Highland Railway

[douglee]

Hi Darwin and anyone interested,
I have been playing around in Highland Railway and note from the readme it is still a Beta, And you may not have access to a machine for route building.
So I post this for information rather than criticism.

The Route is Crashing at Avoch.

I have New Roads, UKFinescale, Tsec 38, The 1.8***Bin patch ect as the readme. I ran the route through "RouteRiter Check Route" before I ran it (the route).
Apart from one or two textures missing (cured). It came up OK.

The crash is around Avoch on the Fortrose Branch. I am experiencing "Train.exe has encountered a problem and needs to close" followed by a Crash to Desktop.

I have done the usual, Lowered Sound settings. Run in Explore, Swapped stock and so on. Made a short test act to isolate the area. The Crash is the station area. Start a test act in Avoch station and MSTS fails. Start a test act before the Station either side and MSTS crashes on the approach.
May be some one with the know how could invistigate.

Of course it may be my own stupid fault.

Apologies for the usual ramble.

Good Luck
Doug

[jbilton]

Hi Doug
I don't know but having recently installing and using this route I noticed the sounds in the route are stereo.
I've changed them to mono, as stereo are a great strain on routes.
You can easily change the using the Windows built in Soundrec.
Then edit the sms file by removing the line Stereo ()
Cheers
Jon

[douglee]

Hi Jon,
Thanks for that.
Something I would not have looked at as a first step! Even if I would have thought of it.
Looking at the number of sound sources via the Route Editor just one point causing a crash seems odd.
I will now have to learn another new procedure in Windows.

Thanks again.

Good Luck
Doug

[douglee]

Hi Jon,
Well! Checked the Stereo files changed them to Mono.
Seems OK.

Also used the 'Use CVRT to check soundsources' option in RouteRirer to check if I had caused errors.

The test act passed the offending spot with no crash.
This Route needs a fair bit of tweaking. But as it is only a Beta-----

I hope Darwin continues to develop it.

Thanks for your input.

Good Luck
Doug

[gremlin1812]

Hi Doug & Jon, Thanks for the information there as I was having the same trouble (unable to go between Fortrose and Avoch and vice versa). I have gone to the routes sound folder and converted all the stereo I could find to mono and edited the sms files as indicated. I can now travel from Avoch to Fortrose but not Fortrose to Avoch (crashes near the top of the hill) I will look to see if there are any more stereo files but I think that I got them all. Frame rate at point of crash is 58 and it freezes and the sound continues.
Any further advice would be apreciated.
Regards
Barrie

[douglee]

Hi Barrie,
I had the same. OK towards Fortrose. Crash towards Avoch.
I played further with the sounds.
I noticed spaces in the filenames of:-
SITKA SPRUCE1
NOBLE FIRS1
Using the no spaces in file names rule.
I renamed these .sms files.
The .wav file name in the .sms
And the .wavs them selves.
To:-
SITKA_SPRUCE1
NOBLE_FIRS1
I was then able to run over the summit and down into Avoch.

Hope this helps.
Come back

Good Luck
Doug

[gremlin1812]

Hi Doug, All of the sounds are now mono and all names with gaps filled in (there was another called BIG SURF) and checked with Route_Riter and no errors but although I get further on coming out of Fortrose the game freezes then goes to a black screen while the sounds keep playing. At the point where this happens I have a frame rate of 60fps so I am at a loss, it really is bugging me as this is a great route just a few bugs spoiling it.
Regards
Barrie
PS - tried disabling hardware acceleration in the sound but no change
My PC specifications are:-
Processor: Intel(R) Pentium(R) III Xeon processor (2 CPUs), ~2.9GHz
Memory: 4094MB RAM
Page File: 239MB used, 5651MB available
Windows Dir: C:\WINDOWS
DirectX Version: DirectX 9.0c (4.09.0000.0904)
Operating System: Windows XP Professional x64 Edition

Video Card name: NVIDIA GeForce 9600 GT
Manufacturer: NVIDIA
Chip type: GeForce 9600 GT
DAC type: Integrated RAMDAC
Display Memory: 512.0 MB
Current Mode: 1024 x 768 (16 bit) (60Hz)

Sound Card Name: HDA XPLOSION 7.1 Wave Device
Default Sound Playback: Yes
Default Voice Playback: Yes
Type: WDM
Driver Name: cmudax3.sys
Driver Version: 5.12.0001.0008 (English)
Driver Attributes: Final Retail
Date and Size: 4/21/2008 15:38:26, 846848 bytes
Other Files:
Driver Provider: Auzentech, Inc.

[Bruces]

Hello,

I will get my dad (darwins) to look at this... I know nothing of that stuff as all I did was forests. This issue seems like a few people have got it so I hope we can soon finish up a patch. Ill have a test run now and see what results I can get.

Thanks,

Bruce

[Bruces]

This is very odd... I have tested this section with a Jones Goods and it worked fine. . This is proving to be harder than I thought. Are there any other bugs with the route you have found? As I said the route is beta and was rushed at the end due to moving to a anther country.

[Bruces]

Tested in both directions.Worked fine.I still have to test 1 more thing. Could all of the people who had this problem tell me what vertion of MSTS Bin you have or if you have it at all.

Thanks,

Bruce

[gremlin1812]

Hi Bruce, I'm using bin patch 1.8.0521.
Regards
Barrie

[douglee]

Hi Bruce,

Tested in both directions.Worked fine.I still have to test 1 more thing. Could all of the people who had this problem tell me what vertion of MSTS Bin you have or if you have it at all.

Thanks,

Bruce

Thanks for looking into this.
My Sysyem:
AMD 1.66 Ghz
1.5Gig RAM
NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200
Sound Card Xear 3D
I am also running BinPatch 1.8.0521
My frame rates are around 10 to 15 at the point in question.

Other issues I resolved.
acleantrack1+2Textures missing
and acleantrack1+2Textures/Snow missing
Aviemoreloco3 Texture/Snow corrupted
SnowSky.ace
SnowSky Lo.ace
RainSky.ace
RainSky Lo.ace Missing
The Highland5 Zip is duplicated as Highland5.zip and highland5.zip
LMSR_5P5F_5055x.eng. Wagon line the file name is missing the 'x'

I would respectfully suggest repacking the route to ease installatation.
New users find it daunting if they do not know where folders go.

Best of luck with this route it is definatly going to be worth it.

If I can do any thing to help please PM me.

Good Luck
Doug

[dforrest]

Hi Doug
I don't know but having recently installing and using this route I noticed the sounds in the route are stereo.
I've changed them to mono, as stereo are a great strain on routes.
You can easily change the using the Windows built in Soundrec.
Then edit the sms file by removing the line Stereo ()
Cheers
Jon

Hi Barrie,
I had the same. OK towards Fortrose. Crash towards Avoch.
I played further with the sounds.
I noticed spaces in the filenames of:-
SITKA SPRUCE1
NOBLE FIRS1
Using the no spaces in file names rule.
I renamed these .sms files.
The .wav file name in the .sms
And the .wavs them selves.
To:-
SITKA_SPRUCE1
NOBLE_FIRS1
I was then able to run over the summit and down into Avoch.

Hope this helps.
Come back

Good Luck
Doug

Just been referred to these old posts.

I see that several routes, including SCP, have these files in stereo and with file names with spaces. I wonder if it effects them?

David

[jbilton]

Hi David
If they run OK ... then I wouldn't worry.
The ambient sounds are better in stereo, its just that they can take memory away from MSTS.
Michael Sinclair was the original author of these sounds.
One was a thunder clap, and this used to crash my system, every roll of thunder.
They also caused a few problems at Clapham junc on the original DC

Cheers
Jon

[dforrest]

In the Highland route, I see that several of the .sms files have the "stereo" line even though the .wav files as supplied with the route, are mono.

Does anyone know how this effects running?

David