Yesterdayz Trainz Group

Ulmer94

Precisely that. I have found one thing that does alleviate the problem. In the windows with blue background, the intensity of the blue colour reduces from top to bottom and if I reduce the height and then move it down to the lighter lower section of the screen there is greater contrast between the black and blue. That works where there is not too much text but not universally.

I has been a long time since i involved myself in session creation so I had forgotten how amateurish the entire display system is, it was cobbled together for TRS2006 and has gone downhill since then. I estimate that more that 50% of the rules/commands have no description of their function and use, and that does include the Auran offerings. There should be consistent dark text colour with a contrasting background used throughout.

If NV3 consider that the AI system is a feather in the Trainz cap, then I am of the opinion that it is wilted, threadbare and broken.

Peter
 
I have just done what i should have done when I started. I dug into the code for one of the Black on Blue commands and it appears the text colour choice is available to the command author, not determined by any of the basic .gs files. All that is needed is a change on one line in the HTML commands. If the text colour is changed to #FFFFFF then I get nice White on Blue. All that mucking around and frustration. Jeez!

View attachment 393

Is this better?

Peter
 
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Ulmer94

Precisely that. I have found one thing that does alleviate the problem. In the windows with blue background, the intensity of the blue colour reduces from top to bottom and if I reduce the height and then move it down to the lighter lower section of the screen there is greater contrast between the black and blue. That works where there is not too much text but not universally.

I has been a long time since i involved myself in session creation so I had forgotten how amateurish the entire display system is, it was cobbled together for TRS2006 and has gone downhill since then. I estimate that more that 50% of the rules/commands have no description of their function and use, and that does include the Auran offerings. There should be consistent dark text colour with a contrasting background used throughout.

If NV3 consider that the AI system is a feather in the Trainz cap, then I am of the opinion that it is wilted, threadbare and broken.

Peter
Oh! Well said! Though I would have said static, underdeveloped and failing of it's initial promise. But the whole world knows you're far less polite about N3V's missed opportunities than me! <BSEG>

I have just done what i should have done when I started. I dug into the code for one of the Black on Blue commands and it appears the text colour choice is available to the command author, not determined by any of the basic .gs files. All that is needed is a change on one line in the HTML commands. If the text colour is changed to #FFFFFF then I get nice White on Blue. All that mucking around and frustration. Jeez!

View attachment 393

Is this better?

Peter
Peter, it is MUCH BETTER, but your explanation of where you changed the HTML line is confusing and unclear. Try again please! (OH! I think by "not determined by any of the basic .gs files"... means you didn't find it in a *.gs file in \libraries--by which I then infer you meant you cracked a rule in CM and directly altered the local edit copy. Unclear as to whether it is in a *.gs or HTML/HTM file though, so I guess I'll look in the morning, err later this morning. (It's 3am and long past time for bed!)

Once again, we get to edit asset after asset, sigh.
Good news though, if you make a list of rules to improve the contrast, a REGEX Search and Replace (SAR) IN FILES can batch change a whole group of opened files using any of several programmers editors like Notepad++.
  1. Make your wish list of Rules to process
  2. Set up a selection of same in CM so they're all in the main view pane
  3. Select your choices
  4. Drag the whole lot into Open with PEVs images2tga (which will open the folders in \editing but NOT open a dozen or whatever separate Windows.
  5. Find the HTML command in whatever file it's in snoop-editing in one folder
  6. Play with find in REGEX search mode (Notepad++ has three, check the second/middle one). Unfortunately, virtually every punctuation character has some special meaning in REGEX's, this one is Pearl based, iirc, so I just escape everything to start and if the search fails, unescape one by one until something does.
  7. Search string should be something like (color\:\#)(......) [that's six dots meaning any six characters, since Hex has alphanumeric characters]
  8. Replace string then is \1FFFFF, where the parenthesis are bounds for expressions called atoms, identifiable parts that hang together. '\1' replicates the first atom, '\2\1' would reverse the atoms, '\1new text' discards atom 2, and adds 'new text' etc.
    1. If the color code is in an HTML style statement, that should work, but one can add a third atom to aim the SAR a bit more precisely, as searching (color\:\#)(......)(\;) for the closing semicolon and replacing with \1FFFFF\3... since 1st and 3rd atoms sandwich the color
    2. My recollection may be rusty, or the color might be in a <font color="#000000"> for example, which needs a different escape sequence. The point is to try combos until you find a REGEX string that matches the line you want to change.
    3. Once it's found, the replace examples above will work.
    4. Click the replace button to verify the output is correct!
    5. If corrupted, type [CTRL]-[Z] and fix your output REGEX--most likely you forgot an atom, or used the wrong slash character, or other simple typos.
  9. After it works in the one open file, (In Notepad++)
    1. select the find in files tab,
    2. RMBh on the edit file TAB and copy the path to \editing in the cut buffer
    3. paste that in the Find in Files path slot, trimming so it's starting in ..\editing, not the open subfolder
    4. make sure the click box mode says to search subfolders at the bottom right of the API
    5. click the find in files button, and a split screen will display all the lines in all the files containing the search string as a top pane, the edit pane below it. (I make no promises the color scheme will be agreeable. My preferred skin looks fairly queer!)
    6. Read the results carefully and VERIFY you aren't about to globally change some command you don't want in any file searched, otherwise you need a tighter REGEX search string.
    7. Now you're ready to replace. There may be a hot key, but I just hit [CTRL]-[F] again and then again goto Find in Files Tab. Verify the REGEX string is unchanged (If you highlighted a new word or character accidentally, roll the mouse wheel and the last search will display again.
    8. Now you can hit the [Replace in Files] button. In a blink of the eyes, they're all changed, ready to be recommitted (hopefully without errors!)
  10. Oh, the split screen has a teensy tiny [X] in the upper RH corner, you can close that whenever you like once you checked the search is working.
  11. [ALT][TAB] to CM and recommit.
Wow, not sure I can handle the concept. Text screens on N3V's background I might actually be able to read without a struggle! There are several good web tutorials on REGEX searching, just google and look around for one with a good table or list with the key escape sequences and syntax.Good luck All! // Frank
 
Frank.

I'm sorry I was unclear. In each case I looked through the related .gs files until I found one that contained a block of HTML code, by digging through that I found the text to alter. As I am not intending to upload them, I committed them under the original KUID. In some cases release of the modified item requires permission, a problem when the listed email address is no longer valid.

I have looked at only a few and they vary enough that fixing them may be a one-at-a-time process. I modified those that I am using, some could be handled just by search and replace, exchanging #000000 with #FFFFFF. It depends on how the colour was handled in the code, some are are a simple first line of the HTML block but one I found required exchanging "Black" with "White", easy to do but not easy to find. I found one that had White on a pale green background, white became black pretty quickly.

It puzzles me why the creators have put a lot of effort in make the rules and then ignore the visual aspects by building "Black on Blue" into the interface screens that they had to make from scratch. Perhaps they believed they had to continue with the original appearance of the Auran content. I'm also puzzled, are you and I the only people who find Black on Blue a problem, I feel sure we are not.

Peter
 
Frank

not determined by any of the basic .gs files.

My initial impression when I started this was that the appearance of the screens was dictated by Auran(N3V). It appears that I was wrong, nothing in the "basic.gs" files seems to control the screen design, this is left to the Rule/Command creator.

Peter
 
Frank
My initial impression when I started this was that the appearance of the screens was dictated by Auran(N3V). It appears that I was wrong, nothing in the "basic.gs" files seems to control the screen design, this is left to the Rule/Command creator.
Peter
Ahhhh, I had a suspicion! When I first started writing my own sessions with the excuse for HTML in TRS2006, I had quite the tussle with fonts and colors. All the rules were black on grey in '06, so you may just be seeing older implementations where the window background color is overridden by N3V. Don't know, but try changing the background to white or lightgrey or some off white like wheat but use the #HEXCOD format found here on Wikipedia.

However, the basic REGEX method outlined above and the Notepad++ ability to search out a targeted string in multiple files in multiple subfolders should still be a great aid. Once you get the right syntaxes by trial and error and bound the patterns, make a helper file with the strings in your documents folder, then cut and paste whenever you want to process another irritating asset! [I've suggested to John we as a community start providing fixed code (assets) to content creators in emails and ask they update such 'inconveniences', reasoning things would be fixed far quicker if the originator just put up an upgrade. Perhaps a sticky thread also noting such a fix had been sent would add some speed to the process! (Some types of shortcomings shouldn't be tolerated so politely!)]

If we're talking rules--as you were, you can target *.gs? files and use the find in files to locate which files have the types of statement that could be changed ("<font color=" and "color:" as starters). I don't know whether the HTML variant N3V uses allows bgcolor, so that's one that needs tested and ruled out or syntax searched around carefully. Onc can also SAR using "background" perhaps, but that may be globally controlled by N3V's rendering.

Similarly, if a non-payware route or session text is the problem, processing the HTML asset of the parent asset will allow those screens the same contrast improvements. If it's local mods, no uploading intended,... "what happens in boxcar, stays in the boxcar"...

There is a filters feature which I've never used, but think I recollect when defined takes a list of filenamespec type expressions as a list, so set up once, give it a name, and done... speeding multi-file searching over say filespec *.* in folder x. Just found out they'd a new release in the last few days, and my help button now finds a bad url... Update time!

Consider the power of this: Bring up dependencies of the route/session that's a pain in the butt to view. Open-for-edit the one's with HTML elements as noted above, then search and make all the fonts associated with the asset have good contrast! Recommit, Drive the route and test the fruits of your effort and be bothered nevermore!

Likely enough those rules were used in other pains in the posterior and your status bar (Modified locally) tells you from then on that rule can be skipped in additional customizations. It would be nice to have a user selected option feature for text font and formatting though, wouldn't it! Note John's much scorned "ant print" can be resized the same edit, so us older folks get double the relief! Good editing! // Frank
 
Frank

Your thought is correct, I checked just one and the background is set at #777777 - grey. So it is not the fault of the author, they did was was right at the time and then program changes stuffed things up. As we have no access to the background colour as determined by the game code, all we can do is change the lettering. About offering the changes to the authors, that might work if they are still active but some of the rules go back to 2006 days. Steve Forget is one of them whose contact email is not valid. Have you ever contacted him in the past?

Peter
 
Frank

About offering the changes to the authors, that might work if they are still active but some of the rules go back to 2006 days. Steve Forget is one of them whose contact email is not valid. Have you ever contacted him in the past?

Peter
I know of Steve, as host of the TARL library--at least until lightning struck and killed it. I would guess Andi06 and IanWoodmore might still be able to get in touch, even if he has put Trainz behind him as a past chapter of his life. IIRC his 'shutting it down message' was in a tone that certainly wasn't down on Trainz, just that he was pursuing other interests.

However, your point is well taken, leaving the best option to do as you are doing and customizing your own local copy. It will certainly be the quickest and in the N3V way, most traditional--let the problems be solve one by one by each Trainz user. Blahhhh! Overall, perhaps what is needed in the long run is a CLEAR POLICY for handling updates of the assets of the dearly departed, the disgruntled, and the less than stellar effort by the youthful enthusiast. THAT is N3V/Auran alter their upload licensing so that if a contributor has not kept their contact profile updated such that a good faith effort to contact them over a problem-- fails over a six week interval, that N3V/Auran reserves the right to alter the uploads of any submission that is degrading the utility of the asset in their products for the good of the greater community**. I made that point to Windwalkr last summer (on the related auto-translation and self-upgrading of old asset data elements--a sorely needed lack that should be straightforward to implement!) that he was using our source code as runtime libraries, and ought be preprocessing and precompiling in any event.
(I need to go buy a lottery ticket today! SOON!!! Amazingly I found the right area of the discussion in the first bookmark I tested--I've at least six to different posts in that thread!--thinking to just link the thread again! Wow! Gotta go see if I can fix an error I haven't been able to hack before like Unicode characters in a texture file name in the mesh indexes--see if I can strip one out in those otherwise forlorn hopes!)

There, I was talking renaming config.txt to config.org,txt and auto-translating to a new compliant run version on opening the asset or validating it on download. Here and now, We're similarly talking tweaks and fixes of a wider scale permanent adjustment to DLS content for similar optimization with the currently supported software, not theft of static prose intellectual property. Altering a few lines of source code doesn't make it yours, the copyrights are still vested in the originator, especially if duly credited.For example:

Code:
-- DOT Placard Library, A LIBRARY ASSET OF 30 TEXTURES

kind                                    'traincar' 'texture-group'
kuid                                    <kuid2:45324:28900:2>

trainz-build                            2.9
mass                                    
---------- ---------- ---------- ---------- ----------
Rev-A 2014-0715 - by Fabartus - Massage description and add/change foldername of library to rename per NAMCON to unified format adopted 2014-0612. 

Asset foldername: 
Original folder: 
*********************************************************************************************************[INDENT]"
[/INDENT]
I put a similar change record in every asset I touch during the initial edit, usually before fixing anything... and most of the time remember to preserve the original config.txt as config.org.txt. Good practices. It's far too late to hope for a change record tag in the TBS! In this bit of boilerplate I was renaming fixed asset folders to a better naming convention (NAMCON) since I never know when a fixed asset is going to be needed if I revisit TS10-SP2 or TS09-SP1, etc, to test this or that. It's better to have them ready for import, updating, or study since I'm roughly ten years behind most of you guys on asset learning curves!

So N3V just needs to add a comment about the fix in the description block out in the open in front of God and everyone. Adjustments are needed from time to time in software and a digital asset is certainly a software creation. As custodians of the community treasure chest, some good faith fixing is more than tolerable, it is necessary (and demanded!) in the long run for the business health of Auran and N3V.

My empathy is with you long term content creators, updating stuff manually that can be done well and easily automatically is a tax on all of us, but the N3V failure to auto-translate has made you pillars of the community defacto slaves to the ill-considered and inconsiderate choices the software gang chose for their own convenience and laziness. NO REASON a v1.3 asset which is fixed by adding a mesh-table manually couldn't have been fixed during preprocessing. Ditto legacy keywords like name, name-XX, asset-filename... you all know the regular list... Ditto thumbnails when an '_art' subfolder is present. Hell, I made the case to Paul Cass last night in an email they could make screenshots on the fly and insert them in all assets using and adapting code they have in either surveyor or railyard,.. that little rotating 3D asset image in the tools selection menus in surveyor is rendered that way. Figuring out the long axis of the perimeter, offsetting orthogonally to a camera location so the 240x180 frame is mostly occupied is just a bit of iterative math. Capture the frozen image and put away. Need not bother the users at all...

The whole problem is the programmers have too small a shop to be making all the decisions about what to prioritize, and Tony and Mr. Edelman are apparently totally ignorant of how simple some of this stuff would be in software by adapting things already in place and debugged. Parsing more than once being time consuming is an absolute joke (WIndwalkr's answer to me linked above). In enumerated types like this, they should parse and tokenize (code for keywords) in a forward pass-just like an interpreted language, then reparse the same array of lines bottom to top and validate the same lines yield the same tokens verifying there are no corrupt data elements--that catches all the unbalanced parenthesis and quotes and would generate a much more accurate error message (to the line range!) and shortstop the mangled list of 20 errors which are just a mislaid quote! Similarly, a end of line test for trailing whitespace inside quotes and auto-stripping of same is a trivial single line or two of C++, and can probably be implemented as a macro!

Off the soap box. Have a good day Peter and you all! // Frank


** Yes, I'm not plagiarizing, but suggesting extending the more aggressive policy they've implemented in the DLS clean-up project to any worthwhile change, such as this contrast issue. I'm surprised they take the heat for script based issues. Admittedly, they need to rescale their default medium font (Size 3 definition) to something 15-25% larger, but that's release software programming and perhaps we've raised enough gripes to get some relief this past year. Should have been fixed in TS2009-SP1 though. Tardy and unresponsive doesn't do them justice!
 
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