Experiments

I seem to be writing up the notes of my experiments in two different threads, so I thought I'd create a separate one to report developments.

I now have a route - Aln Valley - playable in BVE 4, BVE 5 and openBVE. I have encountered transparency issues in BVE 5, but not in the other two. Next, I want to be able to package them up so that I can distribute them to others for testing.

But I don't want to have different sets of objects for BVE 5 and the other two, nor do I want to end up with multiple trains. So I've spent a couple of hours this evening working out how I can arrange the folder tree such that all three programs will use just one set of trains and one set of objects.

To cut a long story short, these are the results of my experiments this evening:

- Bvets5: the program itself can sit anywhere on your hard drive.
- BVE 4: is a bit more sensitive as to where the trains can be.

This folder structure works:



This enables all three sims to find the objects in the new 'structures' folder. Trains are where they've always been.

In order for BVE 4 and openBVE to work, the route file needs to be amended so that the indexing for all objects is an absolute path (if that's the correct terminology?), such as in this example for rail 0:

.rail(0) ..\..\Railway\2012 Routes\name of the BVE 5 route folder\structures\Aln Valley\tracks\brown.x

and, obviously, has to look for the 'structures' folder rather than the 'objects' folder.


For BVE 5 to work, well, I had difficulty attempting to put an absolute path into the 'structures.csv' list, so that's why I'm 'nesting' the routes in this manner. In the file BVE 5 uses to define the scenario, I simply made an absolute path to the BVE 4 train:

Bvets Scenario 1.00

Title = [142_088] Aln Valley evening
Author = eezypeazy
Route = Aln Valley 2012 [142_088] Evening\map.txt
RouteTitle = Aln Valley 2012
Vehicle =..\..\Train\Cl142_088\vehicle.txt
VehicleTitle = Cl142_088
Comment = Converted Document.


... you'll spot the absolute path to the train.

I also found two more folders and files in the 'converted' train that I copied over to the existing BVE 4 train folder.

So this is my next phase of this work:

- Complete the absolute paths in the BVE 4 route file
- Package everything up into one installer. This will include the extra files required for the BVE 4 train, together with a warning that the installer is about to add files to the train; and also three desktop shortcuts, so that each version can be launched from a Windows desktop without the need to open the program and navigate to the correct file.

Not sure how my week is going to pan out - it might be next week before I complete and test all this.


Regards to all

eezypeazy

An interesting take on things there Eezy, trying to get my head round it all, but I shall do some tests of my own soon.

guillyman wrote:An interesting take on things there Eezy, trying to get my head round it all, but I shall do some tests of my own soon.

I found that once I'd looked at it a couple of times, it seems to make sense.

Although if anyone can come up with a slicker way of doing it, I'll always listen!

Tonight I've completed amending the paths in the BVE 4 route file and confirmed that the route runs correctly on all three simulators, with the only real issues being transparency and some minor object placement issues in BVE 5.

I'm off to make the hot chocolate and settle down in front of the telly next, but this is my plan for tomorrow evening. I shall create the desktop shortcuts, then package everything up into an installer (as I said above), put it on a memory stick and attempt to install it all on my wife's pc. If that works, then some time on Friday I'll hide the installer on the BVE Pages website and publish a link to it in this thread. Then, I'd be grateful for feedback on how all three run on other people's pcs.

Development work will then continue. I want to add a barrow crossing at Alnwick and think about one or two other things to tart it up.

Kind regards

eezypeazy

Quick progress report: I've had some time to package up the files and tried unpacking them onto my wife's machine. I had some of the files in the wrong places, so I'll need to have another go at it.

Ah! Things happen like that - I never did get my head around configuring one of these installers when there is a complex folder structure.

At my end, I've just downloaded a non-web based installer for the DirectX run-time files, so I hope to have BVE5 up and running later. This will of course place me in a much better position to offer feedback than I have been...

Have just got BVE5 and a Japanese route to run this morning. Think I'll be ready to try some other routes now.

Mick.

Me too. I successfully installed the non-web-based DirectX run-time files last night and ran the Japanese default route, which was quite impressive in its performance. There was none of the stalling, or jerkiness that I'd come to expect with openBVE, so I can honestly say that the outlook appears promising for BVE5.

Then my troubles began! Not having access to the Internet, I then attempted to install Stephen's work on TWI-WAT without recourse to the folder structure guide. I managed to work out after several attempts the basic format, by examining Mackoy's scenario, and by reading in the .txt and .csv files exactly what the simulator is looking for and where. The result was a successful run from Twickenham to Putney, albeit without the signals and other items in the correct place, but I will solve these matters this evening.

By this time I will have eezypeazy's diagram above copied to my memory stick, and will therefore be able to check if his ideas work on my PC. I must say, I prefer to keep everything relating to the simulator in one folder too, much tidier and allows easier porting to other environments.

Well I made a little more progress last night. I'm starting to make more sense of the hierarchy of files which Mackoy refers to, but I've not yet decided whether the folder structure needs to be as rigid as we are assuming, since all the necessary files are given their address within the individual .csv or .txt files. I'm beginning to see that there is a lot of credibility in eezypeazy's approach, but I will need to be fully conversant with the principles before writing any guides.