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The two main things for an activity designer are 1. Signals - they have to work. If the player train is on a siding, a opposing AI train, still 3 sidings away, should not hold the player train, it should advance till either it is held at a red waiting for the opposing train to take the siding or take the siding as the opposing train sits on the main. They also have to hold AI or the player, the route ppl need to be very carefull where they put the permissive signals. 2. Named and defined sidings, it is extremely difficult to do activities with out them named and defined.That is it, an activity designer can work around a lot of things, but these are needed. There have been quite a few good routes that have been uploaded lately that I would like to do activites for. But do to one or both of the above, it is just about impossible to do. Above anything else, Signals are the MOST IMPORTANT. When I am working on an activity I can tell what is wrong with the signalling, but I am clueless on how to fix it.Kevin Arceneaux DEFAULT IS FOR DUMMIES Lone Wolf Activities Forum on www.3DTrains.com
Hee-hee, smart guy. How ya been, Hobart, long time!Hmmm, well, I did skim thru some of the talk about cutting signals out of (I forget which) a route over there in the activity forum. I considered tossing in my two coppers, but it's a long, complicated explanation.http://www.train-sim.com/cgi/dcforum/dcboard.cgi?az=show_thread&om=3073&forum=DCForumID6&archive=yesThe short version is that interlockings are asleep by default and show red unless there is an active path to tickle them awake. Once an interlocking is awake, it will show something other than red as long as it can trace an uninterrupted path to the next signal facing the other way, unblocked by switches set the wrong way or a train. If it traces a path into a siding that don't have any more signals it will never show less restrictive than yellow, which is why route developers screw around putting permissive signals in odd places. If the next signal down the line is also an interlocking, the second interlocking is still asleep since the path hasn't reached it yet to tickle it awake, so the first interlocking will show yellow until the second one wakes up. What happens after that depends on what the next signal down the line is, if #3 is also an interlocking it will be sleepy-red, #2 will go yellow, #1 goes flashing yellow. If #3 is an interval, it's already awake, and depending on what it's showing (which depends on the next 3 signals beyond THAT one!) #1 will go green, #2 will be either green or flashing yellow, again assuming there's no trains in the blocks and no trailing point switch set the wrong way interrupting the path.Why the hell this was set up this way is easily explained;These are the KUJU Klowns responsible for this mess, notice not one is wearing a railroad t-shirt or engineer's cap. I heard the guy doing activities for MSTS2 hates trains, I can guarantee that nobody on the original team was a trainfan prior to starting the project.I was just testing new AI trains on the PO&N, and got interrupted by our new puppy piddling on the floor. After dealing with that I came back to find that I had drifted past a red signal going onto the wood bridge from Van den Hoven to Tinkers Dam, and was facing a stopped AI train coming the other way. Unfortunately I had run the red signal after both switches had changed, so I was trapped on the single track section with the exit switches at both ends set for the AI path. Not wanting to start over since the test was about how many hours I could run AI trains with headlights continuously before the signals went dark (light count limit bug), I backed up all the way around Van den Hoven on the AI loop, hitting "tab" to get clearance to run the reds until I was back to the previous junction and could pull forward onto the player track again. All that tapping and getting "permission granted" got me thinking, the signals are red not because the track is blocked, but because they're asleep and being off the official path I'm not waking them up. My train won't wake up the interlockings when it's off the path, yet my train going thru a sleeping interlocking without getting permission ends the game?! If the interlocking is inactive due to no path, why would it detect my train going thru it at all?! It's a half measure programming, and the wrong half to boot!So that's part of the sad story, catch 22: Q. How do you set up signals on a route? A. It depends on how you want to set up the AI traffic in the activity. Q. OK, so how do you set up AI traffic in an activity? A. It depends on how the signals are set up in the route.Granted, there are some route developers who don't understand the basics, I got zillions chiming in with "I set up the signals this way, and they work perfectly in explore route!" Well, (A) you don't need signals in explore route since there's no traffic, and (B) signals don't work the same way in explore route as they do in an activity even without AI traffic. You gotta test in an activity to see what they're actually gonna do, and one AI train travelling in the opposite direction or the position of a manual switch off the mainline someplace is gonna make them behave differently. So even those who have a clue about signals are gonna have a hard time setting them up to work most of the time, just because the godforsaken logic is so illogical.
So you're saying the signal logic isn't logical and because of the illogic of the non-logical signals causes illogicity among the logical?Sheesh.Where's Spock when you need 'im?Andre "That Is Not Logical" Ming
The LV sigs work. As do the sigs on Raton and the payware routes. It is a shame to, that they do these fantastic looking routes and you end up with explore route only.Kevin Arceneaux DEFAULT IS FOR DUMMIES Lone Wolf Activities Forum on www.3DTrains.com
These are the KUJU Klowns responsible for this mess, notice not one is wearing a railroad t-shirt or engineer's cap. I heard the guy doing activities for MSTS2 hates trains, I can guarantee that nobody on the original team was a trainfan prior to starting the project.I was just testing new AI trains on the PO&N, and got interrupted by our new puppy piddling on the floor. After dealing with that I came back to find that I had drifted past a red signal going onto the wood bridge from Van den Hoven to Tinkers Dam, and was facing a stopped AI train coming the other way. Unfortunately I had run the red signal after both switches had changed, so I was trapped on the single track section with the exit switches at both ends set for the AI path. Not wanting to start over since the test was about how many hours I could run AI trains with headlights continuously before the signals went dark (light count limit bug), I backed up all the way around Van den Hoven on the AI loop, hitting "tab" to get clearance to run the reds until I was back to the previous junction and could pull forward onto the player track again. All that tapping and getting "permission granted" got me thinking, the signals are red not because the track is blocked, but because they're asleep and being off the official path I'm not waking them up. My train won't wake up the interlockings when it's off the path, yet my train going thru a sleeping interlocking without getting permission ends the game?! If the interlocking is inactive due to no path, why would it detect my train going thru it at all?! It's a half measure programming, and the wrong half to boot!So that's part of the sad story, catch 22: