Route and Asset Tech Manuals offer
(
from here)I'm forking from some comments made a bit off topic by Ianwoodmore on the this
TS12 SP1 HF4.....validation, validations....use the sim thread, because it overlaps with fixing the DLS.
I'm currently working with Andi06, PEV, and Paul Cass on the next version of AssetX/TARDIS. No date for release. I can tell you that I have just met the 80% milestone in my testing. That is, having raised all assets from their original TB to TB 3.7 that are not locked and if you sum all CM reported errors, FD, MD and warnings (pretty extreme milestone) then 20% are defective discounting obsoletes after applying fully automated repair processes. Faulty (red icon) assets only make up a little over 5%. I'm far from finished in automating and I already know that I can achieve a much higher success rate by semi-automatic or last resort manual means. And who knows what other ingenious widgets the other three are going to invent before we release!
Hmm, I'm tempted to send you my errors backlog and see how it gets reduced. Much of it originated in Trainz Routes or other such releases like the bonus CD of TRS2004 deluxe. OTOH, are you putting your fixed assets into the Queue for DLS upgrades, or is this all a productivity exercise in local software?
As far as your joint project... I've troubles... though offer kudos. The trouble with that on MORAL LEVEL is it's not your job--
albeit one that helps the morale around here!
You and I, and certainly Andi and Peter all know, as do others with software skills, that at the minimum N3V could have written some filter programs to convert the data types transitions at the heart of many of these faults, and
indeed are likely using such code internally and doing such conversions on the fly and ahead of time (certainly during error checking at the least--such conversions also output those various warnings, I suspect!), given their bastardization of source and ready-to load binaries, the fact they can read a v1.3 asset means they can convert it to v2.6, v2.8, v2.9 and yes, even up to v3.7 so what the heck are you doing it for?
Well, in fact, your scripts must be doing much the same. I'm sure we all thank you, but the moral obligation should be on those who benefit most and sell such--at least as one of their best features. (The office suits certainly ought to understand that is what attracts people or makes them come back if they go over to the dark side. It isn't for the graphics, or the presence of hesitations and pauses--it's what we can build with all those assets.)
IMHO, those conversions should have been undertaken years ago, and older assets with problems isolated and scrapped well before N3V bought the rights, but that inertia has in my reckoning cost untold hundreds of thousand, perhaps tens of millions of man-hour in customer waitings... worse, N3v has failed to even use the kuid system to update and play fair with it's own bundled assets. Had they done so, the TRS2006 assets in TS2009 would both be on the DLS and be exportable with V2.9 trainz-builds. You people want to know why I'm hot under the collar up above, this is it. Every friggin' time I have to fix a fiddly little error that could have been fixed automatically had someone cared, rubs salt in the wounds. Sometimes ignorance is more peaceful. Unfortunately, I know that most these assets could have been auto-upgraded with a minor amount of coding. The guts of such are already built into their translations software. A function or two to annote a auto-promotion, a kuid promotion, those to substitute the new 'container' data forms for the older unconsolidated tag forms... computers are really good at such text and file manipulation.
The next problem with that, Ian, is we needed the release three or five or seven years ago back perhaps most accurately even as early as when you three were
working with TARL, not in the nebulous future using arcane scripts that may themselves require knowledge and possibly poorly documented niche software by talented wiz-bang third parties. I'm not slamming you guys, nor do I want to rain on your parade or discourage your effort which I hope in fact you'll expedite... but being able to find the documentation for your tools in a readable format
for me leaves quite a bit to be desired. I can only guess from my contacts your joint facilities aren't all that widely used. No one I've asked about them save Pcas and Shane Turner has known anything to speak of about Asset-X, save it exists.
For my part, I can't get to first base with Asset-X simply because N3V put it in their community newsletter and given the margins their IT guy used on that 'ezine' means I have to
scroll each and every line
side to side to try to get the gist. I've visual problems as it is, so that quickly failed a good faith effort. Kind of hard to focus on meaning when you keep loosing your place. (I've been meaning to revisit that with a widescreen monitor, but that is not one I usually read on! LAPTOPs more often than not!) N3V quality control scans/vetting seem to miss their graphics elements blast most the screen space on small screens and on that to miss the margins settings really mess with the readability.
There is another how-to on a site I also can't scale to my needs, a congenial distinguished Spanish Content Creator's ezine, I gather, but like N3V his clever little format is useless to me and my eye deficiencies. I simply couldn't zoom in enough. Maybe there was a trick, but I had to give up when rolling the mouse wheel with control pressed scrolled pages, not the view. Jcitron has had similar issues with the comprehension of reading said documentation, so we both hand fix things for now, and asking the Skype group guys, the only one that I recollect having had success with understanding Asset-X was Paul Cas.
I strongly suggest you all write the documentation for this stuff for the Wikibook, and
I'll be very glad to do the editing for you all. (As I PMed Andi06 about --Don't believe I made that offer to him yet!) I'd love to have text or word processing text to peruse, as a software guy, for hand editing the first hundred errors was good for the education, these next groups, are just frustration rubbing salt in the wounds. I want to explore the route they came in on,
not fix things which should have been at least quarantined years agone. (Andi professed to dislike wikimarkup the way I barf at the thought of voluntarily using PDF files to read or write, so we have somewhat different tastes--quasi-complimentary one might say!) Put your text and embed images into a Word processor document, pop the source images into a zip folder, then add the document when proofed, and I'll be glad to put it up so we can all access it and scale it as needed. Further, if you have no problems with a GNU or CC-by-SA license, we can put up a PDF file version as well that people can download and print locally (Though they can do that with a wiki too), though I'd urge doing both formats. Redundancy is a beautiful thing!
Basically, what I'm saying here is an offer for you guys to take any format you like and put the tale together in some form I can edit too, and I'll gladly do most of the work to convert it to nice scalable wikimarkup, and further, guarantee by the way I write it-- you can also then publish it on the N3V Wiki. I understand Andi's concern about not trusting N3V to be around, but Wikimedia... little chance the World would let that close now.
More to the point, I've been working hard to be able to begin restructuring and then thread the Wikibook into divisions that will be page threadable... turn the page like that Spaniards ezine, but with mouse clicks. In the meantime, there is room now to focus on what should be there, and that is things like Asset-X, your TARDIS operations, and to my mind,
ASSET (ATLS system for example), Andi's Crossings system (forget it's name), ROUTE AND SESSION TECH MANUALS--user how-to articles of all sorts. I was even thinking we could have an essays section.
Putting up Routes tech manuals is a natural and much needed resource, and I urge anyone with a Route to publicize this is the best way to get others to write sessions for your route and thus people to drive it. No one knows the goodies crammed into the corners of a route like the route creator. This is a way to make the backstory for all that modeling work stand out so people can imagine the route coming alive the same as when you were mentally building the V-scale model. Only you can readily see that the industry at Mile three gets feed stock from the industries at mile 15 and 45, while there is a daily run that picks up and drops off cuts at 14:55, etc. The info-page tag went sorely underutilized, and was useless inside teh route. Putting a tech manual on line, potentially gives aid to the users at all stages and modes.
Tony Hilliam re: this
Clearly, if one reads Tony Hilliams' Mission statement when he so optimistically heralded the N3V Wiki back in 2008/09, he expected such would be there, along with contests, and favorites and a whole host of community activities. He must be very disappointed.