When I am generating an activity, and push the change engines button, I get a pop up screen saying to wait while Activity Generator reads the folders, however it stops before the bar is fully across the screen and never initiates the next screen for changing engines.

I have corrected the issue.

It turns out that the last engine scanned before the program shuts down was missing a quotation mark in the engine name.

I have corrected that and the Change Engine feature runs fine now.

Thanks Dick!  A note to other users: I am working on making both Activity Master and Activity Generator more resistant to problems like this, so it will fail gracefully -- best case, skipping the file and reporting the error.  However it is good to note this: all problems with lockups or failures in the "Change Engines" function or similar problems reading the Trainset folder in ActivityMaster are ALWAYS caused by an error in a .eng or .wag file being read.  The best way to solve this is to note which file the program stops reading on, and then check that file for errors.

This has been one of the most challenging things for me to fix and I haven't yet found a way to handle this in ever case.  We continue to research it.

--Steve

 

The real solution to this problem is for the users to discipline themselves to check each and every item of rolling stock (cars + locos), including ALL commercial items and not just freeware, using ConBuilder (payware) and/or RouteRiter (freeware).  If you will do this, you will improve your entire MSTS experience.

If you don't do this you are asking for all kinds of trouble, not just with AG.  Steve can only go so far with protection against this error.

Geez.. I have the same problem, except it doesn't even get as far as listing what the heck is broken!  I get two blue boxes in the progress line and the text box above it is empty, so I don't even have a starting point short of just blowing the whole MSTS folder out and starting at ground zero.  This is infuriating because I haven't even really modified anything in MSTS except to install Clovis route and the associated rolling stock.  Good grief...

Route-Riter doesn't seem to have solved the problem, and I don't have Conbuilder, nor am I particularly tempted to spend more money on this little project if I'm going to be spending most of my time wading through code (which is why I got Activity Generator in the first place... It's easy).  Programming by hand was fun in the 80's when I had my Apple ][ and a copy of Byte magazine in front of me.  Now, not so much.. Anyway, I digress... Any ideas from the peanut gallery?

Paul

Paul,

Steve is on vacation, but should be back tonight.  I suspect that he would be willing to help you with this either by phone or e-mail.  Send him a PM and ask for help.

Thank you for your nice comments about AM.  I enjoy AM and AG because they increase my enjoyment of MSTS ten fold.

I am sorry that you don't have CB.  Quite honestly, I do not understand how any MSTS user can really enjoy the sim without it.  So many files of locos and rolling stock, not just the freebies but including most commercial items, have a little "gotcha" here and there, yet CB will find virtually all of it, AND tell you how to fix it.  Some of these "gotchas" will work with this route, but not that one, or will work with this utility but not that one, but CB will help clean it all up.

Yeah, I'm high on CB.  But I get nothing out of it except a very enjoyable, error free (almost) experience.