Railworks America

I've added cylindercock steam to an engine, and for some reason one cylindercock will intermittently emit 'black' steam. It's only the one cylindercock. The others consistently emit white steam. All of the cocks use the same emitter, except the left is mirrored from the right. A similar phenomenon happens occasionally when I leave TS running for awhile, when I'm changing something in a blueprint or script and testing it. When I restart the scenario, all particle emitters put out 'black' smoke/steam. I have to close TS and restart to put things back to normal. The problem with the cylindercock happens everytime I turn the cocks on, regardless of whether I restart TS. Can anyone offer a solution to this? Thanks!


(If I split cylindercock into 2 words it show as cylinder **, yet 'cocks' is allowed. Interesting.)

It's a bug in TS that causes the shaders to fail to load (or to load incorrectly). It's most likely to happen if you've been in the editor and play a scenario directly without first going back to the Drive menu. In some cases, you have to restart the game. I've had it happen with the FEF-3 but restarting TS always cures it.

Thanks for the quick response! I'm afraid that your suggestions don't help in my case. I also tried a 'clear cache' which forces a restart, and as soon as the engine begins to move, black steam comes from the right front emitter. As stated earlier, this is the only emitter that's affected. I thought it might be in the script, which has been updated as of yesterday. But, going back to an earlier script, which didn't produce this problem originally, now does. I'll keep troubleshooting for now. Thanks again!

I've resolved the issue. The problem was in the engine blueprint -ControlContainerComponent:ControlValues. A control for the cylinder "cocks" needed an entry under InterfaceElements, even though it doesn't have a PickTransformName (cab control) or animation associated with it. (Posted this in case someone might be interested.)

I (sheepishly) have to report that I have not resolved the problem of black steam. After the above post, it appeared to be fixed, but later, the black steam returned.

There are at least 2 things to be learned from this.
1. I don't know what I'm doing.
2. Don't believe anything I say. (unless I tell you to believe me, but then again...? )

In the meantime, I'll keep trying to fix the problem.

You'll get use to the little quirks in TS eventually and accept them as character...LOL. All games have their little quirks.

mikeadams2k wrote:I (sheepishly) have to report that I have not resolved the problem of black steam. After the above post, it appeared to be fixed, but later, the black steam returned.

There are at least 2 things to be learned from this.
1. I don't know what I'm doing.
2. Don't believe anything I say. (unless I tell you to believe me, but then again...? )

In the meantime, I'll keep trying to fix the problem.

Since I have never ever seen this on any other steam locomotive I'm sure it's not some quirk it's something that can be solved. Keep up the good fight.

buzz456 wrote:Since I have never ever seen this on any other steam locomotive I'm sure it's not some quirk it's something that can be solved. Keep up the good fight.

I have seen this many times with all different type locomotives and sometimes static scenery smoke. I would have to say its not something that occurs on a regular basis, but more random. Also, when I had my slower rig, this anomaly occurred more often. In fact, I haven't seen this anomaly happen much at all on my new faster rig. So, I am kind of inclined to support Mike on this and say that it is an anomaly within the code of TS or just a machine lag problem.

Well, let us know what you find, its always great to enjoy the resolution to a problem when someone solves it.