KUID Index Closing?

Haven't visited TKI in ages. I used to use it until they chose to implement a paywall, after that I simply just looked around for free alternatives. Maybe the paywall killed the site? Paywalling stuff is kind of a double edged sword in some ways, some people are willing to pay for the convenience of it, others will not bother and seek a freely-available alternative instead.
Same. I stopped using it for that very reason. I wish pierre the best of luck with whatever he tries to do to TKI.
 
Pierre doesn’t seem to be responding to any PMs, I did try asking him in one. An email might be worth a shot
 
Trainzland doesn't cover anywhere near the volume of available Trainz content that TrainzKuidIndex does.

A useful site for hard to find RU and East Europe content, for sure, but all else it's pretty hit and miss. That's the only time I use it, and maybe occasionally for old U.S. NG content from defunct hosting sites.

TKI has always been useful, even of you don't have a subscription. You could always post an ask on our dedicated kuid search thread,
and ask someone to search TKI for you, and post links.


Rico
Agreed... It's a shame so many people jumped ship when he asked for a couple bucks to keep it going. Maybe if he had enough support, it wouldn't have come to this. I never minded paying my way for any service I benefit from. Kind'a funny...Trainz went subscription, and everyone got in line.
 
TKI asks for a small sum to support a single developer providing a useful service, and people refuse to pay. trainz moves to a subscription model because its devs want more of your money for glorified betatesting, and people break out their wallets. sad to see TKI go.
 
Sometimes the site finds things Google doesn't. Too bad it's going away. For route creators, they should provide a list of where assets came from just the non-DLS ones. For ones that came from sites that closed and aren't available anywhere else the route creator should substitute them because there's no easy way for the end user to replace missing assets in bulk. And missing assets will be invisible in the route, except for splines which show white dashes, so how do you know where a few hundred missing trees or buildings are supposed to go?
 
As someone that ran a site like this back in the 90s, I can tell you it is a massive amount of work. I ran a site that provided child safe links to animal websites that provided useful and fun information for kids to use in their school work. It was very popular attracting millions of hits a month. But the work of finding new websites, adding links for them and scanning old links to make sure they still work was never ending. Today, the cost of hosting has gone up like everything else. I never used the site myself but I can see how it was valuable to the community.
 
how do you know where a few hundred missing trees or buildings are supposed to go?
If you "Show missing assets", you will get orange wireframe boxes on the route where there are missing assets. Of course, you won't know what the missing asset looks like, so you will have to substitute something you think will fit in the space and look good there. For trees, I find it easier to clone an existing tree to the KUID of the missing or faulty ones. It beats having to replace a forest one tree at a time.
 
OK I a supposed to give some answers now. So I will try to give.
First Act
A few years ago I must create a company in Thailand, where I live, to be able to receive money via Paypal. After a few quiet years, the bureaucrats wake up suddenly, see the money coming from oversea, and begin to ask for their share of the cake. In fact they take more than 50% of the cake. The raison they gave : TKI is a casino online !!?? I don't know if it was humor or not, but I do know that with these people you can't talk, you have to hand over the wad of bills. That is why I MUST close the business NOW if I don't want that they take more and more every year.
Second Act
Any alternative ? I don't know yet.
But in the end the main question is not about an alternative. The main question is : is it worth it ?
The number of subscriptions has fallen slowly but steadily over the past 2 years. 450 subscriptors today. I don't know how much people use Trainz, or how much pay for the download station. But I suppose that 450 is very very few. People don't like to pay for Internet sites. I understand that of course. I don't like too !
But the work of updating data for TKI is a formidable task.
I am very grateful to the subscribers who subscribe since years and help me to keep the site alive. But running TKI for so few people doesn't seem very reasonable.
In my dream, TKI should be free for everybody (meaning thousands of users) and supported by some sponsor(s) (like most of the free stuffs on Internet). But that is only a dream of course...
Pierre
 
OK I a supposed to give some answers now. So I will try to give.
First Act
A few years ago I must create a company in Thailand, where I live, to be able to receive money via Paypal. After a few quiet years, the bureaucrats wake up suddenly, see the money coming from oversea, and begin to ask for their share of the cake. In fact they take more than 50% of the cake. The raison they gave : TKI is a casino online !!?? I don't know if it was humor or not, but I do know that with these people you can't talk, you have to hand over the wad of bills. That is why I MUST close the business NOW if I don't want that they take more and more every year.
Second Act
Any alternative ? I don't know yet.
But in the end the main question is not about an alternative. The main question is : is it worth it ?
The number of subscriptions has fallen slowly but steadily over the past 2 years. 450 subscriptors today. I don't know how much people use Trainz, or how much pay for the download station. But I suppose that 450 is very very few. People don't like to pay for Internet sites. I understand that of course. I don't like too !
But the work of updating data for TKI is a formidable task.
I am very grateful to the subscribers who subscribe since years and help me to keep the site alive. But running TKI for so few people doesn't seem very reasonable.
In my dream, TKI should be free for everybody (meaning thousands of users) and supported by some sponsor(s) (like most of the free stuffs on Internet). But that is only a dream of course...
Pierre

That certainly explains a lot. I'm surprised you never considered using ads: I heard they help pay for your site so you don't have to. Even so, it sucks the government is the reason behind all this. With no other KUID finding websites out there, your best choice may be to sell it to somebody else.
 
So how will people find missing KUIDS if the website will be shut down ? It was the main source to find all the stuff that many trainz users were looking for .
 
I'm very aware that Kuid Index site is going to shut down next year and I did read it when I first came there. Very sad to see it go, given how very invaluable this site is, especially finding tons of assets that cannot be found anywhere. The only thing we could do is get out our flash drive, download the assets and transfer them to the flash drive. That way, you do not have to worry about scrambling to find them once Kuid index site shuts down. It's a bit pricey (but if you're financially stable), I would recommend buying a 1TB Flash Drive like one or maybe two. (Rarely, if by stretch, you could also buy three of them.)
 
What brand can you suggest when it comes to external HD or SSD. I own a Dell Laptop Inspiron 14/ Intel Core i5. I also have an Amazon account.
The ideal would be two ugreen external hard drive enclosures, drop a WD black in one or possibly one of the "enterprise hard drive renewed" and something in the other one for backups. For SSD I'd go samsung again I'd go with a separate case, "ssd nvme case" again I'd go ugreen. I think the NMVE drives are cheaper than an SSD in a case.

Cheerio John
 
What brand can you suggest when it comes to external HD or SSD. I own a Dell Laptop Inspiron 14/ Intel Core i5. I also have an Amazon account.
I've used Western Digital hard drives for long term storage for twenty years with good results. By that, I copy to them when I need to and leave them turned off or unplugged otherwise. When I'm looking for something I plug them in and look for it. I avoid the huge capacity drives and use mostly 1 or 2 TB drives. I think that the WD Passport drives would be good for a laptop.
 
What brand can you suggest when it comes to external HD or SSD. I own a Dell Laptop Inspiron 14/ Intel Core i5. I also have an Amazon account.
Many Dell computers use an M.2 NMVE slot for the hard drive and come with a smallish 256 Gb drive. One option is to buy a larger M.2 drive and an external enclosure enclosure. Clone the old drive on to the new one then replace the old drive inside. That way you get the full bandwidth benefit of an NMVE drive.

Cheerio John
 
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