I've found out why there are so few scenarios for RW

[AndiS]

By "no, no", I meant the red exclamation marks. Anyway, it does not matter now.

The 45% are not too bad if you consider that this is relative to the line speed (which I don't know for that location, by heart). Since you are supposed to shunt at 25 km/h (if you count Seeberg with German, or Swiss), then 45% of 100 km/h would still be a lot.

I never explored how the dispatcher counts in acceleration, but the switch changing time is something stored in the track definitions and he might count that in. Anyway, maybe this could be added to the community cookbook: Consider modest percentage for shunting. Of course, some routes have a speed limit of 40 km/h on the sidings, then some 60% would be a good initial bet.

I am not sure whether the need to declare it "special train" has to do with the shunting. Can you run a freight train from Seeberg Yard 7 to Seeberg Tunnel Track 1? Is there some piece of passenger track somewhere? Not that I think so, but this sounds strange.

[RudolfJan]

Because the path finding is also bugged, broken (like million things in RW).

It's possible that you have some trouble creating a scenario. I disagree with the statement that it is not possible to create RW scenarios. I did quite a lot of them, some interesting others maybe not. Creating scenarios takes some time to get enough experience. Sometimes you have to give up because it simply does not work. It always takes a lot of time for testing.

The only point you may have is that maybe many people do not publish their scenarios. The reason may be lack of confidence or lack of time or interest to test the scenario long enough. It certainly is not because RW is buggy. Yes, it contains bugs, as do some routes (which you cannot blame RW), but this does not prevent me to create interesting scenarios. So just don't give up. Make some changes, give it a fresh start and when finished, give it to the RW community.

[msdejesus]

Maybe it has to do with the fact that it takes a long time to get a good one,(I am talking from experience here, trust me), and you get very little or no apppreciation in return, other than people complaining that you used too much payware or you missed an item in the "readme"...

Manuel

[sanyix]

now i tried to make a train overtaking.

1. my train (special) go to seeberg docks, and picks up freight
2. meantime a stopping passenger train starts 1 station before seeberg.
3. both trains reach seeberg nearly in one time
4. the passenger train picks up passengers at platform, so my train go out first to mainline heading to nienberg
5. the passenger train reverses and following my train
6. my train at nienberg got an order to wait 2 min at platform 1, while the passenger train before the station switches to left track and stops at platform 2 and overtakes my train, then switch back to right track, and my train follows it

What is actually happen if i test the scenario.

- my train go to docks, and get the wagons, and go back to seeberg, reverses and head towards nienberg while the passenger train stops at platform 2
- the passenger train follows me but from much further than it should, because it stops at every signals when those are yellow or green and aren't red since long time (because the dispatcher don't want to overtake my train don't know why), it reach nienberg platform2 much later than expected, and when it stops releases my train from platform 2, so the overtake is failed.

So i tried some things.
- the passenger train starts to move seeberg 2 min earier 19:26 instead of the former 19:28, so it reaches the platform before me wait, and follows my train from closer but what happens? F2 save, start scenario simulation "oops something bad happened", restart rw, open scenario and the start time of the passenger train is 19:28 again (how if i saved it?), so i set it again to 19:26, save, start simulation "something bad happened". Restart again, again 19:28 again i set to 19:26 but now after save, i click on start scenario (normal, not simulation) "route is blocked". Back to editor, the passenger train start time is 19:28 AGAIN. I set it to 19:27, save, start simulation it works, but the overtake still fails since the passenger train now waits more time at green signals.
And what is the problem again? The ai trains don't care about the signals. That is the problem, the dispatcher should control only the signals, and the switches, and not the trains. The train driver ai should be separated from dispatcher and should only obey the signals because that is realistic, but this AI "network" isn't the dispatcher and the train driver is ONE ai, and not acting like different entities. The driver's ai should not "know" what the dispatcher ai "thinks".

So i changed my train's waiting time at nienberg from 2 min to 4, save , start simulation "something bad happened". Of course it isn't saved it again, so i set the waiting time again to 4, then for passenger train i got message "route is blocked" by my train...

Lets try again to set my train's type to standard freight instead of special. two hours before, if i did this rw always wrote "route is blocked" when there wasn't other train in scenario, it worked just if i set it to "special", but now the standart freight is worked. And now what happens? I got red signal at seeberg and i need to wait until the passenger train picks up the passenger and leaves.
So as i see it's nearly impossible to make a train overtake at this time in rw without very long separated parallel tracks.

[Darpor]

So as i see it's nearly impossible to make a train overtake at this time in rw without very long separated parallel tracks.

I can do it quite happily on my Cresston route, even on a loop only 500 metres long.

Scenarios run on a million and one different parameters but I have never found any movement to be impossible, they just have to be worked around sometimes.

Nearly every one of your posts has a defeatist attitude or states some message that isn't actually true. Can I ask, is this scenario thing very recent to you or have you been doing it a long time?

[AndiS]

I think you simply must start your train much earlier then the passenger train. Since the freight train has lower priority than the passenger train, it must be in Nienberg a few minutes before the arrival of the passenger train.

Regarding the hesitation at signals showing yellow, I and many others observed that, too, but not as extreme as you describe it. Maybe it was because of the "special train" status. With that, you could never have achieved the overtaking manoeuvre anyway, because special trains do not wait for other trains to let them pass, by definition of the game designers.

[sanyix]

The 45% are not too bad if you consider that this is relative to the line speed (which I don't know for that location, by heart). Since you are supposed to shunt at 25 km/h (if you count Seeberg with German, or Swiss), then 45% of 100 km/h would still be a lot.

The track have speed limits (at seeberg dock line it is 60km/h). But RW should count in the speed limits too, and it does since it is counted 3 min to reach the docks what is a realistic time for this speed, even by counting in the the coupling and decelerating.

I am not sure whether the need to declare it "special train" has to do with the shunting. Can you run a freight train from Seeberg Yard 7 to Seeberg Tunnel Track 1? Is there some piece of passenger track somewhere? Not that I think so, but this sounds strange.

No there isn't passenger track, just yard, freight and mainline. Yes i can run a freight train at that section.
I don't even have any clue why it was needed to declare special, but it worked only with that (in editor it showed the path correctly, and looked everything correct, but in game mod "route blocked"). Now it works with standard freight too, again i don't have any clue why, but this isn't the first strange thing that i notice in rw, but this is still nothing according to those things that i read on this or other forums from other players...

[sanyix]

So as i see it's nearly impossible to make a train overtake at this time in rw without very long separated parallel tracks.

I can do it quite happily on my Cresston route, even on a loop only 500 metres long.

Scenarios run on a million and one different parameters but I have never found any movement to be impossible, they just have to be worked around sometimes.

Nearly every one of your posts has a defeatist attitude or states some message that isn't actually true. Can I ask, is this scenario thing very recent to you or have you been doing it a long time?

It is easy to make a simple overtake(i did too on my route), but i wanted a more spectacular situation. (you see when the other train stops at the station, and when it's waiting you go away first, then that train overtakes you, but as i see it wont work without more sophisticated timing methods in rw (for example triggered train releases from station, triggered goals). I've testing rw dispatcher, and pathing since 2 months, i made test situations like 6 trains heading towards each other from the different ends of a 2 track line, with some crossovers, and siding also for test my signals.

[jkxx74]

Hi sanyix, a couple tips from me.

As of the last couple of RW updates, I've noticed that several things changed which affect scenario making.

One, some of the existing signals just don't work and won't work until you've deleted them from the route and replaced them with new ones. I specifically saw this happen with German signals which I also use in my own routes. The signals will act broken but will start working again once you've re-added them to the route. Now which signals does this happen to? I'm not too sure, actually - haven't spotted a pattern yet. Best bet is to redo any ones that are affecting your scenario and have a full route backup before you get started.

Another thing is scenarios. RSL posted something about the scenario being changed to binary. I haven't looked at the details of what this means, but almost all my existing scenarios failed so I just ended up deleting them. Indeed, when making a new scenario with the most current version things work more or less as you would expect.

Finally, after creating a scenario and hitting play, the scenario won't work right that first time, or at least some of the signals will be wrong. Just exit out of it and start the scenario from the main menu and that should be fixed.

P.S. Avoid using the 'special' category for any service if you'll be having trains cross paths anywhere. The special services tend to lock up the line real good so you won't be able to get too far using them, or at least I have never got them to work locally. The two categories that do seem to behave most of the time for me are the stopping (lower priority) and express (higher priority) service.

(If anyone knows any of what I posted not to be true, feel free to correct me.)

[jevon]

you see when the other train stops at the station, and when it's waiting you go away first, then that train overtakes you, but as i see it wont work without more sophisticated timing methods in rw

Not sure if this is what you're describing, but I got the following to work just fine in a Standard Scenario on the default Newcastle-York route:

* The player train is a York-Newcastle HST stopping at all stations from York-Newcastle.
* The AI in question is an HST Express from York-Newcastle.
* The Player leaves York 3 minutes ahead of the Express and travels on the high speed track up to Thirsk, where it's routed to the slow track for a stop there.
* After the stop, the Dispatcher keeps the Player on the slow track because the Express will overtake it between Thirsk and Northallerton.
* The Player gets a red signal at the points just south of Northallerton where it will move onto the fast track. About 45 seconds after stopping for the red, the Express overtakes the Player.

I could have set it up so the Express overtakes the Player while the Player is still moving on the slow up track by controlling the departure time from Thirsk. But, I liked the stop at the red signal because it allowed for a couple more AI interactions while the Player sat there waiting for the green.

Remember that signaling and timing is everything in Scenario design with AI. In some situations I've had to have the Player stop for two full minutes at a station in order to get an AI to perform some interaction with it. But then I usually throw in some eye candy for the user so they won't get bored while sitting there (animated diggers, AIs arriving from the other direction, church bells ringing, etc.).

Most recently I've been working with Darpor's Cresston3 route. It has amazing possibilities for AI stuff, and the signaling is excellent. I highly recommend you give it a try if you're relatively new to scenario design. It just feels more manageable than some of the larger, very complex routes.

- Jev

[sanyix]

I could have set it up so the Express overtakes the Player while the Player is still moving on the slow up track by controlling the departure time from Thirsk. But, I liked the stop at the red signal because it allowed for a couple more AI interactions while the Player sat there waiting for the green.

of course it will work on that route, because there are plenty of usable parallel tracks, and a lots of space between them. But fe on seebergbahn with 2 tracks it's not so easy.
Now after a lots of "something bad happened" and "i change something, and after reload it's back where it was before" change again "something bad happened" again and not saved etc. It seems i can press on nothing on rw cuz it isn't save it or just "something bad happened". After some hours in scenario editor, i can say this is the most bugged and instable thing that i ever saw, it's not like an alpha version, it's far worse than it. Maybe it's because of the route, since i did't have so many problems testing AI on my route, but it's very unlikely.