An Appeal To All Content Creators

[nicky9499]

Dear Content Creators,

I write this open letter concerning an alarming number of assets on the DLS both new and updated which have a Trainz build number of 3.7 or above. Please do not construe my comments as disrespect or whinging, for this is genuinely not the case.

These past 2 days, I have encountered through the course of route-building several missing platform splines that are displayed with the white dotted lines. These lines cannot be object-picked, and I had to ask a fellow Trainzer running the route on an unsupported build (SP1) to identify their KUIDs. With this information, it was established that said splines were updated to TB 3.7/3 and installed via the in-game updater. Of course, because this is Trainz SP0/49922/3.6, they were broken.

Curiously, CM did not report any missing or faulty dependencies at all. This raises an alarming prospect that objects might have broken silently which is very hard to detect as objects do not leave behind telltale white dotted lines.

How N3V managed to screw up and allow a 3.7 asset to be downloaded into a Trainz 3.6 was the crucial cause but is another separate matter altogether. The point I'm trying to make is most assets I've seen - including the aformentioned troublesome ones - are unnecessarily uploaded as build 3.7. Just like those platforms; as far as I can discern they are just very simple, plain jane splines. No ultra-HD textures, random-sequenced textures, procedural-whatever or any "advanced" features at all. By extension this also applies to a worrying amount of new content on the DLS. Simple things like static cars, shipping containers, road signs and fences; why are they being uploaded as 3.7? I'm not referring to complex objects with mesh libraries or skin changers etc, these are literally "box and textures" assets.

Because finger-pointing is not the aim of this thread, I'd like to avoid mentioning KUIDs in this thread. This is an appeal to all content creators; unless it is absolutely necessary, like if you're using a new feature that specifically requires build 3.7+, please upload your content as 3.5. Yes, N3V screwed up a couple weeks back and the impatient ones went ahead to upload as 3.7 anyway. However even after they rolled it back, there is still an alarming lot of simple content being uploaded as 3.7 for reasons I cannot fathom. Perhaps someone can enlighten me here. It's very sad to see alot of good content that is just arbitrarily off-limits. If the point of uploading content is to share it with as many people as possible, this uploading as 3.7 is very counterproductive.

I have no statistics at all how many are still using 49922. But I'd like to believe many people are, because this old girl is as reliable as a tractor. Yes she's slow at times, yes she's got weird quirks, but no, I don't have to redownload all my DLC every 2 days, or an EDR because some patch went sideways (haven't had to EDR for months now).



To summarise - and for the TL;DR and literary-averse - TS12 is still valid and current, 3.5 uploads are permitted to the DLS, so please stop uploading content as 3.7 if your asset does not require it. Thank you.

 

[shaneturner12]

I assume they've completed the rollback in that case, although the reason some content creators may be doing it is to avoid a warning in T:ANE.

Shane

 

[davesnow]

What there needs to be is a Fan-Made alternate to the DLS or CMP. A website where freeware assets can be hosted, downloaded, reskins uploaded and downloaded, etc. etc.

I'm not talking about just a website, I'm talking about a place which would become known to all TRAINZ users and would be a free place to grab assets. Perhaps it could be made to look similar to Content Manager Plus? I don't know.

All I know is, I'm not unloading anything else to the DLS because of all the errors I get, EVEN when using Build 3.5.

Cheers,

Dave Snow

 

[JCitron]

What there needs to be is a Fan-Made alternate to the DLS or CMP. A website where freeware assets can be hosted, downloaded, reskins uploaded and downloaded, etc. etc.

I'm not talking about just a website, I'm talking about a place which would become known to all TRAINZ users and would be a free place to grab assets. Perhaps it could be made to look similar to Content Manager Plus? I don't know.

All I know is, I'm not unloading anything else to the DLS because of all the errors I get, EVEN when using Build 3.5.

Cheers,

Dave Snow

There is Trainz Pro Routes which is still active, but I would also reconsider because making your stuff available to all is the way to go.

How about a different version besides 3.5? Build 3.5 introduces more strict error-checking which may not be necessary for the kind of models you are making. Just a thought...

John

 

[amigacooke]

What there needs to be is a Fan-Made alternate to the DLS or CMP. A website where freeware assets can be hosted, downloaded, reskins uploaded and downloaded, etc. etc.

I'm not talking about just a website, I'm talking about a place which would become known to all TRAINZ users and would be a free place to grab assets. Perhaps it could be made to look similar to Content Manager Plus? I don't know.

All I know is, I'm not unloading anything else to the DLS because of all the errors I get, EVEN when using Build 3.5.

Cheers,

Dave Snow

What places like Trainz Luvr and the TPR Download Depot? Thing is, someone must be paying for them.

 

[ish6]

Hello,

Your quote, sir

"there is still an alarming lot of simple content being uploaded as 3.7 for reasons I cannot fathom."

We all have simple and complex items, sir, but it's all the same ... as long as everything is correct it will go through the DLS process!

Few of Pev tools have helped fix textures, etc, so that part became easy and fast ...

Now, your answer, from my point of view.
I prefer to make and update any items to 3.7 so that when next year, or so, when the build is pushed to 4.1, it will mean that my items will still be compatible with TANE!

To be honest. although N3V screwed up, and then decided to rollback the builds, I got cold feet, and just left it as 3.7 .... this will, hopefully, guarantee error-free, trouble-free items in the future, for me! -- I have thousands among thousands of items... over a thousand are error free, both simple and complex items, sir! --

Hope this helps answer, at least. some of your questions! :wave:

Ish

 

[cascaderailroad]

Sooner, or later all, people will be updating their older assets beyond TS12, and someday most of the DLS updated assets will be irretrievably broken for use in 04, 06, 09, 10 and 12

 

[paulhobbs]

Sooner, or later all, people will be updating their older assets beyond TS12, and someday most of the DLS updated assets will be irretrievably broken for use in 04, 06, 09, 10 and 12

Yes, but that doesn't matter because the old versions will still be available.

 

[nicky9499]

That would be ok if not for the fact that N3V has messed up the in-game updater somehow such that not only are my splines broken, I cannot even rollback to an older version. Such a broken system can cause missing objects that will easily go unnoticed. My splines are still broken, and after an hour of various convoluted attempts to rectify this I've given up. For now the only way to prevent further occurrences is to not update assets at all, which like all things N3V is a silly workaround.

Hi Ish, thanks for your perspective. What I still don't understand about this logic - and many others have pointed this out before especially in the DLS 3.7 furore - is that an asset can be built to perfectly satisfy TANE's requirements and still be of an older build number. In fact, just now I cloned several 3.7 assets, edited the the config to read 3.5 and committed them. All showed up perfectly error- and warning-free. Yes, many prolific creators like you have thousands of uploads and it would be unreasonable to ask that all of them be backdated. But I don't think it's too much to edit a single digit in the config just before uploading and after verifying that it works in TANE. After all, 2.9 and earlier assets work fine in 3.6 today, why would new assets be any different?

If your asset was problematic in TS12 to begin with, it wouldn't pass TANE validation anyway. If your simple asset is error free in TANE, it will be error free in TS12.

 

[paulhobbs]

Of course you can rollback, just delete the 3.7 assets. The correct way to update the assets is to assign a new kuid that obsoletes the old one if you are changing the trainz-build. That way you don’t screw up the old assets.

I certainly won't upload anything with trainz-build 3.5 as I can't test the assets in that version.

Paul

 

[RRSignal]

Trainz-build number has nothing to do with the quality or functionality of assets. It's entirely possible to build assets to work in T:ANE and pass T:ANE error-checking, but revert the TB to 3.5 just before uploading so everyone can use them. The only exception is an asset that makes use of some new feature e.g. a new material or tag in config.txt.

As for TPR, that's where I'm uploading now, but beware there is a 10mb filesize limit, and uploading is considerably more involved than uploading to the DLS. I may upload NEW content to the DLS at some point as long as it is versioned 3.5, but I'm not updating my older stuff (on the DLS, that is) since I don't want to break compatibility with older versions.

 

[BuilderBob]

but I'm not updating my older stuff (on the DLS, that is) since I don't want to break compatibility with older versions.

If you upload with an incremented KUID and the new build version, why would that break compatibility with older versions?

If someone did manage to download the version that has the build number too high for their game, they can simply delete it.

The problem with the build number only occurs where N3V flags the updated asset as built-in so it can't be deleted, but that's a separate issue.

 

[RRSignal]

If you upload with an incremented KUID and the new build version, why would that break compatibility with older versions?

If someone did manage to download the version that has the build number too high for their game, they can simply delete it.

The problem with the build number only occurs where N3V flags the updated asset as built-in so it can't be deleted, but that's a separate issue.

If an asset such as a route uses a specific revision as a dependency, it won't accept lower revisions; i.e. the dependency will show as Unknown. I have had increment some of my KUIDs, skipping increments, because of that issue.

To be exact, it's not as much a problem with upping the Trainz-build per se, as it is issues with the revision system. Nevertheless, it's still a problem for legacy users that can easily be avoided by not updating assets.

 

[nicky9499]

Trainz-build number has nothing to do with the quality or functionality of assets. It's entirely possible to build assets to work in T:ANE and pass T:ANE error-checking, but revert the TB to 3.5 just before uploading so everyone can use them. The only exception is an asset that makes use of some new feature e.g. a new material or tag in config.txt.

This. Precisely this. How hard is this? Paul, you make locomotives and complex stuff so there's a high chance some of your content is not backwards compatible with 3.5/3.6 and that's fine. But again for simple assets that is utterly unnecessary. There was a beautiful container I saw the other day, it was 3.7, why? No fancy opening door animations or chameleon scripts. It was literally just a cuboid with textures on 6 sides. Are cuboids with textures on 6 sides not supported in TS12 SP0?

Content creators: if your justification is "I can't test it" or "I want it to work in TANE", please know that this is not the case. If your simple asset works in 3.7/3.9, it will work in 3.5!

I am only addressing the DLS in this particular thread as it is intricately interconnected with Trainz and CM and works nicely (most of the time). It will only be to Trainz's detriment if people stop uploading to it. Third party sites support far older versions and have their own set of rules, but as long as TS12 uploads are still allowed I don't see why there is a need to go elsewhere. You can't beat the DLS in terms of integration, period.

 

[trainboi1]

Just personally, the only new rules I've encountered whatsoever have to do with LoD restrictions, and once I think about it, I can't think of any new restrictions that would cause a TANE- or DLS-compliant asset to break in TS12. I haven't come across anything truly unreasonable - it breaks my mind to think that I would be able to get a 120,000-poly model down to 500 polys, even at the distance of a kilometer, but the argument stands that that's better for performance. So really, I don't see what the big fuss is, or why people don't just use 3.5 build version, since that works in TANE and on the DLS.
To boot, the cries for a non-DLS alternative are perfectly acceptable. There have always been third-party sites - we upload to them to maintain our rights, we put payware on them to maximize profits and make downloading easier, and we have a kuid index to help navigate them. That's good enough for me.

 

[BuilderBob]

If an asset such as a route uses a specific revision as a dependency, it won't accept lower revisions; i.e. the dependency will show as Unknown. I have had increment some of my KUIDs, skipping increments, because of that issue.

That's correct, but why should that happen?
- The route has been down-versioned. That's always going to create problems, and you can't expect the versioning system to cope with that.
- The route creator built the route using an asset with a build number higher than the route build number. That shouldn't happen, and it's not something the versioning system can be expected to handle.

There are certainly issues with the versioning system (I have just been dealing with Holm Oak 12m - a complete mess) but I can't see that it justifies not using it.

 

[RRSignal]

That's correct, but why should that happen?
- The route has been down-versioned. That's always going to create problems, and you can't expect the versioning system to cope with that.
- The route creator built the route using an asset with a build number higher than the route build number. That shouldn't happen, and it's not something the versioning system can be expected to handle.

There are certainly issues with the versioning system (I have just been dealing with Holm Oak 12m - a complete mess) but I can't see that it justifies not using it.

The latter case is exactly the problem. I create a lot of custom content for my SEPTA route being built in TS2010. If I increment the kuid of even a single asset, say, to update the Trainz-build to 3.5 in accordance with N3V's DLS upload policy, Trainz will automatically update the expected kuid of that asset to the new increment the next time I save the route in Surveyor, even though the route is otherwise fully TS2010-compatible as well as all the content. Anybody who receives a copy of my route will get an Unknown KUID error unless they have the incremented-kuid asset. And, even if they do manage to get it, and they're using TS2010, it'll break compatibility because that asset will be considered by TS2010 as having an invalid Trainz-build number, assuming it'll even download in the first place.

That's why the existing kuid system can be a disincentive to update content.

 

[shaneturner12]

My view on the system is that it works pretty well. If a user wants to have two separate versions of an asset for compatibility reasons, then having two separate KUIDs is the way to go.

Shane

 

[nicky9499]

That's correct, but why should that happen?
- The route has been down-versioned. That's always going to create problems, and you can't expect the versioning system to cope with that.
- The route creator built the route using an asset with a build number higher than the route build number. That shouldn't happen, and it's not something the versioning system can be expected to handle.

The route has not been down versioned. It was built in 49922 and the issue is taking place in 49922.
The route creator built the route using an asset that originally had a 3.5 build number which was unnecessarily updated to 3.7. That N3V's in-game updater allowed the 3.7 update to be downloaded is a separate matter altogether. But the 3.5 and 3.7 versions of the asset are IDENTICAL to the byte and the only thing changed was config build number (and kuid2 version). Why should people stop unnecessarily uploading 3.7 assets? Because it's pointless and only serves to alienate said content from many users.

So, 2 points.

1. N3V's updating system has trouble with unsupported versions, even though versions themselves are not an issue.
2. Regardless, there is no need to update an asset if only to bump up the build number.

 

[cascaderailroad]

Sooner, or later all, people will be updating their older assets beyond TS12, and someday most of the DLS updated assets will be irretrievably broken for use in 04, 06, 09, 10 and 12

Yes, but that doesn't matter because the old versions will still be available.

When people update the same kuid, the old original asset goes away for good