[Csantucci]

As suggested by James, I tried building the OR projects in AnyCPU mode, and as anticipated, XNA fails.
Here is the build log (sorry for the language, I wrongly installed my Visual Studio in Italian and didn't find a simple way to revert to English):
 Compilazione64bit.zip (1.8K)
Number of downloads: 576
(The lines where you read "mancata corrispondenza" complain about a missing match between chosen project processor reference and XNA processor reference).
Here is the pop-up when I try starting OR:


So replacing XNA would be a great thing. Unfortunately XNA is quite pervasively present in OR, and replacing it is something completely outside my knowledge.

[Csantucci]

Following this http://www.elvastowe...post__p__198081 I checked out with SVN gpz's MonoGame OR solution and built it with AnyCPU set. In fact I got no errors and OR does work, so that the 4 GB limit seems to be overcome with MonoGame, and Peter (gpz) really did a remarkable job. Now my question to an expert of versioning: Peter's modified version of OR is related to the OR version x.3503. How can I easily update it to the actual version x.3936 (maintaining Monogame specific changes) without manually checking file-by-file what must be modified and what not?

[Genma Saotome]

Q: Seeing as Peter did do a monogame conversion -- and it works -- why didn't it become the go-forward release?

[Serana]

If I remember correctly, there were still some things working properly, but I can't remember what it was.

[Csantucci]

Starting from Peter Gulyas work I was able to generate a MonoGame version of the actual release x.3956 of OR.
You can try it yourselves by downloading from here http://www.interazio...56_MonoGame.zip the executable pack, that is a separate OR installation.
You can also download the source pack from here http://www.interazio...arie/Source.zip .
If one has enough RAM memory the problems of limited address space should have gone now, also because I noticed a very strange and special thing: Monogame seems to use much less memory than XNA.
Here is a screenshot of the MonoGame OR version running

and here is a screenshot of the XNA OR version running, more or less at the same point


I found out that, in order to run, d3dcompiler_43.dll must be present in windows\System32. My Win10 release hadn't it and I had to copy it from my Win7 release.

Comments welcome.

[edwardk]

This is going to be interesting. I was wondering what the status of this when I first heard about it sometime ago.

Carlo, Do you know if Peter is still working on it?

Edit: I finally noticed the link pointing to the posts made in 2016.


Edward K.

[edwardk]

One warning, I am sure that the above download posted by Carlo is virus free, but Norton just went nuts and declared all of the "dll" files and executables as unsafe and removed them.

Edward K.

[Goku]

Csantucci, on 04 October 2017 - 12:57 PM, said:

Starting from Peter Gulyas work I was able to generate a MonoGame version of the actual release x.3956 of OR.

Impressive! Is it possible to compile it now on Linux, or are other windows dependencies in OR?

[mirekkr]

Looks good to me!
With less memory used, it seems (to me) that it runs even smoother: I tried to drive in very detailed area with heavy snow.

Mirek

[Csantucci]

Goku, on 04 October 2017 - 02:24 PM, said:

Impressive! Is it possible to compile it now on Linux, or are other windows dependencies in OR?

I don't know. If someone is interested in that, he can check that.

[dennisat]

I experimented a considerable amount with the monogame version and even kept it updated in step with the "real" version for a few months. Not only was memory usage reduced but cpu usage just about halved. I did report a few bugs to Peter but I can't find the posts now. I seem to remember that they had something to do with picking up user input correctly in some circumstances and window positioning. There might have been some graphics issues as well. Overall, I was seriously impressed with the performance compared to XNA and the bugs seemed on the face of it to be minor. I must try and find time to do get back into train simming.

Dennis

[Csantucci]

To ease developers' operations I attach here an OR Monogame developer's kit, that includes a patch file and the Monogame libraries.
The kit must be unzipped within the "Source" folder of an OR source kit that is checked out with TortoiseSVN. You will get the patch file within "Source" and the Monogame libraries within 3rdPartyLibs\Monogame. You simply execute the patch file with TortoiseSVN and you will have a buildable source version based on Monogame. I will modify the kit only if there are improvements in the Monogame operation of OR (or if some incompatibility arises). So I won't have to update the downloadable source pack any more; however I have the intention to update (not on a one-to-one basis) the downloadable executable pack with the new OR versions.
 OR_MG_DevKit_Rev2.zip (1.26MB)
Number of downloads: 542

9/10/17: updated DevKit with release that corrects the rainbow colours of the steam loco exhausts
10/10/17: updated DevKit with release that corrects inital position of OR window and centers full screen


I hope that this transient phase will last few time and that it will be decided that OR Monogame becomes the official OR version.
Patches to correct the few small remaining issues are welcome (in fact the main aim the developer's kit is that one), because in general I won't work on that: I've done the sherpa work, but I'm not able to introduce improvements.

[Csantucci]

People having this working are quite satisfied. Unfortunately, at least in my country, there also people getting problems.
Someone has a bad pixellation effect like following one:

Someone gets crash messages like following one:

which says "An attempt was made to load an assembly from a network location which would have caused the assembly to be sandboxed in previous versions of the .NET Framework. This release of the .NET Framework does not enable CAS policy by default, so this load may be dangerous."
Searching on the Internet, this seems to be the problem
https://docs.microso...access-security

Any ideas?

[edwardk]

Csantucci, on 05 October 2017 - 06:09 AM, said:

To ease developers' operations I attach here an OR Monogame developer's kit, that includes a patch file and the Monogame libraries.
The kit must be unzipped within the "Source" folder of an OR source kit that is checked out with TortoiseSVN. You will get the patch file within "Source" and the Monogame libraries within 3rdPartyLibs\Monogame. You simply execute the patch file with TortoiseSVN and you will have a buildable source version based on Monogame. I will modify the kit only if there are improvements in the Monogame operation of OR (or if some incompatibility arises). So I won't have to update the downloadable source pack any more; however I have the intention to update (not on a one-to-one basis) the downloadable executable pack with the new OR versions.
OR_MG_DevKit.zip


I hope that this transient phase will last few time and that it will be decided that OR Monogame becomes the official OR version.
Patches to correct the few small remaining issues are welcome (in fact the main aim the developer's kit is that one), because in general I won't work on that: I've done the sherpa work, but I'm not able to introduce improvements.

Carlo,

Do you know if the version being used matches with what can be downloaded from the Monogame site? I initially set up Community Edition 2017 with the latest release of Monogame.

Edward K.

[Csantucci]

The actual OR MonoGame version uses MonoGame version 3.5. The most updated MonoGame version is 3.6. I'm trying to update the OR solution to it, as I think it could solve some of the outstanding problems, but I'm not sure I'll succeed.

In the meantime here is the MonoGame version of OR x3957
http://www.interazio...57_Monogame.zip