Welcome to the can of worms that is the topic known as "faulty assets".
If you search these forums you will find numerous threads dealing with this issue, many containing "hot" posts that were sent before their originators actually thought about the "intemperate" words in their posts (or maybe they did but sent it anyway). It is a topic that has generated a lot of heat and accusations about the ungrateful whingers ("whiners") biting the hands of the hard working content creators who feed them free assets, and counter accusations, etc, etc. Needless to say the popcorn sellers have done a roaring trade catering for the many people watching the fights from the sidelines.
The fact is that the DLS contains many faulty assets. Some faults are due to changes in the way that the later versions of Trainz check these assets for faults. There has been a "tightening up" in quality checking and what some earlier versions let go without error messages later versions will not.
Other errors are due to mistakes in the way an asset was built or uploaded - for example not all the necessary files may have been present in the supplied upload. Some of these errors are easy, with a bit of knowledge, to fix, e.g: typing errors in the assets config.txt file. Others require more detailed knowledge, e.g: fixing texture files. While others can only be fixed by the original asset creator (if they are still around).
There are some free software tools (e.g. those by PEVSoft) that can be used to fix some issues.
The question some have asked is "why should users have to fix these faulty assets themselves?" - a point usually followed by many counter arguments, and more popcorn sales.
Auran/N3V recently initiated a policy of allowing other users to fix and re-upload faulty assets if the original creator was unable to do so - this also caused some heat in the forums.
The downside to this is, of course, the frustration it creates amongst users although some of the more experienced Trainzers see it as challenge to their "fixit" skills. It also creates the problem that when you create and upload a route or session with faulty assets, even if you have fixed them yourself, then those same problems are passed onto to everyone who downloads your routes or session.
The popcorn sellers may be back in business again
Peter Ware
