TS 2013 will not load

[OldProf]

You fellows are the greatest! Thanks!!!!!

[OldProf]

Who says that lightening never strikes the same place twice? After performing one minor edit to a scenario I was working on to allow TS2013 fans to drive the new version of the Class 66 on a route other than Glasgow, I shut down the sim and went to bed. The next morning, the big freeze returned again. I've gone through another 2-day-long uninstall and reinstall session and the freeze error is still there. If I ever get this fixed, my days as a scenario writer may be over for good. There's no point in knocking my head against a wall one more time.

[buzz456]

Tom, you just have to take the one last thing you put in out of the sim and usually it'll fix the problem. Then you can see why that thing messed things up.

[bwfer]

Evidently the RSC/STEAM update of 12/3 introduced a nasty bug into the scenario editor and is covered in detail here: http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3030241. So I won't go into any further details. Needless to say I will be backing up my routes folder before using the scenario editor...However, on second thought, I will probably refrain from using the scenario editor till it is fixed.

[Chacal]

I suppose you could use the scenario editor from before the update, if you have saved a copy.

[OldProf]

Evidently the RSC/STEAM update of 12/3 introduced a nasty bug into the scenario editor and is covered in detail here: http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3030241. So I won't go into any further details. Needless to say I will be backing up my routes folder before using the scenario editor...However, on second thought, I will probably refrain from using the scenario editor till it is fixed.

Many thanks for this link! I don't usually monitor the steampowered forums (w--a--y too much garbage floating there), so I had missed the warning that might have prevented two crash episodes and two l-o-n-g 31.3 GB reinstall processes, the second of which is still several hours from completion. I think I may have a pre-12/3 backup set stored somewhere, but according to the steampowered thread, even that might not help due to corruption built into the Class 66-A DLC package and, frankly, I'm not sure that I'm capable of sorting through the backup files to find what I want or even of knowing what I'd want in the first place. Phew! Need to ... catch ... breath ... after that ... absurdly long sentence.

One thing's sure, if this second reinstall allows TS2013 to run again, I won't be touching the scenario editor until the all-clear sounds!

[artimrj]

The main thing that was not mentioned too much in that thread is that this happens when you rename, clone or use the Workshop. I do not use the workshop. I do clone and rename and this has not happened to me yet. At this point I am afraid to clone or rename, but making new scenarios is working fine.

[michbret]

Evidently the RSC/STEAM update of 12/3 introduced a nasty bug into the scenario editor and is covered in detail here: http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3030241. So I won't go into any further details. Needless to say I will be backing up my routes folder before using the scenario editor...However, on second thought, I will probably refrain from using the scenario editor till it is fixed.

Many thanks for this link! I don't usually monitor the steampowered forums (w--a--y too much garbage floating there), so I had missed the warning that might have prevented two crash episodes and two l-o-n-g 31.3 GB reinstall processes, the second of which is still several hours from completion. I think I may have a pre-12/3 backup set stored somewhere, but according to the steampowered thread, even that might not help due to corruption built into the Class 66-A DLC package and, frankly, I'm not sure that I'm capable of sorting through the backup files to find what I want or even of knowing what I'd want in the first place. Phew! Need to ... catch ... breath ... after that ... absurdly long sentence.

One thing's sure, if this second reinstall allows TS2013 to run again, I won't be touching the scenario editor until the all-clear sounds!

Hi. I started the thread on steam forum. I am sorry but I forgot RW America.

My wording may not have been clear enough : When I say that a scenario is corrupted, that means that is has a certain number of empty entries in the <RequiredSet> field of its scenarioProperties.xml .

A scenario with these entries is still functional and loadable if it was saved correctly, and generally will not prevent the game to load.

Since December 3rd, the scenario editor adds these empty entries and the more you save, the more you get (that's quite exponential). I finished with some scenarioProperties.xml files with a size of tens of mega bytes (the usual size is less than 100 KB). Richard Garber, when working on its new route reached more that 90 MB !. I have raised a ticket to RSC for this problem on December 7 !!

That is not for all the scenarios. The files get really big if you work quite intensively on a scenario and are saving often.

If you make a simple scenario, a driver, some AI and only save once you will only have a limited number of empty entries (minimum 2). This will have almost NO impact.

So if the number of empty entries stays limited, (let say <100), you will not feel the change too much.

What is the impact of having thousands of empty entries in one or several scenarioProperties.xml files
- first is performance: saving time are becoming excessively long in the scenario editor (my holding record is 50 minutes with one core of my i7 960 4GHz at 100% and TS2013 on a SSD).
- second is also performance related : Loading such a scenario will takes ages.
- third is also performance : TS2013 is scanning ALL the scenarioProperties.xml file for ALL the route when loading so TS2013 will start to take a lot of time to launch.

If many scenarios have a limited number of empty entries, the effect will be cumulative and this will affect TS2013 launching time that will become longer and longer.

This is propagating like a virus since all scenario created (or saved once) after December 3rd will have these empty entries.
And that's the case with scenarios that came with recent DLC from RSC but also for all the recent workshop scenarios and probably with the recent scenarios published on the various forums like this one.

However, these scenario are likely to be still workable since they have a limited number of empty entries. So Old Prof, you can use your Class 66 V2, no problem!

How can it crash your game and corrupt files.

First with the scenario editor: This fu..ing tools open ALL the scenarioProperties.xml of the route used in WRITE mode !!!. If it crashes, especially when saving your too fat scenario, the scenarioProperties.xml file of your scenario will be truncated but other scenarios on the same route may have the same fate!!
Only one truncated scenarioProperties.xml file in your system and TS2013 will not start : the famous error line 113 .... badly formated xml file ...

Second : The workshop installation process : Another example of stupid programming: When you install a workshop scenario on a route, the installation process open all the scenarioProperties.xml files of ALL the scenario of this route and REWRITE them all !!! One failure in this installation process and you will have trucated scenarioProperties.xml files and TS2013 will not start. I raised a ticket to RSC for this on September 30 !!

Third : If you have some excessively big scenarioProperties.xml files in your system, TS2013 is likely to crash by itself (it eats a lot of memory) thus corrupting other files in the process.

Four: You may loose patience: Not everybody will wait 50 minutes for something that is usually short. TS2013 in such situation exhibits all the symptoms of a looping program (100 CPU on one core, almost no I/O, ...). OK, Ctrl+Alt+Del to kill the process .... and Bingo : you have won: TS2013 will not start again.

Note that the usual "verify of local game cache" will not correct the problem if one of the truncated scenarioProperties.xml is not coming from Steam (one of your scenario, a workshop, a freeware, a 3rd party pack, ...).

Hoping this clarified and my apologies for the English errors: That's not my native language.

Michel

[OldProf]

Thanks, Michel, for repeating and expanding your information here.

For my TS2013 installation, a second uninstall and reinstall has resulted in a version that does run ... sort of: With the same settings I used before these line 133 errors started appearing, I'm getting much lower fps as measured by Fraps. It seems to me at this point that there is much more damage than meets the eye, but I am remaining hopeful that RSC realizes what it has done and is working on a solution. I wonder if RSC could somehow "take back" that Dec. 3 update?

[OldProf]

One more update to what I'm experiencing: I ran a cache verification last night and even though the results report said that all files had verified correctly, today TS2013 is running at excellent fps rates with practically all settings at maximum. Yesterday, when I tried running a scenario on Just Trains Bristol & Avenmouth route, the fps rate was 6-8; today, the same scenario ran at fps rates in the 30s. Go figure!

[Chacal]

Did you shut your computer down or restart it in between?
This can have two effects:
- correcting a problem, such as zombie tasks eating up memory and cpu cycles;
- cooling down the cpu and gpu

Recently I experienced slowdowns and freezes. I had the idea of checking vitals with a freeware called HWMonitor. I found the cpu temperatures were very high. Opening the case, I discovered my main case fan was dead, and all grills were plugged with dust. Problem solved.

[OldProf]

Did you shut your computer down or restart it in between?
This can have two effects:
- correcting a problem, such as zombie tasks eating up memory and cpu cycles;
- cooling down the cpu and gpu

Recently I experienced slowdowns and freezes. I had the idea of checking vitals with a freeware called HWMonitor. I found the cpu temperatures were very high. Opening the case, I discovered my main case fan was dead, and all grills were plugged with dust. Problem solved.

As to shutting down, I almost always do that after installing, or in this case reinstalling, anything: especially anything connected with TS2013, but thanks for the heads-up anyway.