Railworks America

About fifteen minutes ago I was checking to make sure all the files are there for each route-addon that I have purchased through Steam or a gift from my son through Steam too. All route-addon files are disappeared and only left is MainContent.ap. I was surprised to see that happened after checked with this. I have to extract them each MainContent.ap files to each route folder. I know RW_Tools can do the job but I don't know how. Sorry!! Now my question is that who is the blame for this problem? Windows 10 or Steam or Dovetail Games or my desktop, HP Omen 870-119 or desktop hardware like SSD. I was planning to send a support ticket to Dovetail Games but no use for this because they did reply before and did not help. I remember someone had similar problem like mine and believe that would be trev123 from New Zealand. He probably will see my message later today and hopefully will reply to my message. I am going to leave Railworks on my desktop for a bit because it happened to me all the time with this situation. Seem to me that I am no luck with this all the time to see the folders disappeared and all I have left is MainContent.ap files in Content Folder. If anyone know how to stop this happening from my route-addon and scenarios files disappeared from my Railworks folder. That would be wonderful to see if that can be stopped from happening over and over.

Thank you,

John

Is this inside your Assets or Content folder? I can't even find such a thing here.

Hi Buzz,

Here is what I got the main folder of DonnerPass in Content folder and the number is 00000032-0000-0000-000000000000. All I have are 2 folders and 7 ap files below:

RouteInformation
Scenarios
DonnerPassAntrakE8ScenarioPack.ap
DonnerPassSD45T-2Scenarios.ap
DonnerPassSD70MSPScenario.ap
DonnerPassSDP40FScenarios.ap
DonerPasUnionPacificSP01.ap
DPScenarioPack01Scenarios.ap
MainContent.ap

In other Route folder one route have 6 folders and look below:

MixMap
Networks
RouteInformation
Scenarios
Scenery
Terrain
de.lan
es.lan
pl.lan
RouteProperties
ru.lan

That's what I am talking about the missing folders of each Route Add-on above with 6 folders plus 4 lan and RouteProperties.

And my question is that how these folders are missing? I did extract each ap file into Route Add-on folder few days ago like two weeks ago and now disappeared. That's a big pain to extract every single ap file for each Route Add-on in Content. I think that I better read the manual to see how RW_Tools extract them into each Route Add-on folders and Scenarios too.

Thank you again,

John

Did you run a cache verify or a re-installation or anything. I haven't run my Donner in forever and the scenarios are stll all there outside of the .ap

Hey John, is there any particular reason why you want to extract AP files? Anyway if I want to extract one to view for missing stock or swap an asset I use 7zip.

Yes I do but every time I turn around to check the Content and Assets folder before launch the simulator. And see the files with folders disappeared also the .ap files are still there. That's my question about this and I did sent support to Dovetail Games and Steam too and came up empty answers from them because they don't know the answer for this. Also Steam mentioned to me that I should ask the community to see if they can help from other members here about this.

Thank you again,

John

Okay, from what I can tell, only some of my routes have a MainContent.ap file. The rest of them have the contents of what is in a MainContent.ap file actually in the folder vice a MainContent.ap file. So my guess is that depending on how the route is setup the content folder is different.

I had read somewhere that if you unzip a "proprietary" .ap file, the next time you run TS20xx, the files that aren't supposed to be there are deleted. I've never tried it to see just mentioning it here for your benefit.

So what I'm wondering/thinking is that after you extract the contents of the MainContent.ap file to its folder, as long as you don't start TS20xx everything is there where you can see it but once you restart TS20xx, it all disappears because it's not supposed to be there so TS20xx removes it when it is setting up.

I could and probably am, wrong or misinformed.

John you are probably aware of this, but just in case:
- You shouldn't remove the .ap files, you don't need to, and they will come back next time you verify local files, or possibly before that.
- It is possible that, when the .ap files are created again, the other files and folders get deleted.
- You don't need to extract anything from .ap files except:
---- files you want to modify;
---- routeproperties.xml (so that RW-Tools can show route names);
---- asset blueprints (so that if you use RW-Tools for finding missing assets, it won't flag them as missing).
- When you extract a file from an .ap you don't need to delete it from the .ap.
- RW-Tools does indeed offer batch processing of .ap files.

@jgvaughan : it doesn't work like that. When you extract a file from an .ap, the extracted file is used by the game, and not the file in the .ap.
If you want to undo your changes, you just delete the extracted file.

Trev123 -- If you want to check the workshop scenario for DonnerPass in RW_Tools. If not extracted yet and the rolling stock will NOT show up in Available Stock on the right pane window also the list of rolling stock. Is that correct? I think that I am right about this because so many times I check the workshop scenario and couldn't find the rolling stock unless extracted.

Chacal -- No I did not remove the ap files at all and all are there in each route add-on folders in Content. What I am talking about after extracted each ap files for routes or scenarios in Content also rolling stock too in Assets too. My question is that when I extracted the ap files last week and yesterday some of the files in Route-Addon are disappeared and only left are .ap files. My question is that where all the files go after disappeared from Train Simulator 2020. I don't know which program removed them and I can't think which one is the problem with this. That is why I want to know why are the files removed from Content or Assets folder. Can you think of what program removed them automatically. I can tell you that I have the program called Advanced SystemCare and do you think that is the problem with this to remove the files without my permission. I am not sure what else will remove them in my desktop maybe Windows 10?

Thank you again,

John

If you have extracted all of your route files from .ap archives using RW_Tools (or 7zip), then they are placed in a normal folder tree. You can then use RW_Tools to view their contents etc.

However, why would you want to do that unless there is a file which you wish to modify in some way? It is pointless checking the .ap archive for missing files as it is unlikely that the manufacturer would issue a route with missing files.

I have found that if you have extracted your files and you then either run a 'Verify Files' from Steam, or if DTG sends an update to the route, then Steam does remove all files which are outside of the .ap folder (It does not remove the folder tree which has been set up).

This is why you should always keep a backup of your Assets and Content folders outside of the Steam folder, e.g. on a USB drive.

Mike

Mike

I have found that if you have extracted your files and you then either run a 'Verify Files' from Steam, or if DTG sends an update to the route, then Steam does remove all files which are outside of the .ap folder (It does not remove the folder tree which has been set up).

I'm not sure that any files are removed as you say. Otherwise you would lose all added scenarios (including extracted DTG scenarios and some marketplace addons) and reskins and that doesn't seem to happen. Steam/DTG only modify files and overwrite existing ones according to a set algorithm (based now on the .ap file structure) - AFIK there is no similar algorithm to delete or remove files.

To the OP - John Extracting the .ap files (except to edit something inside the structure) is counter productive.
The .ap files are zero compressed files and extract to the same size so a 2GB .ap file will occupy a further 2GB on your hard drive when extracted.
Now what that means is that instead of TS20XX checking and loading the checksum files in the .ap file structure it now has to wade through a whopping 2GB of extracted data before it can then use anything else needed in the original .ap file. TS20XX ALWAYS reads files outside the .ap file structure before it reads the .ap file. Not a good thing.
pH

Hi Peter,

While developing RW_Tools, I unpacked every .ap file in my copy of TS2019 which contained 260 routes. Since then, I have run the 'Verify Files' option also for test purposes. After this I found that numerous DTG Assets folders had many files missing. The following is an example:-



The first column is an unzipped version of a folder in the .ap file, the second is how it now appears in my TS2020 installation. The Textures folder is also empty.

Mike

Mike,
I have experienced the same after a verification run.

Mike
I have not seen that effect but all my extracted DTG/RSC assets (just a few) .ap files and extracted scenario .ap files still appear after a file verification.
It must be selective and I was told years and years ago that file/cache (as it was known back then) verification only overwrote the base files. Hmmm!
Thanks for the info - I will have to update my thinking on that.
Do you lose any scenarios that you have extracted from .ap files, post file verification?
Regards
pH

I very seldom use RW Tools to extract .AP files but 7zip. I shall continue to use 7zip.