[roeter]

A number of routes fail to load in OR, with a crash reported during the build of the signalling database.
Investigation of a number of routes with this problem have shown that the reason in general is invalid route data. This can either be errors in the route's tdb file, or spurious world-files in the WORLD directory (these are world-files containing data like tracks and signals which are not included in the tdb-file, and therefor not actually part of the route).

The signalling database is build out of data elements from various parts of the route data - tdb data, world files and signal data (sigcfg.dat and related sigscr files). There elements are linked through a series of references and cross-references. Errors in the data structure will invariably cause errors in these reference structures, in particular it causes 'dead' references. It is these 'dead' references which causes the program to crash.

Changing the program in order to avoid these problems caused by the route data errors would require extensive changes to this part of the signalling process and probably even changes to the data structure itself, which in turn would lead to extensive changes throughout the signalling process.

In view of the limited resources in the project team and given the fact that very few routes are affected and the cause of the problem is within the route data rather than with the program, it has been decided that no effort will be made to resolve this problem.

At present, the following routes are known to be affected :

MLT Greater Toronto Area
Czech route Trat321
Paris Metro Route

Some other route which also failed to load were investigated, and these were found to have a number of spurious world files. After removal of these files, the routes loaded correctly.

These routes are :
Ferrovia delle Dolomiti
Italia13
Italia28

We are sorry to disapoint the users of the routes involved, but we feel that as only few routes are affected and the problem is clearly directly related to route data errors, the required effort cannot be justified and the limited resources available to work on the signalling code can be used better on other outstanding actions.

If we can, we will try and help to sort out the possible data-errors by advising on how this can be checked.

Regards,

Rob Roeterdink

[PA1930]

Hello.
As for the Czech Trat 321 route, I have made one crazy "hack" which was putting the sigcfg and sigcr files that didn't belong to this route, and although signals appear rather incorrectly, I was sucessfully able to do my main purpose which was just taking some screenshots on OR, so all in all it worked on replacing these files with ones that I knew it worked on other Czech routes.

[R H Steele]

roeter, on 20 May 2013 - 05:40 AM, said:

In view of the limited resources in the project team and given the fact that very few routes are affected and the cause of the problem is within the route data rather than with the program, it has been decided that no effort will be made to resolve this problem.

At present, the following routes are known to be affected :

MLT Greater Toronto Area
Czech route Trat321
Paris Metro Route

Some other route which also failed to load were investigated, and these were found to have a number of spurious world files. After removal of these files, the routes loaded correctly.

These routes are :
Ferrovia delle Dolomiti
Italia13
Italia28

We are sorry to disapoint the users of the routes involved, but we feel that as only few routes are affected and the problem is clearly directly related to route data errors, the required effort cannot be justified and the limited resources available to work on the signalling code can be used better on other outstanding actions.

If we can, we will try and help to sort out the possible data-errors by advising on how this can be checked.

Regards,

Rob Roeterdink

ALL in all a practical solution, especially since the routes appear to bear the burden for the crashes, not Open Rails. Seems like the solution lies with repairing the routes, not being a route builder, I don't know if this is practical, but upon reading some of the other post ... it seems like people are already tinkering with the routes to make changes in them. Does anyone know of any "how-tos" in Route Repair?? I use route riter but don't have enough experience with it yet to make repairs. Luckily, I have yet to load a route that just would not run under any circumstances. rhs