Large world files

[gnrail]

I'm a long way into building my route but I have now hit a new problem and I'm hoping someone can advise me.

I'm working on a tile which is heavily populated with objects. This is mostly because it contains a main line station with a lot of trackwork. It's a re-creation of a real place so I need to be accurate. Unfortunately the landscape is very hilly and needs a lot of modelled earthworks as the terrain can't cope with deep walled cuttings!

The problem is that I seem to have reached a point where, after placing a new object, the world file frequently fails to save correctly causing a Send/Don't Send crash. When I restart the RE I find that ALL objects have disappeared from that tile and the size of the file is always 34 bites. I then have to overwrite the world file with a backup. The current size of this file is 757 KB and it contains 1357 objects.

I tried reverting to a backup from a month ago in case there was a corrupted entry but after putting everything back the problem started again. I also re-installed MSTS with no effect. I know that I haven't hit an absolute maximum because if I persist I eventually succeed in placing more objects but it crashes on saving about 3 times out of 4.

Unfortunately I still have a lot of scenery to place on this tile so has anyone else hit this problem and is there a cure please. I'd be grateful for any help at all as this has got me very worried to say the least.

Here's hoping....
Cheers
GNRAIL

[longbow]

Use of the Forums Search facility is a vital Route Building tool. Do please use it before you post. The world tile size limit is a well-known problem that has been addressed many times in these forums, not least in a few recent posts.

[terrycunliffe]

~Clue~
Do a search for "Watermark" in the Route Buiding Forum.
That, together with the links found in the posts will tell you all you need to know.
T

[gnrail]

Thanks for pointing me in the right direction. I had just looked at the contents of the troublesome world file and saw the watermark entries before posting the question but they didn't mean anything to me so I wouldn't have known to do a search for anything about them.

It seems like I'm in for a lot of cutting and pasting then. I guess the best way would be to place as many objects as possible in one go to cut down on all the time this workaround will waste! If only the MS code could be hacked to change the seemingly pointless limit on saving. Or if the tile size could be changed there would be less objects on each?
Incidentally it's the approaches to the old Bradford Exchange station that have caused me to reach this limit.

Anyway thanks again.
Roger North (gnrail)

[eyore]

Another option is to move to another unpopulated tile beforer saving. Move far enough away from the heavily populated tile that its no longer loaded in MSTS memory as an adjacent tile, then save.

Phil

[saddletank]

It's a re-creation of a real place so I need to be accurate.

That is the key to your problems. MSTS is a fairly crude simulator and it's ability to accurately reproduce real world stations is limited. If you read through the sticky at the top of the routebuilding forum you will glean all sorts of useful tips from there.

I can think of a couple of tricks you could try to help you:

1) Is the station a large one with lots of sidings? If so try and work out which sidings will rarely be used and make these dummy ones, filled with dummy rolling stock. This gives the impression of a busy place but with less load on the sim.

2) Try and combine several models into one object. Houses, trees, walls, cars, people etc. Merge them in your 3D modelling program so that one huge chunk of city or whatever is just one item. This helps MSTS quite a bit.

There's plenty of other tricks you can use. Have fun!

Martin

[gnrail]

Interesting points there. I'd already noticed Phil's suggestion up to a point. I happen to be building the next station after Bradford Exchange which is just at the mid-point of the heavily populated tile. The large Brad Ex station building is just over the border into the next tile. I noticed that if I retreated past this mid-point so that the building in the distance disappeared I stood a lot better chance of a successful save after placing a new object. I will now follow the advice to jump across 2 empty tiles so that no objects are in memory before saving. Will I still hit an object limit eventually?

The other answer is interesting because I found when I was building Brad Ex itself that I reached a point where MSTS would no longer display the object at all so I divided it into 2 shapes which solved it. This is the opposite of the advice to combine everything into one s file. What was I doing wrong? Probably something obvious.

Roger

[eyore]

Will I still hit an object limit eventually?

Have a look at this thread where tile object limits are discussed.

http://forums.uktrainsim.com/viewtopic.php?

Phil

[gnrail]

Afraid I can't. Clicking on the link informs me that the topic doesn't exist

Oh well I'll have another look around. Once I get about another 150 or so objects onto this tile I'm unlikely to hit the problem again as the rest of the route isn't so difficult. I hope.

Roger

[saddletank]

The thread you should read - and I mean all of it, there's tons of good advice in there, is this one:

http://forums.uktrainsim.com/viewtopic.php?t=5783

The object limit problems begin at around 1400. You can do things to get the tile to play game until approx the 1900 mark and then MSTS really will object to anything else in the tile being changed.

Martin

[eyore]

Sorry, should have said

http://forums.uktrainsim.com/viewtopic.php?t=46978

[gnrail]

Thanks for the links. Now I'll write 50 times "I must learn to use the search facility before asking stupid questions".

Cheers
Roger (KWVR route)