How to remove part of a route for later re-instatement

How to remove part of a route for later re-instatement

Postby thephantomphish » Tue Jul 26, 2016 12:20 pm

Hi everyone,

I have a rather unusual situation with the project I am currently working on which some of you may know from the UKTS forums. I've built a significant amount of my route so far, which is essentially actually two routes of similar but quite differing character which neighbour each other with an interchange station. For complicated reasons (which made sense when I started) the routes are set in two different historical eras, and I need to try to sort this out so that both are as accurate as possible.

The current idea is to try to initially release the (almost finished) first route set in the 1990's, and then modernise it slightly and finish the other line to eventually release a 2010's version of the whole thing later on. The problem is that this means temporarily removing and storing the entire newer line (currently around 17 miles or so) for re-instatement at a later date, which is not something that I imagine many people ever need to do!!

And so the question for the experts - how best to achieve this?

Rather than going into the editor and manually deleting everything asset-by-asset, I suspect it will be quicker to back the route up somewhere safe, then remove certain scenery files (and folders?) from the directory structure for the tiles involved. It will still need some of the DEM data in place, and some areas will need the scenery left in situ but with the track removed (that last part can easily be done manually as required).

I'm not illiterate when it comes to computing but am certainly not a programmer, so not sure exactly what the best way forward is with this and which files I should be tinkering with, if any!

Any thoughts anyone has on this would be very much appreciated...

Cheers,


Steve (ThePhantomPhish)
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Re: How to remove part of a route for later re-instatement

Postby Rockdoc2174 » Tue Jul 26, 2016 12:25 pm

The easiest way to do this, I think, would be to clone it and work on the two different eras separately. DO NOT clone using the TS Editor because this always screws up the geographic settings and Google overlay doesn't work correctly on the clone. Cloning with RW Tools does safely preserve all the settings, however. I've used this technique to let me play with some areas of The Friargate Line without risking making a major muck-up of the rest of the route. If my efforts bore fruit then copying the appropriate tiles to the master copy transferred what I'd done.

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Re: How to remove part of a route for later re-instatement

Postby brysonman46 » Tue Jul 26, 2016 7:05 pm

Rockdoc2174 wrote:The easiest way to do this, I think, would be to clone it and work on the two different eras separately. DO NOT clone using the TS Editor because this always screws up the geographic settings and Google overlay doesn't work correctly on the clone. Cloning with RW Tools does safely preserve all the settings, however. I've used this technique to let me play with some areas of The Friargate Line without risking making a major muck-up of the rest of the route. If my efforts bore fruit then copying the appropriate tiles to the master copy transferred what I'd done.

Keith


I agree with Keith on all counts. If you do as much as you can on the earlier route before cloning, then there will be less to change (particularly track and infrastructure which BR/Network Rail tended to reduce rather than build). You can also use RWTools to change from older to newer buildings (and other assets) in one go, throughout the route. You can change old wooden track to modern concrete track in one go (Mike Simpson, Marleyman and DP Simulation have some excellent tutorials), or you could PM me for further tips.

Nick
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Re: How to remove part of a route for later re-instatement

Postby thephantomphish » Sat Aug 20, 2016 8:20 pm

Hi folks, and thanks for taking the time to reply.

Some good thoughts there, especially about backing-up but not doing it by cloning in-game - I learned that the hard way but thankfully not before too much work was lost!

'Copying the appropriate tiles to the master copy' sounds like the sort of thing I was thinking, but in reverse initially in order to put those same tiles back in at a later date. Which files is it necessary to do this with? I looked briefly at the folder structure and it seems there is a .bin file in each seperate folder for mixmap, networks (lofts / road / tracks all seperate), scenery, and terrain. I really need to find a way to easily move the necessary files for each tile for safekeeping for putting back in later on, but it looks like that could be a fiddly task of finding each individual .bin for each tile in each seperate folder as the whole lot ideally needs to temporarily go.
Is there any simple way to do this?

My work at the moment is indeed getting the 'core' route (my original project that inadvertantly grew!) into decent enough shape to release. Once that is done then the vast majority of those tiles won't need attention again, so the more modern extension can then be re-instated.
Thankfully I won't need to swap buildings much as there is only about 15 years between the two eras, not a lot has changed, but I really appreciate the offer of tips regarding swapping stuff - which I might end up requesting if I can't get something to work!


Thanks again for your help and if anyone has an 'easy' solution or any other thought on this I'd be happy to hear it.


Steve
*** builder of a large chunk of digital North Wales with some narrow gauge railways added for good measure ***
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Re: How to remove part of a route for later re-instatement

Postby Rockdoc2174 » Sun Aug 21, 2016 9:57 am

All the data for the route is saved, as you've found, in tile-related files. Terrain tiles record the ground levels, scenery tiles record the fixed assets, loft tiles record all the lofted assets except track and so on. Track tiles cover the track lofts and everything that links to the track, such as signals. You can end up with umpteen files overall but, if you want to change or back-up a specific position, you can cut the requirements down considerably by saving only the tile or tiles covering the position you're interested in and, for best insurance IMO, one tile in each direction beyond that. Once you know the extent from within the Editor, you could copy the whole route somewhere and delete all the tiles you don't want. I believe that track tiles work in the same way but you have to also include the Tracks.bin file, although I'm happy to be corrected about that.

I still think that cloning the route is a good way to do this because it saves a complete snapshot and you can still do as I suggested earlier from that back-up. In addition - and I hope I'm teaching Granny to suck eggs here - I save an RWP file after each day's work and sometimes more than one if I've done a lot of changes. I don't think you can have too many back-ups!

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Re: How to remove part of a route for later re-instatement

Postby brysonman46 » Sun Aug 21, 2016 6:47 pm

Just one important MUST to add to Keith's explanation. Never remove track tiles from their folder unless they are "empty" - usually 1kb in size. They are intimately related to the tracks bin file. If the track tiles do not match the tracks bin, then the danger of a crash/dump is magnified. The way I have found best is to work on a clone, and manually remove track/signals/markers. If you "switch off" all other tiles (temporarily renaming the other folders) so you are just left with the above, then you can remove great swathes at a go, using the lasso and delete key. Once you are satisfied, then the "empty" track tiles can be removed. Again, a good check on whether other tiles (scenery, roads, etc) is to look at their size. 1 and 2kb ones tend to be empty.
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Re: How to remove part of a route for later re-instatement

Postby thephantomphish » Sat Sep 24, 2016 4:36 pm

Hi folks,

Belated thanks again for your replies - very much appreciated!

I think, with the nature of the route (single track mostly, with a few passing loops) I might be best off cloning what I have and then just manually deleting the track and station assets to leave the rest of the world intact but without the railway line. This would be pretty quick and easy to do, and what ends up left would actually give a good representation of how it was at the time modelled in the earlier time window; it also prevents me messing up the route structure by fiddling with the programming side of things!

I totally agree with regular backups, I have about 4 or 5 up-to-date copies of the route in separate locations 'just in case', partly because my laptop is now physically deforming from years of running so hot from having TS running for so long! Creating a .rwp only takes a few seconds, but TSUtilities takes (at last timing) half an hour to load up so I don't make many backups that way!

I'm digressing now so I'll get back to the important business of tinkering, building, testing, and watching my laptop slowly warp..!

Thanks again, chaps, for your time and useful advice given!


Steve
*** builder of a large chunk of digital North Wales with some narrow gauge railways added for good measure ***
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Re: How to remove part of a route for later re-instatement

Postby brysonman46 » Sat Sep 24, 2016 5:22 pm

thephantomphish wrote:I totally agree with regular backups, I have about 4 or 5 up-to-date copies of the route in separate locations 'just in case', partly because my laptop is now physically deforming from years of running so hot from having TS running for so long! Creating a .rwp only takes a few seconds, but TSUtilities takes (at last timing) half an hour to load up so I don't make many backups that way!
Steve


Make yourself a separate Content\Routes with nothing in, and point a copy of RW Utilities at it. When you wish to make a rwp, drop your route into it, and it only take seconds to load up from this RW Utilities. Once completed, drop your route back to its location. The same thing works with Assets. Also, when you have downloaded an rwp, extracting into the dummy takes no time at all, and then you can drag and drop the extracted files into your main folder.

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