Why are items on DC with no descripton?

[slabay]

My two cents:

First off, I feel that you owe it to yourself to include a description and a thumbnail when you upload anything. Even if it is a reskin that you only worked on for a few hours, but especially if it is a route that you worked on for months or even years, you need to put a description and thumb for everyone to see at least something about what you've done. You are shortchanging yourself if you put all that effort into something and don't toot your own horn by giving it a description and showing it off (in its full 240x180 glory!:hehe

Second, you owe it to the community. I agree that the description should tell us something about the route, but a REALLY big thing- if it is a WIP route, we should know about it before we download it. I may or may not download it- I really don't have a lot of time to mess with a WIP, so I'm probably not going to download it. But, on the other hand, if it is a WIP of something that I am really interested in (Cascade's Horseshoe Curve comes to mind), I most likely will download it.

Up to now I have been using a generic thumbnail which just says "Mick Berg's Assets for the LNER".

I'll admit to it too, but in certain circumstances. All of my stuff has a description and a thumbnail, but I have been doing a bunch of rolling stock using Chameleon/Gecko script. I don't think anyone really chooses what rolling stock they want to download from perusing the "non-environmental textures" section, so all of my skins have a generic "Chameleon Skins" thumbnail and the actual cars have a proper thumbnail. I have a skins template that is already set up that all I have to do is drop the skins in and upload them, so that saves a little time and trouble. I want to dedicate the time to the main asset, and the skins will get grabbed in hte download as a dependency anyway.

What are these people thinking, some of these uploads don't even give a clue in their name, what it is they uploaded? Some of the names of such uploads are often meaningless, have no connection with the content or are in a foreign language one can not understand or does not know which language this is.

Google translator, which is free to access in any browser, would do a good job for such CCs to at least give an English meaning to the asset name.

Playing Devil's Advocate here, but it is awful Anglo-Centric to presume that every asset uploaded to the DLS should have an English name/description, isn't it? I don't really care to try to find French, German, Dutch, or (yikes!) Chinese translations for my stuff, why should they have to find English for theirs? With that being said (Devil's Advocate mode off), sure, it is pretty frustrating to not be able to find a great asset because you don't know what the foreign name of it is. I had a particular group of three tanks on my route that I saw once before on the DLS and when I made that portion of the route, I couldn't remember what they were called. It took three months of route building and looking for this and that before I stumbled across those tanks again and put them where I needed them.

OK, so my two cents seem to be more like about $1.98.

 

[Mick_Berg]

Having said I will update my thumbnails, I now have to work out how to get the updates into the DLS. How do I do that?
Maybe I will just undertake to provide proper thumbnails for all future uploads. There's only a couple with the generic thumbnail.

Mick.

 

[shaneturner12]

If using Content Manager, just right-click the asset and use Create New Version, then edit the newly created version.

Shane

 

[Mick_Berg]

If using Content Manager, just right-click the asset and use Create New Version, then edit the newly created version.

Shane

And then re-submit it??

Mick.

 

[backyard]

When I started creating content back in 2003 using Paint Shed, I took pains to use the provided skins above and beyond what I found I could do in PS with mspaint.

We had tutorials from World of Trainz and a special module to create $screenshots$(the $-Dollar sign helps locate the texture easier). We called them Art Files back then, however today the $screenshot$ is all that is needed.

I also created some of my $screenshots$ using in-game pictures.

I found out about IrfanView, and learned to import screenshots from the folder, now in User Data, and quickly re-size, save-as and eventually enter a thumbnail container in the config text file.

thumbnails
{
  0
  {
    image                               "$screenshot$.jpg"
    width                               240
    height                              180
  }
}

I also wrote a description of the object of the project.

I posted notices and screenshots in the Forums to publish the content...some of that was lost in the forum-crash in 2006...

You can see the results by clicking my banner!

 

[shaneturner12]

Correct - just make sure it's the new version, not the obsoleted older version.

Shane

 

[Mick_Berg]

Correct - just make sure it's the new version, not the obsoleted older version.

Shane

Thanks, first one is updated and on its way to DLS-land.
Mick.

 

[JCitron]

Thanks John, that helped. CM3.6 said there were a total of 45 missing dependencies, none of which were said to be on the DLS but I did manage to find that there were some missing dependencies WITHIN a few of the yellowed out assets that were on the DLS. This got the list down to 25 still missing that I haven't resolved yet. I may just put this route on the back burner until I've more time to try to get it working. It is a very scenic route, and looks to have a lot of things to do, so it will remain on my wish list to have. Perhaps an update will be forthcoming.

bill

I'm glad I could help.

Sometimes these unfinished routes are awesome additions that can be expanded on later on and finished off. I have a few of these myself that I've merged into larger routes.

John

 

[angelah]

I just checked my assets and I ALWAYS include a thumbnail the correct size with every asset I upload, whether it be to here or the TPR. But on the DS all that is in the box is an http address for auran...!!

What's the point in making a thumnail if N3V don't bother to show it?

Angela

 

[Euphod]

I just checked my assets and I ALWAYS include a thumbnail the correct size with every asset I upload, whether it be to here or the TPR. But on the DS all that is in the box is an http address for auran...!!

What's the point in making a thumnail if N3V don't bother to show it?

Angela

Angela, I just checked your DLS content on the black pages and in Cm3, and your thumbnails show in both locations. I really question what's going on at your end.

 

[ldowns]

They do now. Currently, assets without a thumbnails container are rejected by N3V, and assets created in TS12 Content Manager register faulty without one.

The obvious solution would be for N3V to also reject any submission without a description...

--Lamont

 

[NickieFoenshauge]

The obvious solution would be for N3V to also reject any submission without a description...

--Lamont

Logically they would then also have to read every single description to make sure it actually makes any sense - maybe a bit much to ask for. Otherwise you could get around this "solution" with a generic nonsense description. Much like the generic nonsense thumbnails we all know. And you wouldn't be any better off.