Lost a DLC and can't get it back

[jfail]

I have been using Raiworks for some time with no problems at all. Yesterday I started it and got a Fatal Error: Failed to load platform modules". I found a link online that said to make a registry change to "English" when encountering this error. I checked the registry at the location specified and it already had "English" in it. I got RW to work without error by running RW directly without using Steam to start it. It has been working ever since. I had not used RW in several days. I noticed there is an upgrade out and maybe that had something to do with the problem.

My only DLC that I have ever bought was Colton and Northern, that has always worked fine since I bought it last year. It has now disappeared from my routes. It also no longer appears in the Package Manager. Four times over the last two days I have seen a message pop up at the lower right hand corner of the screen saying Colton and Northern has been downloaded. The message flashes by so fast I cannot read the rest of the text before it disappears. I have run RW a number of times as well as the Package Manger and Colton and Northern never appears.

I tried contacting tech support several times but no response of any kind from them.

Anyone have any ideas how I can get my Colton and Northern back?

[lonewolfdon]

Did you buy the route via Steam?

If so try a Verify and Clear of cache which may resolve things;

From Steam client, go to your games list, right-click on RailWorks, select Properties, Local Files, Verify Integrity of game cache.
This will check for missing or corrupt files and attempt to reacquire them if so.

After that is finished, launch RailWorks, from the initial launch-window click on Tools & Docs tab, then click on Clear Cache button.

Try starting RailWorks after doing those steps and see if the problem has been resolved.

If you did not buy that route add-on via steam (perhaps you bought the Colton & Northern route direct from Rich's site at http://www.allaboardrails.com/ ?), then you'll need to re-install the route separately or contact Rich there for advice on the matter.

[jfail]

Thanks so much for the help. The re-validation worked to a point. I don't know why they make this so difficult. It reported "2764 files failed and will be reaquired", shortly after that I saw it downloading. Now Colton and Northern is back but when I select it I get a "Scenario - Broken Consist found: - Long: -77.714 Lat 39.231327" and "Broken Consist found: - Long -77.670662 Lat: 39.239437". and I either have to edit or exit.

I have no idea what or how to edit that file so I just have to exit. I tried re-validating and it instantly came up with "all files successfully validated". Still get the same errors above.

I purchased Colton and Northern directly via Steam last year and it has always worked just great until all these problems.

[lonewolfdon]

Did you try the "Clear Cache" option as well?

Not sure what else to suggest at this point. Does any of the scenarios load at all, or are all scenarios not loading or reporting errors now?

Maybe you can try to contact Rich Garber (Creator of that route & scenarios that go with it) for some possible help and advice on the matter. Though he may be limited in what help he can give if you bought that route via Steam rather than from his site directly.

Rich sometimes replies to some posts here on this forum as well (Under username of "rgarber"), so he even may see this thread here and reply with some advice.

Good luck.

[jfail]

I did try the clear cache. No luck. I was getting the errors from free play. When I try any of the scenarios, they load but there are no tracks for the locos or cars to run on. Obviously something is very wrong. The errors/missing tracks only occur in Colton and Northern. All of the default RW trains, scenarios etc. work just fine. C&N was also just fine up until I ran into that error yesterday and it has been downhill from there.

I just looked in the manual but I don't see any email address for Rich. Besides that I am reluctant to ask him for help since I did not buy it from him directly and it just does not seem fair to impose on him. I can assure you that if I had known at the time there was another source to buy it I would have bought it from him. Steam and their support is just abysmal.

Thanks again for your help, at least it got me this far.

[lonewolfdon]

Yes, I agree that we don't want to really impose on Rich.
But he seems like a friendly guy and I just thought that even if he wasn't able to quite help (because you never bought the route direct from him) that he may perhaps still offer some advice or suggestions.

Another idea to try is; From the railworks launch-window, click on the Package Manager, highlight Colten&Northern on the list, then UnInstall it.
Then close RailWorks, Close Steam, then see if Steam will automatically re-download that C&N route addon automatically for you, or if it doesn't seem to automatically detect to download it again for you to then again run the "Verify integrity" option.

Though before doing so, you may want to make a back-up of the Colton&Northen folder...

Path is where you have steam installed, then ..steamapps\common\railworks\Content\Routes\e75e54 bd-........

(The folder name beginning with "e75e54bd-" should be the Colton and Northern, at least according to what I see when I check with RW_Tools here).

[jfail]

Tried all of that. No luck, same errors. I was thinking of totally un-installing RW and start from scratch and see if that works. I have seen some posts around where people have had some pretty bad experiences in trying to un-install RW so not sure I am interested in that procedure. I have looked around in the documentation etc. and I do not see anything about how to completely remove RW and steam. I'm not sure that the Windows 7 control panel would remove RW and steam correctly.

What a pain!!

[lonewolfdon]

Yes indeed, a real hassle when stuff like this happens.

The following link might have some useful info for you:
https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=8296-VSOM-8056

You might also consider backing-up the railworks "Contents" folder as well if thinking of uninstalling and reinstalling, but perhaps try the method as detailed in the above link first maybe? That way you'll still have your full current installation of RailWorks along with everything extra you may have installed, and you could copy over anything from the old installation into the newly created one as you want.

Good luck.

[jfail]

I had just started removing steam and RW when your reply came in so I was too far into it to back out. I have reinstalled steam and it is now downloading RW (painfully slow download).

Sooo, will see how it goes. I'll report back the results. At the rate this download is going it might be tomorrow LOL.

I truly appreciate your help.

[rgarber]

As far as I'm concerned if you've bought my routes then you're my customer. The way I understand this is Steam is only the delivery method. Technically RS.com should have some liability in offering customer support *cough ah-hem* but you know how that goes. ;)

The thing is there are some differences which puts limitations for what I can do. Like I said, my fix for the Fort Kent route has been out there the day after the patch and I still can't get an answer what's happening with the Steam version.

You ever get the feeling they only love ya when they need ya? ;)

The one thing I will ask ya for is (and this is my disclaimer) is proof of purchase. Not that anybody has ever tried to pull a fast one, but just in case.

You should try and get your situation rectified through Steam though only because whatever fix we come up with, Steam's just gonna overwrite it anyway.

Rich

[jfail]

Thanks Rich.

I am still downloading (it's only at 51% right now and then it still has to download C&N) so will see how it works out.

Appreciate the input. I do have proof of purchase via an invoice I got from them. Hopefully it won't get to that and the re-install will fix all the problems. Colton and Northern was (and is) my favorite routes.

Thanks again

[rgarber]

The C&N has done pretty good and I've been tossing it back and forth between me and myself to get an update for the route out there. Mostly replacing the 2d trees imported from MSTS and some other ideas I have. I have already started another route for Railworks that I think will be as diverse as the C&N but it's a real route instead of fictional. I think I can get both the new route and the update to the C&N done at the same time.

Rich

[jfail]

I will be first in line to buy it directly from you.

[jfail]

I have no idea what is going on here but I completely reinstalled Steam, RW and still getting the same two errors (The broken scenarios) when I try to run Free Play in C&N, also as before no tracks appear when I try to run any of the C&N scenarios.

I'm lost. All other routes (the RW defaults) run fine, C&N is the only add on that I have for RW.

[rgarber]

"still getting the same two errors (The broken scenarios) when I try to run Free Play in C&N..."

That maybe associated with the update situation and would have to be addressed by RS.com. I don't think that's just unique to you.

"also as before no tracks appear when I try to run any of the C&N scenarios"

IIRC this is a problem with the Steam version where if you press the Cache button it goes away. I think there's a thread on here somewhere that addresses this. It's not in the All Aboard version, just something that happens with the Steam version. Easy fix, or was...

Rich

[{Yotsuba}]

You should try and get your situation rectified through Steam though only because whatever fix we come up with, Steam's just gonna overwrite it anyway.

Rich, just so you know, Steam Support do not offer support for problems with third party titles, they will simply redirect people to either the publisher (RS.com) or the developer (in this case, yourself).

[jfail]

The clear cache fixed the missing tracks issue. So now I am just down to the broken consist errors. Looking around the forum I see comments about broken consists having to do with versions of updates of RW. That confirms what you pointed out, I guess I am going to assume that is the case since free play always worked just fine up until yesterday when an update was downloaded. I will just wait to see if they fix it.

[lonewolfdon]

Okay guys, I think I have managed to fix it.
I had the same errors as Jfail was having too. I was busy doing other things with working on my own route & scenarios, so I hadn't the chance to take a look at this problem until now.

This is a "Cloned" version of the Free-Roam scenario and fixed the "AI" and "Broken Consists" errors (at least it seems to work fine for me anyways).
You can get my most recent "fixed" version of this scenario at:
http://www.rryard.com/files/ColtNorth_FreeRoam_Fixed_v2.zip

Rich, you can perhaps put this file on your site as a work-around fix for users that have bought your C&N route via Steam. This should replace the earlier "fixed" version that I had made a while back (and you had put on your page: http://www.allaboardrails.com/colt1.htm )when it was just the "AI Consists" errors fix.

This will not overwrite any of the original scenarios, so if Steam does do an update, then it should not effect this "fixed" version of mine.

From the Colton & Northern scenario list, my fixed scenario here will show as: "Free Roam (Fixed Consists)"

I tracked down and removed a few problematic consists that seemed to be causing the errors, and so far this scenario seems to be working okay for me.

I didn't bother replacing any consists this time, as I didn't want to risk adding any errors, but users can go into the editor and perhaps add in a few of their own consists on this version in places they like.

Hope this helps.
Try it out and let me know if it works for you.

Cheers! :D

[rgarber]

Thanks Don! Much appreciated! I'll have this posted tomorrow.

Your fix should work for both the Steam and the All Aboard version I'm thinking. The only differences between the two versions was I didn't know about the 1mph Stop At trick and rigged the scenarios to always end successfully. RS.com fixed the scenarios so they would end normally by putting in the 1mph instruction for all the Stop At commands.

Rich

[lonewolfdon]

Oops! I think I forgot to mention about how to install my "fixed" version of this Free Roam scenario (some people may not yet know how to use the RailWorks Package Manager to install some addons);

After downloading to your computer and un-zipping the file, launch your RailWorks. From the initial launch-window click on the Package Manager tab, then click on the Install button, navigate to the ".rwp" file that was downloaded and select it, then it should install without problems (hopefully).

Rich: No prob. Glad to be of help Sir! :)
If I can ever do anything for you on my end, just ask. BTW: Though I may have said it in another form previously, I'm still enjoying your Fort Kent route too. A job well done! Keep up the good work.

[jfail]

LoneWolfDon:

Worked perfectly!! Thanks for your help. I would have never had any idea how to fix that problem. I was very happy to see that I was not the only one to have the problem.

Great job.

John