Pulling my hair out over saving scenarios

[FourEightFour]

I have a one in fifty chance of playing a scenario I spend hours creating. What happens is I create a scenario, close railworks, reopen the scenario the following day, only to have RW crash and save a dmp file. Where can I look for the problem, as I cannot imagine that this game is that bad at saving scenarios, otherwise we would not have scenarios...

[artimrj]

I would have to suggest verifying the game cache integrity first. I never have had that problem in a few hundred scenarios I saved.

[_o_OOOO_oo-Kanawha]

After veryfing your Railworks' integrity as Bob suggested you should clear the .pak cache so nothing of previous gameplay remains.

Then you can start troubleshooting.

Are all your files and folders under Railworks set to read and write? Does your user account have writing privileges?

Which route are you writing a scenario for?
- Can you play the supplied scenarios?
- Can you edit the route?

What rolling stock are you using?
- Default, official DLC, repainted, hacked?
- Does it run in other scenarios?

When does your game crash? Early or late? How many .pak files are created? Does it crash with the same number of .pak files everytime?
Can you pinpoint the youngest .pak file created? That asset pack might be the culprit, an incomplete repaint, broken repaint, etc.

Fire up LogMate.exe and watch the messages in its window scrolling by. That might also help in finding the cause.

[FourEightFour]

I started the verify about an hour ago, up to about 33% complete.

This problem is not route specific. I will clear the .pak cache. The route where the most recent episode occurred is the RWA. Standard RWA rolling stock, RailsimulatorUS's Union Pacific F7A/B, Smokebox's connie and FEF-3. I had removed the FEF to see if it was this engine, however, it was not. It crashes during the loading screen. After the crash I cannot even edit the scenario without it crashing during the loading screen.

[_o_OOOO_oo-Kanawha]

Not route specific? Then it might be your asset collection that got corruped.
What does Railworks load during the loading screen? LogMate might show you.

More questions that might help:
How long ago the crashes started? What did you install lately? Can you trace your steps back?
How large is your scenario collection? Are there any zero byte files in the Content folder? And in the Asset folder?
How large are the Kuju folders? There is a certain maximum to the number of assets referenced from any provider and the Kuju folders have a tendency to bloat.

Start removing Route folders from the Content folder. beginning with the ones you created scenarios for. Move them to a temporary location 'Bad Routes' under Content so they are out of the way.
Try to retain only the default routes, those starting with 000000. Try and run a default scenario from each of them. Move every route that crashes, there should be a few good routes left I hope.

Then start moving back the bad routes in, one by one, and try to run any offending scenario. Move that scenario folder temporaryly out of the way again. Hopefully you are left with a few running scenarios. Try to edit the route to check that basic dependencies are met.

When you have isolated all offending scenarios, ask for help again.

I don't know if you can have RW_Tools check the scenarios in the temporary 'bad routes' folder if it isn't a subfolder under Content.

[mrennie]

I started the verify about an hour ago, up to about 33% complete.

This problem is not route specific. I will clear the .pak cache. The route where the most recent episode occurred is the RWA. Standard RWA rolling stock, RailsimulatorUS's Union Pacific F7A/B, Smokebox's connie and FEF-3. I had removed the FEF to see if it was this engine, however, it was not. It crashes during the loading screen. After the crash I cannot even edit the scenario without it crashing during the loading screen.

Curious;y enough, I have the same problem with the RWA route. I haven't been able to save a scenario with the FEF-3 on that route.

[buzz456]

Have you had any problems with any other scenarios? I've never had this problem with the RWA.

[mrennie]

Have you had any problems with any other scenarios? I've never had this problem with the RWA.

I'll try it again and get back to you ... who knows, maybe it was a glitch and works now.

EDIT: Tried to create a free roam, but it crashed before I could finish placing the passenger cars.

Tried again and got as far as saving the scenario, but when I tried to select the consist, game crashed.

[buzz456]

Not to tell you what to do however you need to look to the rolling stock not the route when this is occurring.

[mrennie]

Not to tell you what to do however you need to look to the rolling stock not the route when this is occurring.

It was the same loco and set of cars that I've put into free roams in several other routes. I'm just wondering if it's because I'm always placing them near to the route origin in the RWA Lakeside (because when you create a new free roam scenario, that's the only choice, and I'm too lazy to move it further away), and there happen to be a lot of trees there. The editor slows to a crawl there. Could be that my poor old video card just isn't up to the task.

[buzz456]

I have been kind of mentally trying to catalog problems like this for some time to see if we can make some sense of all this to advise all how to prevent situations like this.