[Gman347]

Quote

No crew in the 22?

They all ran away when the coal started levitating! :bigboss:

It's been a while since I installed this loco. Honestly I can't recall if Bill included a crew with it? I was thinking she looks incomplete without a crew but I haven't had a chance to go back and look at the original install files. If he did include them I can't imagine why I would not have installed them.

[atsf37l]

Here's another take on this whole issue predicated by talking with Derek Miller yesterday and by thoughts that came to me this afternoon while I was talking with a buddy about MSTS and the history of the hobby.

What Derek did with his crews for the MSTS WP 2-8-2's, and what obviously has been done with the British engines displayed, was to develop a workaround for a bug in MSTS, namely, when you create and place an FA on an existing Tender shape, MSTS expects it to be in the coal bunker and to be moveable through the software, down as coal is used and up as coal is replenished. When we use an FA on a tender for any other purpose we have to 1. Trick it into not moving by changing the 1 1 setting to 0 0, and 2. Fiddle and tinker with the shape placement until it goes where we want it and not where MSTS thinks it ought to be.

Obviously, Build 1946 and earlier versions allowed MSTS to dictate where the FA sits and therefore the crews were in the same place as MSTS but Build 1947 and later negated that. Since that ancient time, OR has been putting FA's right where the modeler placed them, even if that was a jiggled and fiddled location designed to fool KUJU.

So essentially what I am saying is that what we are dealing with here regarding the errant crews is a workaround for a bug in MSTS in the handling of FA's.

This MSTS workaround is effecting a limited number of steam locomotives that were designed for MSTS with multiple FAs. As I have shown above, the fix is simple and should be performed on each locomotive so designed, creating OR versions of the tenders to which the FA's are attached.

We shouldn't expect the programmers and designers of ORTS to rebuild the OR software to address an MSTS bug fix.

Fix the engines, not the simulator.

{stows soapbox back under the desk} :bigboss:

[copperpen]

The simple fix is to allow a base shape to carry more than one FA. Then the crew can be attached to the engine without having to find the original author and hope he still has the source files.

[markus_GE]

copperpen, on 01 November 2014 - 01:27 AM, said:

The simple fix is to allow a base shape to carry more than one FA. Then the crew can be attached to the engine without having to find the original author and hope he still has the source files.

Well, either you need the author to fix, or you can do it yoursefl with shape file manager, as mentioned above. It´s really not that difficult to do, and since shape file editing will also be required when creating a new crew for placement in the loco, it´s a question of what one likes better.

Cheers, Markus

[gpz]

Herb, thank you for finding out what MSTS "bug" caused this behavior. Having this information it was easy to reproduce it in OR. Please try r2618.

[copperpen]

markus_GE, on 01 November 2014 - 07:18 AM, said:

Well, either you need the author to fix, or you can do it yoursefl with shape file manager, as mentioned above. It´s really not that difficult to do, and since shape file editing will also be required when creating a new crew for placement in the loco, it´s a question of what one likes better.

Cheers, Markus

In a lot of cases the author has moved on to other things, some have passed on. Source files no longer available. Shape File Manager does not have the ability to merge different shape files into one single shape. Adding crew is simple to do. However, when OR code changes and the FA is no longer where it should be then either the code has to change again, which it has, or changes have to be made to allow extra FAs onto a base shape.

[copperpen]

gpz, on 01 November 2014 - 07:34 AM, said:

Herb, thank you for finding out what MSTS "bug" caused this behavior. Having this information it was easy to reproduce it in OR. Please try r2618.

Checked several engines where this problem was, some have reverted crew in the cab, others have not, but it seems like if the crew FA is treated like the coal FA things work properly. Some repositioning of crew might be needed, but nowhere near the number required before. Thanks for the fix.

[gpz]

Can you show an example locomotive with the crew is still outstanding? In fact a particular line would be interesting in tender's .wag file:

freightanim ( WPCrew324.s 0 0 )

What do the two numbers say there?

[copperpen]

gpz, on 01 November 2014 - 11:45 AM, said:

Can you show an example locomotive with the crew is still outstanding? In fact a particular line would be interesting in tender's .wag file:

freightanim ( WPCrew324.s 0 0 )

What do the two numbers say there?

All of those I have looked at thus far are of UK origin, and have settled back into position after changing the positioning data in the eng file. Previously they had three numbers in there like a normal FA. Note, I did not say there will be only that there may be a need to reposition, which is a much better proposition than doing that to a whole folder of engines.

[atsf37l]

Way to go GPZ! Glad to be of assistance. Nearly all of my engines are now properly crewed and coaled! :pardon: Being aggressive in modifying locos to perform to their optimum in OR, I had and have to fix a dozen or so engines to put them back the way they were on their FA settings but this is far superior to having the whole OR world having to change all their engines. Glad you were able to find a simple fix that works across the board.

Paul, you're going to have to put your coalpile back! ;)