RoysTrainz -- You do an excellent job of explaining the life of a route creator. Perhaps a written agreement that No Changes can be made to the purchased route without the consent of the original owner. Irresponsible management fiddling in-house is only asking for trouble. Trouble that ends up on the plate of the author and the customers. When the product is segment, allegedly to fit a region, it is yet another variation with its own unique issues. More stuff to manage. More stuff to test. More stuff to market. More confusion for the new customer.
Dick,
the fiddling was with consent of the author but only cosmetic add's.
The downside of it was it was far from what the proto route should show and more a showroom of at that time nice good looking big chunks of rocks how to use in any fictional route or route were indeed they mimic reality.
Again to be honest the coincidance of TRS19 MB size changed dramatically was not intended by n3v just pur bad luck for me.
Most routes out there on the DLC are small or medium size compared to mine and detailed only near track were mine are detailed all over miles away from track.
When trainzers start mumbling about discounts as if that is the only thing we breath at the receiver side to feel good and forgetting the producing side ends up with less than a hand full of coins than there is a fundamental breach of descency and respect.This cannot work on the long term!
Since TRS19 n3v introduced a limit of pricing at 39.99 $ for what they call big route and sessions.
This is so utterly unreal and unfair words fail to even get close what it feels like to have no choice.
One can conclude and it had been said many times in the grapevine, certain individuals are not willing to pay a fair prize 70 or even the halved price of 40 usd for a extremely large big route even if it is worth a lot more.
So coming to the realisation living in a brave new world of different standards one can only try to produce smaller sized routes to keep some visual balance in size,quality and prize.......
n3v use the marketing tool for cooking the sales stew and throw dlc chunks in the boiling pot for big sales called black friday and sorts of weird names, yes for me it is black friday by ALL means.
The already underpayed route becomes like a sliced pizza, have a chunk for only 2 $ or the entire pizza for 5 $. Marketing calls it win by the numbers for them it might be true but for the individual creators it is far from as the number per creator are totally different from what n3v cashes with all the pizza's different flavors sold.
I almost feel like the pizza man.
To end with the newly introduced TCCP 2.0 (no it has no links with CCP) is another phenomena intended to relieve n3v from the suicidal process of handling all incoming assets and process them in house for DLC ready output.
The intention is good and clear and I actually told them years ago to please look for a way to NOT do the entire process in house( they not have the resources no one has) but allow the creator to have access to and upload their assets to trainz.
Now we as creators end up in a strict,very strict process of steps to try to upload (internet works or has glitches as usual) and hope the asset makes it tot the first destination on TCCP.
To makes things worse their upload system only reckonize a fully uploaded asset and not have a safe partial upload if a glitch or interruption of the internet happens. Like we are used to continue where you left off if the file not made it in full.
I live in the NNE of Thailand far from civilisation and just within the range of an antenna 10 km away and have a for my standards good to very well link. regular is upl a solid 30-40 MBS or bad one 5 MBS, dl 30-40MBS very good one 50-60 MBS and bad one's 10MBS from friday thru sunday as the bandwith is used for Thais of all ages to flock the internet.
So uploading a 7.3GB file on my google drive takes me roughly 15-20 min when going well. Upload to n3v is the slowest of all and it takes me roughly 10 hours if go well to get that file uploaded.
The chances are like 1 out of 10 trials makes it all the other fail somewhere down the road or just at the 10th hour for whatever reason. Drove me totally nuts and I said no more upload that way.
Upload also means you cannot work on anything other than that route and if your have a freeze or crash yes your tccp is gone too because you have to reboot the system.
Beta testing is the next level to go thru and try to survive and before you know it you as the author are doing the job of others identifying bugs,glitches and other critters and report them in a format defined by n3v.
Bug report they only do work on reports they can read and it needs to be absolutely programmer style detailed to make it thru the screening.
I am a route and asset creator/author and not a bug fixer/identifier/reporter.
If you are lucky the route makes it thru the beta testing and if you had encountered a trs19 bug you are in for a different ride you not expect.
ALL posts from beta testers including bugs and critters or advice from testers must be answered and "followed up" by the author.
The route will not go the the next level before all posts are answered and cleared. Sounds like a big fly catcher and it is similar to the black hole mosquito catcher looks awsome but the catch is nowhere to be seen. Maybe it sreally a black hole to absorbs the critters, would be nice.
So this is getting a really lengthy post and let's end with if you have some big and good your window of making it thru the DLC within the life expectancy of eg TRS19 is very narrow.
The processes of creating things and get it cleared by all different levels of steps to make it to a TCCP build version and the final test version and the final give green light by n3v..... is quite lengthy.
I know TCCP 2.0 is not a final version it goes thru the growth process of any new system trying to put in place.
Roy
