Railworks America

ex_railwayman said: ↑
I logged in to Steam yesterday and had to sit through a 35GB update in my game, after waiting for hours it has put back all the .AP asset files in my DTG folder that I had opened to install upgraded routes from the German community, and put in loads of loco and wagon repaints, etc, etc. It also put my routes back into .AP packs again, massively infuriating as I certainly didn't see any warning this was going to happen, and a good thing I had the extra capacity on my hard drive to incorporate everything, what was it all about, any idea folks?

Cheerz. Steve.

From DTG
Curious issue but not one we have any control over. Steam handles everything to do with your file structure for TS. We can't force a verify at this end as it has to be done by the Steam Client itself (either automatically or via manual request). Whils we can periodically provide updates at times, only those files which are different on your machine versus the ones on the file server are actually downloaded to your machine. There is no process where we can forcibly get your machine to do a verify otherwise we'd use that when you contact us for support - thus why we ask you to do it since we can't do it ourselves.

What I do know is that when Steam starts up, it polls all your appmanifest files (which is essentially a directory of every piece of dlc you have installed per owned product). If there is a mismatch in the appmanifest on your local drive versus its entitlement record then that itself will trigger a verify.

Typically, the most likely suspect that can interefere with your appmanifest files are firstly a Steam update. It has been known to cause these types of problems. Secondly, anti-virus or anti-malware software or even Windows itself (particularly if it's under program files) can also cause these problems as they will sometimes get blocked from being updated when Steam is doing maintenance or writing to the file. If those changes are not being recorded it will create a mismatch in the database record and force a verify on next start up.

There may be a setting you can implement to prevent this happening but, in the first instance, I would encourage you to highlight it with Valve Customer Support since they own and control Steam they may have a better idea as to why it's happening and will be able to properly guide you on preventing this from happening in the future. At the very least, they will have a record of it and the more people that report it, the greater the chance of it getting fixed.

martschuffing said: ↑
Yes please DTG fix this issue All my mods are gone now and even after extraction again they get nullified again if left online to steam!
Also, I am in a bad position with ap files as the game can't "see" inside them, this is an issue I've had with this software for many years with no solution to it, all I get is; that's impossible, but here I am with no assets and no scenery if they are in the ap file structure.
Please do not let the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one!

From GTG.
That to me sounds like an OS level restriction since TS relies on Windows own file permissions. If it's restricted at OS level, then it will be restricted in TS. There is nothing special about .ap files, they are simply zero compression zip files which are natively supported by Windows. If TS cannot see inside them then it's likely that your OS has no support for compression or zip file handling (unlikely unless you've restricted certain services from running at account level). However, generally, missing scenery and other assets are usually related to file structure issues, possibly at OS level.

Hope this helps.

Best, Steve

First off everyone needs to understand that the only time Steam is going to start changing anything on your Railworks folder is if it sees that there is a missing .ap folder. If you extract things from the .ap as long as you leave it intact Steam won't care what mods you make outside the .ap. It's only if you decide to delete the .ap that Steam will decide that something needs to be changed. What I do if I need to disable the .ap when making some mod changes is to just put a .xx suffix on it so the game can't use the thing temporarily until I'm done and then I remove that leaving the .ap in place. The key is to leave the .ap as a place holder so you don't trigger Steam to think it needs to fix things. I have no idea at this time if Steam checks the file size or just looks to see if the named folder is there.

I hope this helps to understand what's going on under the hood.

Interesting - I generally run with only a few routes in the Content/Routes folder as there are usually only 2 or 3 I will be thinking of using at any one time.

Never had any problem with this until 25 November last year when I purchased 1 item of DLC (a scenario pack) and Steam proceeded to download every route I had purchased through Steam, presumably also the Assets...took a long time...but not aware of anything being wiped out as such. At the time I had no Steam DLC routes in the folder.

Only happened that once, thankfully.

Rod

This one reason I keep at least 2 older copies of my Railworks folder on a separate drive. This will save the frustration of completely having to start over when route building or doing any modifications.

Whatever they have done with their updating/ checking process since the end of November is really annoying, especially for those of us that like to tinker with things. I downloaded one piece of DLC on my laptop at the end of November for the Sechelt & North Coast Route and all my own custom edits and modified DLC disappeared. Furthermore it deleted every single AP I had unpacked, leaving empty folders and at the same time downloaded every single route again that went with the APs. I ended up copying over my desktop files and custom files which mirror the laptop so nothing was really lost, just hours of time. However to my surprise and annoyance, I booted up the desktop at the end of December and found the same thing had happened to it when it decided to do an update for no reason one morning. It appears something is now randomly checking the install of everything, perhaps even for file edits that adjust the size of files triggering a verification of the file system. Having gone through this a few times more, I now keep a special backup of all my changes, basically my own installation which overwrites everything and I use till the next checkup erases everything again. Annoying as I originally mentioned.

The thing is you guys if the Steam server determines that your copy of TSC doesn't appear the same as what is on the Steam server of course it is going to update your copy to the same as on the Steam server. To explain it in simple terms you purchase a file from Steam that contains coloured marbles anyway you decide you don't like the orange ones and remove them the next time you start up Steam it is going to see that you no longer have the orange marbles is your file so replaces them. I have had TS since 2010 but have had a Steam account since about 2004 when the Valve Halflife games came out and have never had any issues. Your guys issues are self-made by mucking around with your TS files.

I have never seen anyone on the TSC Steam forums complaining about this which has nearly 90% more posts than on here.

Forgetting about that 90% of the people on the Steam forums have mental issues I agree that you have to be doing something strange to trigger a huge update. Steam does update files IF you unpack a .ap and then delete the original. If you leave the original there it could care less what mods you make on the stuff you unpacked in my experience. It only checks stuff that you say you have that it can't find and then that triggers updates. In all my years I have never had it do a huge update to the whole Railworks folder.

Me neither.
Some people don't understand that you have to keep the .ap files and never modify them.

Chacal wrote:Me neither.
Some people don't understand that you have to keep the .ap files and never modify them.

Just to clarify, until November of last year you did not need your AP files which you can quote me on. I have tinkered a lot over the years with the sim in ways most do not which never triggered the update. I have over 10 years of various TS20xx installations backed up proving this point and have never needed to keep the AP files after unpacking until November's update. Downloading a existing or newly purchased DLC never triggered such an update till November, even if you didn't have the AP files or the actual route to go with it. This is specifically a change in the Steam software from November. The way I have run the sim over the last 10 year is simple, I run a stripped down set of assets of only what I need for route building, no AP files, no other routes, no unneeded rolling stock and no unneeded scenery assets which is deleted from the unpacked ap files, essentially I keep only the files I want. If I want to run another route, I have another installation for that on another system. Since November, the files in the "Data" folder in the main Railworks folder I have also modified (redone 3D weather, textures and Silverlining file using redone content I borrowed from the original software Developer's demo software adding new "features" and effects that DTG cut out and I edited back in) are now also reverting to their originals when such an update occurs. These files have never been an issue till now as well and there are no AP files for these.

I clearly understood till November's update what you needed to install and didn't need to install to manipulate things with the sim really well to my liking without forced updates regardless of having an AP file or not. Running my installation this way also eliminated the majority of the memory / performance issues during route building. If you want stability during route building, this is the only way to do it. I found my own solution per my last post, my own custom install every time a forced update occurs, I delete everything it installs and replace with my own. The ultimate fail safe and easiest solution I am now using as well on my route building system, is to take Steam offline when running the sim in this manner. No communication with Steam, no updates, simple.

Chacal wrote:Me neither.
Some people don't understand that you have to keep the .ap files and never modify them.

Some people...well there is no need to modify a .ap file as everything can be modded outside of it but it is certainly not my understanding at all with regard to removing Content/Route folders and .ap files...

ENR3005 wrote:Just to clarify, until November of last year you did not need your AP files which you can quote me on.

I agree - something in November was totally different. I have never deleted any .ap files in my Assets folder, but have regularly removed routes from my Content folder. Currently running online with only 1 route in the Route folder.


This total "update" of DLC routes has thankfully been a one off event for me.

I have bought some DLC scenarios since then that haven't had the base routes installed at the time without any problem - i.e. the scenario .ap has installed into a fresh Route folder that only contains the newly purchased scenario .ap - this has been my experience throughout since the .ap files were first introduced for DLC.

Rod

Again let me add that if you remove routes from the content folder if you don't want Steam to put them back in then you need to uncheck them in your Steam DLC folder and then when you get any sort of update they will not re-appear. I have several European routes that were installed that I have unchecked and they stay that way.

buzz456 wrote:Again let me add that if you remove routes from the content folder if you don't want Steam to put them back in then you need to uncheck them in your Steam DLC folder and then when you get any sort of update they will not re-appear. I have several European routes that were installed that I have unchecked and they stay that way.

Don't disagree that is the ultimate way to get rid of routes but it will probably also remove the Assets which may be required for non DLC routes from other providers.

Saying it again too - apart from that one time (and that is the only time) in November 2022 I have never had any route reappear when I have removed it.

None of mine have been, or are, unchecked in the Steam DLC folder.

Currently running, as I have for the last 5 years at least, with a stripped down routes folder (at present 1 route but usually 2 or 3).

All of my spare routes (i.e DLC and those purchased or downloaded from other providers, probably 200+) are zipped up and are kept on a separate drive, being unzipped and transferred to Content/Routes when required.

Subsequent to the November anomally, all has been running as before without any mass download of DLC even though I have purchased further DLC in the meantime.

Rod

I agree that it will probably remove the assets for a unchecked and removed route. (I think)

First off, I have all my Railworks backed up on a 3TB external drive. This drive is solely dedicated to Railworks. IF Steam jacks me, I have that backup. It's wise to backup everything regarding your files in general on your computer.

With the exception of when I buy something, I always stay offline. I didn't encounter that 35GB update. But I have noticed on occasion a Steam update can mess things up a tad, ( some files somehow not related to DTG or RSC content get delated on occasion. I never lose the DTG/RSC content) thus why a backup is an asset to have. The info about the AP is news to me. I usually extract the AP then put the AP in a folder on my backup drive. That way I have the original AP should my sim enter the Twilight Zone.

I'm at the point I say NO to computer updates for anything if I can control it. The updates seem to do more harm than good. I got an app to block Windows from doing updates to Windows 10 because of so many problems after a Windows update. And you can go look up what the Windows updates can potentially do to your computer. Not everyone has issues, but many do. And in my case my computer just runs so much better without the Windows updates. Oh, Norton is a exception. The auto updates I allow and those have never jacked me up and have been using Norton for over a decade.

Well just to be clear I am online all of the time and I have never never had Steam erase or change one of my mods as long as there is a .ap file. Remember some of the older stuff didn't have a .ap so Steam may then change your mod on items bought through Steam.