South London Network/London to Brighton

[JustRight]

Righto, I have found some of the 'missing' Markers and Portals in the old L2B. When looking at the new South London to Brighton there are Portals in place, but they have been renamed DOH!

For example, there are 5 Portals in L2B called "Waterloo 1" through "Waterloo 5". In South London to Brighton these are named "Portal Waterloo 1" through "Portal Waterloo 5". So I am currently attempting to add an additional 5 Portals a short distance from the others named as per the original L2B route. (Not having much luck yet)

I have yet to locate some of the other Markers, like "London Bridge Fast".

Anyway, I will keep poking about with the Route Editor. But I'm a complete novice in this regard.

[JustRight]

Woo Hoo !!!

Figured it out Managed to get some new Portals added. Tricky trying to get them to cover more than one track!
Have resolved all errors in one scenario, except for one. So I seem to be on the right track.

Could take some time to re-add all the missing and/or renamed markers to South London to Brighton.

Only significant problem I seem to be having now is the TS2015 is crashing and taking a dump on Exit. Ie. After clicking on Exit and returning to the desktop the program crashes ??????

[chrisreb]

Woo Hoo !!!

Figured it out Managed to get some new Portals added. Tricky trying to get them to cover more than one track!
Have resolved all errors in one scenario, except for one. So I seem to be on the right track.

Could take some time to re-add all the missing and/or renamed markers to South London to Brighton.

Only significant problem I seem to be having now is the TS2015 is crashing and taking a dump on Exit. Ie. After clicking on Exit and returning to the desktop the program crashes ??????

Good work. As to the crashing - do you have absolutely masses of scenarios like I have? The reason I ask is that this can be an early sign that the sim is struggling with the scenario database and will soon refuse to start unless you store some routes. May not be your issue but this is how it started for me.

[JustRight]

Woo Hoo !!!

Figured it out Managed to get some new Portals added. Tricky trying to get them to cover more than one track!
Have resolved all errors in one scenario, except for one. So I seem to be on the right track.

Could take some time to re-add all the missing and/or renamed markers to South London to Brighton.

Only significant problem I seem to be having now is the TS2015 is crashing and taking a dump on Exit. Ie. After clicking on Exit and returning to the desktop the program crashes ??????

Good work. As to the crashing - do you have absolutely masses of scenarios like I have? The reason I ask is that this can be an early sign that the sim is struggling with the scenario database and will soon refuse to start unless you store some routes. May not be your issue but this is how it started for me.

Thanks for the tip re the scenarios. You could be right on the money. I already have 4 separate 'Content' folders for just that reason. However recently I have purchased a number of items in the sales and installed a number of new scenarios. It all adds up, so I guess I will be looking for a route or two to move out into another 'Content' folder.

Cheers.

[chrisreb]

Yes I use StoreThem - I have 180 routes believe it or not. Eventually game crashes on splash screen when Saving Scenario Database when it finally tips over the edge.

Having got various things in the sale I am sure it is right on the edge again.

[JustRight]

Yes I use StoreThem - I have 180 routes believe it or not. Eventually game crashes on splash screen when Saving Scenario Database when it finally tips over the edge.

Having got various things in the sale I am sure it is right on the edge again.

Yep, that was it! I moved a number of my large freeware American routes into a folder of their own, and now TS2015 is all good again

I had not previously experienced the crash on exit, but am very familiar with the crash on startup during the scenario update/save.

Cheers.

[gptech]

Anyway, I will keep poking about with the Route Editor. But I'm a complete novice in this regard.

Don't worry Trevor, you won't be when you've finished

[PaulH2]

Not wishing to duplicate effort, but just for amusement (and as I have the day off) I'm going to have a bash at hand copying the original London Brighton portals back into the combined route's XML and see what happens...

[JustRight]

Not wishing to duplicate effort, but just for amusement (and as I have the day off) I'm going to have a bash at hand copying the original London Brighton portals back into the combined route's XML and see what happens...

I would be very interested how you get on with that Paul. I had a look at the Tracks.bin but could not figure out just where to place the 'missing' markers. Other references I found on this subject suggested that any manual editing of the Tracks.bin was doomed to failure and the venerable CTD.

Good Luck!

[PaulH2]

Not wishing to duplicate effort, but just for amusement (and as I have the day off) I'm going to have a bash at hand copying the original London Brighton portals back into the combined route's XML and see what happens...

Well, that approach does work, up to a point. It is possible to rename the portals present in the combined route back to their London Bright names, and that does work. It may even be possible to duplicate the portals with both the London Bright and South London Network names, so that both sets of scenarios work, but I haven't tried.

Manually adding the missing portals back in (for example the single Tooting portal in London Brighton has been replaced by Tooting Up and Tooting Down in the combined route) is very hit and miss. If the network hasn't been edited around the location, it can be done (by finding adjacent track elements with coordinates exactly matching between the routes and copying the portal XML over to the corresponding location), if it has been changed , it can't be done, I think those would have to be added back in in the route editor.

Oh well, so much for that bright idea!

That said, Trevor is spot on, missing portals is indeed the basic issue with transferring London to Brighton scenarios over to Danny's combined route.

Paul

[PaulH2]

Not wishing to duplicate effort, but just for amusement (and as I have the day off) I'm going to have a bash at hand copying the original London Brighton portals back into the combined route's XML and see what happens...

I would be very interested how you get on with that Paul. I had a look at the Tracks.bin but could not figure out just where to place the 'missing' markers. Other references I found on this subject suggested that any manual editing of the Tracks.bin was doomed to failure and the venerable CTD.

Good Luck!

Well I haven't quite given up hope yet Trevor! However, renaming the portals that have just had name changes is a doddle, for example all the Waterloo portals are identical between the two routes with only their names changed, changing them back works, though might break South London Network scenarios cloned over in the process. I'm going to try seeing what putting two portals in the same place with different names does (basically just copy the XML immediately after the original portal and just change the name).

Where there have been substantial changes such as at Tooting (see my previous comment, where the portal has been split into separate Up and Down portals in the new route), manually adding the XML back looks to be somewhere between very tricky and impossible. Those might need to be added back by hand in the route editor.

That said, a combined approach might be the trick, fix (sorry, that sounds harsh, they aren't broken, just changed) what we can in the XML and add the rest back in the route editor. Let me have a bash at adding duplicate renamed portals (so scenarios from both routes would work)...

Paul

[danny3]

Just a word of warning though, i have updated the track (minor fixes) since so if you have made changes you might want to clone the route or at least have a backup before i update it again. As for the portals i dont think any were actually removed, just renamed to a different format. Extending the route would have broken scenarios anyway in the process unfortunately.

I say this though, while i understand why people are making changes this way, in fact i'm really sorry that this happened but i cant really support any changes that have been done to the tracks.bin file in the route , what people do to their own copies i have no say over. Also i know the easiest solution would be to change the portal names but this would also break the south london network scenarios that could be copied over.

Another method though might be to add the portals in the game itself next to the renamed ones perhaps? rather than hacking the tracks.bin file as that could do more damage than good. Just an opinion though because making changes in that way can easily break the route further. (I'll have a look to see if t here is anything that I can do but its unlikely that i'll be able to do drastic changes because i'm uncertain on the effect of having two portals on the same track next to each other!)

[PaulH2]

Another method though might be to add the portals in the game itself next to the renamed ones perhaps? rather than hacking the tracks.bin file as that could do more damage than good. Just an opinion though because making changes in that way can easily break the route further. (I'll have a look to see if t here is anything that I can do but its unlikely that i'll be able to do drastic changes because i'm uncertain on the effect of having two portals on the same track next to each other!)

From what (minimal) testing I've done so far, putting portals adjacent doesn't seem to cause any trouble, not that I've observed anyway.

And no need to apologize, the reason we're playing around with this is a testament to your skills in combining the routes in the first place!

Paul

[shinymac]

Hi All

I recently bought SLN, and was keen to download the Workshop Scenario which merges the SLN and the L2B routes. (by "Danny")

I wanted at first, to run a short distance test run from just south of the border point between the two routes, to see what the area where they merge (Norwood Jn ?) looked like. However, I have a problem ! Whenever I load up a QD from an intermediate station on the L2B route, eg Gatwick Airport, or say Redhill, and choose my destination as London Bridge, I get error messages stating things like "cant find East Croydon P1" or "Cant find London Bridge P16".

However, the strange thing is, that if I choose a QD scenario to the same destination (London Bridge), but I choose the start point as BRIGHTON, then I can drive the whole route, and get NO error messages, even though that route passes through East Croydon, just the same as if I had started my journey at Gatwick or Redhill !!!

Can anyone tell me why this is happening ? I havent tweaked the SLN or the L2B routes in ANY way, and am just trying to use them as normal.

Thanks

Derek

[JustRight]

Just a word of warning though, i have updated the track (minor fixes) since so if you have made changes you might want to clone the route or at least have a backup before i update it again. As for the portals i dont think any were actually removed, just renamed to a different format. Extending the route would have broken scenarios anyway in the process unfortunately.

I say this though, while i understand why people are making changes this way, in fact i'm really sorry that this happened but i cant really support any changes that have been done to the tracks.bin file in the route , what people do to their own copies i have no say over. Also i know the easiest solution would be to change the portal names but this would also break the south london network scenarios that could be copied over.

Another method though might be to add the portals in the game itself next to the renamed ones perhaps? rather than hacking the tracks.bin file as that could do more damage than good. Just an opinion though because making changes in that way can easily break the route further. (I'll have a look to see if t here is anything that I can do but its unlikely that i'll be able to do drastic changes because i'm uncertain on the effect of having two portals on the same track next to each other!)

Thanks for that Danny,

I shall take your tip and keep backups as I have been manually adding the old L2B portals next to the existing ones via the Route Editor. Learning a lot along the way as well.

As Paul has said, we don't expect any support of changes like this, purely for our own benefit in order to be able to run some of the L2B scenarios. I have had some success so far, and have even been able to get three of Darren Porter's complex scenarios with loads of AI running. In those cases however I needed to fix up the scenarios themselves as there were a number of pathing problems and AI trains misplaced on tracks around the London area.

I will keep an eye open for any update you make to South London Brighton, and will have to make a detailed list for myself of all the portals I added and just where they were.

All the Best,
Trevor

Allthe