Compute and save - anybody know for sure?

[sniper297]

I've heard two things about the "compute and save" function;
1. It's only for packaging an activity for TSunpack, and has no other function.
2. The ASV file created loads faster in the sim.

I'm here to tell you #2 is BS, I made an activity with AI trains starting an hour before the player, spawning 10 minutes apart, so there are 7 AI trains on the route when the player appears. The "computing simulation state" portion of the loading screen takes longer as a result, so I thought I would try cloning the activity (change display name, save as stevens point1 instead of stevens point), and after saving, I did the "compute and save". Then I loaded the original activity, timing it from clicking on "start" to the second the screen appeared, 22 seconds. I did the same for the activity with the monster-sized ASV file, 22 seconds.
I really can't tell if there's any difference in "stuttering" framerates when an AI train is approaching a meet with the player, maybe it's supposed to affect that.
Does anyone know the real deal with compute and save?

[chucksc]

Good question Sniper... I've wondered that myself... I thought maybe (MAYBE) it was just a compled version of the activity files to save space and loading time also.. but never did the experiment.... I've done them just as a matter of habit for every activity I throw together.... If you get the answer please let me know... Now you've got me curious!

------Chuck Schneider---------
http://forums.flightsim.com/dcforum/User_files/3be393470fae6ec7.jpg
-----"Power for You"-------

[chucksc]

And yes I know, you've caught one of us rolling stock boyz lurking over here in the routes and activities domain... But I promise not to interject anything of substance here.... LOL!

------Chuck Schneider---------
http://forums.flightsim.com/dcforum/User_files/3be393470fae6ec7.jpg
-----"Power for You"-------

[andyknott]

I should read this forum more often.

I spent most of last night trying to work out why when I changed
the starting speed of a player driven train in an activity it
had reverted back when I played it.

Using the "save as" function is ok. Using the "compute and save"
does not save certain values.

Ah the joys of MSTS

Andy K

[rgarber]

Jim,

I was a bit suspicious of the #2 when I first saw it mentioned too. Seems very odd a programmer would make a routine to see the same file under two different extensions. It's probably just a temp file that's created while it figures whatever compute and save is doing. I know with the programs I have written I create temp files too for when reports get complicated. Then I copy the contents of the temp file back to the main file after everything has been all sorted out.

On the speed thingy. It's been awhile since I did an activity but what I found out but never verified this was you can save the start and end speed better if you save it with the values the same. See if that works for you'all. There's definetely a trick to doing it (another MSTS rubiks cube puzzle) though. Maybe it's like the passenger time schedule trick. Dunno. Never used start and end speeds that much to warrant investigating exactly how its done.

Rich Garber

[sniper297]

Actually they're two different formats, if you open an .act file in wordpad it's all text, the .asv file is 3 times the size, but in code. That's why I can't tell exactly what they put in there, unlike .act it's not readable in English. Using ffedit to convert an .s file to binary makes it smaller, not bigger, and supposedly that loads faster too. Has anyone tried packaging an activity with AI traffic without using "compute and save"? If that works it would be a tipoff that it ain't for packaging.
Speed is a wierd thing, I like to start my activities with the engine sitting still, so you don't get the feeling that Scotty beamed you into the cab of a train that was already underway. The AI traffic start and end speeds don't affect how fast it cruises, that's in the "expected performance", which defaults to 75. It obstinately resets itself to 75 every time you edit the activity, I've found the cure for that is to set for 25, create a clone (use as template), then delete the original.

[Mark_Blum]

Rich:

Is there a passenger time schedule trick? I can't get many of mine to compute the entire path :-( Shoulda known it was a trick!

Thanks

Mark
A Southern Railway Fan

[bobs]

I can't remember where I learned about this, but here's what I've heard:

File/Save will create an .act file.

File/Compute and save will create both an .act and an .asv. Supposedly the .asv is compiled and loads faster, but, like shapes and world files, it doesn't seem that way.

If you make a subsequent change to an activity that has an .asv file, but you just save, not compute and save, you now are out of synch. Apparently, if an asv file exists, it is loaded, so the changes that are in the .act file never make it into the sim. The .asv file is not required and you are probably better off without it!

File/Package Activity will create an .apk file. This is for distribution of your activity to others and includes consists, paths, and all that good stuff. It can only be processed by TSUnpack.

[rgarber]

What was I gonna say? Ever go to answer a post and forget what the question was? Hold on...

oh yeah...

Compute and save. I never do it. Never have probably never will. From what I learned is it doesn't have an effect on the activities. This was way back in the early days but those guys somehow knew the activity editor pretty good. You can take the asv or whatever it is file it creates, turn it backwards, forewards, play it backwards, rename it, whatever and no difference in the activity. I don't even include them in the distribution of files. The gist is no 11K file versus a 30K file can possibly make that much difference. The only difference is one is coded more like the machine wants to see it. But no activity happens that fast that a cpu isn't falling asleep while you're at the wheel. So I never use it or include it.

There is a trick to the passenger time schedule, Mark. You first type in the arrival time into arrival time. Then you type in departure time into arrival time (yep, arrival time, not a typo). Then you type the arrival time back into the arrival time and wholla! Works, it really does. Kuju logic supreme-OOOHHH!!! :-)

It's almost as bad as somebody naming their route after the number 11 when it was supposed to be 10. Now who'd a do something like that???

Rich Garber

[Denny]

LAST EDITED ON Mar-03-02 AT 12:22PM (EST)[p] "The AI traffic start and end speeds don't affect how fast it cruises, that's in the "expected performance"-Sniper.

To add my impressions here, I've noticed it seems that the player/AI paths and actions affect the AI speeds.
I had set a freight AI to enter at 45 mph and overtake the player soon after the start of the activity. the AI overtakes the player under a clear green, but only moving at 37 mph. the player then overtakes the AI, but in the middle of of a block the AI suddenly pickes (old english) up speed and walks away from the player who's running under a 45-approach.
But in the above case, the AI path converges with the player ahead so as to cause the player to "ride his bumper".
I had tried all sort of start speeds and performances for the AI, but he always cruised by me at 37 mph.
When set in a path that didn't converge, he booked on by me at the start.
As to the hair pulling over performance changes sticking, I've only been able to make them take by deleting the path, resetting the performance level, and then re-doing the path.
Regards to all,
Denny
nectrackteam@aol.com
http://forums.flightsim.com/dcforum/User_files/3be893ad589dbb46.jpg

[sniper297]

Wow, who unburied this one? Oh, that's you, Denny. Yeah, until someone says otherwise, that's the way I understand it. The expected performance in the player service is only for the VCR play feature in the activity editor, and don't affect anything else. It's basically a guess at what speed the player will move in the activity, so you can see how the interaction with AI trains will be affected if the player does indeed average that speed. I still have no idea what the numbers mean, percentage of overall route speed, percentage of average throttle setting, who knows. The AI service expected performance directly affects the speed they move at, altho it's a guess-and-try-it approach, to the best of my knowledge nobody ever came up with an exact formula, or another way to control AI speed. The expected performance obstinately resets to the default 75 every time you open the activity, so what I do is create a service, set the expected performance, then make a clone of it with the "use as template" for both the service and the path. Then I delete the originals, and use the clone, which has a default of whatever the original was set for when I made the clone.
45 is a little fast for heavy freights for my tastes, so I use something between 25 and 30 to get an average speed of 15 - 20mph. That don't work on everything, the 30 to 40 car 2x dash 9 consists and the single geep with 17 cars are pretty close, but the default 2xGP38 35 mixed cars is a lot slower than any of them. Here's the six AI consists I used in PO&N5, and their expected performance to get them all running at the same average speed of 15 to 20 mph:
1xGP38, 17 mixed: 23
2xGP38, 35 mixed: 30
2xDash 9, 30 grain: 27
2xDash 9, 30 mixed: 25
2xDash 9, 40 mixed: 25
2xDash 9, 37 oil: 25
The different values needed between apparently similar trains, and same values for wierd things like the 30 mixed and 40 mixed, are because of the different weights of the cars. Trying to slow the whole pack down by dropping the single geep with 17 cars to 20 causes it, or any other train at 20 or below, to suddenly stop at green signals and refuse to start again, so 20 is the lowest limit I've been able to use.
Speeds are also affected by curves and grades, altho the AI traffic cheats on grades and climbs hills that would be totally impossible with the player driving the same consist. Placement of signals and spacing between signals, combined with the signumclearahead value in the sigscr.dat file, also affects the AI speed. But on my route, with those values, the slowest I've clocked them at was 14, and the fastest about 20. On level track (which there ain't much of on the PO&N) a speed of 16-17 mph will usually keep pace.
I was rather ticked at the ridiculous complexity of all this, you can directly set a starting and ending speed by directly entering an mph number, but the cruising speed is by guess and by god?
I'm gonna have to do this all over again for PO&N6, since I need to make "lite" traffic for low end machines. On my son's 800mhz Athlon, GEFORCE2 GTS 64mb AGP, with the visibility turned down about halfway, specular lighting and high detail shadows off, object and train texture quality to 2, it averages 20-24fps, but when a long AI train goes by it drops to around 14 to 16 fps. I'm thinkig shorter AI trains may cure this, altho they won't look as cool, so I'll have to make both regular and diet versions of the activities, probably with less cars in the loose consists as well for the wimpy machines.

[bewdley]

I've had good results (values that 'stick') by changing the values in the Service files with a text editor.

I might be out to lunch on this, but my impression is that the Efficiency value behaves not like a straight percentage but something like a logarithmic value. If you use some low value such as .01 or .009 (I do this by editing the text file), AI trains will slow to a crawl, but increase the value to .15 and the train picks up speed. Increase it to .25 and the train seems to go at something near normal (.75) speed.

The visual effect of low values is good if 1) the train would be visible for a shortish while, say in a yard which you are leaving or 2) on portions of the track where slow speeds would be required.

AI passenger trains have an Efficiency value from station to station, so theoretically you should be able to speed up and slow down a passenger train. Freight trains have only one Efficiency value. However, if you made a freight train stop in stations ...? Silly I know but if it was timed so that the player's train didn't pass through the station while the freight train was sitting there, all the player would see would be the freight train going slowly by when passing between stations. I've tried this (but not rigorously tested it) and it does seem to have a visible effect, depending on the relative speeds of the trains at the time.

Anyone else experimented along these lines?

[rgarber]

Gosh I forgot all about this thread...

There is a trick to putting in timetable values for a passenger train.

Don't bother with the compute, or maybe you should.. I think it does it automatically...

But anyway...

First type in your arrival time, then in the same block (you'll love this), type in your departure time. THEN... type in the arrival time into the same block and you'll be set.

Sounds weird doesn' it? The entries move to the next block to the right. So you do this for every station...

...and you have Kuju magic!

Rich Garber