Rolling stock causing MSTSbin to crash.

[ianmacmillan]

Tonight I tried an activity and MSTS crashed during the activity setup screen.

I switched to the default train.exe and the activity loaded.
MSTSbin didn't seem to like something.

I then tried each consist in explore until I found the one which crashed MSTSbin.
Then I removed a wagon at a time until I found the baddie.

It was the match wagon for Mike Simpson's breakdown crane.

The .wag file seemed OK so I opened the shape file.
At the end of the file I found an animation entries for Wheels1 and wheels2.
I removed these and at last MSTS loaded but the wheels did not turn.

I went back to the shape file and changed the Matrix lines from Wheels1 and Wheels2 to read Wheels11 and Wheels 21.

The wagon now ran correctly.


I'm not sure if the animation was faulty or if MSTSbin doesn't like Wheels1 and Wheels2 but at least I've found the cure.

If anybody else finds the same problem with any other wagon be sure to check out the shape file.

[BobLatimer]

Hi Ian.

I think I read about that somewhere but I can't remember where. Apparently Wheels1 and Wheels2 should not be valid but are not picked up by v1.4. I think the Bin patch got more discerning when the correction was included to get the bogies turning correctly on reversed stock.

The other one I've run into is a ROD animation in a .wag file. Okay for an .eng file but not for a .wag.

Regards,

Bob.

[systema]

The wheels fix for Bin1.6.10 only occurs in wag files. If the 'problem' is in an eng file it still works for some some reason. I think there are other lines in the shape file that refer to wheels apart from the matrices, these should be changed as well. The problem is related to the animation of the wheels and bogies for reversing, which now all go the right way round providing the wheels paramenters are correct. In 1.4 exe the sim is not looking for any direction reversing parameters so it works OK.

Mick Clarke

[OTTODAD]

Bob and Mick are correct.

This is a coding abnormality MSTSBin 1.6.1 found after the incorrectly turning bogies of Flip ( ) locos were fixed by it.

George found it when he fixed the DB-Talent-643 for me, it's 2 parts sharing a bogie.

It seems, as you found, that the BOGIE1 WHEELS1 / 2 lines need to be changed to WHEELS11 / 12 in Matrices as well as the Animation lines and also BOGIE2 WHEELS1 / 2 to WHEELS21 / 22 if they are incorrect too.

O t t o

[CaptainBazza]

BOGIE1 WHEELS1 / 2 lines need to be changed to WHEELS11 / 12

Well, here's a puzzle, what has MSTS Bin got to do with wheel animation, a province of modelling rather than operational?

Every modeller should well know that wheels11~13 and wheels21~23 are allocated to bogies 1~2 respectively, and are automatically animated by the sim's coding, as are the bogies.

Wheels1~5 are allocated to driving wheels and as such require animating at the time of modelling.

In theory, MSTS Bin should have no effect at all because the modelling and conversion process is completely separate to MSTS until such time as the model is run in the sim.

For MSTS Bin to have such an effect, the patch would have to change the coding in the shape/ENG/WAG. Therefore, the patch coding is somehow misreading the wheel label protocol?

BTW, rod(x) can also be used for an extra set of drivers if necessary, so I have found.....but cannot vouch whether that's acceptable in TSM, 3DC, or GMax.

Cheers Bazza

PS, Wheels1~5 (and rod?) works with diesels, cannot vouch same for electric locos.

[BobLatimer]

Just been doing a bit of testing with the latest Bin patch. It doesn't seem to be as fussy as the previous version. A shape file used by a .wag that had Wheels1 and Wheels2 wouldn't run under the previous version but will with the latest.

ROD used in shape files used by .wag files still will not run.

[BobLatimer]

Clarification of the last post. I just tried the original Burning Pallets .wag file that had a ROD animation in the shape file and would cause a crash using 1.6.10. Running it under 1.6.12 it loads okay but the animation doesn't animate.

[CaptainBazza]

Kia Ora Bob, MC & HNY. I've never succeeded getting wheel(x) or rod(x) animation to work with a WAG, hence I adapt an ENG instead. It has advantages and disadvantages, depending on the object of the exercise, pardon the pun.

However, scenery object animation is much more flexible, with no particular requirement for a protocol for (animated) part labels. One model experiment I did had about 45,000 frames of animation, the sequence lasted 12 hours in real time*!

Cheers Bazza

PS I hope KRS gives us real flexibility for animated parts in the new sim, as well as more steam exhaust points.

*It was a analogue clock, which worked perfectly*, but the sim's limitations meant it was essentially useless, because after the driver's loco left the 2000m radius POV from the model, the clock stopped and winked out of existence. Of course, when you returned within its 2000m LOD radius it started again, but had lost time, or it restarted the timing sequence.

*A miracle, considering my mathematical ability, but the minute and hour hands worked, can't recollect if there was a seconds hand, but it was likely there was.

[CaptainBazza]

Yes, it had a second hand which required 43,200 rotations during the 12 period.

In a year, your watch's seconds sweep hand does 31,536,000 and if it lasts ten years it will have rotated 315,360,000 times.


End of trivia.

[mikesimpson]

As an interesting aside to the above, I have dug out the original source for the Crane model refered to Ian above and note that the Match wagon on my breakdown crane originally had the Wheels correctly entered as Wheels11 and Wheels12 as they should have been, and no animation was added to the wagon at all.

I can only think that one of the early versions of 3D Canvas may have had a bug which renumbered the parts and added animation during the export to MSTS.

I have used dozens of versions of 3D Canvas over the years, and can only think this may have happened back then.

Mike.

[streamline]

Hallo!
This seems to be the right topic to ask my question. The problem is the German electric freight engine Class E94/194. I ask my question here because we haven't found any solution of the problem in spite of many discussions at the GR forum. Maybe Ottodad can help because he knows German engines too, and because he has got contact to the creator of the patch.
There are two models of this loco. One is payware by Protrain, the other one freeware by Heiko (the better model, http://www.the-train.de ). The E94 is an articulated engine consisting of three parts. (front bogie, middle with cab, rear bogie) PT and Heiko define the bogies as tenders and the middle part as engine.
When I drive the PT engine it works fine, but on switching on the lights the sim freezes.
When I try to use Heiko's loco the sim crashes right away and tries to phone home. With one of the previous versions of the patch I got the engine working (without lights like the PT loco) by using a reversed version of the rear bogie as a front bogie, but that doesn't work any more with the latest version of the patch.
If anyone could help us lots of Trainsimmers over here would be very happy because the E94 was the standard electric freight engine in the south of Germany in earlier DB times.

Keep on steamin'!
Dietmar

[OTTODAD]

Hi Dietmar !

I had the same MSTS crash problem with my DB-TALENT-635, it's two cars also sharing a bogie in the middle.

Telling George about this he then found the reason for it, already mentioned in number of threads, which was incorrect naming of some Animation parameters of bogies and wheels, affecting other rolling stock also, it seems !

Am not at home to download this freeware set you got problems with to my computer to check, but if you can not sort it yourself can do it for you in early January !

O t t o

[streamline]

Hi Otto!
Thank you for your quick reply. There's no need to hurry because I've got enough to do having recently switched from multiple installations to a single one using train store. Now I've at least got a hint where a solution of the problem could be. I don't think I can solve it myself because I haven't dived deep enough into s-files to know what is going on there.

With the best wishes for the new year
keep on steamin'!
Dietmar

[alanch]

Hi Dietmar

Have a look at my detailed dexcription of what to do to correct .s files at the bottom of the first page of this thread http://forums.uktrainsim.com/viewtopic.php?t=62846.

However, it may be that the latest version of the Bin patch has eliminated this problem, so you might want to try that first.

Alan

[jbilton]

Hi Dietmar
It'll be worth looking in on the Bin forum at TS.com too.
As I know the Americans have been having problems with some of their articulated steam locos....but I don't know what the solution was.
(Although I believe a work around was to transfer the lights to the main eng file)
We're lucky in the UK don't have many examples.
Cheers
Jon