Notice to all visitors and members of the Train-Sim.Com message forums: If you plan on using a signature banner in your posts, we would like to remind you that there is a maximum size for banners. That maximum is 450 pixels wide by 120 pixels high, and not to exceed 25k. Your compliance is appreciated. FORUM RULES Problems? There are two common reasons for problems with logging in and posting messages. The first is that you are running a firewall that prevents your messages from being sent to the server. The other is that you have cookies disabled; the DCForum software requires cookies to work properly.
Is there something in the building of an activity that might prevent a consist from smoking or steaming? I am trying to find out what's wrong with a Thomas The Tank Engine activity that plays (Day Out With Thomas from the files area), but the player consist engine will not smoke or steam. I have tried several consists in the activity and none of them smoke, but they all do in another activity (Gordon To The Rescue) on the same route (Europe #1).Everything checks out OK in RouteRiter, Conbuilder and the MSTS activity editor although I have literally no experience with activities and might not recognize a problem unless it flashes me.I have compared the .eng, .act, .srv, etc., files and all seem to be in order. I thought that maybe making engines smoke was somehow tied to having a tender which Thomas does not have, but Gordon with a tender does not smoke in the activity either when I substitute him for Thomas.Probably not many of you fool around with Thomas stuff, but maybe someone has seen this problem before in another activity or might be able to give me a clue to what I should look for.My three year old grandson loves Thomas and I can't convince him that Thomas doesn't smoke because he is a diesel.Thanks for any info Bob V
Don't know if it helps you, driving the AI engine reverse results in having no smoke. This is a TS bug. Change direction of the AI engine. Is it OK then ?Rudi
Thanks for the input, Rudi. The activity does not have any AI trains in it. Everything is placed along the route as a cold iron loose consist. After hours and hours of fooling with everything that I could think of, I decided to make my own activity along the lines of the one that doesn't work. There is definitely something amiss in the original activity, because the one that I made to replace it works as expected.I now have a smoking player consist and Thomas can visit all his friends along the route. The next step is to try some AI paths as a learning tool, and make all those engines along the route smoke and chuff.Thanks again for your help. The learning curve for this stuff is really steep.Bob V
Strange...I'd be real interested to know what you changed in the activity to solve this problem. I can't imagine anything directly related to the activity itself that would prevent the locomotive from smoking.Thanks,MC
I worked on the consists in the .act file using Wordpad. Especially the player consist which is the one that is not smoking. I compared the faulty .act file with another that is similar but works. I changed everything that I thought might affect the smoke on the player unit. Sometimes I changed other stuff and got the S/DS error, but in all cases, nothing that I did ever fixed the problem of the player consist not smoking.Finally, using the Activity Editor, I created a new activity using the one that does not work as a guide. I did the same things in the new activity that I saw done in the old one, except I corrected a few loose consist placements that were originally placed in collision or overhanging a buffer at the end of a siding. When I corrected these problems in the original activity, it made no difference in the smoke problem (yes, I did the recompute thing before saving). The activity has many loose consists including some with engines just sitting on sidings. Being a Thomas thing, most of the engines were duplicates and even duplicates of the player consist. However, changing those did nothing to fix the smoke problem.Master Chief, I don't have a clue. The new activity that I made with AE worked just fine. I still haven't figured out what's wrong with the original one. All the other similar activities work without problems. It's just the one that's messed up somehow.Thanks for your interest and sorry that I don't have the experience with activities yet to provide you with a reason for the smoke problem. I guess this problem is unique to my setup and might be a corrupt .act file. If I get it worked out someday, I'll let you know.Bob V
Thanks, Bob.I'm working on a similar problem (one of my own creation) right now. I've created an activity, and am trying to get an AI train to pass me while I'm in a siding, using two reverse points, as has been exhaustively discussed here (and, I've managed to do, in other activities, myself). The AI train gets a red, and won't proceed. If I create the same situation in a mini-activity, where I'm not doing the whole activity, but just this small section, it works flawlessly. Go figure... MC