[Lindsayts]

Now, I do a good amount of playing around with eng files and consists. Over the years I found MSTS does not like such playing around and will eventually stop working. All I use MSTS these days is for building consists and activities and bit of playing around in the route editor, so I decided to try and run OR out side of MSTS.

A new directory was made named \games\openrails_data, the ROUTE, TRAINS and GLOBAL files were copied into this, OR's directory was changed to look into this and it works like a charm. MSTS will be purged and will be reinstalled. As much modifaction of the trains and activities will be done in OR's data directory as MSTS cannot see this this should help preserver MSTS's sanity.
An intersting side effect of this is setting up a "mini route" under OR will be a breeze, I have already done the SOB in one and the Scotish Central Highlands in another.

Note: I like to keep the railways of different countries in separate directories, the reason being to prevent the TRAINS directory from getting to insane sizes which makes looking for rolling stock a major problem, The above discovery will make this a breeze.

Lindsay

[Genma Saotome]

Yeah, that works.

You can take it a couple of steps step further by using junctions. I use junctions to link back to \global\shapes as well as \sounds so all those files live in just one place. I do not put the junction to \global as sometimes I need to be using a custom tsection file but if that's not an issue for you then you could do it there and have just one tection file.

I also am experimenting with the use junctions within \routes. What I'm doing here is leaving the real files in MSTS where I can edit them using RE and then use the junction to make them appear in an OR specific "run time" directory. I'm not satisfied with that yet as it's giving me issues with \services files (I'd rather maintain those in the "run time" directory structure). Not sure yet how to solve that.

[Lindsayts]

Genma Saotome, on 04 March 2013 - 03:15 PM, said:

Yeah, that works.

You can take it a couple of steps step further by using junctions. I use junctions to link back to \global\shapes as well as \sounds so all those files live in just one place. I do not put the junction to \global as sometimes I need to be using a custom tsection file but if that's not an issue for you then you could do it there and have just one tection file.

I also am experimenting with the use junctions within \routes. What I'm doing here is leaving the real files in MSTS where I can edit them using RE and then use the junction to make them appear in an OR specific "run time" directory. I'm not satisfied with that yet as it's giving me issues with \services files (I'd rather maintain those in the "run time" directory structure). Not sure yet how to solve that.

Unfortunately, Junctions according to the docs I have seen are specfic to NTFS, the file system used in this case is VFAT. This is because, the said file system __must__ appear under Linux as nearly all my development work (including for OR) is done on that OS. Linux's current write support for NTFS is experimental and has some weakness's so NTFS is not used.
It would be excellent to have OR natively be able to use two (or more) data directories though so one could say keep all your regularly used rolling stock in one place.

Lindsay

[JohnS]

Lindsayts, on 04 March 2013 - 12:17 PM, said:

Now, I do a good amount of playing around with eng files and consists. Over the years I found MSTS does not like such playing around and will eventually stop working. All I use MSTS these days is for building consists and activities and bit of playing around in the route editor, so I decided to try and run OR out side of MSTS.

A new directory was made named \games\openrails_data, the ROUTE, TRAINS and GLOBAL files were copied into this, OR's directory was changed to look into this and it works like a charm. MSTS will be purged and will be reinstalled. As much modifaction of the trains and activities will be done in OR's data directory as MSTS cannot see this this should help preserver MSTS's sanity.
An intersting side effect of this is setting up a "mini route" under OR will be a breeze, I have already done the SOB in one and the Scotish Central Highlands in another.

Note: I like to keep the railways of different countries in separate directories, the reason being to prevent the TRAINS directory from getting to insane sizes which makes looking for rolling stock a major problem, The above discovery will make this a breeze.

Lindsay

Where did you create these Directories and how did you set up the different "mini" installs?
I figured that out, but can I also suggest that the main sound folder be added too.

[copperpen]

I have been running in this way for several months now, using the four folders under a sub folder of OR. I do however think that there is benefit to the end user in also having sets of routes and stock dedicated to a particular theme similar to the MSTS mini install system.