error fixing cmp, Trainz objekty, trainzclassics co uk
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A Guide to Error Fixing Assets for TRS2006
So why do my Assets have errors then?
First, a short history of the development of Trainz is necessary. Over the years there
have been many different versions of the Trainz program and the assets available
were based on the best information available at the time, or in some cases as Trainz
didn’t complain the author assumed that the asset was OK. In fact what was
happening was that earlier versions of Trainz were working around problems which
TRS2006 does not. Hence assets that apparently worked fine in TRS2004 are being
shown as ‘faulty’ in TRS2006 – the assets always were broken but TRS2004 didn’t
tell you.
Why Should Errors be Fixed?
In many cases you don’t need to fix ‘faulty’ assets as they will continue to work in
TRS2006. In some cases though a fault will prevent an asset from showing up in
Trainz, so if something you have downloaded won’t show up in Surveyor the first
thing to do is fire up CMP and see if errors are present.
Additionally human nature being what it is if something is described as ‘faulty’ then it
needs fixing. It has been reported though that using error free content can actually
improve the stability of Trainz and increase frame rates so it would seem to be
worthwhile.
What is Involved in Fixing Assets?
We’ll be looking at correcting some common faults later, but it is something that
anybody can do. Each Trainz asset has a ‘config’ text file called (surprise surprise)
‘config.txt’ (though your PC may well hide the ‘txt’ file extension in which case it
appears as ‘config’ in an Explorer window), and this is where most of the faults are to
be found.
CMP is also very helpful for analysing assets and telling you what is wrong with them.
A couple of tips though – firstly CMP has a habit of checking the DLS every so often
and opens a dialog box saying it is updating the database or verifying your
registration code. When the DLS is busy it can take a long time for these messages
to disappear if at all. Simply hit the ESC key to close the dialog box(es) and then you
can carry on working.
Secondly there are two options available for editing the config files via CMP – always
use ‘open in Explorer’ and not ‘open in CCP’. All of the files you need to edit are in
the ‘local’ folder inside the TRS2006 folder, but you should never try and edit
anything in the ‘local’ folder, instead open the asset for editing via CMP.
How Do I Find the Faults?
Start CMP and in the Search Filter choose ‘Faulty’ like this:
The ‘!’ icon denotes that the asset(s) have faults. Note that this only appears if the
‘Icon size in Main View’ is set to ‘small’ and the ‘default view in main view’ is set to
‘Assets (Text View) in the ‘Miscellaneous’ tab of the ‘Settings’ dialog box.
It is also worth noting that CMP itself includes help documentation (found under the
‘Help’ menu at the top of the window), and the main TRS2006 manual (click on the
‘Manual’ button on the TRS2006 launcher screen) has a fuller description of CMP.
Fixing Assets – Illegal Tags
The first faulty asset listed above, ‘Britannia_trailer_bogey’ demonstrates a very
common error, an illegal tag. Everything that appears at the start of a line in a config
file is a ‘tag’, a description of what follows the tag itself. Trainz versions prior to
TRS2006 simply ignored anything they couldn’t understand so tags got used for
adding comments or special information that could be used by scripts. Sometimes
the tag was even wrongly spelled which causes problems for TRS2006.
So, lets fix this error. Right click the mouse button over the faulty asset and choose
‘View Errors’ like this:
An information window opens:
Now we have to open the asset for editing to correct it. Close this window and select
the asset again with the right mouse button. This time choose ‘Edit in Explorer’.
An Explorer window will now open showing the files belonging to this asset.
‘config.txt’ or ‘config’ is what we need to change, so double click on it to open it in
your usual text editor. Don’t use Word or anything too fancy as some programs can
add extra invisible characters to the file that can trip TRS2006 up. If in doubt use the
standard Windows text editor.
Now delete the line that CMP complained about and resave the file. Select the asset
with the left mouse button in the main CMP window if it is not already selected and hit
CTRL and M together to commit the asset back into the database. This simply means
that CMP will check the asset again to see if any errors are present and will make it
available in Surveyor. Assets that are open for editing will not show up in Surveyor
unless certain options are set in the ‘Settings’ dialog box.
Once the asset has been committed the ‘!’ icon should be greyed out denoting that
the asset is now error free.
That wasn’t too bad was it?
Another case of this error could be that the ‘description’ tag in the config includes
extra ‘”’ characters The first ‘”’ defines the start of the description text and the second
one marks the end, so if there is an extra ‘”’ somewhere in the middle TRS attempts
to interpret the rest of the description as tags.
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