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"AI Train Consists"

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jseiler (17 posts)
Sep-17-01, 12:16 PM (EST) "AI Train Consists" On August 12th JM Steven wrote in part:>In my activities, I also use a proximity event. The player must drive from one of the train sheds to the fuel point. If they reach the fueling siding, the system triggers a switcher to bring in cars for a consist.>If they make the fuel pickup and don't just drive on the siding, this triggers an event for the switcher to move the cars to a siding.>If they don't refuel within two minutes, the switcher drives away and the route map currently has 80+ miles on it.>If the player fuels up and heads to the siding beside the switcher and consist, a proximity event triggers where the System AI train disconnects from the consist.>The player then must back up to the consist (since the >switcher's disconnected but remains in the way at the other end)>If the consist isn't connected within two minutes of the switcher disconnect, I trigger a 35 car passenger train to arrive on the adjacent siding. That boxes in the player train for five minutes.>The switcher doesn't move either and events that follow start timing out.This implies the Mr Steven has found a way to get complete control over the actions of an AI train. I have been looking for a way to get an AI train to leave a cut of cars at an interchange siding for me to pick up. According to the preceeding this should be possible, but how? No matter what I try I can't get an AI train to stop at a siding and leave part of it's consist behind.Is Mr Steven running a different simulator?
Thanks for any thoughts,
Baffled
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Table of Contents

Subject Author Message Date ID RE: AI Train Consists rgarber Sep-17-01 1 RE: AI Train Consists LawrenceKellie Sep-17-01 2 RE: AI Train Consists rgarber Sep-17-01 3 RE: AI Train Consists jseiler Sep-18-01 4 RE: AI Train Consists rgarber Sep-22-01 6 RE: AI Train Consists mikebate Sep-22-01 5 RE: AI Train Consists rgarber Sep-22-01 7 RE: AI Train Consists jseiler Sep-24-01 8 RE: AI Train Consists rgarber Sep-24-01 9 RE: AI Train Consists JAG07 Oct-06-01 11 RE: AI Train Consists jseiler Sep-25-01 10 About MODE & TYPE in Activity files thirl Oct-10-01 12 RE: About MODE & TYPE in Activity f... rgarber Oct-10-01 13 RE: About MODE & TYPE in Activity f... thirl Oct-10-01 14 RE: About MODE & TYPE in Activity f... thirl Oct-10-01 15

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rgarber (243 posts)
Sep-17-01, 12:57 PM (EST) 1. "RE: AI Train Consists" hmm.. interesting. Never saw that post before. I can't figure how he got an ai train to disconnect from its consist. Unless you can get a ai train to use the action events where it drops cars off.. maybe? Maybe we've made the wrong assumption that the events only apply to the player?? Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
LawrenceKellie (414 posts)
Sep-17-01, 01:01 PM (EST) 2. "RE: AI Train Consists" No, Jim is not running a different simulator. However, he is a very senior, accomplished programmer for MS, and has the ability and tools to "hack" into the executable.Having said that, however, he also made comments that at least implies that the event-concept is public, just not documented. In other words, anyone can do it, but we don't have the documentation to access it.I hope that he will return to the forum soon. He is quite involved in the release of Windows XP--his code is used in every installation of the software. Because of that (I assume, hope), he has not been writing in the forums for quite some time.I miss his insight.Lawrence Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
rgarber (243 posts)
Sep-17-01, 03:01 PM (EST) 3. "RE: AI Train Consists" He must've meant that and I never even thought to try this, that you create an action like drop off cars but use the consist of an ai train... I gotta look into this. This sure would be great to add some flavor to the activities. Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
jseiler (17 posts)
Sep-18-01, 00:01 AM (EST) 4. "RE: AI Train Consists" I too thought that might be the way, but the editor won't let you pick cars from an AI train. I'm still looking for the proximity events he mentioned. Has anyone found those? Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
rgarber (243 posts)
Sep-22-01, 09:17 AM (EST) 6. "RE: AI Train Consists" Thanks. I haven't gotten yet to messing with trying to make it work. My copy of msts is crashing all of a sudden and I think my only solution now is to uninstall and reinstall. I tried defragging that didn't help. Nothing's changed that I know of. Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
mikebate (22 posts)
Sep-22-01, 04:18 AM (EST) 5. "RE: AI Train Consists" Hi,
I dont know if this helps but i was messing around in the activity editor and if you right click on a pice of track - a sididng in my case and select the option Place Location event, this gives you a radius to that point for and event to happen. You can then specify the events that you want and the outcome and even create a new event - would this be a proximity thing?
have not tried with ai treains but i would pressume it would work.
Mike Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
rgarber (243 posts)
Sep-22-01, 09:19 AM (EST) 7. "RE: AI Train Consists" Location events seem to be tied to the player. I tried using location events on AI Trains for another purpose and they wouldn't work. Plus, there's not an option in Location Events that has anything to do with picking up and dropping off cars. Unless there's some way to tie an Action Event to an AI train and then assign an Action Location. Problem is, the guy posted above he couldn't choose a car off an AI train. Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
jseiler (17 posts)
Sep-24-01, 11:24 AM (EST) 8. "RE: AI Train Consists" I looked at the location events, which are the proximity events Jim was talking about, but have not been able to tie them to AI trains yet. I looked at the activity file ( *.act ) using word pad and found the AI train entry. this is followed by all the specific events for the player. I have as yet not been able to determine how to tie the events to the AI train, but I suspect this is where Jim did it. You can edit this file manually to change any of the other parameters so you must be able to add events for the AI consists as well, although I haven't yet been successful in doing so. The first event I would like to create is to have an AI consist sitting in the yard when I arrive and then leave while I wait to leave, following it. As it sits now the yard is empty and the AI train just "Poof" appears at the designated time. To make this happen I need to make it appear and then wait for a time in the siding before it actually starts moving.The main reason this is of interest to me is that the line I am modeling, E&N on Vancouver Island, is that there are no signals on the line, it is run by train order. I could add signals but this wouldn't be prototypical. Ok so I'm a bit of a nitpicker but that's what drives us to find out how this thing works.I'll keep plugging away at it and hope for the best. Maybe if Jim comes back he can let us have a look at one of his activities. Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
rgarber (243 posts)
Sep-24-01, 12:28 PM (EST) 9. "RE: AI Train Consists" Good to see somebody else is trying to figure this out. J... what I got to thinking and tried doing was I noticed for the AI train, you can pick a player path. I thought by doing that I could ascribe events to it like the player. However, I had to do a reinstall of my whole computer and I haven't gotten yet to reinstalling msts. What I did see was I couldn't assign cars for a ai train to pickup still. That's all the further I got before I had to do this reinstall.Rich Garber Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
JAG07 (4 posts)
Oct-06-01, 05:38 PM (EST) 11. "RE: AI Train Consists" Just bumping this up, hoping that Jim Stevens will shed a little more light on this. If AI trains can be programmed as he suggests, that would really enhance activity development big time! Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
jseiler (17 posts)
Sep-25-01, 01:08 AM (EST) 10. "RE: AI Train Consists" I have done some more checking and made the following discovery. In the Activity file ( *.act ) there are two parameters "type" and "mode" that are set to "0" and "2" respectively for general acitvities. If you set them both to "0" the activity becomes the "Introductory Train Ride" for your route. It will stop at waiting points for about 5 seconds regardless of time set in activity and it will stop at all stations set to stop at in the activity. It will also run all AI trains in the activity. But it won't do any switching or dropping off of cars specified in the activity.To change these parameters open the Activity file in Word Pad, change and save.Changing the mode parameter to 1 makes the activity disappear from the activity list in the simulator. Where it goes or what it does is a mystery at this pointThe tutorials use Mode set to 3 but so far I have not discovered any difference from mode 2At least we can now make an introductory train ride activity to ship with any new routes, for those of us who would rather explore the route as a passenger instead of an engineer. Are there really railroaders like that?!? Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
thirl (7 posts)
Oct-10-01, 04:26 AM (EST) 12. "About MODE & TYPE in Activity files" About MODE & TYPE in Activity files....First I must say I have no idea what "Type" does, I've never touched it. But one day I wanted to know what made an ITR different to a normal activity. Simply, the answer is in the "Mode" command. I found that if you change the Mode line in ITR activity from 0 (zero) to 2 it becomes a normal activity and appears in the Drive A Train menu - you can become the driver of the ITR train. Likewise, you can change a normal activity to Mode 0 and it will now move from the Drive A Train Menuin to the ITR menu.

Note, you do not have to rename your Mode 0 file to the default ITR name but you can ONLY have one file with Mode 0 for each route. I think MSTS looks for the first Mode 0 file and then stops looking for others. So if you make an activity into Mode 0, you must change the default ITR to Mode 2 (or move it out of the folder). Note also you do not HAVE to have a Mode 0 file. If it ain't there TS simply ignores the fact.However, ITR activities only really work with passenger trains or simple A to B runs because the ITR does not do manual switching, pick-ups etc but it will stop at stations. And all your other consists and AI trains WILL appear in the ITR. There are also Mode 3 activities, these are in the tutorial folder. I've not yet noticed a Mode 1 activity but I haven't really looked. For those who don't know, the ITR (Introductory Train Ride) cannot be controlled by the "player" at all. It also cannot be saved mid-route. You cannot use F5, F6 or any other "HUDS" or "AIDS" EXCEPT F4 (showing the mile posts, signals etc). You also get the same old intro every time from that woman with the horrid (I'm really sorry for this) American drawl. PLEEEEZ somebody tell her the rest of the world drive on "ROOTS" not
"ROWTS".Not that I need talk, I'm from North East England (and any Brits will know wghat that means)! And weirdly I drive through the "real" (original) Washington every day (right past old George's family's home) to reach the "real" Philadelphia. Which in this North East corridor are less than 10 miles apart. (But there are no trains.... anymore.... sniff).Thirl Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
rgarber (243 posts)
Oct-10-01, 08:52 AM (EST) 13. "RE: About MODE & TYPE in Activity files" Hey you seemed to have worked alot with the ITR, would you know how they included the audio to come up at places? At one time there was some talking going on here about that, but I don't recall them ever saying they figured out how it could be done and if we could include them in our regular activities. Do you know? Thanks!
BTW... I've tried everywhich way to get a AI train to drop off a consist, I never could figure it out.Rich Garber Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
thirl (7 posts)
Oct-10-01, 05:46 PM (EST) 14. "RE: About MODE & TYPE in Activity files" I can't claim to know much about the ITR. I just spotted that the Mode command makes the difference. Otherwise, all I know is the activities themselves. Like you, I've read the previous threads on this board and have hoped that someone can find a way to utilise the voices. Just switching off the voice in the ITR would be a nice start!The voices don't appear to be connected to the activities as such. I think they are coded into MSTS itself. Or I should say, I think the "triggers" are coded into MSTS. Maybe there is a file somewhere which could be edited to trigger the sounds but I haven't found it - not that I've looked for it specifically mind you. But the same thing also triggers "actions" in the tutorials. For instance, if you don't change the view when the voice tells you, MSTS will do it for you and then tell you "well done"!If you run any of your activities in Mode 1, they can become replacements for the tutorial runs but they won't do anything other than run from A to B and the voices will be as per usual (depending on which lesson you are on). The voices themselves are easy enough to find, they are in the sound folder of the tutorials folder. They are just wavs and could be changed for new wavs like any other sound in the game. But there wouldn't be much point in doing this unless you want the tutorials to have your own voice!!!Thirl Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
thirl (7 posts)
Oct-10-01, 05:50 PM (EST) 15. "RE: About MODE & TYPE in Activity files" Hmmm, I said...."If you run any of your activities in Mode 1, they can become replacements for the tutorial runs".Actually that's not true, you have to create an activity using the tutorial route. Which is a bit pointless I suppose.Thirl Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top

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