Scenario Packaging

[jimbf]

I need some help in packaging a scenario for uploading to the files area of train-sim. Has anyone experience in sucessfully uploading KRS scenarios?

[pallent]

had experience uploading my own scenarios to Train-Sim.com. There are two easy ways to package a KRS scenario:

1) Use the KRS Package Manager. This produces an RPK file which can then be used to install the scenario--but there have been reports of problems when using this method to install scenarios.

2) Use RS_Tools_The_Missing_Bits, which can be downloaded from Train-Sim.com. This produces a scenario.bin file with the proper pathing and an installation EXE-type file, plus a couple of other files. Take a good look at the program's help file before creating a package!

In either case, the creator of the scenario has to add a readme.txt file and a fileID.diz file to the package; a screen-shot may also be added. There are complete instructions for this on the Train-Sim.com web pages: click on the Upload Info link near the top of the homepage or at the bottom of the file library page. Read everything carefully and when all else fails, follow the instructions.

Good luck!

Tom Pallen

[RSDLadam]

1) Use the KRS Package Manager. This produces an RPK file which can then be used to install the scenario--but there have been reports of problems when using this method to install scenarios.

Hiya,

This is incorrect. There are NO known problems using the official Package Creator or Package Manager supplied with the RSDevTools. This is infact the safest method of all as it has been developed by the official team and works very securely with the RS file formats.

Internal sharing of files at RSDL is soley done using the RPK format, and no manual editing of files is ever required.

[sniper297]

No KNOWN problems because there's no conclusive proof, what Tom said was there have been REPORTS of problems, and indeed there have. Tom sent me an officially packaged .rpk scenario, which removed three out of eight installed routes from the list including the route that the scenario was for. I sent the same .rpk file to Mike Simpson for analysis, on his system it wiped the entire routes.xml file leaving only the header. After reading your report on manual hacking and corrupted routes.xml files I had Tom zip up the routes.xml file he used to package the problematic .rpk, it passed the browser test with no problems for both me and Mike.

None of the testing Mike and I have done on the official packager conclusively PROVES that there's anything wrong with it, but it is questionable. Mike's unofficial installer also makes automatic backups before appending code to scenarios.bin or routes.xml on the end user's system, which to my way of thinking makes that the safest.

[OwainGlyndwr]

I go for the official packager, i have distributed many private scenarios for testing without problems.

[sniper297]

http://forums.flightsim.com/vbts/attachment.php?attachmentid=3361&stc=1&d=1208577983

[OwainGlyndwr]

Heheheheehehehe, i am satan's henchman. :D

No offence to Mike S, as he knows i admire all the work he does for trainsimming.

But i have downloaded scenarios and routes using non default packagers and they have totally screwed up my RS install. ;)

Mike.

[RSDLadam]

Tom sent me an officially packaged .rpk scenario, which removed three out of eight installed routes from the list including the route that the scenario was for.

Hiya,

Any chance you could name the officially packaged RPK? It appears you have found official content that causes issues that we certainly are not aware of. I would like to resolve any issues with official download content as quickly as possible! First of all we will need to remove it from download. However you havent said what RPK it is :(

[sniper297]

Hee-hee, I think we're talking about two different things here. No, I haven't found any "official content" anywhere with any problems, what I'm talking about is unofficial content (AKA third party) packaged with the official packager. IIRC youse guys said the official packager don't corrupt the .rpk file unless the routes.xml it was packaged from was already corrupted, in this particular case the .rpk had a problem, the routes.xml file it was packaged from checked out okay. I'll do a little hunting to see if I can find the little lab rats in question, altho one example isn't really gonna prove or disprove anything. "Reports of problems" refers primarily to "missing routes", mostly on UKtrainsim.

Improvements, number one some kind of error checker, two have the installer make an automatic backup before appending code to routes.xml and/or scenarios.bin. (Better would be to reprogram that whole mess, similar to blueprints.pak - if the blueprints.pak file is missing from an assets subfolder the game scans the subsubfolders and rebuilds the blueprints.pak, would be better if something similar happened with the routes.xml file and scenarios.bin files to make repairs easier. This, of course, would necessitate having all the info for the route somewhere in the route's folder itself, but that's really where it belongs anyway.) Third;

http://forums.flightsim.com/vbts/attachment.php?attachmentid=3400&stc=1&d=1208788678

A little more user friendly interface. I want to package the Churchtown scenario from Port Ogden & Northern US3 route, the official packager won't let me do that - instead it requires me to package the d9c125d9-850d-4f18-8651-bf8e3f377283 scenario from the d7b39091-c2b5-44c4-beaf-6ed5047db8a6 route, how do I know which one that is?!

http://forums.flightsim.com/vbts/attachment.php?attachmentid=3401&stc=1&d=1208788690

Kinda like that. :cool:

[dhammerman2003]

Adam,

I know what Jim is talking about as I had an issue with this. A perfect example is here (http://forums.flightsim.com/vbts/showthread.php?t=268724).

Dave

[sniper297]

That one don't support my position, it contradicts it, since the trouble you had was with Mike's installer, not the official one. Score one for Adam. :cool: Seems to me there was one other example of Mike's screwing up and deleting routes, but the majority were from the official installer. Which might prove my point if I could remember what the hell my point was. :rolleyes: Trouble these days is I follow carefully and test thoroughly then promptly forget what I learned, but IIRC (not likely) this is some kind of "stealth" thing where a corrupt .rpk file works fine, but screws up the code in the routes.xml file so the next thing you install after that (with either installer? Have to ask Mike) trashes the routes.xml file.

[OwainGlyndwr]

http://digitaltraction.net/joomla/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=68&Itemid=2

[MikeSimpson]

Hiya,

Any chance you could name the officially packaged RPK? It appears you have found official content that causes issues that we certainly are not aware of. I would like to resolve any issues with official download content as quickly as possible! First of all we will need to remove it from download. However you havent said what RPK it is :(

Hi Adam,

I can not find the package with incorrect Routes.xml file in it at this time, but the problem was that once the Package Manager was run to extract the .rpk file, the entry for the Routes.xml which were appended had all lines ending in Line Feed only rather than Carriage Return/Line Feed combinations.

Any subsequent entries to the Routes.xml which were in the correct format were then apprently invisible to Rail Simulator.

Mike

[OTTODAD]

I have been working with Mike since day one of his RouteSetup.exe and later found that a separate AssetSetup.exe is doing the same, installing whatever is in it's Rail Simulator folder, deleting all the Blueprints.pak files it can find in the process. After a few initial niggles were taken care of by him have had no problems using either since, but am now using the RouteSetup.exe for installing combined route and assets add-ons.

To make sure that there are no included Assets BATCH files, which could be missed by an combined install, not updating what they are supposed to, I first install the downloaded Assets on their own and then add their folders/files to the combined add-ons RouteSetup.exe Rail Simulator folder.

Doing similar with *.rpk scenarios downloads, I first let the Package Manager deal with them and after having checked that all of the route is still working as it should, including the newly added one, then add the new scenarios to the RouteSetup.exe Rail Simulator folder.

Having done that with Jim's downloads for some time now, saving installers having to download separate Assets ZIPs from God knows where, all my web site's RS downloads are complete and ready to run out of the box ! ;)

However, doing it this way will always overwrite whatever a user has modified in the previous version of the route ! :(

I should have thought that a scenarios only install for existing routes would do similar to what a route install does with the Routes.xml, check the route's Scenarios.bin and if the scenario is not listed in it will then add it to it and install the new scenario folder ?

O t t o

[sniper297]

It does do that if you extract to a temp folder before running assetsetup.exe. The file should include scenario.bin, scenario.yyy, and scenario.zzz. The .yyy file specifies the route folder name and the scenario folder within that route to copy the scenario.bin file to after creating that subfolder in scenarios. The .zzz file contains the code that should be APPENDED to the scenarios.bin file for that route, it doesn't overwrite anything. The official packager works the same way except for some reason it appends code to the routes.xml file as if it was installing a route and a scenario for some reason, possibly to do with the object filter.

Three "master list" files for railsim;

1. routes.xml - contains the name of the route, folder number, coordinates and assorted other stuff like filter sets, terrain paint texture set, default weather, and so on. This is the file that the list of routes in the menu comes from.

2. Scenarios.bin - each route folder has one of these, and if it's missing the game automatically generates a new one with a blank, empty free roam scenario at the zero zero coordinates in the route. Scenarios.bin has a list of scenario names and which subfolder of \scenarios that name is associated with, along with the location of the marker and weather type. This is the file that the list of scenarios for that one route comes from.

3. Blueprints.pak - several of these at present, one in each subdeveloper's folder, this lists the assets (scenery objects, track, trainsets) for that filter set.

None of the three have anything to do with each other, if you install an asset you don't need to append code to the routes.xml file, if you install a scenario you don't need to delete any of the blueprints.pak files, since the blueprints.pak files would be rebuilt exactly as they were before if no new assets were installed. Only reason the installers delete the blueprints.pak files when installing routes or scenarios is for the automation, if an asset is packaged with the route or scenario it will be added to the list automatically, if there are no additional assets then deleting the blueprints.pak doesn't do any harm.

If you're getting addon scenarios overwriting existing scenarios, then something isn't packaged right or something isn't being installed right.

[Capt_Scarlet]

The package manager does put into the PackageUninstallInfo folder a .inf file that stops you installing a package if its already installed. This is also where it gets the info to uninstall a package as well if you wanted to.

John

[RSDLadam]

Hiya,

I read through the topic linked, but its discussion heads off down copying files and executables all over you computer which I would never recommend anyone to do. Certainly no processes of installing RPK files with the Package Manager requires any such action.

[sniper297]

Hee-hee, don't read THAT link, Dave works at the Illinois Railway Museum and he's been smoking too much anthracite. :rolleyes: That thread doesn't do anything at all to support my argument, it supports your argument since it's one of the times Mike's unofficial installer apparently screwed the pooch. :eek: Can't remember offhand if that was the only time or there was another, or if we ever found the actual cause.

Anyway, the point here, your theory is that manual hacking of routes.xml trashes same, packaging from the trashed routes.xml corrupts .rpk, installing corrupted .rpk trashes routes.xml on the end user's system which then removes routes from the list the next time he installs something else. Tom said he didn't manually edit the routes.xml file, and he zipped up that routes.xml file and I tested it in Internet Explorer with no errors, yet the .rpk file generated from that routes.xml removed three out of eight routes from my system and all routes from Mike Simpson's system. Running the packager from that same routes.xml file on my system generated a .rpk file that did NOT delete any routes, so who knows. My theory is that the official packager is what's actually responsible for corrupting the .rpk files, but I haven't been able to conclusively prove that, if it's true then it's a random event. Most of the reports on UKtrainsim of "where did my routes go?" involve the .rpk packages tho, so to my way of thinking the official packager is still questionable until there's conclusive proof either way of the actual cause. Meantime everyone needs to back up the routes.xml file periodically just in case since it's a critical file with no built in safeguards.

[OTTODAD]

Hi guys !

I have been using the Packager Manager since downloading the first add-on rolling stock packages, official and third-party and had no problems whatsoever.

Installing the JT-US add-on and the German Railroads rolling stock and scenarios add-ons for the HAGEN route again had no problems.

Could it be that some problems originate with how these add-ons have been prepared before being packaged by the RS Packager tool ?

I have also added routes and scenarios manually to the Routes.xml and Scenarios.bin files, after copying some and renaming the last digit of their folders.

I have motivated the ConBuilder team into creating their MSTSManager and perhaps one day can do the same to Mike Simpson, creating a RS-Manager utility, which will do the above easier ? ;)

O t t o

http://forums.flightsim.com/vbts/attachment.php?attachmentid=3447&stc=1&d=1208970249

http://forums.flightsim.com/vbts/attachment.php?attachmentid=3448&stc=1&d=1208970249