TS2014, the CC, and Me

The upgrade happened and just like all the upgrades before this there is a period of adjustment. Everyone has their story, and here is mine.

The download happened. A single pass was all that I needed to get TS2014 situated on my machine. I ran my two-click installer to copy over my third party assets and tweeks and so far so good. My first test was not my route, but what Jerry, Mike and I have been crafting the last several months. The GP40-2. It loaded and everything was operating as it did prior to the update. A slight bump in the frame rates was nice to see. The next thing I checked out was the new Blueprint Editor... wow. It wouldn't be until later that night until I saw just all nice little gems RSC crafted into the new editor.

Then my son wanted to make his own route...

Like all things in a house with three kids (and one on the way) you must be prepared to change gears suddenly... I wish they invented the automatic transmission for these moments. Keeping with the daily schedule the boy were tucked in starting at 7:30 and ending around 8:45. I sat down in front of my computer and loaded TS again. I was beginning to worry at first. There was a lot of clamor on RWA about broken this, not working that, the usual drama, but not from the usual suspects. I clicked on my route. It failed to load.

wow.

So where to now? Other routes seemed to work. Other assets seem to be present. An interesting quandary ay? I put on my developer hat and and restarted TS with LogMate.

The problem, quiet suddenly, hit me like a brick in the face. Why do the simple bugs have to be the most painful?

Long, long ago, when I was working on a project far far away... lets just call it RCAP version 2. I started making new RCAP assets under the provider 'My RCAP' so as to not mix with the version 1 work which was getting tested for release. Can you see where this is going yet? Can you feel weight of the brick I mortared into the wall? When RCAP v1 release I thought I had renamed all my v2 sources back to 'RCAP', but I missed one, and it was the route marker. Yup. The pin on your map which designates the origin of your route, or some place of interest was malformed. But why crash? TS2013 didn't crash (while I am here kudos to RSC for failing gracefully in TS2014, though some logging would have been nice) it worked fine. The only thing I can think of is that TS2014 validates the files better. This is a good thing if they are letting anyone post their work into the Steam Workshop (garbage in, is garbage out after all). I made my fix to the marker and the route launched. But LogMate wasn't done with me yet. It had to show me the nice muddy field I had made for myself all these years now, and it drug me through that mud and the memories. Hindsight is 20/20 and if I had to start over I would have started smaller, and would have started with making blueprint sources and not my hand crafted hacking of bins. Oh, I did learn a lot. I learned how everything is hooked together. The experience was invaluable, but my inexperience from when I started the CC was a badge I didn't care to wear. I posted my fix to the RCAP group so it would make it into the v2 release.

I never stopped working on the CC, even though I stopped blogging about it. I kinda ran out of things to say, and with the new Engine Driver site providing tutorials perhaps I will need to say even less, for lack of being repeated, repeating what may have already been said, or simply being overlooked for a new shiny site which has it all.

I will continue to work on the CC. I am finally converting all the paths to the old SMM assets to the new RCAP assets. Call it a test I should have done long ago, or just thank the brick. I promise to keep posting, but as I already mentioned I will be posting less often. I am not here to make myself relevant to the world, just to tell my story and share the hobby I love.