....and I imagine with all the negative comments on these forums there will be quite a few less freeware content producers and possibly more payware, or people making use of other sites to make their content available as a free service to others.
Quite the opposite to what I'm thinking.
I stopped creating models and Rules/Driver commands for Trainz a long time ago because:
- CMP is a pain
- No working Exporter for the versions of Max I use
- Lack of support from anyone wearing an Auran badge
- Dwindling community spirit
- DLS a mess and very unreliable
If TC3 or Trainz 2009+ have a version of CMP that is stable and works for everyone (and not just rhetoric saying that it SHOULD work), working exporters, etc, then I'll actually feel like writing script and modelling for Trainz again.
Auran have addressed most of these already with the Dev site, releasing beta versions of the exporters, communication both ways via the dev forums, and the promise of a clean, working DLS with a stable and non-intrusive CMP to work along with it.
If they push forward the same way they've started, and prove to us it's not just marketing, then most of the things that have stopped me contributing to Trainz for the past 2 years will be gone, and I can enjoy the hobby again.
If I should start making content again I will not be putting it on the DS again. Barry
Well, if they fix the DS the way they say they're going to, then I'll have no problem with uploading to the DS.
However, if they don't, then I'll also be using my website to distribute them, but I can assure you that I have no intention of charging money for any of it.
I don't see how you can see there will be more payware.
Less freeware maybe, but not more payware.
Although the rest of this post is slightly off-topic, I'm going to say it anyway, because the topic of backwards compatibility has been touched on.
Maybe Auran should start a new thread, or even a poll, on what people want to see from backwards compatibility.
Anyway,
Auran need to decide whether to allow those people dragging their heels regarding compatibility to hold the progression of the sim up.
We've already heard that within the new version of Trainz, you'll be able to choose whether to use the standard 10m grid or the new 5m grid, so I imagine that Trainz routes going back to at least TRS2004 will be able to be loaded into the new sims, and then people can convert the route to the 5m grid and tweak the landscape to take advantage of this finer grid.
I also assume that the textures used will be carried over, and set initially to the 10m grid square (unless you've used faulty textures).
The way I see it is that it makes sense to allow routes created in TRS2004/TRS2006/TC1,2,3 to be loaded into TRS2009/X, loading them into the standard 10m grid baseboard to start with, but I think it's really too much to expect them to allow all the faulty content to be loaded too, and I would hope that importing one of these routes into TRS2009/X would automatically delete any references to faulty content in the route, so that the imported route is ready to be saved in TRS2009/X without any errors or faults carried over.
So, in short, you'd definitely get all your landscaping and ground painting carried over, and any objects that met the new criteria for content would also be carried over.
Let's not forget that if you're using TRS2004, you could use TrainzObjectz to replace any assets that were known to be faulty, with safe ones before importing to TRS2009/X, and you could do the same with TrainzMap if you were using TRS2006, although I think to a lesser extent.
Or you could do it by hand.
What's the point of releasing a route that people using the new version of Trainz will not be able to use because you've allowed faulty content to be referenced.
As for spending months on routes only to be told that some of it may not be carried over, if nothing else, it shows that a new standard needs to be set now so that subsequent versions of Trainz are future-proof in this regard.
As long as you don't need to start the route from scratch, and only need to pay attention to some areas, then I think that's a small price to pay for a standard that will allow the Trainz franchise to move on.
Discuss. lol :hehe:
Smiley.