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"Track Database /Alcohol - Part 2 - fixed (?)"

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highball5 (62 posts)
Jan-31-02, 07:34 PM (EST) "Track Database /Alcohol - Part 2 - fixed (?)" Well, I'm not sure I understand it all, but I brought the route back from the brink. As I mentioned in the original post, I thought I'd try reloading MSTS. But since I had not only a backup of the route in question, I also had a complete system backup from before the demonic possession set in. So I figured I'd try restoring bits and pieces of MSTS to see if at some point things changed. Well they did change for the better. I restored the 1033 (whatever that is) folder and the fonts folder. Nothing changed there. But when I restored the global/shapes folder, poof! the world righted itself. All of a sudden all the database lines and track segment lines reappeared.
This is with the my most recent backup of the route in place, the one that refused to work when I restored it earlier. Now whether it was something corrupt in one of the track shapes, or something else I don't really know. But at this point everything looks totally back to normal. I added a few track sections with no problems, have saved, exited and re-entered the editor with nothing unusual. I'm not sure what connections there are between the global folder and individual routes, but apparantly there's something there that had a bearing on all of it. Wish I could pin in down a little closer as to what the magic bullet really was. Thanks to you guys for the replies, if I discover any more of an explanation I'll let you know. Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
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Subject Author Message Date ID RE: Track Database /Alcohol - Part ... sniper297 Jan-31-02 1 RE: Track Database /Alcohol - Part ... OkrasaGhia Feb-01-02 2

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sniper297 (1462 posts)
Jan-31-02, 11:40 PM (EST) 1. "RE: Track Database /Alcohol - Part 2 - fixed (?)" Actually, the secret ingredient is Crown Royal, not just any alcohol will do.
One of those really strange things probably caused by the premature release of the sim, the \global folder was possibly intended to be truly global. The track section shapes are all in the global folder, along with a number of other common shapes. No special reason I can think of why all the shapes wouldn't be in there.
According to the guy who did Xtracks (I always forget how to spell his name), the tsection.dat file in your route is created the first time you use dynamic track, and the only track section info stored in there is dynamic track. The tsection.dat file in the \global folder has all the rest.
And therein lies the problem, if you install Xtracks or a route based on it, the tsection.dat file in the \global folder has to be modified to use the new track sections. So if something goes wrong with that, it will screw up all the routes. The \global folder is only 10 megs, so I made a complete backup of \global before I tried the latest Hoboken shore or the Xtracks mod, it don't take much space and I don't have to reinstall MSTS.
The \Trains folder is another story, I have over a gigabyte of add-on trains now, so backing that up takes time and space! I just backed it up today so I could delete it and replace it with the default MSTS \Trains folder. Why would I do that? Simple, I'm almost done with PO&N5, and I'm currently writing the activities. Having the default trainset and consists insures that I won't accidently pull a goof like I did with PO&N 3.1, placing a pair of 2-6-6-2 mallets as loose consists, and anyone who didn't have the mallet installed went crazy with error messages, anyone who did have it installed couldn't run the activity without editing it, since nobody else but me had logdbleng2662.con as a consist!
Orange geeps and dash 9s and the unimaginative default consists (2 SD-40s with 4 cars? Gondolas and autoracks referred to as "boxcars"? Triple Dash 9s pulling 15 intermodals? Who thought this stuff up?) are somewhat boring, but it's the only way to be absolutely certain of compatibility. That's life, I figure people who know how to download and install custom rolling stock have enough smarts to hack the activities anyway. Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
OkrasaGhia (228 posts)
Feb-01-02, 07:01 AM (EST) 2. "RE: Track Database /Alcohol - Part 2 - fixed (?)" You're getting closer each time Sniper.
I'm thinking of your explanation of tsection.dat and the world-folder. The local tsection.dat is created first time you use dynamic track as you said but all the info regarding the dynamic track sections are also stored in the world-files. It would be possible to recreate the local tsection.dat from the global file and the routes world-files. I don't know if RE will do that if you delete it though. I think you should view the local tsection.dat as a cache of the dynamic track information contained in the world-files. The world-files also contain information about your other track sections and all the static objects you've used. I don't know but it might also contain information about signals, platforms and such but those things have other files also.
The global folder contains shapes and textures for a number of shared things and a number of other things important for the functioning of all routes. One example of shapes contained in the global folder is the track shapes but the textures for those are taken from each route (that's how you can have different ties). Adding new shape-files to the global folder is harmless as long as you don't replace something already there. It's when changing or replacing files in the global folder that strange things may happen. In the case of XTracks it would suffice to backup the tsection.dat in the global folder. Those extra shapes added by XTracks can be left in the global folder without harm.
I hope to document some of my findings regarding these matters in the documentation that will be included with XTracks. It's really complicated with many dependencies and easy to screw things up. I'm now confident enough to change things on the fly but would not recommend others to do that (I run TSM & MSTS at the same time using RE as preview of my new track sections without restarting). Change something in the global folder and routes you have not touched can become corrupt. This is the reason I'm working on a utility (Horace for those who tested it) to handle all the things that needs fixing when adding new track sections.

//Okrasa
Chief Engineer
okrasaghia @ yahoo.com
http://www.geocities.com/okrasaghia



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