Articulated Road Vehicles

[Wile E. Coyote]

I started discussion about consist desintegrating in other thread, but I think that other spotted problems depend here. Shortening vehicles for more than 2/8 (so, minimum 3/8) causes desintegration. Refitting now don't causes crash.

[krtaylor]

Does this mean that ARVs are, in theory, usably stable, as long as you don't encode really short ones?

[Wile E. Coyote]

Sometimes occur that trailer don't enters in depot, but I have no enough data to repeat it. I'm still in investigation what is not working good, I'll post anything new what I'll find.
But articulated animated tram which is present in Serbian tram set seems to be stable.

[Wile E. Coyote]

I investigated and I think I found how to reproduce problem in anytime.

When aRV enters depot (when enters for service or when I send it there), it stucks in depot with speed 0. It's possible to stop it and sell. But it seems that rear part stays somewhere, it's not possible for other vehicles to enter to depot.

Here is GRF for testing. (Admins/mods, please remove attachments in locked thread.)

EDIT: Attachemnt is deleted. For testing you can use Serbian tram set - OTTD Remix.

[Uwe]

Would it be possible to make goto depot work with articulated vehicles? I get all sorts of errors whenever an ARv decides it needs to get serviced while it is currently loading/unloading at a station. The usual case is that several vehicles get stuck in each other, unable to free themselves without manual help.
And a similar problem: When selling an old standard vehicle and replacing it with a ARv, the schedules are copied (as they should be). However, the ARv then happily tries to enter a normal bus station, which it cannot enter. When blocking the entry, other vehicles get stuck, leading to all sorts of problems... And when trying to turn the vehicle around it gets split up Is there a way of preventing copying invalid orders?
All problems seen with nightly r1939.

[Uwe]

Well, this time it's a bug report. I currently play a test game using TTDPatch 2.6 r1939. Now with this version it looks like the distance between trailer and leading car is influenced by the number of corners the tram is going through. The two pictures depict one tram, the first one directly after it has started out of the depot, the second one after having taken a number of corners. The trailer is offset by about one pixel after each corner, at least that's how it looks like to me. When the leading car is blocked by another vehicle, the trailer moves on until having reached the original distance. TTDPatch cfg is attached, the grf in question is not yet released, I can send it if necessary.
I have switched back to an older nightly, r1889, from my backup installation. With this older version the error is not reproducable with otherwise identical settings.

[Lakie]

Does it happen with 1913, in which case does it stop working at 1914?

~ Lakie

[Uwe]

r1913 works fine, in r1914 it is broken.

[Lakie]

Does the attached version (modified) work for you then? As with using your configuration with it, my tram does not split into segments.

[Edit] Committed changes r1940.

~ Lakie

[Uwe]

This seems to work indeed, the trailer held its position correctly

[krtaylor]

Is this patch feature still under development, did it get perfected, or did it run into a roadblock? Looks like there has not been a post in this thread for a long while, and last time I played with articulated trams they worked none too reliably.

[wallyweb]

Is this patch feature still under development, did it get perfected, or did it run into a roadblock? Looks like there has not been a post in this thread for a long while, and last time I played with articulated trams they worked none too reliably.

There is still an issue with adding go to depot orders (workaround here ). Otherwise it's been quite consistent for me since r1940.

[krtaylor]

OK, I see, that's not ideal but not so bad... Was the issue with refitting aRVs fixed, or is that too in workaround-mode?

[wallyweb]

Was the issue with refitting aRVs fixed, or is that too in workaround-mode?

Refitting is fixed in that both tractors and trailers get the refit. There is one small exception to be aware of though. If you have a vehicle already refitted to something other than the default cargo and you upgrade it to an aRV, the cargo type will follow to the tractor but the trailer will get the default, so be sure to do a refit before letting the new aRV out of the shop.

[krtaylor]

If you do multiple trailers (e.g. trams) they appear fine on the roads, but not in the depot. So, how do you remove trailers after you've built them if you want to do so?

Also, sometimes the trams flatly refuse to accept a depot as an order. Strange - they'll go to ONE depot, but not to another one, even though the tracks connect.

[krtaylor]

And... I found a bug. A tram seems to have lost its trailers then got stuck when it worked its way back round to them. It may have been caused by the UFO landing on it. Clicking on the list trailers opens the window of a... train, which is working normally, but shows "Crashed" in its display. Clicking on the vehicle manifest caused a hard crash, and here's the crashlog.

[wallyweb]

If you do multiple trailers (e.g. trams) they appear fine on the roads, but not in the depot. So, how do you remove trailers after you've built them if you want to do so?.

Yep ... Unfortunately the Tram and RV depots can't show a full articulated consist. You have to sell the full aRV and then rebuild it it from scratch the way you want it. Yep, you'll lose some $ due to inflation, but think about it ... You get a brand new rig for your trouble.

Also, sometimes the trams flatly refuse to accept a depot as an order. Strange - they'll go to ONE depot, but not to another one, even though the tracks connect.

I just tried it in my current game. I had no problems adding a second tram depot to the orders and the tram used both of them. Are you sure your second depot isn't a standard truck depot? These can be added to a tram's orders, but of course the tram will ignore it or run around trying to find it.

[DaleStan]

What wallyweb said.

here's the crashlog.

Can I have the savegame and configs instead?

The crashlog will prove I'm seeing the same crash, but it's so much more useful to watch the crash than to see the pictures afterward.

[krtaylor]

I don't have a great deal of confidence that the crash will still happen, as I didn't have a save in a very convenient spot, but here are some savegames and the configs.

[krtaylor]

One more file.

Remember, what seemed to cause the major problem was a UFO taking out one of my trams, but that tram did not completely crash and disappear all the way.

Regarding the depot-orders problem, I know it's a tram depot because it has the electric stuff on the roof and the tracks go into it. Also, since it's at the end of the line, the trams all do go in to turn around. And they even appear to get serviced in there. They simply will not accept it as an order - you can click on it all you like but it won't appear in the order list.