Elvas Tower: The Route Tile Blues - Elvas Tower

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The Route Tile Blues Rate Topic: -----

#1 User is offline   Genma Saotome 

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Posted 04 February 2014 - 06:45 PM

Ok Route Experts, I need some help: I've got weirdness in my route tiles that I cannot figure out.

First, let me say that, for better and probably worse, the route has gone thru several iterations of RGE and DEMEX and so I'm not too surprised things are out of sync.

Here's what RGE says I've got:
Attached Image: BayArea05.jpg
Everyting has finally been split into the smallest squares.


DEMEX 2 says this:Attached Image: BayArea04.jpg
Note how there are large and small squares, all crossed.


And Mosaic thinks I've got this:
Attached Image: BayArea03.jpg
Note a different set of large and small tiles, usually in the same place.


Turning on terrain and water gives this:
Attached Image: BayArea06.jpg
Which I know to be incorrect because some of SF Bay is blank whereas in RE it is water.


RE thinks I've got something else yet (no picture).


How do I go about getting everything to look the same (especially Mosaic)? What I want is no large tiles.

Anybody know?



p.s. Once upon a time I had something yet again different:

Attached thumbnail(s)

  • Attached Image: BarArea01.jpg


#2 User is offline   c36dash7 

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Posted 05 February 2014 - 01:29 PM

Genma : I wouldn' t be able to offer much assistance with this, other than to relate to what I did a few months back .

In a situation somewhat like yours, I decided it would be wiser to go right back to Square One, and generate a totally brand new / totally fresh RGE "platform" .

And yes, I will candidly confess I had to use Michael Vone's Guide Book, minimized on my desktop , but open at all times, as I quickly realized there were so many steps along the way , which I did not do properly . We all had to start from somewhere one day , didn't we ? ...'-)

Once I had this totally fresh and brand new ( and yes, "error-free" ... ) RGE platform, I then went about "replacing" ( say , "swapping", but never outright "Overwriting" !!! ... ), the Tiles from the new RGE platform, with the ones from a previous Route "version" .

Yes it is true, I went about this "manually" , one tile-after-another, although , then again, I only "brought onboard", only the ( terrain ) Tiles I truly wanted to have ( this time ) .

Altogether, this worked really well for me / for the "size" of the project , and have no regrets whatsoever, if it took me a full 1 or 2 consecutive weeks ( all individual hours added up ), to get the results I am now working with.

All-in-all, the only true words for "off-limits" type of cautions, have to do with outright "overwriting" terrain Tiles in one Route "version", with Files from another version . Perfect recipe for frying an entire Route.

"Swapping" entire ( block of 4, or at times, 5, "filename extension" ) terrain Tiles, by removing ( and "saving to a side folder"... ) the new RGE ones, and dropping in their place, the block of 4 or 5 ( filename extensions ) of the exact / same overall terrain Tile filenames, does work really well.

I am sure others have better ways to suggest . I basically liked the idea I could now "pick and choose" exactly which... terrain Tiles, I wanted to, say , "salvage", and bring onboard, a totally fresh / new / error-free RGE platform .

Jean Brisson

#3 User is offline   Genma Saotome 

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Posted 05 February 2014 - 04:41 PM

2 full weeks? Yuck.

Do you know if there is any way to tell from the tile file names which ones are the smallest squares and which ones are not?

#4 User is offline   TBlake 

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Posted 05 February 2014 - 07:33 PM

If you run the route through TSutils ichk, it will show which tiles are over written by smaller tiles
see the first port in : LO-TILES and Mosaic

Also: (Length=4)

Where you have the 2x2 squares (Showing in Mosaic),
you go in RGE and unpopulate the 1x1 squares (removes the blue X), then merge the 4 1x1 squares
and it should show a 2x2 populated square (blue X), unpopulate it then right click and delete the 2x2 tile.
Split the 2x2 tile back into 1x1 tiles and re populate them and save the quad tree.

As for the San Francisco bay one, it is the same process except that one is a 8x8 one.

Use a back-up copy and do one at a time, and reload the route in Mosaic and you can see the difference, as you go along.

TBlake
'Tony'

#5 User is offline   Genma Saotome 

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Posted 05 February 2014 - 10:34 PM

Very interesting (I remember that thread now... I even posted in it asking Charlie if his route was at Monterrey Bay).

Reading Jeffery's advise very carefully I tried one thing (on a lark): I found and removed all files in \tiles that began with an underscore -- there were 116 of them. All of the tiles in I expected to be correct in Mosaic now are correct (there were two or three oddballs from long ago)...

Attached Image: BayArea07.jpg

Jumping into RE and everything appears to be ok there too... DEMEX... no change.

So it looks I'm I'm only part way along....

Thanks for the lead Tony... I continue to follow Jeffery's instructions.

#6 User is offline   charlie 

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Posted 06 February 2014 - 12:30 PM

View PostGenma Saotome, on 05 February 2014 - 10:34 PM, said:

...I found and removed all files in \tiles that began with an underscore -- there were 116 of them. All of the tiles in I expected to be correct in Mosaic now are correct (there were two or three oddballs from long ago)...

Sorry Dave, I had begun a reply yesterday, but the ice storm pulled the plug on everything. Until noon today, large downed trees also blocked the route to the beer store...

If all you did there was to delete files, that more than implies that proper std tiles were already present. I can't do a proper comparison between your RGE and Demex views since I cannot make out which tiles are x'ed in the RGE view. However I've never seen the RGE and Demex be in disagreement as to the state of the quadtree.

Quote

Jumping into RE and everything appears to be ok there too... DEMEX... no change.
So it looks I'm I'm only part way along...

After looking at your Demex view carefully, I'm pretty sure that at the time you took the view you had no undivided std tiles. I've attached a comparison between a route that had gargantuan and super-gargantuan std tiles and a snippet from your Demex view. First a note for folks not used to Demex: The "big red dots" are not dots; they're just intersections of horizontal and slanted lines.
Attached Image: Demex_1.jpg

In the route on the left, you can see that the undivided tiles have no place for red dots since there's no sub-division. The areas that appear to be darker in the view on the right are completely sub-divided into 2km x 2km tiles. The big clue for what comes next if that the red dots in the darker areas at line intersections there are not so bright.

Here are the attributes of Demex and Mosaic that may be causing confusion for some folks.
1. If a set files for a tile is present in the Tiles folder, Demex will display it even if the tile is not in the quadtree. In this case though, the display for such a tile will be in a darker shade of red.
2. For the same situation for Mosaic, no hint at all will be given that the tile is not in the quadtree.

Perhaps I'm being led astray by jpg's that, due to colors in the Demex display, are very difficult to make clear. This should settle the question though. If the areas I think are in darker red really are, right click on a tile. If you get the option to add it to the quadtree, I would do it even if you think you might not want the tile later.

If you ever do want to dump that tile, use the same method. The advantage there is that the tile files are not deleted but have a new "unused" file extension. I keep those for a while just in case I change my mind again...

If I guessed correctly as to the jpg view, total fix is five minutes away. ;)

regards,
charlie

#7 User is offline   Genma Saotome 

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Posted 06 February 2014 - 01:35 PM

Hi Charlie,

It appears to my eye that all of the X's squares in RGE are set to the smallest area possible. IIRC that wasn't always the case but it is now.

I zoomed in on the DEMEX image where the red color is dull as well as bright (click on image to enlarge for better viewing):
Attached Image: BayArea08.jpg

The X squares are the inverse of what was marked as terraformed.

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