Message Areas - "rambling Route-Riter rave"

Train-Sim.Com Message Areas

"rambling Route-Riter rave"

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
Southern_Railway (463 posts)
May-14-02, 01:23 PM (EDT) "rambling Route-Riter rave" My thanks to Mike Simpson!Last night I tried Route-Riter (ver 2.1.3) on Sea View 2 and was thrilled with the way it worked. With a few simple steps the route was ready for sending to a couple of beta testers. Only took ten minutes with no apparent errors.Step #1 - Click "Get .s files" button - This selected all the *.s files actually used in the route and produced a printable list.Step #2 - Click "Find .ace/.sms" button - Produced a printable list of all *.ace, *. sms, and *.wav files actually used by the route.Step #3 - Click "Kill Unused Files" button - Deletes all shape, texture, sound, and terrain texture files not used in the route. (I uploaded Sea View 1 with a large number of unused files, but it was too tedious to find and remove each one.)Step #4 - Click "Comp.w" button - compressed all *.w files in the World folder.Step #5 - Click "Delete Raw" button - Removed all *e.raw, *n.raw and *.bk files. Step #6 - Click "Write .bat" button - Writes the InstallMe.bat file for the user to click to install the route.Step #7 - Click "Comp .w" button - This was also done in Step #4 above. Not sure if it was necessary this second time.I then tested everything. The InstallMe.bat worked like it should. I then scanned the entire route with the Route Editor. Received no error messages and everything looked normal. I drove a lot of the route and nothing seemed to be changed or missing. (Lots more testing will be done before uploading.)I am thrilled, because not being very technical, preparing a route for distribution is very difficult for me. Not any more. It appears that with a few button clicks on the Route-Riter screen, your route is ready for uploading. Bill Burnett Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
Table of Contents

Subject Author Message Date ID RE: rambling Route-Riter rave atsfdude May-14-02 1 RE: rambling Route-Riter rave Hawk May-14-02 2 RE: rambling Route-Riter rave henry3 May-14-02 3 RE: rambling Route-Riter rave romerails May-14-02 4 RE: rambling Route-Riter rave sniper297 May-14-02 5 RE: rambling Route-Riter rave MikeSimpson May-15-02 6 RE: rambling Route-Riter rave sniper297 May-15-02 7 RE: rambling Route-Riter rave Jitny May-15-02 8 RE: rambling Route-Riter rave Bodgeous May-16-02 9

Lobby | Topics | Previous Topic | Next Topic
Messages in this topic
atsfdude (140 posts)
May-14-02, 01:39 PM (EDT) 1. "RE: rambling Route-Riter rave" Thanks for the update Bill. I was dreading the work that would need to be done for the Richmond route I am doing and good to find out it will be a bit easier. Still have more to do, but one less worry for the future.ATSFDUDE Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
Hawk (460 posts)
May-14-02, 01:41 PM (EDT) 2. "RE: rambling Route-Riter rave" Hey Bill,
Pretty neat, huh?
I still haven't figured out everything that went wrong with Snafu Pass. I'm still working on it though. Probably something I did wrong, I'm sure.
Good job Mike, and thanks a bunch. An excellent program for us technical illiterates.
Hawk
"Traaaain-Train, Take me on out of this town." Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
henry3 (792 posts)
May-14-02, 01:45 PM (EDT) 3. "RE: rambling Route-Riter rave" Thanks for the "heads-up", Bill! While I don't know if I'll ever get to the point where I'll have a route worth uploading, it's nice to know that this alternative (necessity?) is available.Henry Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
romerails (74 posts)
May-14-02, 02:13 PM (EDT) 4. "RE: rambling Route-Riter rave" Thanks for that update. I also had considered using this program when and if my route is ever ready to go up. Nice to know that it appears to work as promised. I had already downloaded it some time ago but have not tested it. thanks Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
sniper297 (2232 posts)
May-14-02, 10:11 PM (EDT) 5. "RE: rambling Route-Riter rave" Hey, Hawk, I was just gonna email you. "All the things wrong with snafu"? The only thing I found was that missing \terrtex\snow\US2Mount1.ace, and further research shows that wasn't your fault or RouteRiter, it was yet another KUJU screwup. If you do a search in explorer for US2Mount1.ace, you'll find it originates in \USA2\Terrtex, but they apparently decided not to use that terrain texture and forgot to take it out. It don't HAVE a snow texture! So if you're gonna use that one, you gotta either make a snow texture for it, or copy the regular \terrtex to \terrtex\snow, add the line;copy ..\USA2\Terrtex\USMount1.ace .\Terrtex\Snow\USMount1.ace . That will give the regular texture in snow, but it's better than error messages. Optionally, cheat like I did;copy ..\USA2\Terrtex\snow\us2pinkrock.ace .\terrtex\snow\USMount1.ace . That will give you the snow texture for us2pinkrock renamed to USMount1.ace.This thing works very well, I am almost giddy that it's finally here. Still needs just a little tuning, I would add the following line to the bottom of the batch file just to be safe;call xcopy ..\..\template\terrtex\*.* .\terrtex\ /s /yThat will copy microtex.ace and terrain.ace into the route,, even if you don't use either of those textures the sim looks for them at the oddest times in a route, and returns error messages if they're not present in \terrtex.In your case, Hawk, since you customized terrain.ace and don't want to overwrite it, yours will have to be done differently, I'll get back to you on that.
Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
MikeSimpson (21 posts)
May-15-02, 06:01 AM (EDT) 6. "RE: rambling Route-Riter rave" Thanks for the kind words on my program. I have fixed a couple of small bugs and v2.1.6 can be downloaded from my homepage as under.Program will now advise names of files which are missing from the route (e.g. one route I was testing was missing crossing.sms).It will also check all the texture and terrtex folders to make sure it finds all versions of a texture (previously it checked the default routes in order starting with Europe1 and if it found a texture there and not in Europe1\Snow, it assumed there was no snow texture, however this is not the case, there are quite a few textures in Europe1 without snow textures, but these do exist in Europe2 !!)Mike Simpson
http://freepages.hobbies.rootsweb.com/~agene
Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
sniper297 (2232 posts)
May-15-02, 09:14 AM (EDT) 7. "RE: rambling Route-Riter rave" Now THAT wouldn't surprise me, in their hurry to meet the deadline they rushed the game out the door so fast there are empty pop cans, half finished objects, Fritos bags, orphaned files, and cigarette butts littered throughout almost every subfolder in train simulator. This USMount1.ace is the first terrtex file I've seen with no snow texture at all, but I wonder how many more there are? When I was trying to finish Jim Steven's missing objects work there were over 50 of those little Marias Pass "stations" (little huts with the station name on them), some had SD files calling for non-existant snow textures, some of them had no SD files at all. I forget the count he came up with, but it was something like 400 default objects that KUJU didn't include in any of the default routes because they didn't work, but left the files scattered all over the place anyway. That's the biggest challenge with trying to eliminate uneccessary files. Mike has done an unbelievably masterful job here, but the packaging rule still applies - delete the route from the \Routes folder completely, pretend you're a new computer user downloading it, unzip, run the batch, and do a test run in every season and weather, day and night. Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
Jitny (171 posts)
May-15-02, 10:45 PM (EDT) 8. "RE: rambling Route-Riter rave" Let's say I want to delete the routes I don't use.
Can I put all necessary route files and folders from all routes into one basic folder for use in new DLed routes. Can this be done and just copy files from this one folder to the new routes with a batch file? Regards
Bob

Mobile AL
M&O,GM&N,GM&O,CSX,IC,SOUTHERN,BNSF,L&N(Old Reliable)

Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
Bodgeous (99 posts)
May-16-02, 05:25 PM (EDT) 9. "RE: rambling Route-Riter rave" In a word, YES. I keep a master file (directory) of shapes, textures and .ref files. Copy them to your desired route directory (be sure to rename the .ref file) and edit in the RE to your heart's content. When you have the route finished, use Route Riter to remove all the unused stuff and regain disk space.I have found it easier to track additions of objects this way. Always keep backups of this master file. You may discover the hard way that some new object might overwrite an existing shape or texture.Bill Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top

Lock | Archive | Remove

Lobby | Topics | Previous Topic | Next Topic