Atomic Systems

Hello all,

Not sure if this occurs in the route builder but sometimes I have strange effects in the Scenario editor:

1. Place scenario scenery down, trackworker, car, van, TSR sign, *sometimes* I place it down then it goes invisible unless I hover over it with the mouse (if I'm lucky to find it!), its fixable by deleting it and re-placing it elsewhere, is this common though?

2. Sometimes I can't click on things like trains, driver icons, scenario scenery like above. In this case I have to move the camera until it works. I've had it before where I tried to move a loco and I could not select it, it was only until I got the camera IN the loco that it selected it, then zoomed out to move it then it de-selected it. I had to delete the loco and put it elsewhere and only then could I click and move it without having to try different angles.

Does this happen to anyone else? Sometimes I find it very time consuming!

1)There has been a spate of reports along these lines recently; double click the errant item to bring up the properties box on the right hand side of the screen. Check that the level of detail is high enough---10 is the maximum, I believe anything under 7 can cause the 'disappearing' assets syndrome but of course this is open to variation depending on your hardware and settings.

2) Ain't got a clue...sorry

This is driving me barmy as well. The game is randomly allocating the LOD of scenery items to anything between 1 and 10. If it is 10 then it will always appear but if it's 1 it will almost never appear because even setting the graphics level to Highest doesn't move the Detail button all the way across. You can add the same asset several times, say houses on a street, and the chances are every single one will have a different LOD setting. It's infuriating. The only way around this I've found is to place one asset, check the LOD straight away, set it if necessary then use the Clipboard facility for any extra copies. The clipboard seems to preserve the LOD value.

I now work in the editor with the graphics set to Medium so that anything set to 6 or higher will show in game mode and, once I've forced the LOD setting manually, I can be certain that it will appear on most systems. I used to work in High or Highest mode but that masks most of these problems so, yesterday, when I looked at an area I finished months ago it was a complete mess and it took me over an hour to fix one housing estate. Although the editor doesn't always give you an indication of a problem, you can check this without having to drop into game mode. There's a slider at the bottom left which runs from 10 to 1 and is around 8 by default. I set it to 5 while I'm working but starting at 10 and moving it one step at a time will show you which items drop out when. If an item has an LOD of 1 it will only appear when the Detail setting is at 10, 2 at 9 and so on. If the LOD is set to 10 then it will appear even if the detail setting is at its minimum but too many of those might overwhelm a very weak system so I think 6 is a reasonable compromise.

I think not being able to select an item in one spot but easily in another may be a reflection of the number of nearby assets whose bounding boxes overlap. I placed two vegetation assets near a tunnel portal recently and cannot select them again no matter what I do. That appears to be because they sit on top of part of the portal and, for some reason, the portal is selected preferentially.

Keith

Interesting, I've not been in the route builder but sounds like it happens there too.

In the scenario editor I can't see the LOD but if its random in the Route Builder I guess its random in the scenario editor

tubemad wrote:Interesting, I've not been in the route builder but sounds like it happens there too.

I'd say that's the top and bottom of this problem. Scenarios can't affect scenery, by and large, so what you're seeing is intrinsic to the route.

In the scenario editor I can't see the LOD but if its random in the Route Builder I guess its random in the scenario editor

Yes, that would be true. Some assets can be accessed in the scenario editor but they have to be specially tagged for that and most are not, as I understand it.

Keith

This has to do with the asset's high and low LOD values in the source blueprint. There's a min and max value - typically set to 1 and 10. Any item set to 10/10 will be visible all the time in any scenario on everyone's machine irrespective of the individual player's LOD setting.
If the author sets the min and max values to 1 and 10, it allows the game to randomly allocate an LOD "priority" number when that item is instanced into the scene. For example you could place two trees and one of them would be given a priority of 9 and the other might get 4. That's where the problem comes in. If the player has their scenery complexity set to anything other than maximum, the "4" tree will just vanish. The "9" tree might stick around but can often also disappear.

This is a valid mechanism that the game uses to help players with less capable machines scale back on the amount of geometry being drawn, but it does cause an enormous number of problems.
There's two solutions:
(1) as a player, you can set your detail level way the heck up there - maxed out is best, but it can/will slow your machine down if it's not burly
(2) as an author, you can set the LOD levels to 10/10 which means your item is forced to be displayed all the time no matter what the player's machine is set to.
(3) as a player you can use RWTools to edit the LOD values in the blueprint to be 10/10 to force the item to always show up

(2) is a total hack and the danger is that someone who has deliberately set their detail level lower will now be forced to see your item all the time when their machine might not be able to handle the load.
(3) is nicer because it becomes YOUR choice to do it