Consider this the Pre-Thursday update of route progress.
I was a totally weird TS weekend on the Bergen. Every once in a while, I get the bug to make a correction or put in an element that was promised to subscriber. As mentioned previously, signaling issues on the Ordinary and still fresh in my mind. I noted that ingress signaling for Suffern, Waldwick and then Campbell Hall showed yellows, sometimes red, depending on how the switches were thrown in the yard. This is because only the entrances and exists were signaled. So, the yard latter switch position might block the game from seeing the next signal. I new to resolve, I had to signal yards. So the sessions for Friday and Saturday were devoted to that and testing. It works. So, this should not only give you a clean aspect going in and out of a yard, but improve AI and scenario performance. The next issue below killed any scenery work for both Sunday and Monday.
After doing yard work and sitting down to a nice cold PBR on the deck I see this message on my workshop page:
jtrainman94 Aug 27 @ 2:48pm Delete
This route does nothing but crash. It's rare for me to even get past the load screen. I've tried everything to get this route to work. Lower graphics settings, using different trains, deleting the route file and reinstalling, but nothing works. Don't even bother subscribing to this. It's just a waste of space on your hard drive.
First, I dealt with this like any other issue: offer help and ask for any information. I hear nothing ... and I responded within 15 minutes. Then I notice the big fat down vote. It reminded me, there has been some dude for the past year or so, who down votes then a few weeks or a few months later upvotes it again. That person has never left a message. I started thinking about it ... this guy's writing is familiar. Could it be a known person? This is a private account so you cant see anything. I think this guy has been here too.
Either way, I have to check the route. What I had in the back of my mind was a report from NSTrains - that he could now longer user the QDs, his machine would just keel over. With any error, I get one report - I take a quick look, 2 reports - I got a problem. With the last update 2 things changed. 1. 30 Rail Vehicles were added to CH and 2. I loaded STRM from Wood-Ridge, NJ to the NYS Thruway to the North for a potential side project.
I know rolling stock impacts fps and I know distant scenery draws affect FPS too. I am getting nervous - the rolling stock I can remove - terrain I have to go to backup and restore the tiles. So I decide to cull rolling stock out of the QDs by a third. First, I get RWTools to get a count. Holy smokes! 883 pieces of rolling stock were on the QD! I start from West to East and all is going just fine until I get to Croxton. Its laggy in there as it is. But there are two tiles that start just West of where the NEC divides the yard and goes one more tile East. Once I enter it - I get video out of memory and then crash. Perhaps this is the issue. So by hour 6, I decide to wipe out the QD Scenario which as been in existence since June of 2014. By the end of the 8th hour I have a new QD with 2 spawn point tested and working. The crash issue is gone.
I was up to 2am Monday morning working on this. I haven't posted a hotfix because the immediate crash only happens in edit on the QD. While I did crash running from Croxton IMF after 2 minutes each time - the rest of the route was fine. I test on max max settings on my build machine and High with my laptop. Both machines are underpowered for the game so its a good test of someone with a 4 year old machine. After I get to testing in Croxton I noticed a track break and spend last nights 3 hours session replacing 16 switches and improving the track. So the work was worth it. I did discover a huge FPS drop in the tile to the East side of the NEC divide in Croxton. As you head East, The Jersey City Tiles fill in from distant - my drop was from 16 to 4 fps when that loaded. I expect that midline computers have a huge issue here. I will revisit this is the future. For the meantime, I will not stock Croxton IMF until I get the fps load down a bit.
So this is where we stand - from a strange weekend of route building on the Bergen.
MM
