The Region tag needs more love!

[RobWed]

I thought I'd see if there were any interesting routes on the Download Station. I learned two things

• Lots of people upload their first test layout for reasons unknown...
• The region tag gets no love.

There were over 19,000 routes available for download. Only one of each carring a tag for United Kingdom, United States, Germany, or Australia as their region.
And yes I did add my own username to the Author filter just to check...

 

[pware]

There are 93 assets on the DLS that I counted that are of type Region and contained the word "Region" in their names - so it is possible that there are even more that have not been correctly named. Unfortunately there is no category=Region that would make finding them easier. So my method was

1. In CM select the Custom Search filter
2. Set up the following filter lines
   • Name = Region
   • Out-of-Date = False
   • Obsolete = False
3. Sort the resulting list in reverse alphabetical order on the Type column (left click the heading Type twice)
4. Scroll down the list to find all the Region type assets (on DLS, Modified, Packaged, Built-in)

 

[RobWed]

moving everything into the name fails to leverage the value of the tag.

 

[pware]

moving everything into the name fails to leverage the value of the tag.

I don't understand that. Maybe I misinterpreted your original point.

I would agree that many route creators simply use the default region when they create a new route, In my case I always set the region on all new routes I create, even the "throw-away" ones, to <kuid:45176:100490> Australia with TRS19 Grid (no word "region" in the name).

Many of those first test layouts that appeared on the DLS were created in the Android version(s) of Trainz. Apparently, the DLS is/was the only place where you could save your routes.

 

[RobWed]

Lots of people focus on a region. It'd be great if creators used the tag properly so we could filter by whatever is our interest (at that time) It's like the rating tag. Only one route has a rating. And I've no idea how we would rate assets.

 

[RobWed]

Oh and I wasn't asking how to find stuff in a particular region, simply bemoaning the lost opportunity due to underutilisation of tags....