jeffryfisher

I haven't tinkered with saved games in this iteration of RR Tycoon (I did in the original). I suspect that the train list has rules that won't be easy to tease out. However, if you can find it and understand it, then it might be easier to fix the corruption than to delete a train. The one vague recollection I have from earlier investigations is that all trains in the game (for all companies) are stored together in a master list, so finding *your* train 182 isn't as easy as scrolling down to the 182nd train in an array. If you might recover from the older saved game, first try running it for a year or two to see if it's already doomed. If it gets past your crash date, then it's probably okay. Look at the trains at and around #182. If train #182 in your old save isn't the same train as #182 in the corrupt save, then you might have deleted a train during the year, and that might have corrupted your file. Did you see my message above where I wrote that there's a bug in the game's train deletion algorithm? Never ever ever delete a train! Good luck!

I looked train #182 on the map, but I couldn't touch it without crashing the program. I fear that its data has become corrupted in a way that we can't fix, so your path forward appears to be to fall back to your earlier save (and avoid corrupting it). I recommend rotating saves more often. Do you have a habit of deleting trains when no longer needed? Years ago, I complained that RT2 doesn't always clean up all of its internal pointers correctly when it deletes a train. I can recall having one train's catalog entry linked to a neighboring train's detail page. For that reason, I have a policy of never ever ever deleting trains -- I repurpose and/or replace them instead. Good luck!

Well... I have loaded the saved game and tried (while paused) to investigate the train. However, when I first load the game, keeping it paused, and scroll through trains, I always crash at the moments that I expose train #182. I even went into train details of #181 and then clicked the right-arrow to display "Next". To confirm toxicity, I snuck up on it from the high side, displaying the condensed list from #183 to #187, but when I clicked "prev", the game crashed. No Go! Train #182 is radioactive and toxic. It can't even be displayed, which makes it difficult to find it and delete it. I have no idea where it is on the map, and I don't know its route. #182 is the demon train!

RT2 has some known crash bugs, including one where it's possible to build track over the top of a farm but the 1st train to run over it will crash the program. I'll try to take a look on Wednesday night. I'll look into #241, but that could just be a coincidence (if you stop that train in place before arrival, does that prevent the crash?)

My modded version of the EXE came from the v1.56 CD. It looks for the existence of one particular file at the root level of what your computer thinks is its CDROM drive (old Windows standard device/path name). I can't recall the name of the obscure little file, but it has been discussed in this forum in the past. I'll have a look later. Try faking a CDROM environment variable pointing to a directory (Google how to do that) that has a rt2_tsc.CFG file in it.

My notes are sketchy, and I don't have the game at hand, so I suggest opening the map in the game editor and reading the briefing / announcements (events 21, 74, 82, 126, 436, 466). My fuzzy memory is that you must deliver a load or two from your starting territory to a target city on the west coast (e.g. Canada -> Vancouver, US -> SF). Mexico might be inverted (deliver from Cal to Matamoros). Each has a news announcement during the game telling the award and its conditions.

Very cool -- That info could get someone into at least part of the code (perhaps the most interesting part). The "engine" might not crack as easily, and I don't know how that would affect a reverse-engineering project.

Waste can make electricity cheaper. Surplus lumber & steel can make rail-building cheaper. Surplus diesel can make fuel cheaper for diesel locomotives. None specifically discount bridges.

Open up the map in the editor and copy out the texts of these briefing events: 1: Briefing 7: SP - Goals 21: Transcon Rules 39: Designer's Notes 239: A Fuel Rules 449: Civ War Race Then find help translating them from English

Which information would help?

That's the early-game behavior. However, if you start in 1830 and play through the 1960s passenger slump to an event that boosts passengers back to something useful, then you'll see weirdness. My working theory is that the passenger recovery event affects all houses in the game at the same time, so it synchronizes many of their production dates.

That would be a neat trick. I've never used a decompiler myself, but I vaguely recall reading that some languages (like Java) decompile more easily than others. I don't even know what languages were used for RT2 (possibly C), just that some "game engine" was incorporated, so there might be multiple sources, and some portions might have been originally coded in assembly language. What decompiler tool would you recommend for an EXE of such unknown provenance (and age)?

If I understand your calculation, the "years" number is the total-cost optimal age when I should replace a loco type with itself (if I'm not up against some other constraint)?

The map itself is like any other -- Just copy the mp2 file into the "maps" folder of your RT2 installation (which you must find on your computer). To get the full experience, you can also upgrade your game. To do that, you'll want to first preserve the game files (RT2_PLAT.EXE and default2.lng) that you're about to replace. Preserve them by renaming -- It's customary to simply add an extension like "original" to each. With them out of the way, copy their modded replacements (something like RT2_PLAT.EXE.j10x2 and default2.lng.x3) into the RT2 installation folder where you found the originals you just renamed. Then rename the newly copied modded files to strip their extra extensions so they now look like the game's originals did before you renamed them.

What do you mean by "mods"?

I still stop by here daily, so please post if you have questions / comments. My US History map/scenario has over 500 events covering about 200 years, so you might not finish in one weekend

Well said! The feasibility of tunneling depends on map-scale. In Metra mode, a whole system should be possible underground. On a continental map, tunneling under even one square (six miles) would represent one of the longest tunnels in the US. If the game did have tunnels, then I'd allow only electric track and locomotives. While some steam and diesels can / do use tunnels, there are many places (e.g. under Manhattan and the Hudson) where heat and fumes caused so many problems that electrification came quickly. I'm not sure that max train length needs to be explicit. Loco strength vs cargo weight alone effectively limits length already.

Try these: editor3.txt EDITOR2.TXT EventsTutorial.zip

Is the AI buying industrial sites?

It's not an analogy -- It's a game mechanism. The stock market within the Railroad Tycoon II game really does move in response to earnings spikes.

Territory triggers are tricky. IIRC, you check a per-territory box and (for just one) fill in the ID number of the destination. Then you find the function for hauling cargo to territory from territory and feed it the amount, cargo ID, and source territory ID. It has been so long that I forget the exact format, but I know that US History has one for hauling passengers from Washington DC to Galt's Gulch. EDIT: Galt's Gulch (event 662 in my spread sheet) is too complex, but Seattle (716) looks like one worth emulating. It uses a function called CompanyTerritoryLoadsHauledFromLifetimeToTerritory(#) where you pass in the "from" terr-ID and it returns the number of loads. Combined with other conditions (player company, destination territory ID), you should get what you want.

Does anyone here have experience with Kalypso's Railroad Empire (or Railroad Empire 2)? If so, how does it compare to the venerable RR Tycoon II? Does it have a scenario builder / map editor to support user-created content? (I haven't found any yet).

That's over 2 billion, which when expressing thousands would accommodate 2 trillion dollars, both plus and minus. Since RR Tycoon doesn't suffer inflation like the real world does, 2 trillion should be adequate for all cash amounts in the game.

Isn't the smallest increment of money something like $1000? The overflow bugs could have been pushed out by a factor of 1000 if only the internal storage was number of thousands (just add ',000' to every display).

Excellent research -- Yes, that answers my question perfectly.