Patch Fixes to Route Editing

[bigvern]

With my copy of the US version of RS hopefully winging over the Atlantic, just wanted to canvas thoughts as to what changes the recent patch/upgrade have had on the route building process?

The most obvious issue and the one that caused me to throw arms up in frustration was the corruption of lofted objects such as roads (suddenly all sticking up in the air at odd angles), or fences (stick up at 45 degrees). This was promised a fix so wondered if anyone can confirm the problem was eliminated?

After browsing the 3D Trains forums, however, it seems experience over there with the patch is that this has caused problems with the track laying tool itself, made it twitchy and not so easy to control?

[AdamsRadial]

The problem I have noticed with twitchiness in track laying isn't as much due to RS as it is to the optical mouse I use. Jim Ward has commented on this as well, much to my relief; I thought I was developing some form of muscular palsy or early senility. Now I know what it is I'm less worried about it. Putting the optical mouse back on to a normal mouse pad has reduced the problem slightly; I think the oak grain of my desk was responsible for a lot of the jitteriness of the mouse. If I get really worried about it I'll switch back to an old-fashioned PS2 mouse, or try and reduce the sensitivity in the control panel.

[RSAdam]

The most obvious issue and the one that caused me to throw arms up in frustration was the corruption of lofted objects such as roads (suddenly all sticking up in the air at odd angles), or fences (stick up at 45 degrees). This was promised a fix so wondered if anyone can confirm the problem was eliminated?

After browsing the 3D Trains forums, however, it seems experience over there with the patch is that this has caused problems with the track laying tool itself, made it twitchy and not so easy to control?

Hi Vern,

If I may be permitted to comment without wishing you to feel singled out again. I have to say Ive never heard of such an issue occuring with lofted objects. Thus it suprises me that any such promise of a fix could have been suggested.

I can however imagine such occurances if you are laying large sections over intricately undulating terrain using the 'Snap to Terrain' tool. As this tool operates on ensuring as much of the produced loft between each click is displayed above the terrain surface, if you space your clicks to far apart the tool will stick the loft into the sky as the only solution to is task. The remedy is therefore simple - click more often Although an alternative does exist as well - Use the Gradient tool and snap the flying sections back down to the terrain. This works a treat for getting fences and walls to hug rough terrain on embankments.

The over keen track laying bug is an unfortunate side effect of attempts to improve track laying speed. It is however only experienced when using the 'Follow track placement' option. We will also be addressing this as quickly as we can.

Hope this helps

[overmarze]

With my copy of the US version of RS hopefully winging over the Atlantic, just wanted to canvas thoughts as to what changes the recent patch/upgrade have had on the route building process?

The most obvious issue and the one that caused me to throw arms up in frustration was the corruption of lofted objects such as roads (suddenly all sticking up in the air at odd angles), or fences (stick up at 45 degrees). This was promised a fix so wondered if anyone can confirm the problem was eliminated?

After browsing the 3D Trains forums, however, it seems experience over there with the patch is that this has caused problems with the track laying tool itself, made it twitchy and not so easy to control?

I had this problem not on the latest service pack but the last verson before havnt seen the problem since

[bigvern]

Adam - Derek confirmed there was a problem in my original post on the matter...

http://forums.uktrainsim.com/viewtopic. ... 18&t=78931

...however as Overmarze has said it looks like one of the fixes may have caught it.

We will see!

[RSAdam]

Heya,

Not to appear picky, but Derek mentions roads, for which these do have a number of 'annoyances' that we are looking into. He doesnt speicifcally acknowledge what you highlighted as your bug. Remember that more often than not, Derek and I post here on a personal basis and what is written on any forum other than the official one cannot be construed as official confirmation of work to be undertaken or fixes to be supplied.

Sorry if that sounds harsh, I dont mean it to be. My manner is to cut to the chase, and Derek is always moaning about it.

[bigvern]

When my copy arrives I will see if the problem can be reproduced and post some screenshots, but also (so far as fences are concerned) try the technique suggested.

[sniper297]

Not sure what Vern is talking about either with the "roads suddenly sticking up at different angles", but it sounds like they're placing and stretching okay, then at some point afterwards you get an earthquake? Or do you mean they do that when you're trying to lay roads? Pre patch I did see some oddities with track, like the line for the next section suddenly sticking straight up or bending around 180 degrees in an impossibly tight radius curve, but moving the mouse to stretch that section in the desired direction was all it took to correct it. Post patch;

"It is however only experienced when using the 'Follow track placement' option."

No. I think you mean "Follow Network", and I always have that turned off and it does it anyway. It SEEMS (again unholy intermittent bug hard to pin down) to do it more often when the doohickey is further away from the camera, altho I have had it do it when close up as well. If there's no immediate patch forthcoming for it, any chance you could "accidently" let it slip exactly which file is the one that was changed? Real PITA having to copy a route from the patched version to an unpatched version to lay track, then copy it back again for testing. BTW, I have a Microsoft Optical Trackball (which I clean on a regular basis so it doesn't twitch), so the wood grain isn't a factor here since the optics are internal. Changing the software driver tracking speed and double click speed also doesn't fix it.

[bigvern]

Just to clarify...

With the roads, the sections were initially laid correctly to the terrain. However without warning attaching a further section would cause the earthquake as Sniper (Jim?) puts it, with the sections then sticking up at sharp angles, like a triangular rollercoaster.

Using the undo function would remove the new section of road but *not* correct the deformity that had occurred in the contiguous joined pieces.

With the fences this was happening both with individual placement and using the offset tool to create a run of several sections. The sections would be pivoted at around 30 to 40 degrees with one end on the ground and the other in mid-air.

Can assure all concerned this *not* a figment of my imagination.

[sniper297]

Hee-hee, well, no, actually I never saw that, closest I got was exploding tracks;

http://forums.flightsim.com/vbts/showth ... p?t=264127

http://forums.flightsim.com/vbts/showth ... p?t=255998

Altho I haven't really played with roads all that much. One oddball I got was suddenly all the turntables got buffers at all the exits, and the ground had dropped slightly under the lead in tracks. Turned out ALL the tracks on the route had shifted half a meter in all three axises, with the turntables being a different type of object not in the tracks.bin file they didn't shift along with the rest. Restored from a backup and it never did it again.

[RSAdam]

Morning Vern,

I can imagine one other instance where this could happen. We did fix a bug whereby if you used 'Snap to Terrain' to follow the landscape, but then laid a section of loft and manually applied a gradient to it, all the 'snap to terrain' gradients would be lost. This was down to both tools trying to use the same code entires to insert their gradient values. This was fixed in Upgrade Mk1 so that you could have both instances without conflict

If this still isnt what you describe, then we will sit tight and await your insight. If not fixed we will do our best to resolve it in Upgrade Mk2

[Acorncomputer]

Adam wrote

I can imagine one other instance where this could happen. We did fix a bug whereby if you used 'Snap to Terrain' to follow the landscape, but then laid a section of loft and manually applied a gradient to it, all the 'snap to terrain' gradients would be lost. This was down to both tools trying to use the same code entires to insert their gradient values. This was fixed in Upgrade Mk1 so that you could have both instances without conflict

I think this is what Vern was referring to. It did happen but does not now.

I have found that when editing fences laid to terrain since Mk1, the fence breaks up into separate sections so that changing gradient at a join only moves the fence on one side of the join and there is no gradient arrow to move on the other section. Fortunately the solution is simple - if you set a new gradient arrow at anywhere except a join, the fence loft moves together but is still limited down the loft each side to the next gradient point. This also applies to roads and I guess all lofted objects. I think Vern. that the problem has been fixed but it is back to the point that I have made before that it is all down to learning the right techniques to use with the tools and not assume that there is a bug that needs to be fixed.

On the other hand, I do get twitchy track and there seems to be no obvious circumstances where this is easy to replicate. I can only say that it seems to happen more often when the camera is a long was from the track/road being laid and I also have an optical mouse on a wooden work top. I usually have 'follow network' off so I do not think it is related to that.

Geoff Potter

[bigvern]

Well it sounds as if it has been fixed, well done!

[bigvern]

Quick update - so far I have only had twitchy track syndrome once, which I think was when I pushed a combination of the cursor keys and right mouse button without actually moving anywhere! I have snap to track enabled, but not snap to terrain.

Admittedly I've only been working in the Mallaig station area so early days yet.

One thing I did notice though if I reset the track laying tool to place more than one parallel line, the yellow dongle would only "snap" when trying to join the left hand side track and not the right to the single track section.

I haven't done any "destructive" testing on the road/fence tool yet either.

[sniper297]

Is that a "dongle"? I've been calling it a "doohickey", no wonder it don't work right, I musta hurt its feelings.

Control shift alt left right arrow is probably irrelevant, it does it to me even when I'm not touching anything else - single click to start, move mouse to stretch, second click to end the section is how it's supposed to go, post patch the first click sometimes barfs up a series of short sections. Left side snapper, prepatch same thing, with double triple whatever it wants to snap to the left one, AFAIK there's no way to make it snap to the other track instead. I've been getting around that by laying two short sections, deleting the one between, then starting from the opposite end so right becomes left.