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I am working on creating a Capitol Limited Activity for MLT's Sandpatch, and I am fairly new with using the Activity Editor. After placing loose consists and "dead" trains in sidings and such along the route, I went in and ran the activity to check on the effect the consists had on my frame rate (especially in Cumberland Yard). In doing this, I noticed that the target faces for the signals were blank/black. The correct signal aspect appeared in the Track Monitor, but not on the signal itself. Also, I noticed the headlight was missing from my locomotive. The headlight was projected on the ground in front of the train, but it was not on locomotive (the flasing red light on the last car for the E.T.D. was also missing). After going back into the AE, I deleted all loose consists, and it solved the problem. Does anyone have any ideas as to the cause of this problem and a way to correct it? As it stands now, I am placing the loose consists one-by-one and testing the activity after each placement. At this rate, it is going to take forever for me to finish this activity. Any help at all would be appreciated. Thanks.
Sorry GaryG...I posted here before I read your reply in the MLT's Forum. I posted in both forums in an attempt to gather as much information as possible. My apologies if I offended you.I checked out the link, and I am pretty sure that I understand the situation. The only thing I am concerned with is changing the lights in the consist files and screwing something up causing a fatal error of some kind. If all fails, I will use more default equipment. Thanks again for the input.
More Help!!!!!!I went into the ".wag" files and changed the number of lights to 1 (one) on all the rolling stock I am using in the activity. Once I finished that and went into run MSTS, I was able to get to the Route/Activity Selection screen, but as soon as I hit "Start", it locked up, Also, The AE won't start up. I get the "Send/Don't Send" error. Any other ideas?I am going to go back and put the number of lights back to the original in hopes that I can get MSTS running again. Once again, my activity is on hold.
FWIW, I've never seen any effect whatsoever in hacking .wag files to remove lights. That doesn't mean there is no effect, it just means I haven't seen any.The light limit bug is either two bugs or two variations on the same bug. The "static" light bug comes from too many light sources defined within a single .eng file, the "active" light bug comes from too many lights turned on within the player circle of visibility. One may or may not effect the other, and signals may or may not be a factor as well.If you place 20 engines that have 35 light sources as loose consists, and have no AI traffic running, there won't be a problem. 23 of those same engines, even if the player engine is something like the default GP38, will cause all lights to stop working. Even on a route with no signals, the player headlights will no longer work, but if you reduce the number of 35 light engines or change them for a couple of hundred 10 light engines, it cures the static light problem. Dunno what the exact trigger number is either, somewhere between 30 and 35.The active light problem I haven't done much testing on, but putting 15 or so engines with the lights activated (so that they're always on even when the engine is just sitting on a siding as a loose consist) will trigger the bug, put out all the headlights, and darken the signals if the route has any. Some guy in Germany said the total number was 70, altho I've had more than that before the trigger. Might also be system and/or video card specific, I dunno.http://www.railpage.org.au/steam4me/trainsim/tutorials/Yuri has a tutorial on AI lights which has a lot of good info in it.My suggestion, instead of fiddling with .wag files, would be to create AI engine and loose consist engine clones, with a minimum number of lights in the AI engines, no lights in the helpers, and then you can use the dazzling light show engine for the player engine without all the problems.When you go to hack these things, pay close attention to the parentheses, those ")" thingys are there to tell the program ("yo, computer, this is an instruction!) that this is the end of a datablock, or the end of a section, or both. In the .wag, for example, you'll see two datablocks that start with "Light (" and end with 3 ")", and after the second one there are two more ")" to indicate the end of the section. Deleting one too many or one too few ")" is gonna confuse the program.
Thanks for all your help guys!!! I test ran the activity last evening and all my signals and headlights were working. Now, all I need to do is add my AI traffic and add a few finishing details and my activity will be complete.If all goes well, I am going to upload the activity, but it does require quite a few non-default downloads all from this site. Again, thanks to all of you for your help.