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John Cletheroe's
Trainz Hintz |
This downloading checklist is primarily intended for use with Auran's Trainz Railway Simulator 2004 (TRS2004). Some of its entries may also apply to other versions of Trainz.
A very useful "Downloading Tutorial" is available at Gerard's Trainz Tutorials, in the form of an Adobe Acrobat PDF document (external link verified Oct-04). These notes are intended to be additional to that tutorial.
I find that it helps to keep a record of assets that you are searching for, assets obtained, any assets obtained from third-party web sites, and any special procedures that downloaded assets required. Programs such as Word and Excel are suitable for this purpose. Sophisticated users might even wish to create an Access database system.
I highly advise downloading and installing the excellent Trainz Objectz program (TO), which helps enormously in the tasks of checking downloaded assets and correcting problems with them. Available free of charge from TafWeb or http://www.trainzobjectz.co.uk (both external links verified Oct-04; both URL's lead to the same content).
The separate Trainz Objectz Explorer program (TOE) may also be useful. It displays assets without having to start Trainz. There is a link from TO to TOE. TOE can be obtained free of charge from http://trainz.luvr.net
The risk of a virus infection from a CDP file downloaded from Auran's Download Station is, in my opinion, exceedingly low but I cannot state categorically that it is zero. All downloaded files should be scanned before being opened, using an anti-virus program which has had its virus definition list recently updated.
If downloading an asset from Auran's Download Station (DLS), use Trainz Download Helper (TDH) to avoid repeating already installed assets, and automatically also obtain available dependencies. The CDP files downloaded in this way will have their contents installed into sub-folders of "C:\Program Folder\Auran\TRS2004\World\Dispatcher\Downloads", one folder per asset, and the folder names being the kuid's of the assets. Depending on what type of asset is involved, some kuid folders have further sub-folders. All kuid folders (or very nearly all) have a config.txt file. Almost all also have a number of other files, but the mix of files depends on the type of asset.
SP3 and UTC scenery and rolling stock items tend to usually work correctly with TRS2004, together of course with TRS2004 items. For layouts, the same tends to be true but perhaps less so. For Driver sessions and especially scenarios, TRS2004 users are advised to stick to TRS2004 items, even though there are at present not a large number of them. In Auran's Download Station, the relevant ticks can be removed so as to restrict the search to TRS2004 items. I have yet to find a pre-TRS2004 scenario from any source which fully works. Many non-Auran sources sadly fail to state which versions of Trainz their offerings are compatible with. All the current (Mar-05) published Razorback Railway scenarios are compatible with TRS2004, while almost all of Trainz Pro Routes' scenarios are not (as far as I can figure out).
config.txt files can be edited using any plain text editor program such as Notepad which comes as standard with Windows, or an alternative such as EditPad. Trainz Objectz also provides a facility to edit config.txt files which usefully highlights their syntax.
CDP files obtained by means of the FTP facility on DLS, and from other sources, will in almost all cases install in exactly same manner when they are opened by double-clicking them.
Other installation files may or may not install in the same manner. Some install files into sub-folders of the "C:\Program Files\Auran\TRS2004\World\Custom" folder, an area which is really intended for your own creations. I regard any item which installs itself into "Custom" as being somewhat suspect, since it implies that the content creator may be either lazy or ignorant.
Assets can be manually created, edited and deleted from either of these folder trees. The only proviso is that after doing so, always use the option in Trainz Objectz to delete the Dispatcher.chump file. Trainz does not appear to maintain an index of installed assets, nor does it use XML files to maintain a record of them. Experienced computer users will flinch at the thought of data files being stored in the program folder, and shudder with horror at the thought of users interfering with them, but that is the way it is with Trainz.
After downloading and installing any asset, run Trainz Objectz with full checking enabled. Fix any syntax errors in config.txt files that Trainz Objectz detects.
A full discussion of the syntax of config.txt files is well beyond both the scope of this document and the knowledge of its author. Information on the subject is not easily obtained but the "Downloading Tutorial" PDF document available on Auran's site offers some good basic hints on the subject. If you are unfamiliar with the subject, be sure to take a backup copy of a config.txt file before modifying it.
In overall terms, each section of a config.txt file starts with a keyword, which is called a tag. Tags are not enclosed in angle brackets. Keywords include bogey, obsolete-table and username but there are many others. Which tags are required depends on the type of asset. In general, Australian spelling is used for tags, for example bogey not bogie, color not colour, and organisation not organization.
The keyword is followed by a separator of one or more spaces and/or tab characters, followed by a parameter.
Numerical parameters should not be enclosed by double-quotes unless they are expressed in scientific (exponential) form. A decimal separator (if present) must be a decimal point (a full stop or period symbol). A comma, commonly used as a decimal separator in some European countries, is not permitted in Trainz config.txt files.
Scientific format is sometimes used for very small numbers in air-drag-coefficient tags, and sometimes for very large numbers in fuel tags. Looking at numerous config.txt files, it seems that numeric parameters in scientific format must be enclosed in double-quotes, must have one digit before the decimal point, can have any number of digits after the decimal point, which must be followed by a plus or a minus sign, and finish with exactly three digits. For example "7.0e-005" is valid, "6.55e+006" is valid, and "9.2156e+010" is valid (in all three cases, with the double-quotes). For example, "7.0e-005" means 7.0 * 10^(-5), or 0.00007
String parameters (text) must be enclosed by double-quotes (") and in most cases can run over more than one physical line.
Kuid parameters must have one of these two formats: <kuid:usernumber:assetnumber> or <kuid2:usernumber:assetnumber:versionnumber>
Table parameters, containing a list of items, must be enclosed in curly brackets ({ and }). In most cases table items must be numbered starting at zero (not the letter o) and there must be at least one space or tab character after the number. The kuid-table list in scenarios is an exception to this rule: instead of having numbered items, it has the names of each of them.
Some tags can take nested table parameters (one table inside another).
Since config.txt files will be read and acted upon by a computer program, they must be 100% accurate in every respect. This includes spelling, punctuation and whether upper case or lower case is used. Beware of spelling differences between the UK, the USA and Australia in words such as "colour" and "organisation".
In Trainz Objectz, check for any missing rolling stock parts and attempt to obtain them.
In Trainz Objectz, check for any duplicate kuid's and resolve them.
If the downloaded asset is a layout (a map), a Driver session (a profile), or a scenario, then in Trainz Objectz right click the asset and check for any missing dependencies. Attempt to obtain these. When the list of assets for a layout is displayed in Trainz Objectz, any missing asset can be right-clicked to invoke some very useful options, including displaying the "type" (whether it is scenery, track, etc), searching for it on Auran's Download Station (DLS), or downloading it from DLS if it is available. Most of these options can be applied to the one clicked missing asset or to all missing assets. The option to download all missing assets is slow since Download Helper (DLH) is restarted for each asset. I find it faster to use the option to find all missing assets on Auran's Download Station (DLS), then add them to the cart. This facility is particularly valuable when obtaining missing assets on DLS for a layout which is not itself on DLS. There are other programs for downloading assets from DLS, including Trainz Agent and Trainz Downloader Pro, which some users prefer but I personally find awkward to use.
If you have Trainz Objectz Explorer installed, use the option in Trainz Objectz to display the downloaded asset. However, there may be legitimate reasons why TOE will not display assets which will work correctly in Trainz.
If the downloaded asset is a rolling stock item then check that it is displayed in Railyard. It is a good idea to check that all rolling stock items are displayed in Railyard every so often.
If appropriate, attempt to add the downloaded asset to a test layout in Surveyor.
If the downloaded asset is a layout, a Driver session or a scenario, then attempt to load it in Surveyor, Driver or Scenarios as appropriate.
If any errors occur while trying to use the downloaded asset in Railyard, Surveyor, Driver or Scenarios, then examine the log files for any relevant error messages. The two log files are "C:\Program Files\Auran\TRS2004\JetLog.txt" and "C:\Program Files\Auran\TRS2004\Cache\Logs\log0.html"
You may wish to retain downloaded files and archive them to CD-R or DVD-R disks. You may also wish to regularly backup the contents of the C:\Program Files\Auran\TRS2004 folder to CD-R or DVD-R disks. I would suggest that it is vital to do at least one of these actions. Due to the amount of material involved, it is probably best to compress the files to one or more zip archive files, using a program such as WinZip, before writing to CD-R or DVD-R. Some programs which create zip files limit their contents to about 64,000 items, so with Trainz it may well be necessary to create several zip files. An alternative backup approach is to make copies on one or more external USB hard disks. Ideally an incremental backup system could be used, which only records new and changed items. However, devising such a system is not simple, since the time and date stamps of files and folders may in some cases be when they were last modified by their creators, not when they were installed by the user.
Most recently modified 23-Apr-07