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vanishing aspects on LSE

Posted: Fri Mar 24, 2006 9:09 pm
by barrett
since aquiring a set of South Eastern Division working timetables for the 1960's i have been writing an activity using them with accurate and intense AI traffic around London Bridge (there is a station stop at London Bridge of around 20 minutes). Everything runs fine for the first 5 minutes but then the traffic suddenly stops. when the player train leaves it passes an enormous queue of trains which stretches from New Cross to Hither Green. i have reason to believe that this is caused by no aspects being shown on the signals. has anyone else had this sort of problem and if so have they found a way of fixing it?

Posted: Fri Mar 24, 2006 9:19 pm
by 250787
Signals "lose" their aspect when there a too many lights on a tile. They still function correctly but show no aspect

Cheers

Matt

Posted: Fri Mar 24, 2006 9:41 pm
by barrett
it does that with the player service but the traffic seems to grind to a halt for no reason (no traffic in front to cause a blockage).

i can give you a screenshot if it helps

Posted: Fri Mar 24, 2006 9:46 pm
by enotayokel
Too Much AI :)

I've learnt it can break MSTS the hard way.

Also how long are your paths?

Posted: Sat Mar 25, 2006 7:04 am
by Lad491
Its more likely a problem with the path of the leading AI service which is causing the block. Remove that service to start with and see if the rest run normally, assuming you haven't used the same path for all services :( If it does then you've found your problem. :)

Posted: Sat Mar 25, 2006 7:49 am
by Bigant
Also each AI train gets its path confused as it comes up behind another one, you will need to space them out.
Not possible to run to a real railway timetable unless you could control the signals yourself :roll:

Don

Re: vanishing aspects on LSE

Posted: Sat Mar 25, 2006 12:01 pm
by Optrex
I used to have no end of bother with red signals messing up activities on LSE - so much so, I gave up last year.

I tired again this year, and faced the same problem. Then I tried a tip from David Johnson over on the Making Tracks forum, which I didn't try previously because it sounded ridiculous:

http://forums.makingtracks-online.co.uk ... .php?t=470

Basically, I create my activity (using Laurie's Patented add-a-little-at-a-time-then-test) and then save it. Not compute and save, just save. Then I exit activity editor. Then I open the editor again, open the same activity and just do a Save As (without changing anything) and overwrite the activity's .act file.

Hey Tesco, it works. Don't ask me why or how, it just makes things all work happier. I'm already on part three of a three-part acitivity that I've wanted to make for a long time, I just couldn't have got this far without David's tip.

I did a bit of plundering and noticed that each time you re-save, the 'Serial()' entries in the .act file and the traffic/path files all get incremented. There's a bit of talk about that both here and on train-sim.com if you search for it, but I don't think anyone really knows what's going on with it.

This may or may not work in your case, but it might be worth a try. :)

One thing I did have to do was take it easy on AI traffic around London Bridge and New Cross. I'm running on an AMD XP4000+ with 1GB RAM, 10,000RPM hard disk and a decent graphics card, and I can't have more than a few AI trains in these areas at the same time. I can have three or so moving at London Bridge and a couple of static consists and get around 15fps, but I'd hate to see it running on a slower PC or with more stock.


Mike

Posted: Sat Mar 25, 2006 6:31 pm
by barrett
Also how long are your paths?
i've tried to keep the paths so that the AI trafic comes from the direction it was supposed to (eg if it is a train from Dartford i have started it at Lewisham, North Kent Junction or Hither Green).

haven't tried the tip but i will do. thanks

Posted: Sat Mar 25, 2006 6:34 pm
by barrett
Also how long are your paths?
i've tried to keep the paths so that the AI trafic comes from the direction it was supposed to (eg if it is a train from Dartford i have started it at Lewisham, North Kent Junction or Hither Green).

haven't tried the tip but i will do. thanks