Missing custom scenery / items (part solved)

[RollerBoaster]

As I've played both vanilla RCT2 and ORCT2 (and still do) which both use the same vanilla object files I've discovered a major problem with custom scenery etc missing in the scenario editor/designer.

 

It's particularly problematic for paths and scenery groups.

 

I've partly resolved it in two ways:

 

1. sometimes you need to open parks with embedded custom items in both your vanilla RCT AND ORCT to have the items appear in both vanilla and ORCT's scenario editor, in both cases it's wise to close the game and reopen it between loading different parks so it can update the objects list.

 

2. if you identify what items are missing sometimes you can fix it by duplicating the file to the relevant ORCT custom objects folder, this will of course only fix the ones you discover are missing. If the custom set has an installer (such as with UCES) you can't just copy the dats to the ORCT folders to be sure as it is set up to put them in the vanilla folders and you won't easily know which files they were i.e. what was added. I also wonder if it's a problem waiting to happen duplicating the files in this way if you copy any to the ORCT folders.

 

However this does not fully resolve the issue- I still have missing scenery objects that the vanilla scenario editor finds but that ORCT fails to find, it also dawns on me there's the risk of the reverse (items missing in vanilla) if you put them in the ORCT folder only. The problem is down to ORCT splitting the custom content- it has its own custom content folders, whether it finds any in your vanilla folders is very hit and miss. Usually it doesn't unless you've opened a park with them embedded in ORCT. To reconcile this I'd have to make a list of every object file in both vanilla and ORCT, establish which were custom and then which ORCT was missing which would take forever so I'm not even going to begin to try this.

 

I think ORCT needs a fix where it checks for new/ custom objects in the vanilla files AS WELL AS it's own custom object files so that it captures all of them and reconciles any issues that are causing files to get missed- it found some objects but not others so it's somehow not checking what's in the vanilla game objects folders completely and accurately. Is there a way it can be tweaked to better reference both the vanilla ones and ORCT ones?

 

Similarly to opening a park with embedded objects it may just need to copy the missing custom objects to the ORCT custom objects folder, or have some way of also referencing those that are in the vanilla folders so both appear in the scenario editor. It just needs to know what the vanilla RCT2 and expansion files are then it will know what's been added and can track this as it needs to.

[X7123M3-256]

3 hours ago, RollerBoaster said:

sometimes you need to open parks with embedded custom items in both your vanilla RCT AND ORCT to have the items appear in both vanilla and ORCT's scenario editor

Not sometimes, always. OpenRCT2 will not read custom objects from your vanilla RCT2 install at all. Custom objects for OpenRCT2 need to be installed in your OpenRCT2/object folder (either manually or by opening a park which contains them). Objects in your vanilla ObjData folder will not be copied there by default - OpenRCT2 does not check for custom objects in that folder (it did in the past, which might be the source of your confusion - it was changed when the JSON objects were introduced).

If you play both vanilla and OpenRCT2, you need to install custom objects in both places to use them in both games. You should be able to solve this problem by symlinking your OpenRCT2 object folder to your RCT2 ObjData folder, but I have not tried this.

 

 

 

[RollerBoaster]

3 hours ago, X7123M3-256 said:

 

If you play both vanilla and OpenRCT2, you need to install custom objects in both places to use them in both games. You should be able to solve this problem by symlinking your OpenRCT2 object folder to your RCT2 ObjData folder, but I have not tried this.

 

 

 

Does anybody know if ORCT will crash if there are duplicated core game objects in the custom objects ORCT folder? If not you could just copy the whole objects folder over, however by selecting all and copy-pasting and selecting 'no' to copying over any duplicates so as to not delete/change any other files already there.

 

The only possible problems are object limits- I wonder if ORCT has ended up with a lower limits cap- and duplication (files being in both vanilla and orct object folders), which is also a problem if anything has a newer version of a file in future- if I didn't know it may only get updated in one folder.

 

Any of the devs got any thoughts on this and the below?

:

I tried one method of porting over some missing path- I think (not 100% sure) the problem files are pathrctfan#dp / pathrctfan#snd / pthrctfan#st (all dat files) but can't confirm this for sure- one of the missing ones is labelled 'rctfan1556 stone path'- basically these are files near the end of the list in vanilla rct's path selection window in the scenario editor- of the last four items in vanilla I get 'rct fan 1556s desert path' in ORCT but not the three after it- rct fan 1556's sand and stone paths and one just labeled as 'rozy path'. I tried making a park with these paths, copying the files I think belong to them to ORCT's objects folder and after saving the park in vanilla with 'export plug in objects with saved games' then opened it in ORCT-  I got the 'rozy' path in the save opened up in orct even though it doesn't appear in the orct scenario editor but the second two rct fan paths were missing (vanilla had them but not orct), in ORCT it just duplicated the desert path which appeared three times in the save file from vanilla as opened up by ORCT (vanilla has the three different paths ok in the saved game and none missing in the editor) so there may be a problem both with the number of path choices in the scenario editor with orct- some may be dropping off the end of the list (vanilla still finds them) and orct may not be happy with the filenames of the missing rct fan paths- if I've worked out which ones they are correctly maybe it's the # ???.

 

Re items at the bottom of the list this seems to affect scenery groups too- in vanilla there's one of the last scenery groups with 40 items, in ORCT it was saying it had only one, now it's getting a too many items error, unfortunately I've not been able to get any more info on it to check if the scenery items are there just not in the scenery group or missing.

 

Update: the problem scenery group in this case is 'mkx magic scenery 1'- 40 items in vanilla, in orct it's only adding 3 and giving an overlimit error message even with only selecting this group, so orct doesn't like it- file is mkxmgc1.dat, I've noticed however that other groups can give the too many objects error message even when they theoretically shouldn't (slightly different to vanilla) and also that orct doesn't give the object count underneath the scenery group name like vanilla does. Just tried in vanilla and it behaves the same in vanilla- same error message and only 3 items- wonder if the 40 items count in vanilla is as they're special effects I think- could they be 3 items that use 40 slots? Or just buggy in some way? The other possibility is the set began with 40 items but got used in a park where they only needed three of them so they deselected the rest with the 'advanced' tab Vanilla and orct actually only have 3 items in that tab not the 40 that vanilla claims the group has in the editor. Could just be that vanilla's object counts are wrong and nothing's actually missing or that the object group wasn't set up correctly.

 

On the upside I have found another fix for missing items that means MOST of the missing ones are now in my ORCT, as an update to my below solution- load up every park you had saved in your vanilla game with custom items- from both the start new game (saved scenarios in the parks menus) AND saved games- remembering to check different save locations (vanilla and orct), scenarios and saved games (you only need to open the most recent version then close it) - some of my missing files were in a saved game in my vanilla save folder. ORCT couldn't find the items so wouldn't load it so I opened it up in vanilla, resaved it with 'export plug in objects with saved games'- it's possible this wasn't selected previously as it was a savegame from a downloaded scenario- then ORCT found and added all the missing items linked to that park. I've loaded all my parks in ORCT now , so any other missing objects are only identifiable if I did the long job of working out what the custom ones are and what's not in orct.

9 hours ago, RollerBoaster said:

1. sometimes you need to open parks with embedded custom items in both your vanilla RCT AND ORCT to have the items appear in both vanilla and ORCT's scenario editor, in both cases it's wise to close the game and reopen it between loading different parks so it can update the objects list.

[X7123M3-256]

7 hours ago, RollerBoaster said:

Does anybody know if ORCT will crash if there are duplicated core game objects in the custom objects ORCT folder? If not you could just copy the whole objects folder over, however by selecting all and copy-pasting and selecting 'no' to copying over any duplicates so as to not delete/change any other files already there.

It should not crash. If it does, report it as a bug. If you want your OpenRCT2 and vanilla install to have the same set of objects available, I would create a symbolic link so that both games are reading the same folder. If you copy the contents across manually, they can get out of sync again.

 

7 hours ago, RollerBoaster said:

The only possible problems are object limits- I wonder if ORCT has ended up with a lower limits cap- and duplication (files being in both vanilla and orct object folders)

OpenRCT2 does not read the vanilla folder and vanilla doesn't read the OpenRCT2 one, and I don't think there's a limit on how many custom objects you can have installed anyway, so this shouldn't be an issue.

7 hours ago, RollerBoaster said:

if anything has a newer version of a file in future- if I didn't know it may only get updated in one folder.

There is no update mechanism for objects. If you open a park that contains a new version of an object you already have, the updated object will either be installed alongside the original or not at all (depending on whether the checksums match or not). The game has no way to tell which version of an object file is newer, and neither can you, which is a bit annoying.

[RollerBoaster]

On 25/11/2019 at 13:32, X7123M3-256 said:

I would create a symbolic link so that both games are reading the same folder. If you copy the contents across manually, they can get out of sync again.

 

 

Would this be possible though as both ORCT and vanilla may be set up to look in the folders' parent directory which is different for both games- is there a trick for doing this and pointing both to the same folder?

 

Another thought was to do it manually you could set the files to date order, establish which was the newest original game file then you'd only have to copy over the ones after this date, then you'd have all the custom files. Any you add later could then just be added to both folders.

 

Has anyone had any thoughts on the missing paths issue as to why that didn't work and why the scenario editor also had a problem with some of the paths.

 

Thank you

[RollerBoaster]

I now have matching object files in both vanilla and orct- they are now the same so I've pretty much sorted the missing objects issue.

 

However the orct path issue previously mentioned persists- so it does seem some paths are dropping off the selection menu for paths in the scenario editor- three that I know of are missing in the editor and two in the test park I did with these paths (where it defaults to using the same path image three times for three different path options, one of which is the last one to show up in orct's scenario designer) - as I mentioned the third path type DOES appear and is usable in the test park but not the scenario editor.

 

All the paths are available in vanilla both in-game and in-editor so it's an orct-only problem.

 

Any ideas? Can send files for investigation if needs be (reminders to self- test park is 'pathfinder', problem paths last three on vanilla list in editor)

 

Another thing I've noticed is some custom scenery/rides have descriptions that appear in vanilla that don't appear in open (when previewing in Scenario editor object selection windows)- only seems to be certain items.