Steam locomotive tender freight animation (crew) incorrectly positioned

[Gerald Saunders]

Hi,
It's becoming regular practice to use a Freight Animation in the tender to show footplate crew on the loco where the latter already has an FA for other parts. Up until the issue of X1944 the crew was correctly shown. From the next issue (X1955) they seem to appear in various locations, but very often by the smokebox - see attached screenshot. This coincided with the issue which corrected the problem with the tender load, which also uses an FA. I appreciate that it may not be possible to make both types of tender FA display correctly, but I found it difficult to actually find a tender which used an FA for its load! There will be a great many more which use the tender FA to place crew on the loco footplate.
One solution I found was to change the Type parameter of the tender to read Freight instead of Tender, but that's unsatisfactory due to its effect on the ability to refuel!

The loco in the screenshot is one of those included in UKTS file ID 32751

Thanks,
Ged

[Peter Gulyas (pzgulyas)]

Fixed in r2618.

[Gerald Saunders (saunderby)]

Hi Gentlemen (and Ladies, if any!),
This bug has been classed as "Fixed".
I'm sorry to report that it hasn't. In fact, the situation is worse than it was when I reported it. I have found the cause of the problem - it's the second numeric parameter of the FreightAnim entry in the wag file; this is, in a great many cases, shown as 3.0, but I've not found out why. It may just be that once somebody used it, everybody else followed! I've found there is no purpose for it when the FA is used to place the crew on the footplate of the coupled steam loco. The shape file contains its own positioning parameters.
This bug-fix also affected the positioning of an FA used for showing a diminishing fuel load in that the first parameter is ignored with the result that the load is displayed at its final intended position.

May I emphasise that the following only applies to wag files with a Type of Tender. Freight Animations on locos (eng files) and wag files with type Freight show perfectly correctly and must not be changed!

May I suggest that :
a) the coding for the Tender Freight Animation introduced in r2618 should be removed and reverted to its previous state.
b) the coding for the Tender Freight Animation should be amended to include a check that if the second parameter (ie first one after the shape file name) is zero or 0.0, any further parameters should be ignored, or treated as zero. If the second parameter is non-zero, the coding for the diminishing fuel load should be actioned - but see below.

Incidentally, although it's not directly part of this bug, I have found that in r2439, the diminishing fuel load is correctly shown in its initial position (ie top of tender), but in r2460 it isn't and is shown in its final position (ie low down in the tender). For this test, I've used the default Flying Scotsman loco.

Cheers,
Ged

[Peter Gulyas (pzgulyas)]

Please try r2636.

[Gerald Saunders (saunderby)]

Hi Peter,Well done, sir!!I've checked 10 tenders for Freight Animations and they all look to be correct. I've also checked an FA used to place a load on a flat wagon and several locos with their own FAs.Finally, I checked the default Flying Scotsman tender and the coal load is in the correct starting position, although I haven't checked yet if it reduces to its base position.
Thank you for a very quick turn-around :) If there's anything else I can test, please let me know.
May I mention one other small problem with the crew? When using Camera View 2, the crew disappear for about 30 degrees either side of the centre line when facing forward; this occurs from ground level up to well above the loco roof. I wondered if it was a shape problem, but it doesn't occur in MSTS. Also, I can't make it happen when using view 3 on Open Rails, although the positioning is different. I wouldn't call this a serious problem, just a bit of a niggle!
Regards,Ged

[Gerald Saunders (saunderby)]

Hi Peter,Further to yesterday's email -I can confirm that the coal load does appear to diminish, at least when using the default Flying Scotsman loco!
Thank you,Regards,Ged

[Gerald Saunders (saunderby)]

Hi,
Although the bug was reported as "fixed" on 25 May 2015, it wasn't! I've checked all X releases back to April and into 2014, but it's not been implemented. I had a message from Peter to check r2636, which I did and proved all was OK with the crews. Since then I received a message in Nov 2014 to check the coal load diminished, but after that ... nothing, until James advised that the fix had been released in May.
Regards, Ged