Hey, Igor #1, how ya been? Where ya been? Em-BEAR-assing display of ineptitude last night, hey? @%^&*#! McCaskey might be collecting all the dough, but the guy who really OWNS Da Bears is Brett Favre, dat bum is now 21 and 4 against them if my recollection serves me.
Two of my kids live up in Cheeseheadland USA, they never let me hear the end of it. Well, oddly enough that actually works, altho once the numbers have been hacked you can't move the post any more once it's beyond that 20 meter limit. Can't even move it closer to the trip, damn thing won't budge in any direction, refuses to even rotate. So I did the exact placement thing instead of moving approximately and adjusting afterwards (you're gonna love this, more screenshotz! );
I place two of the signals, one where I want the trip (upper left), the other where I want the post (lower right), then look for the coordinates and copy the position & Qdirection lines.
Finding the one where the trip will be, I overwrite the position and Qdirection with the lines from the signal post location. Save the .w file, exit the RE without saving, and reload.
The posts are now in exactly the same place, so I select the trip for the temp post, slide it over a little to make sure I have the right one, and delete it.
Near switch curved, far switch straight, post far enough from junction to stop short. Interval shows red for the near switch set against this track, distant signal correctly shows green for the far switch straight, since the trip is beyond the base the path trace isn't interrupted by the near switch and it don't give a false red indication. Still need another one at the base of the switch to cover the "dead zone", since HAL don't actually look at the other track to see if the player has passed the signal trip, instead he traces the AI path onto the single track section from the curve, and unless the player is beyond the base of the switch he looks at it as being clear and resets the switches accordingly. Having a distant signal indicator at the base gives the player a final check as he's going past the base of the switch where HAL will detect him and stop setting switches for the player.
Hmmm. Still hope there's another way, all that manual wordpad searching and editing would get tedious considering I probably have over a hundred of these AI/player junctions, maybe I'll use the ingenious Miller Madness Method only on the problem junctions, the notorious Sundermeyer crossing tracks sections.
Here's Anderson yard, two-way AI traffic thru the classification yard tracks (red).
Close up of the crossing junctions at one end, AI tracks red, player blue, shared track purple.
Since there's no way to protect an actual crossover track with signals, the junctions in Sundermeyer were made with two switches joined base-to-base, and since the sim won't accept that the bases were seperated with a 10 meter straight section. For this one I used a 2 meter dynamic track section instead, which gives a better illusion of a crossing, but don't leave much space for the signal trips.
Unfortunately 1 out of the 4 crossing junctions don't work right no matter what I do with it, the signals don't display correctly no matter where I slide the trips.
Bottom searchlight being a distant switch indicator that has no block occupation detection, it's correctly displaying green, but the top signal is an interval gantry mount and should be red.
Backing over the same signal trip causes it to display correctly, unfortunately it's not consistent.
And this one don't change no matter what, altho the same signals on the other 3 junctions with the same configuration display correctly.
With a 2 meter long crossing you don't really need block occupation detection anyway, you can SEE whether there's a train in the block. So I tried it with just distant signal and switchstand indicators.
When the near switch throws curved, both heads turn red since the path trace is blocked, the switchstand shows the far switch is actually still straight. The switchstand indicators don't always reset to the correct indication after AI train passage either, I've always found switchstand indicators with automatic switches to be a sometimes-iffy thing. But in order to keep HAL from throwing both switches at the same time and/or throwing the switches while the player train is in the crossing junction, some type of signal trip is necessary between the switches. Probably what I'm gonna do there is go ahead and use the switchstand indicators and just bury the heads underground to avoid confusing indications.Well, later, Igor, gotta go see if I can blow up the lab again.
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I need to drag the signal post itself at least double the max distance away from the red trip marker, and I don't see anything obvious in the shape file that determines the maximum distance limit.
