I have just uploaded a patch to the NZ Route.I would like to thank all of those people who have contacted me regarding this route. The positive support received and the general response has been overwhelming, and totally unexpected to the degree experienced.The most frustrating issue, for me particularly, has been the send/don't send error. Some have mentioned this in correspondance with usually a statement saying it does not bother them.
Personally it has always bothered me and I was optimistic that someone may find a cure once it was in circulation.
Feedback indicated two possibilities, corrupt file or a memory issue.
I always suspected the latter.Over the last few weeks I have systematically been stripping all custom objects from the route in an attempt to see if I could pinpoint a bad file.
There were a couple of possibilities discovered that further testing eliminated.What I did notice, as objects were removed, was the error message, when testing results, became less and less. I eventually reached the stage that I stopped receiving the message and the route was stable.
All of this points to a memory issue, at least I am convinced that this was the problem.On checking the original route I found the two biggest tiles were Dunedin at 616KB and Halfway Bush at 575KB. Both were around 1400 objects.
On the stripped route they were down to 535KB and 533Kb respectively and the route was stable.I started again on the route, removing objects that would not distract to much from the character I wanted to create, and I could dispense with because they were generally out of direct sight.
Once I had a stable route I stopped and on checking the tiles found Dunedin was at 515KB, Hlfwy Bush at 522KB.Testing from 6 people gave me 3 stable routes, one improved but still liable to the error, one no difference(still received) and one reminder that their copy had never received the error message.
I now have a stable route and the results of the changes is about 50/50.The Patch:
The changes are obviously going to be a hit or miss affair for those that experience the send/don't send when exiting the route.
I have also made changes to the track work as I discovered I had missed changing a lot of points/switches in the yards to manual. This showed up as I was writing some quite involved activities for the route. All points/switches within the yards are now manual, apart from any right hand 45 degree, as KUJU in their wisdom? decided not to provide manual RH's. These can be worked around through reverse points in activities.I have also removed a couple of signals that were badly placed and repositioned some others that interfered with activities.
The patch will have no other effect on the route and is a simple overwrite of existing files.To summarise:
The problems seem to have been memory related on my system. The route was built on a 600mhz machine with 378meg ram.
I am aware that others, such as enocell, have built routes with a far higher tile size and object count. I can only surmise that bigger machines will produce a stable route that can be used by people with smaller machines but not the reverse unless the tile size is kept to about 500KB. This may well be refuted and would not surprise me as the sim is certainly fickle to say the least.
What works for one may not necessarily work for another.I hope people continue to enjoy my little bit of New Zealand and I want to now move onto NZR2.
Cheers
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