Purpose of AI locomotives

What is the purpose of AI locomotives?Thanks!Michael

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RE: Purpose of AI locomotives, cn_bayview, Apr-02-04, 08:38 PM, (1) RE: Purpose of AI locomotives, 6330trainfan, Apr-03-04, 05:13 AM, (2) RE: Purpose of AI locomotives, JonN, Apr-03-04, 10:01 AM, (3) RE: Purpose of AI locomotives, yellowdog, Apr-03-04, 10:09 AM, (4) RE: Purpose of AI locomotives, aquarius94, Apr-03-04, 10:40 AM, (5) RE: Purpose of AI locomotives, Coonskin, Apr-03-04, 01:24 PM, (6) RE: Purpose of AI locomotives, michaelnscale, Apr-03-04, 11:39 PM, (7) RE: Purpose of AI locomotives, yellowdog, Apr-03-04, 11:54 PM, (8) RE: Purpose of AI locomotives, chucksc, Apr-04-04, 02:13 PM, (9) RE: Purpose of AI locomotives, michaelnscale, Apr-05-04, 09:29 PM, (10)

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I'm not 100% sure.But I believe they have less lights and better lights for the locos at meets also they allow more realistic sounds(Which is controled by the speed of your train).But other then those two things, I actually do not know.

Rob

TH&B Van #68
www.greatlakesrail.com

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An AI loco is a computer controlled locomotive which allows for additional traffic to be placed/used in an activity. As a player can only control one train, the player train, it would be pretty boring without the AI`s.Regards
Stew aka 6330trainfan
Albany WA Australia

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LAST EDITED ON Apr-03-04 AT 10:03 AM (EST)

>An AI loco is a computer controlled locomotive which allows
>for additional traffic to be placed/used in an activity. As
>a player can only control one train, the player train, it
>would be pretty boring without the AI`s.No, I think he was referring to a locomotive specifically designed to be used by the AI (some locos come with two .eng files. One for the "player" loco, the other non-drivable AI loco). In other words, he's asking: "Why bother creating locos specifically for AI use? Why not just have them use the same loco the player does?"
Jonathan Nikiforovs.
Milepost 180, CP Belleville Sub.Repainter for Yonder Locomotive Works.

"A crictic is a man who creates nothing and thereby feels qualified to judge the work of creative men. There is logic in this; he is unbiased - he hates all creative people equally." - Lazarus Long

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Some people include AI locomotives in their uploads. The main technological difference between an AI loco and a player loco is that the AI loco has the cabview removed. Some authors include various lighting or sound modifications as well. The purpose for creating an AI loco and using it in an AI (or non-player position) on a train is that the lack of cabview creates less work for MSTS and theoretically improves FPS and sound. AI locos are to be used in any AI consist or any position in a player train except for the lead position, for obvious reasons--if the AI loco train is in the lead position on a driveable consist, MSTS will report errors and crash b/c there is no cabview.

Clayton

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Hello guys, as i put in my last activities (SVRR) some AI steam locos, I can explain the main reasons. These AI locos, realized with Route Riter, are used of course with traffic train :a) they have a better appearance when running. The wheels of a normal drivable loco used in a traffic train run too fast. If you have time, make a consist and try both. You will notice an appreciable differenceb) they use less resources from the computer for they have no cabview (nor any link to a common cab folder)If necessary and if you are a little bit skilled you can modify manually some parameters in the eng file to have the lights on when running. You can also make the horn or the bell play when the AI loco pass the player's trainRegardsEmmanuel

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LAST EDITED ON Apr-03-04 AT 01:25 PM (EST)

In addition to the above, an AI file should be made to have NO wheelslip, thus bypassing a lack in the eng file system whereby only the player engine has sand applied.Andre MingVisit V Scale Creations Forum at: http://www.3DTrains.com

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>Some people include AI locomotives in their uploads. The
>main technological difference between an AI loco and a
>player loco is that the AI loco has the cabview removed.
>Some authors include various lighting or sound modifications
>as well. The purpose for creating an AI loco and using it
>in an AI (or non-player position) on a train is that the
>lack of cabview creates less work for MSTS and theoretically
>improves FPS and sound. AI locos are to be used in any AI
>consist or any position in a player train except for the
>lead position, for obvious reasons--if the AI loco train is
>in the lead position on a driveable consist, MSTS will
>report errors and crash b/c there is no cabview.
So if I make a consist I can select the driveable one first (cabview) then the AI locos for the remainder and get the same power as all driveables? This should improve the FPS?Thanks Again - Michael

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Yes, if you're making a driveable consist (i.e. one that YOU want to drive in a route), then you'll select a driveable one as the lead, and then any other locos in that consist (no matter what their position--helper, pusher, mid-train) can be an AI loco and it will give the same power as the driveable as well as improve FPS. For any NON-driveable trains (i.e. those trains you want to pass with your train on a route), just make all locos in the consist AIs, even the lead loco. Good luck!

Clayton

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LAST EDITED ON Apr-04-04 AT 02:17 PM (EDT)

>What is the purpose of AI locomotives?
>Michael To understand why we make AI locomotives you must first understand that among the more egregious pieces of mis-coding that Kuju foisted on MS and eventually us were several semi-hard limitations in the number of sound streams and how they are played and the number of lights displayed at any given time and coding inefficiencies in the game engine that crippled overall game performance.Some of the nifty symptoms that these coding defects cause are lights out or reduced.... Some sounds don't play at all or intermittently and when approaching those limits erratic behavior including, but not limited to, reduced frame rates. Slow frame rates on otherwise capable machines. FWIW, I used the term semi-hard limit because in the case of sounds, for instance, it depends on a mix of your hardware capabilities and proper manual configuration of the MSTS global parameters to take advantage of your hardware.The community has come up with several ingenious work arounds to mitigate some of these effects....The 1st, slavishly copied from Kuju themselves, is to delete the Cab view and link to Cab sounds from all locomotives not destined to be player drivable lead units. This alone significantly reduces the strain on the game engine.All lights not displayed in tiles where the total light count is too high. IIRC the total light count includes all "defined lights" not just the ones that are currently illuminated. We at NALW, following the lead of other designers, have mitigated this by removing all AI lights from the light definitions of drivable engines and removing all non-AI lights from AI engines. This seems to help in our tests with out compromising the fantastic lighting efforts of "The ACE".Reduced or intermittent number of sounds. Following discussions on this board with other sound developers We have included a fairly basic change to your global/soundcfg.dat file to significantly increase the number of streams played in SL5 (max sound quality) and doubled the number of streams for SL0 (AI sounds). We have also removed all but the SL5 sounds from our drivable engines. SL0 is only defined for AI now and is a separate SMS file which has the net effect of reducing the total number of sound streams the game engine has to load. Missing or misplayed sounds. The community has discovered that Kuju mis-documented several sound triggers that in fact have no or disabled underlying code in the game engine. Typical of this is the external compressor sounds. We have worked around this by tying the sound trigger to brake release/apply on driven engines and adding a random trigger to AI engines. It was also discovered early on that the only sound trigger, other than random, reliably available in SL0 was speed controlled. With developmental help from Dan Zollner we have improved our AI and trailing unit sounds to more closely emulate what you might hear in the real world. Not perfect but at least they now throttle up and down.So the real answer is, that because of shortcomings in the Kuju written game engine and to improve performance (usually measured in FPS ) a variety of techniques have been developed. These have all culminated in the concept of an "AI engine"... Where only the parameters absolutely necessary for AI (or game engine controlled) performance are presented to the game engine. And Player drivable configurations that only present what is necessary to the game engine (removal of all AI Sound/Light components and Cab view code)!This requires that you give some thought in building consists in that you would only have the lead engine as a player drivable unit and all the others being the AI configured units. And if you are building traffic consists you use all AI units.While some of these techniques were discovered and documented over 2 years ago, the NS D9-40C is the 1st time that NALW has brought them all together in one package. If user acceptance warrants it we are giving thought to going back and "upgrading" some of our earlier locomotive packages to conform to our new standard. In fact all new NALW packages will use these techniques.Chuck Schneider
Chief Cook, Bottle Washer and (Virtual) CEO

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Thanks Chuck! Great information and explanation. Michael

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