" Is that 190MB with all the shape files and textures removed for replacement by AllStuff or a reasonable facsimile or is that 190MB total including those files? If it's post removal you have reduced as much as it's going to get I think and you could either zip it (which won't help much as it won't compress more than 25% probably), use an existing installer, or write your own installer or bat file installer. The best bet if you're no uberprogrammer is to just zip it, include a readme with VERY detailed instructions and a copy of the prefered method of restructuring the object files. If you look at some of the other downloaded routes (East Coast Metro for instance) some of them have very nice installers which pair a windows installer with one of the the "allstuff.bat"s. You could always ask the authors (Rich Garber) where he got it and if it's easy enough to set up for your purposes.If the 190MB is post-removal of shapes or not then you could zip, split the zip into parts with File Shredder:
http://www.kazusoft.pair.com/software/shredder/And remember, that while uploading a big single file of 100+MB takes forever and can often time out, provided you have a place that will let you put something that big. However, it's much easier for the enduser to just download one single file of 100+MB. Yes... there are still dialup users out there who will whine about how it takes them 6 days when the rest of us get it in 30 minutes, but one 100MB file takes as long for them to download as 5 20MB files and if they don't mind having all their personal information sold to the highest bidder like chattel slavery they could I suppose use a download manager to allow them to resume interupts.I suppose you could always write it to a CDRW but then it would cost you money since you can't sell your route and people like free addons better (which is understandable with this economy).Hope at least one of those options would work for you as one can never have too many routes -Andy
akochan@crosswinds.net Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
Woelferl (4 posts)
Jan-12-02, 10:12 AM (EST) 2. "RE: My Route is ready for beta-release. How to do it??" Hi Andy,thanx for your quick reply. First of all: those 190 MB's is all the route's data.Which files can I take out without causing problems when reinstalling?Woelferl
Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
sniper297 (1322 posts)
Jan-12-02, 10:48 AM (EST) 3. "RE: My Route is ready for beta-release. How to do it??" http://www.train-sim.com/dcforum/User_files/3bca43f267d4e8c4.zipThat's the battle-tested creation/distribution package, there's another one in the works, but it's still in beta. If you already have your own ref file you can skip the replacement step, but if you are going to use the batch file you should follow the instructions to edit it and save the end user some space.
Any custom objects that you included in the route have to be included in the zip as well, but all the shapes and textures that everyone else already has on their disk will be recopied by the batch file.Quoting from RouteEditor.txt in the package,
"When your route is finished, before distribution, go through the error message section (of the batch file) and change "myroute" and "Ezstuff3.bat" to the appropriate names for whatever your route's directory and batch file are named. You need to make at least one simple activity to get the route to be drivable in explore mode, be sure to include these for distribution. Delete the following folders; \envfiles \shapes \sounds \textures \terrtex. Do a tools, find in explorer (STARTING IN THE ROOT OF YOUR ROUTE) for *.BK , *E.RAW , and *N.RAW . Select all, delete all. Then zip the route up, delete the copy you zipped it from (you have been making backups as you've been creating this thing, right?) and test the extraction to make sure it works and is playable." Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
Woelferl (4 posts)
Jan-12-02, 10:55 AM (EST) 4. "RE: My Route is ready for beta-release. How to do it??" Hey,I'm gonna give that a try.Thanx a lot!Woelferl Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
sniper297 (1322 posts)
Jan-12-02, 12:35 PM (EST) 5. "RE: My Route is ready for beta-release. How to do it??" I noticed you asking Dave about tips in the other thread, and it occured to me to add that it depends on the ref file you use. Dave couldn't use that system because his route is based on ALL_OBJECTS.REF and the script merge process created by another guy last summer. I have tested this with the IC route;http://www.train-sim.com/dcforum/User_files/3c3d22853fb41330.zip
And it does work, altho it's still in beta and hasn't been thoroughly tested yet. If your route is NOT based on ALL_OBJECTS, you don't need it for distribution packaging.
If you want, you can send the zip to me as an email attachment (click on the envelope link next to my nickname) and I'll test the extraction on a K6_2 450 with an unmodified MSTS install. I have a limit of 10 megs, I think, but it should be smaller than that. Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
LawrenceKellie (1057 posts)
Jan-12-02, 03:23 PM (EST) 6. "RE: My Route is ready for beta-release. How to do it??" Incredible, Jim. Thanks for the information.I tried it on Tapiola, which in development (includes all *.bk files) is 644 MB.I followed the steps you outlined, and it was reduced to 46.5 MB. Zipping it at maximum produced a file that was 29.8 MB. Very reasonsable.However, the final packaged size will be a bit larger--not much--as I have some custom shapes that have to be included. But on the whole, this produces a very distributable product.Oh, and the route is 257 tiles. Therefore, based on that, the packaged size for me is a little over 100 KB per tile.Lawrence Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
sniper297 (1322 posts)
Jan-13-02, 01:22 AM (EST) 7. "RE: My Route is ready for beta-release. How to do it??" Yeah, some of that is kind of funny, all the years I've spent looking at FAQs that was the first time in a long time I got any useful info out of one. I had uploaded PO&N v3 just before that tip about the e.raw and n.raw files was posted on the MSN site, and PO&N3 was 1.8 megs. Since some error reports started coming in about two of the activities, I fixed them and uploaded again as 3.1, this time deleting the e.raw and n.raw files. 1.2 megs instead of 1.8. Big savings on a small route, and if you look at Dave's newest IC, he cut the size in half by eliminating those files. On a route that size it takes a little longer for the tiles to regenerate the first time it's run, but for the reduction in size it's worth it.
Custom add on objects are a bit tough, if you look at the directory structure and the install batch for PO&N4, you'll see I added custom terrain textures (126mb of terrtex from the six KUJU routes and I couldn't find one I liked, fussy little %$#&#!, ain't I?), kept copies of them in a \custom folder, and added lines to Ezstuff3 to copy those into \textures. Same with envfiles\textures\waterbot.ace for the roof of the coal mine. The one thing I found from all this that makes me a little reluctant to use add-on objects is the fact that ace files don't compress in a zip. I have a coal mine shaft head with turning wheels and cables I got from a UK site, but that one object would add 2 megabytes to the zip all by itself! The allstuff/stuffit/whateverwe'regonnacallit package doesn't have that problem, the only thing it would add that wasn't already on the end user's drive are the missing or botched and repaired S and SD files, which are small to begin with and shrink even smaller.
Anyway, that's two ways you could do it, either add the custom shape and texture files to a custom folder within the route, adding to the batch file the lines to copy them, or keep them in a seperate folder, and after deleting all the files within the \shapes \textures folders for the route, paste only the custom ones back into the proper places, and zip it up like that. Things like waterbot.ace, acleantrack1.ace, or your replacement texture for terrain.ace, would have to be in a custom folder and copied by the batch last, after everything else was copied, in order to overwrite the defaults. No other way to do some of those, the names are hard coded and can't be changed by this type of batty remote-control process. Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top

Lock | Archive | Remove

Lobby | Topics | Previous Topic | Next Topic