Sorry about this, my explanation is a bit long! As of yesterday, suddenly TSC which is installed via Steam will not load. I get the splash screen and then nothing. I did a file verify and it went through the motions for half an hour. It checked files, downloaded some files and updated some files. The game then loaded but all was not well. I immediately noticed icons (menu pictures) for routes and scenarios were missing but before getting any further the game crashed and I was then back to the original situation - loading stops after splash screen and the game shuts down. I've tried various things (many of them coming from this forum) such as deleting cache files, blueprints and playerprofile. Nothing works. I did however notice that the SDBcache was much smaller than it should be so I copied a previous verion from a recent backup. Still no joy. But here's the weird thing. I have the whole Railworks\ folder copied on an external Hard Drive (for backup purposes). So I ran the railworks.exe file located on my external HD, fully expecting an error of some sort (or nothing happening at all). But the game loaded and works fine when run from the external HD. I don't know if it is loading routes and content from the external HD or if they are loading from my proper Steam installation but they work. So next I tried copying all files (except the huge content\ and routes\ folders) from the external HD backup to the Steam\...Railworks\ folder, overwriting existing files. My backup program tells me the two folders are now identical but I still get the same result when running from the Steam installation. Splash Screen, then nothing. I tried a verify again, it did the half hour routine again, the game loaded once, the game crashed, now back to same issue! Just to be clear, I have tried running all the railworks .exe versions in the Steam folder by using Steam GUI, my shortcuts and directly by double-clicking on the .exe files. Always the same result. My last resort will be a full 156 gig uninstall and reinstall but before that, has anybody here got any idea what could be going on? Why does it crash when run from the Steam folder but not from crash when run from the external HD even though the folders are identical? PeterH
No idea why it crashed initially, but doing the Steam verify often breaks any third party content you may have. Going forward, once you have this sorted, I strongly advise that you make a back up of your Railworks folder on a different drive. Each time you install something new, test it, and once satisfied that all is well, make a new back up. If this becomes habitual, you will always have an up to date back up. Should anything go wrong again, you can literally just drag your back up Railworks over and replace what's already there. This always fixes any and all issues. Only overwrite your back ups with a new one once any updates are thoroughly tested though, or you may be backing up a faulty install.
Of course it should throw error messages, not just crash, but. Technically, the game is only crashing due to bad content (routes, assets, scenarios). 1) Make sure you have no workshop subscriptions. You can favorite them instead, for now. Make sure you only ever subscribe to one workshop item at a time. Let the game download and install it, then you can grab the next. There is a scenario where the game loads, installs multiple, corrupts some, and upon restart it breaks on them. 2) You can untick absolutely all DLC in Steam under game properties. This should really work. From this point onward, you can keep adding content. As Pookeyhead suggested, it's best to have a working backup. Of course workshop will always be added to your main install, so thread with care.
OK, I have TSC working again. To cut a 24 hour nightmare short; The final thing I did which fixed the problem was to copy my complete backup of Steam\ - not just the Railworks\ and Workshop\ folders because that alone had not worked. After a 2 minute copy of the remaining Steam\ folder TSC now loads and works as normal. I guess I'll never know what caused this but, as people always say, backups are absolutely vital. Though knowing what to copy back is not necessarily as obvious as it may seem.
I took this advice on what to reinstall from a backup if everything is borked.... Me: So what files should I copy over? ...: Such a nice helpful Man
