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Pennsylvania Steam crash [SOLVED]

Unread postPosted: Mon Feb 14, 2022 8:50 pm
by torfmeister
Hello fellow simmers.

It's been a while since I last enjoyed this wonderful route. Coming back to it now, it refuses to work. I can't even load it into the World Editor - after a few seconds of loading: OOM and it crashes to Desktop.

I have a well maintained system, and no issues with TS - apart from this. Tried reinstalling it, running in 32bit, with -disableFastload, cleared blueprint caches and SDBCache - all to no avail.

Could anyone having it confirm that it's running/not running on TS 72.0a? That would help me in finding out why this happens.

Thanks in advance!

Re: Pennsylvania Steam crash

Unread postPosted: Mon Feb 14, 2022 10:30 pm
by trev123
I have just downloaded this and the 2 scenario packs and ran the first scenario with no issues.

Re: Pennsylvania Steam crash

Unread postPosted: Tue Feb 15, 2022 9:42 am
by torfmeister
Thank you trev123, so the problem is on my side.

Is there anyone who can make something out of this? This is what LogMate reports.

Code: Select all
2022.02.15 14:42:31.201 - [NOT SET] - Assertion failed
2022.02.15 14:42:31.221 - [NOT SET] -
2022.02.15 14:42:31.221 - [NOT SET] - ASSERT(mStartPos.isNearCurrentOrigin());
2022.02.15 14:42:31.221 - [NOT SET] -
2022.02.15 14:42:31.221 - [NOT SET] - cCurveStraight::setPosition()
2022.02.15 14:42:31.221 - [NOT SET] -
2022.02.15 14:42:31.221 - [NOT SET] - cCurveStraight.cpp : 359
2022.02.15 14:42:31.221 - [NOT SET] - Assertion failed
2022.02.15 14:42:31.221 - [NOT SET] -
2022.02.15 14:42:31.221 - [NOT SET] - ASSERT(mStartPos.isNearCurrentOrigin());
2022.02.15 14:42:31.221 - [NOT SET] -
2022.02.15 14:42:31.221 - [NOT SET] - cCurveStraight::setTangent()
2022.02.15 14:42:31.221 - [NOT SET] -
2022.02.15 14:42:31.221 - [NOT SET] - cCurveStraight.cpp : 372
2022.02.15 14:42:31.221 - [NOT SET] - Assertion failed
2022.02.15 14:42:31.221 - [NOT SET] -
2022.02.15 14:42:31.221 - [NOT SET] - ASSERT(mStartPos.isNearCurrentOrigin());
2022.02.15 14:42:31.221 - [NOT SET] -
2022.02.15 14:42:31.221 - [NOT SET] - cCurveStraight::setTangent()
2022.02.15 14:42:31.221 - [NOT SET] -
2022.02.15 14:42:31.221 - [NOT SET] - cCurveStraight.cpp : 372
2022.02.15 14:42:31.221 - [NOT SET] - Assertion failed
2022.02.15 14:42:31.221 - [NOT SET] -
2022.02.15 14:42:31.221 - [NOT SET] - ASSERT(mStartPos.isNearCurrentOrigin());
2022.02.15 14:42:31.221 - [NOT SET] -
2022.02.15 14:42:31.221 - [NOT SET] - cCurveStraight::setTangent()
2022.02.15 14:42:31.221 - [NOT SET] -
2022.02.15 14:42:31.221 - [NOT SET] - cCurveStraight.cpp : 372
2022.02.15 14:42:31.221 - [NOT SET] - Assertion failed
2022.02.15 14:42:31.221 - [NOT SET] -
2022.02.15 14:42:31.221 - [NOT SET] - ASSERT(mStartPos.isNearCurrentOrigin());
2022.02.15 14:42:31.221 - [NOT SET] -
2022.02.15 14:42:31.221 - [NOT SET] - cCurveStraight::setTangent()
2022.02.15 14:42:31.221 - [NOT SET] -
2022.02.15 14:42:31.221 - [NOT SET] - cCurveStraight.cpp : 372

Re: Pennsylvania Steam crash

Unread postPosted: Tue Feb 15, 2022 11:35 am
by buzz456
Looks like something is buggerd on your route installation. I think you mentioned that you had re-installed it. Did you download a fresh copy? If not I suggest you do that and then re-install.

Re: Pennsylvania Steam crash

Unread postPosted: Tue Feb 15, 2022 12:17 pm
by torfmeister
Thanks, I'll try that.

Sadly that did not help.

Re: Pennsylvania Steam crash

Unread postPosted: Tue Feb 15, 2022 1:36 pm
by AmericanSteam
Manually delete the route before reinstalling to remove all associated files. I usually use NameMyRoute to find it and manually delete it from there.

Re: Pennsylvania Steam crash

Unread postPosted: Tue Feb 15, 2022 3:21 pm
by trev123
Did you remove the scenarios from the content routes folder?

Re: Pennsylvania Steam crash

Unread postPosted: Tue Feb 15, 2022 6:39 pm
by torfmeister
Thanks, I did do all that, completely removed assets and routes\GUID folder. I also put it on a second clean RailWorks offline install which only has Academy, Kuju\RailSimulatorCore, RailSimulator, RailsimulatorUS, RSDL\Foliage01 and G-TraX\BLE installed. I can load it there, fired up Employee Excursion Part 3 but as the camera intro zoomed in on that guy in the park it crashed again...

Also editing the template route to use the core TimeOfDay seasonal files instead of default.xml for all 4 seasons was not the cause. Really odd. I managed to have an almost OOM free Railworks (430 Gigs) but only this one is giving me headaches...

I used TS Tools to check if it uses assets not declared in the RouteProperties (which btw caused the Black Polygons in Ohio and Fort Kent because the ScaleRail traffic uses cars from IslandLine - which is not preloaded by RouteProperties.xml - simply adding "RSDL\IslandLine" to the blueprintSet in RouteProperties.xml fixed the bug), but it crashed while scanning scenery with some error message that would not close, having to kill the process with TaskManager.

The fact I can at least start a scenario on a clean install tells me that there are more assets in use, and some other DLC interferes somehow.

I'm gonna do some testing if I can spot something in the World Editor on the clean install, having replaced the milk bottle's GeoPcDx with a huge OxPadd chimney, so I can easily see missing stuff.

Edit: I can rule that out, just flew over the map, no chimneys. So no other assets are being referenced.

Seems this is one of the TS oddities. I can use the workaround playing it on the second clean install. Thanks for your help!

Re: Pennsylvania Steam crash

Unread postPosted: Tue Feb 15, 2022 7:11 pm
by trev123
Have you looked in Windows Event Viewer to see if anything is showing up in that?

Re: Pennsylvania Steam crash

Unread postPosted: Tue Feb 15, 2022 8:05 pm
by torfmeister
Yes, it gives no information.

As the so-called OOM message (which imho is just hiding the fact that TS has no error handling code, except for milk bottles and missing rolling stock and tracks.bin queries) has nothing to do with Out-of-Memory and RailWorks shuts itself down instead of being shutdown by the OS, nothing is reported. It seems it quits sending a "zero" returncode to the OS, and internally the WriteCache will be written on the next proper exit.

Indeed the "OOM" is the only critical error message that TS has built in, not showing the real reason for the shutdown (Vertex buffer error comes from DirectX). Actually the engine is still almost the same as in 2007, and I feel it has problems handling too much content.
In 2007, the number of DLC was easily manageable. In the early versions of RailSimulator there wasn't even a ScenarioProperties, and the engine checked the scenario.bin for which assets to load. As it grew, they introduced the BlueprintSetPreLoad.

The Consist Editor is clearly showing that, for me, it is unusable. (Don't do Quick Drives anyway... I like setting up a FreeRoam just like in the Run8 world)

Re: Pennsylvania Steam crash

Unread postPosted: Wed Feb 16, 2022 8:31 am
by buzz456
torfmeister wrote:Yes, it gives no information.

As the so-called OOM message (which imho is just hiding the fact that TS has no error handling code, except for milk bottles and missing rolling stock and tracks.bin queries) has nothing to do with Out-of-Memory and RailWorks shuts itself down instead of being shutdown by the OS, nothing is reported. It seems it quits sending a "zero" returncode to the OS, and internally the WriteCache will be written on the next proper exit.

Indeed the "OOM" is the only critical error message that TS has built in, not showing the real reason for the shutdown (Vertex buffer error comes from DirectX). Actually the engine is still almost the same as in 2007, and I feel it has problems handling too much content.
In 2007, the number of DLC was easily manageable. In the early versions of RailSimulator there wasn't even a ScenarioProperties, and the engine checked the scenario.bin for which assets to load. As it grew, they introduced the BlueprintSetPreLoad.

The Consist Editor is clearly showing that, for me, it is unusable. (Don't do Quick Drives anyway... I like setting up a FreeRoam just like in the Run8 world)


Most of the OOMs that everyone loves to blame on the game is mostly caused by inadequacy of the computer. All the folks playing on some computer not built for gaming or a out of the box desktop again not made for gaming and then blaming the game for not doing it's job is wrong. I don't have anything real fancy here but a good cpu is a must and having a fairly fast gpu means almost never getting the dreaded OOM. I can't remember the last time I was running a route and had one of those pesky things show up and trust me I have a tone of assets, routes and scenarios loaded on mine.

Re: Pennsylvania Steam crash

Unread postPosted: Wed Feb 16, 2022 11:53 am
by AmericanSteam
Almost all of my OOMs in consist building using the builder have been because of corrupted assets.Running Logmate while loading will help in identifying those assets and remove/fix the offending file.

Re: Pennsylvania Steam crash

Unread postPosted: Wed Feb 16, 2022 2:06 pm
by buzz456
I would agree with that completely. The only thing the game lacks is telling you what went wrong but in that respect it joins a whole host of other programs while enjoying the mysteries of computers. I can't name the number of times I've commented to my bride who's also a semi geek that "If only the darn thing would tell me what it doesn't like I'd do it."

Re: Pennsylvania Steam crash

Unread postPosted: Wed Feb 16, 2022 7:29 pm
by torfmeister
All I was saying that it is not related to your system memory - in this case Windows would give you a message like "Railworks.exe has stopped working." Pagefile usage never exceeds 4 GB. There is some sort of problem in Railworks.exe handling physical memory and Virtual Address Space. We're having a tech discussion on DTG forums on this and the 'Pagefile' myth which DTG endorses.

Indeed it is related mostly to bad assets, and there a lots of them (Alaska - a wonderful route which was clearly released before it was finished, has Wildlife assets consisting of just an XML header), and workshop scenarios that get corrupted after download. TS unpacks them from the 24010 download folder, inserts Workshop tags to the ScenarioProperties.xml and saves them to the Routes folder, and this is where things can get screwed up. I sorted this out for me and have almost no crashes anymore, having about 500GB of content.

Re: Pennsylvania Steam crash

Unread postPosted: Wed Feb 16, 2022 8:32 pm
by buzz456
What triggered me was this comment. "Actually the engine is still almost the same as in 2007, and I feel it has problems handling too much content." We have way more content than we we had back when I joined in this sim in 2010 and the game is ten times more stable than it was back then so I just can't go along with this being the cause of problems some people have experienced in the last couple of years.