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Issues with mail routes

Started by SuperTimo, April 18, 2019, 07:09:40 PM

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SuperTimo

Cheers James and ACarlotti.

Whilst the server is not back up and running, has anyone else noticed any issues with setting up new post routes? I recently set up a couple of post routes around Arlsinghall to deliver post to my main station there but there is no post being picked up anywhere en-route and stops state that there is no post service from the stop even though there is.

For example in the pic below you can see this stop states there is no post service but this line has been running for multiple in-game months. Via my line from the main station, which connects to two other major railways and the airport at Green Quantinglow, post on this route can go to almost anywhere in the entire map so I am surprised that there is none whatsoever (no one else is providing a post service in this area from what I can tell).



I have done some testing with post routes in offline games and they seem to be working okay so I am guessing that it is something relating to the server.

jamespetts

I have split this from the topic relating to the server specifically as this appears to be a bug report.

Can I ask whether anyone else can confirm this?
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Ranran(retired)

Mail seems to disappear little by little while waiting at the station. Is this correct behavior?
Please observe the station where the mail is waiting for a while. It is often seen that waiting mails disappear even though convoy has not arrived at that station.
Note that the values some times differ between station information and line manager. The station information dialog will be updated later.
ひめしという日本人が開発者達の助言を無視して自分好みの機能をextendedに"強引に"実装し、
コードをぐちゃぐちゃにしてメンテナンスを困難にし(とりわけ道路と建物関連)、
挙句にバグを大量に埋め込み、それを知らんぷりして放置し(隠居するなどと言って)別のところに逃げ隠れて自分のフォーク(OTRP)は開発を続けている
その事実と彼の無責任さに日本人プレイヤーは目を向けるべき。らんらんはそれでやる気をなくした(´・ω・`)
他人の振り見て我が振り直せ。ひめしのようにならないために、らんらんが生み出したバグや問題は自分で修正しなくちゃね(´・ω・`)

SuperTimo

I have tried running the server save offline at a higher speed and have noticed now I am seeing similar issues with new passenger routes.



There is a regular service at this stop, and this route connects to two other railways plus a multitude of bus routes, but no passengers appear to be being generated.



Looking at the station details it seems that the game doesn't seem to be detecting the stops that can be reached from this station for passengers. This also appears to be the case for the post routes I mentioned previously.

jamespetts

You refer to "new" routes; may I ask how new? The way in which the game works is that the path explorer (the part of the code that searches for routes between various places) runs slowly in the background. The more routes that there are, the more time that it will take to complete its work. Until it completes its work, new stops will not be recognised as being served, and will not generate traffic. I suspect that what you are seeing is just an effect of this. The path explorer can take a number of real-life minutes to complete on a game as big as the Bridgewater-Brunel server.
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SuperTimo

The mail route I included in my first post has been running for the best part of an in-game year. The passenger route is one I extended yesterday on the sever and then, by running the server game offline, I have ran for several in-game months. The passenger one could just need some more time to run, but the post routes are pretty mature in-game and I have another route where I added some mail vans to trains years ago but I see the same issue. From my experience building new routes on the sever it hasn't taken this long previously for new routes to start functioning correctly.

I would get some more precise numbers but my game crashed whilst running the server save offline and the server itself is offline.


jamespetts

What you need to check when running a test is whether the path explorer has completed its run. To check this, look at the "display settings" dialogue. The very lowest part of this dialogue shows the path explorer's status. Look at the very bottom section under "status". When anything to do with pathing is changed, this will trigger the status to change from its default "stand-by" to an active state. Once the path explorer reaches "stand-by" again having started a full refresh, the routes should be complete. If this occurs without pathing data appearing, then there may be some problem.
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SuperTimo

I found an older auto-save from the server and have been trying to test the path explorer. I tried making some new routes and extending some old ones and the path explorer has not changed status from 'stand-by' at all. I tried this in several other new offline games and observed the same.

jamespetts

Thank you for testing that: that appears to be the cause of the problem. I will have to investigate that after I get home, as I cannot easily run a graphical debugger on the computer that I am using on holiday.
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jamespetts

I believe that I have now fixed this - I should be grateful if you could re-test with the next nightly build.
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SuperTimo

#10
The path explorer seems to be working and changing status in a new local game I started. I haven't had a chance to test on the main server, although I did see Dr SuperGood has a post which describes similar issues.

edit: sorry I meant to say haven't rather than have

jamespetts

Quote from: SuperTimo on April 23, 2019, 07:12:35 PM
The path explorer seems to be working and changing status in a new local game I started. I have had a chance to test on the main server, although I did see Dr SuperGood has a post which describes similar issues.

We have not tracked down yet whether this is simply the fact that the path explorer takes a long time with such a large dataset or whether it is a separate problem.
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RigorMorris

Hi.  Brand new here; this is my second time in maybe five years trying to start with St-E.  Big Dwarf Fortress fan; this seems like a thing that should work for me.

I've been struggling to make any local games go for about a week; it seems like recent work has improved this problem but not resolved it.  I haven't been able to isolate a pattern -- it seems to change a bit from one new game to the next (same map seed) -- but what I'm seeing is that most routes start out working okay but eventually producers (primary or otherwise) stop shifting their product to their stops, passenger stops get declared "No passenger service" even when regularly visited, and workplaces are quickly abandoned.  Usually by March of the first year all vehicles are driving around empty almost all the time (even when source industries have product in stock), and I can let a game run all day, into the next year, and that doesn't change. 

I have seen that the route-finding status does claim to be doing something when I add new stops -- it cycles through all the different sorts of paths it might be finding and then returns to "stand-by".  My games are all small and primitive so it can't be an overloading the algorithm thing (I haven't gotten as far as making one industry chain work in 1800).

Could be that I'm only doing things wrong -- but I sure have tried lots of different things.

jamespetts

Thank you for your report. Can you upload a saved game in which this can reliably be reproduced?
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Ranran(retired)

An error may have occurred in mail connection information when loading a saved game.
It assumes that the station has no mail connection right after reloading the saved game.
It is not linked with the station detail window.


Even if the number of mails waiting is 0, if it is determined that the station has a route that transports mail, it is basically displayed like this.

That is, haltestelle_t::gibt_ab(goods_manager_t::get_info(1)) returns true.


However, after 2019/4/7 it will be in this state when reloading save.

That is, haltestelle_t::gibt_ab(goods_manager_t::get_info(1)) returns false.


Before changing Path Explorer, the mail bar was displayed for stations with mail transport lines even if the number of waiting is zero.
This image is a station with nothing waiting immediately after reloading on an old build.
ひめしという日本人が開発者達の助言を無視して自分好みの機能をextendedに"強引に"実装し、
コードをぐちゃぐちゃにしてメンテナンスを困難にし(とりわけ道路と建物関連)、
挙句にバグを大量に埋め込み、それを知らんぷりして放置し(隠居するなどと言って)別のところに逃げ隠れて自分のフォーク(OTRP)は開発を続けている
その事実と彼の無責任さに日本人プレイヤーは目を向けるべき。らんらんはそれでやる気をなくした(´・ω・`)
他人の振り見て我が振り直せ。ひめしのようにならないために、らんらんが生み出したバグや問題は自分で修正しなくちゃね(´・ω・`)

RigorMorris

I've uploaded an autosave from last night (via Simutrans File Sharing, right?), using the nightly I got yesterday afternoon (using the Nightly Updater).  When I left it it was showing a mix of working and failing routes -- I think the grain and woodchips were running okay but after the first delivery the beer was no longer getting transferred out of the brewery to its stop.  I have saves of other games where primary producers were not transferring their goods, but those were also from earlier nightlies; maybe not of interest at this point.

Jando

Quote from: RigorMorris on April 24, 2019, 11:42:09 PMbut what I'm seeing is that most routes start out working okay but eventually producers (primary or otherwise) stop shifting their product to their stops, passenger stops get declared "No passenger service" even when regularly visited, and workplaces are quickly abandoned.

I took the liberty to download your game. :) I suspect you see multiple errors, caused by different features of the game and probably by a bug as well. And then some things that just don't work that way in Extended.

Passenger transport first: The "no passenger service" message is likely a bug that is discussed here in this thread - but it won't make much of a difference for you anyway because the passenger routes on your map won't attract many passengers, it's just too slow, the passengers would be faster at their destination if they just walked. Sorry. Reason being that your stage coaches - more or less - take a scenic route through the town and travel at slow speed anyway because you are pulling them by a pretty weak horse.

Cargo: Nothing wrong that I can see, it's just that the pub has no demand for more beer. Thus it doesn't demand beer, thus the brewhouse (it's output storage is full) doesn't deliver because the pub has no demand any more. Thus the brewhouse also does not demand new grain and wood chips.

Perhaps you can see the difference when you download one of my games, here it is: https://simutrans-germany.com/files/upload/Hartcester_Actual.sve

It's a game in 1870, thus with trains and all, and all the industries I placed myself using the public player of Simutrans, but there's also plenty of town passenger transport with coaches that is working well. As to the workforce abandoning industries, yes, that's a problem, luckily you can switch off that feature, hit "i" in-game to get the settings dialogue and set the two "minimum_staffing" values in the Extended tab both to zero and it won't bother you any more. James may disagree but I think that feature is not yet properly balanced and tested to be used. :) Sorry, James!

I know Extended has a steep learning curve and it's still work in progress. But it's already a very fun and interesting thing once you know how to get around the little oddities.

RigorMorris

Thanks Jando!  I am completely willing to believe that most of my problem was operator error and I understand your points -- had wondered about each of those things.  I would have kept assuming it was my fault except that my symptoms seemed similar to what was described in this thread.  I'll study your save on a more alert evening.

I do have more thoughts on what you're saying but that would be a story for maybe another thread.  Yeah; get around the "little oddities"!  But hey -- steep learning curves are the fun part.

DrSuperGood

Be aware that there most certainly is an issue with the passenger and mail routing tables. One can see this on the Bridge Water Brunel server where new stops never get any routing updates because the pathfinder never runs beyond the first 2 passenger classes and so never updates any of the saved routing tables. Since mail is updated after passengers, these new stops cannot service mail as internally no mail routes are created for them.

Jando

Quote from: RigorMorris on April 26, 2019, 12:32:34 AMI do have more thoughts on what you're saying but that would be a story for maybe another thread.

Yep, best make yourself a thread in https://forum.simutrans.com/index.php?board=82.0

The regulars round here are usually happy to provide any assistance and to answer any questions you may have.

ACarlotti

The issue with routing tables primarily affects very large maps, where the frequency of certain events that trigger a reset of the path explorer search was such that the time between resets was much less than the time to run the path explorer on all categories/classes.