Granfield Branch (Class 111 DLC version) career mode

[USRailFan]

Has anyone been able to play the career mode scenarios with this DLC? I got a tracks.bin error message when trying to load the first one (Branch workhorse). Have not modified the route in any way. I see there are a couple of high scores recorded for it though, so somebody must've found a way to play it??

[Rockdoc2174]

I've never got Branch Workhorse to load properly, either. I can run the Class 111 scenario but the destination boundaries for stopping at the Halt on the return leg are too tight and I can never get the doors to open.

Keith

[levisham]

See my thread,Things were going so well............, in Steam Help regarding the 8F Workhorse. I can send you 'their' suggestion to remedy the problem but it didn't work for me perhaps it may for you. I looked throught the whole scenario and the Tracks.bin is there. All the other scenarios work OK except this one,

Regards, John.

[USRailFan]

Wasn't there someone who posted, quite some time ago, about some file that could be edited to get the green hash showing even on these unplayable scenarios?

[levisham]

I've just recieved my second reply from Steam Help over the 8F Workhorse scenario. Basically it's a cop out. They state that this problem is handled by a third party and give me a number of links which take me to Frequent Q&A for RW3 and THIS forum! I get the impression that they know there is a problem but they don't know how to solve it. Perhaps when I have nothing to do for a day or two I can trawl through all the previous posts and see if I can find the solution as mentioned in the previous message! In the meantime, if anyone out there recalls the solution..................please post it,

Regards, John.

[Rockdoc2174]

I saw somewhere that a recent Steam update had been for this route and Branch Workhorse does at least load now but it's still unplayable. I dropped off the first set of wagons and picked up the second at Thenhill, moved up to the junction for Weedon Quarry and reversed into the branch, as instructed. Near to the sidings you pass a distant at danger but I got an Exit on SPAD between it and the home signal!

Keith

[levisham]

I saw on the RW TS2012 web page that there is supposed to be a fix for the 8F Workhorse scenario coming out. Will this be a dedicated download or something that happens next time we, or I, verify my games cache? It's a problem that should have been attended to some time ago,

Regards, John.

[USRailFan]

AFAIK it was fixed a week or so ago automatically through Steam.

[levisham]

The 8F Workhorse opened OK and everything seems to be there so I'll run it all the way through tomorrow when I have more time.

Regards, John.

[Rockdoc2174]

I got it to run up to the point where you have to reverse into the quarry sidings. As you come to the yard you have to pass a home signal but I got a SPAD at the repeater/distant, long before my train reached the home itself.

Keith

[45708]

why don't they do their jobs and fix it PROPERLY. after all we have paid for it. i'm getting sick of all the scenarios that have flaws in them and are unplayable, why can't they get them right 1st time and check them before releasing them. they should start to EARN their money.

[Rockdoc2174]

It may very well work on the test systems and with the number of times, since I joined UKTS only at the start of the year, I've seen people post they're having problems and others replying they're not I'm sure that the game can be affected by hardware/driver combinations.. I've had the AI behave slightly differently on two runs of a scenario and it's a well-known dodge that saving progress before a problem point can sometimes make it work. It appears that the AI recalculates everything on a reload instead of saving that, too.

On a personal slant, my first, passenger scenario worked fine from scratch, didn't give me any serious problems in its development and is on here. The next one is similar in essence but is for overnight freight workings over the same route and I cannot make that work smoothly. I scrapped one version and started again but I still ended up with AI-based problems to the point where I look like scrapping that version and beginning for the third time.

Keith

[stuart666]

why don't they do their jobs and fix it PROPERLY. after all we have paid for it. i'm getting sick of all the scenarios that have flaws in them and are unplayable, why can't they get them right 1st time and check them before releasing them. they should start to EARN their money.

Spoken as someone who presumably hasnt written a scenario or spent an hour and 50 minutes testing one, discovering a bug, then having to test it over again? Only so many hours in a day that you can do that before you start going a bit potty.

You ought to try it on Woodhead where not only do you have the length of track to consider when testing, but if you get anything near accurate and model a ot of traffic (and lots of feeder junctions), you are guaranteed AI problems at some point. Which 9 times out of 10 always seems to be towards the end of a scenario on test. So you fix it, have to run it through for over an hour again, find you didnt QUITE fix it, and have to run it again. Etc etc.

Its easy to blame Railworks and the people who build scenarios for the problems, but the fact remains, traffic patterns are complex. Change one small thing and quite possibly you have to change everything, and its beyond the scope of one person to always see it. Even if you change the modelling of the rolling stock, quite possibly that throws everything out of kilter. Considering the back catalogue of routes and rolling stock and scenarios, Im amazed they keep up as well as they do.

An interesting example. Had two 1 hour 50 minute scenarios I built (albeit relatively simple) scenarios work perfectly out the box. The second was a 32 minute one that no matter what I did, would not do what I want it to. The scenario editor in Railworks is first rate, but because of the complex problems you can create, its not surprising if sometimes you can create your own problems you cannot fix.

So yes, there is an easy way to guarantee no problems, one locomotive and and train and zero ai traffic. Im not sure most people would go for that.

[malkymackay]

Very well put Stuart.

I can fully understand there may be frustrations sometimes. What happens when a scenario works fine on the creators machine and on testing only one of the testers reports an issue the creator just can't replicate? What do you then? Do you scrap all the work you've done, or do you just release it, knowing some may have issues with it?

[stuart666]

Very well put Stuart.

I can fully understand there may be frustrations sometimes. What happens when a scenario works fine on the creators machine and on testing only one of the testers reports an issue the creator just can't replicate? What do you then? Do you scrap all the work you've done, or do you just release it, knowing some may have issues with it?

Ive not scrapped one yet. Usually there is some intelligent chappie who knows how to fix it, though such solutions are often well beyond my capabilities. I usually find a work around. For example if I get a red light always popping up, I contrive to put the service on another track, either through traffic in the way or (as I did on one woodhead scenario) by contriving a derailment that put on you on the goods line. Well, it worked!

Interesting thing, I did one scenario for Woodhead that I know worked perfectly when i released it because I tested it ad nauseum. For some reason between my writing it and it ending up on the steam server it developed an AI problem. No idea why. Im pretty sure nobody touched it after I made it, but it developed the problem and everyone who bought the route complained about lack of testing. That was not the case, though I accept it often appears that way.

Suffice to say its easy to make a scenario in railworks. Its a heck of a lot harder to make complex ones. Regrettably with something like Woodhead you have to go the extra mile, and quite often its easy to put banana skins in your way you only find out about much later.

Ive not looked at Granfield and Ive not made any scenarios for it I might add. But ive distinct sympathy for anyone who did. Single line routes can be very complicated to do traffic for, particularly when facing opposed traffic. It can be done of course, but any slight changes in consist or power output can often throw them entirely out of kilter. I found that when I did a freeware scenario for it with the modded DT 61xx. Worked fine until I swapped it out with the 56xx at which point the scenario broke and nothing could be done with it.