Nnngh! How difficult can it be to interact with anything?

[LocoPower]

My blood is just about at boiling point after spending the last three hours wrestling with the scenario editor.

I'm using the Cajon Pass route, as I quite like the enormous American freight. My long Autorack train sets off from Barstow and goes all the way to San Bernadino with no problems.

Until I add any AI trains. My activity starts at 0800 and my train is set to depart at 0810. A slower, lower priority train starts on an adjacent track at 0800 - ten minutes is plenty time for it to clear the yard before my train is due to depart, but no, the activity won't load because of a blocked path. Nnngh. Do the signals not work in the yard?

I had put in several pieces of oncoming AI traffic throughout my journey. All of them started from sidings on the opposite side to my running, yet all but one of them caused a blocked route conflict. Nnngh. Can it not use one line for each direction of travel? It's not rocket science.

In the end, my efforts to insert 4-5 pieces of basic AI traffic resulted in all but one of them being removed because of blocked routes. Even putting the F7 and some coaches in certain starting positions gave me error messages about electrification or track type. Nnngh. Do RSDL know something about the F7 that we don't?

I nearly bought the NS addon pack tonight, until I realised how painfully lacking the fundamentals appear to be. I've read through the wiki which has given me enough impetus for a second attempt at some point, but if anyone has any other tips then I'm all ears.

[msts991]

You probaly know this but worth a try.When you add any train,it auto default's to special and from what I read on here it blocks the complete route until the train reaches its destination.So never use Special as a type.Might be worth checking it in the timetable editor.

[Acorncomputer]

Hi

Scenario writing is a complicated process and although the dispatcher is often blamed, there are techniques to acquire and rules to follow.

There are dozens of scenarios that have already been written for default and other routes and I would suggest that you go into some of these and try and work out what the scenario writer has done in order get the scenario to work correctly. Note the paths of AI trains in comparison to the player train, check out the designations given to AI traffic, etc. I would then suggest you write your own scenario on the same route that someone else has but varying the instructions a little and see if you can get it to work.

Using the experience of others in this way will be more help that trying to start from scratch with no real idea of what you are doing.

[Basherz]

You probaly know this but worth a try.When you add any train,it auto default's to special and from what I read on here it blocks the complete route until the train reaches its destination.So never use Special as a type.Might be worth checking it in the timetable editor.

Just for your information, having a consist set to "special" doesn't take the whole route, but it does take control of the next 4 signal blocks, and therefore any junctions in between.

[LocoPower]

Cheers guys for the replies. I guess I just needed to let off some steam yesterday (pun not intended). I'll approach it in a more analytical way now, although at the moment I still don't understand why it needs to be so difficult. I could understand it if I was trying to get the AI to do complex things, but all that's really happening is I'm driving from A to B and want a few AI trains to go from B to A. Oh well, fingers crossed.

PS. Oh, and yes I'd set the priorities correctly, I hadn't left anything on "special". The problem was that it seemed to be assigning me a path long before I was due to depart, and if paths crossed at any point, it told me that mine was blocked. I'm still scratching my head as to why the F7 can't start from so many positions.

[Basherz]

PS. Oh, and yes I'd set the priorities correctly, I hadn't left anything on "special". The problem was that it seemed to be assigning me a path long before I was due to depart, and if paths crossed at any point, it told me that mine was blocked. I'm still scratching my head as to why the F7 can't start from so many positions.

Right, say you have a player train at Paddington, @ 10.00am BUT, the departure time, and this is important, is set for 10.14. See what happens when an adjacent train uses your points! You should see that the route you want will not be selected until about 1 minute before departure.

[LocoPower]

Well, I just had another go. Decided to keep it simple at first, but this time it's failed at the first hurdle. I built a nice long consist in the Barstow yard and put my player driver in it with the destination set to San Bernadino, dotted a few pieces of stock & locos around the yard (but without drivers), and saved and tested it.

Upon loading the scenario, the camera is rotating around the engine and I can't get the F5 display or anything on screen. The locomotives are rolling backwards and I don't have time to do much of anything before an error message pops up saying "derailment due to player collision" or something like that. Any clues?

[Trainguy76]

Upon loading the scenario, the camera is rotating around the engine and I can't get the F5 display or anything on screen. The locomotives are rolling backwards and I don't have time to do much of anything before an error message pops up saying "derailment due to player collision" or something like that. Any clues?

Check that there aren't any cars overlapping in the scenario editor.

[bigvern]

LocoPower - I do feel your pain. I couldn't get any AI interaction going on my Tanigumi route either which was a cause of great frustration on what should be a busy tram route. I went through almost identical processes as you describe. First I got the error message about the AI pathing "clash", tweaked that and the error message switched to the player train.

Yet on my previous route(s) I was able to get opposing traffic working, even on single lines. The difference is that Tanigumi was finished after the last core update so I do begin to wonder if something, somewhere, slipped that has resulted in these rather nonsensical pathing clashes being generated.

Ultimately I do feel RSDL need to look at spending a bit of money on properly overhauling the AI and signalling so we can get multiple paths and crossing AI working without these glitches.

[LocoPower]

Check that there aren't any cars overlapping in the scenario editor.

Cheers. I'll go and have a look. I guess I'd assumed that the scenario editor wasn't stupid enough to let me place rolling stock on top of each other.

Ultimately I do feel RSDL need to look at spending a bit of money on properly overhauling the AI and signalling so we can get multiple paths and crossing AI working without these glitches.

Absolutely. It's all very well them trotting out numerous repaints and different SD40 variations, but I won't be buying any until I can make effective use of the stock I've already got! More time needs to be spent on getting some fundamentals right. The potential is so clearly there, which makes it doubly frustrating that seemingly basic AI "journeys" are so difficult or even impossible to implement. Plus the interface is seriously clunky, and having to "fly" everywhere (instead of being able to jump there) is a real pain. It still feels like a developer's tool, rather than a consumer one. I used to dabble with the MSTS Activity editor, which was a black art in itself, but I shudder to think how easily the average newbie would be put off Railworks as soon as they tire of the supplied scenarios and try to put their own together.

[malkymackay]

Err, it's quite easy to jump from location to location in the editor. You can bring up the coordinates box at the top of the screen and type the the required destination in the box, click on the little white arrow, et voila. Alternatively from the same box, click on the little gps symbol to bring up the marker flyout on the right side, select destination from the list to input coordinates and continue as above.
The easiest way is to open the 2D map, Ctrl-Left Click where you want to go and the coordinates are input for you. Once you have placed all your required stock, you no longer need to jump about thanks to the new timetable view.

[LocoPower]

Alternatively from the same box, click on the little gps symbol to bring up the marker flyout on the right side, select destination from the list to input coordinates and continue as above.
The easiest way is to open the 2D map, Ctrl-Left Click where you want to go and the coordinates are input for you. Once you have placed all your required stock, you no longer need to jump about thanks to the new timetable view.

Thanks for the tip. That's saved quite a lot of time this evening trying to get my scenario working. And have I got it working?

Hahaha, hell no, of course not. I'm beginning to form the opinion that this piece of software doesn't actually work. I'm simply not sure what, if anything, I'm doing wrong.

All my scenario consists of is my standard priority freight train going from Barstow to San Bernadino. An AI train consisting of empty stock departs a few minutes in front of me. This AI train is instructed to stop at a siding for 10 minutes to let my train past. A few pieces of AI traffic come the other way.

1. The AI traffic pathing is up the creek. It tries to put northbound traffic onto the side of track clearly being used by myself going southbound.
2. None of the AI traffic paths can overlap. It gives me path blocked errors if any AI train stumbles upon a path used by another AI train, even if they're hours apart.
3. The AI train in front of me crawls along at the default settings. How is this even remotely accurate? It's an SD40 pulling a massive 12 empty doublestack cars. It should be able to run at line speed by default. What's more, the percentage performance settings I applied in the scenario editor were ignored when I went back in to edit it, it had gone back to the default value.
4. After finally tweaking, trimming, and culling the four or five AI services until they're totally artificial, I run my scenario only to find that the AI train of empty stock in front of me runs at decent speed and then inexplicably slows to 1mph. Literally. It's going to take about an hour to clear the next signal block, so I give up and return to the scenario editor.
5. I re-apply the performance settings, and re-try the scenario. The AI train in front of me is never in sight and it's green signals nearly all the way, but as soon as the yard where it pulls over is in visual range, the program froze and crashed.

I've invested several evenings now in playing around with the scenario editor, and still haven't got anything usable out of it. The AI pathing and logic is just non-existent, and even when it finally looks like it's going to work, it crashes. I think I've just about had enough. I program market research surveys for a living with all the conditional routing logic they can contain, and although RW obviously uses a different and more dynamic logic, it feels to me as though it's a complete bodge job, or barely even programmed at all. Driving a train around on it's own against non-stop greens has little appeal to me, I want to feel as though I'm part of a railway whilst other trains move around and have greater/lesser priority than me. Hmm, I wonder if Steam give refunds.

[Acorncomputer]

Hi

You may have to help the dispatcher to tell it exactly the course you want the AI to take. This may entail adding in markers to the scenario so that you place a marker/waypoint after each junction and include that in your instructions to the AI consist. If you do not precisely plot the course for the AI, the dispatcher will try and work out itself the quickest route between markers/waypoints which may be completely different to what you want.

If you have not done this already, try again adding in markers to the track for your scenario.