Time for a bit of a gripe

I have just spent most of this morning downloading a route from the DLS. My gripe is the size and amount of dependencies associated with most of the new route arriving on the DLS. This route, I am not going to name the route or the author, stated in the description it is 30 miles long. Ok download of the route, no problems, but took a look at the missing dependencies. First 36 unknown, scroling down quite a lot on the DLS so I start to download them. I have no idea of the number of items but they added up to 640MB. some of the items I did take notice of, trees, I think every tree available on the DLS and some others as well have been used, 100s of them, one in particular I noticed is 121.49MB and this is one tree not a spline, not a group, just one tree and there are quite a few on the map a long way from the track. I have steam locomotives that smaller than this.

Relay boxes, I saw 11 different types, signals 15 different types.

What ever happened to using the same objects at different locations two or three times over.
Then to top things off when I loaded the route in surveyor I find one of the unknown objects is the main line track, it appears as dotted lines on the route, I have no way of finding what the track is or where to find it, I could go through all the unknown items one at a time till I find track but frankly I have no desire to spend another day trying to find required items for a route uploaded like this one. I will just delete it.

Bill69

Not only that Bill, but even if you delete the route, now you have 640MB of new assets that you will need to manage - including things like renamng, keywording, error/warning fixes and updating whenever they appear.

Yes, I agree Bill. I have downloaded some routes that require all the assets presently on the DLS and a host of others located somewhere in the far flung corners of the Trainz Universe. And some of these have been only a few baseboards in size.

A suggestion - go for the routes by "philskene".

Frustrating to say the least. I appreciate people taking time to make great routes and sharing them, but it's counterproductive when one has to spend hours scouring the internet for dependencies.

Don't blame the route builders! If we see a nice asset then it is going to be included. Maybe point this in the direction of the 3D modellers for not managing the poly count resulting in a single tree or shrub being upwards of 60Mb. Unfortunately, if you want to avoid the dire built in Speedtrees and the old now transparent cruciform trees, there's little option but to go with the high poly trees which often come in at more Mb than the route footprint!

I would add however that in the interests of optimisation I do try to not use 100's of different assets, but one of the joys working in Trainz as opposed to the "other" sim is the plethora of content available.

Maybe it would help if CMP gave an indication of the total file size of the required assets before starting download, to give users an informed choice but I wouldn't hold your breath when so many of the basics still need sorting out by N3V.

With regard to items not appearing correctly after download, you may find you need to identify the asset concerned, go into CMP and do a check for the sub dependencies as the downloader doesn't always acquire these automatically.

There is a lot to be said for the occasional route that uses only 'built-in' content - and this can be a useful exercise for the creator. However, once one has downloaded a number of new assets, doing this is difficult. For example, I would like to have a go at this in TS2010 - but the only easy way would be to use a completely 'virgin' copy. Which leads to my question - is it possible to have two copies of TS2010 on the same drive, in different folders, one 'clean', the other including one's own creations and all downloads? Advice on this would be appreciated, as I am only a (very) senior computer user, and hesitant to do anything which might compromise my enjoyment of this great hobby.

Ray

Yes you can

Ray --

I now have 5 installations of TS12 and 2 of TS12 Patched.

If, like me, you download directly from the DLS rather than searching through Content Manager, make sure that the CM of the installation you want to download to is running before clicking on the "Download (Helper)" under the thumbnail. That item of DLS content will then be added to the upper left "Download Helper" pane of CM.

Phil

For me getting a TS2012 route loaded with ancient assets that look terrible is a pain. Yes, you can get hit with hundreds of megabytes of stuff on some routes. I always delete the route and then spend time getting rid of newly installed stuff that only clogs up the fly-out menus. I tried once disabling stuff older than n years. But that caused routes I had to show the dreaded white lines. When I am playing around on a route I really only want to see the latest stuff (2009 and later) when I go to a menu to select a goodie. Wading through awful assets from 2002 is a pain but some routes still use them.

Dinorius_Redundicus said:

Not only that Bill, but even if you delete the route, now you have 640MB of new assets that you will need to manage - including things like renamng, keywording, error/warning fixes and updating whenever they appear.

Click to expand...

Hi DR,

It's quite easy to delete the downloaded assets too. You only have to search by dependencies and date installed, local. Suprisingly there are no errors or warnings in the assets downloaded, there possibly will be if I edit any of them.

Cheers,
Bill69

Not all things come built-in to the game ... you have to go get them ... or run the route without them ... edit them out ... fix their errors ... etc ...

The list of fun chores to do with missing dependencies goes on forever !

It's like a scavenger hunt ... nothing comes easy ... especially when assets are oddly named, ie: Wasenlaunge

My W.I.P. route currently has 3,000 assets

Also once downloaded you don't need to do so in the future for any other route(s) that use that asset.

Phil - many thanks for your reply and the reassurance that if I install a second, clean copy I will not cause a disaster!

Yes, I always download direct from the DLS, saving via FTP to a named download folder so that I can run a scan before importing into Trainz - or even save it there without importing for future consideration (I am very cautious!). It would then be very easy to make sure that I am using the correct CM for importing and that I don't add downloaded content to the clean copy.

So I will go ahead with installing a new copy - after backing-up my userdata (cautious again!)

Ray

I haven't done much route building lately, but I'm pretty sure I'm one of "those people" that have A LOT of assets, and I can't even begin to guess where everything came from anymore. What I will say is that my Mon Line route is set in Western Pennsylvania and to keep a similar feel, I use assets that the other routes in the area tend to use too. I've taken a lot of cues from the likes of JFolco's B&O WM merged routes (Connellsville isn't too terribly far from the Brownsville end of my route). That way, if people are interested in routes from the same general area (and thus have the same "feel" for the towns and such), they will find a lot of the same assets in both routes and will have a good library of stuff already.

I have to agree with Bill69,

It is very frustrating to wait for around 10 to 20 minutes to download a route, which we have all paid for by purchasing a first class ticket, only to find the track and ground textures and most other objects missing, some objects can be found on the DLS, but not all, as some websites have now closed, so the items cannot be found.

What really gets to me is, the creator of the route has spent a very long time creating the route, putting in all the final details, and making the route look superb, only to find after it has been uploaded to the DLS, it is no use to anyone, as it features a ton of payware material, which can vanish overnight on the internet, along with other freeware stuff that can also vanish overnight on the internet, the only bits left on the route is what is built in or what is on the DLS.

I would like to see N3V introduce payware routes, which can be used in some versions of Trainz (TS2009/2010/2012), similar to what Railworks are doing, highly detailed, accurate routes, that don't cause system lag and that contain everything you need, so no hunting around for missing items. The introduction of the Settle to Carlisle add on pack was a superb idea and more of the same in future would be very welcome.

That's it... Rant over.... right nothing to see here folks... move along please

Joe Airtime

This is why I download very few routes - I mostly download routes that I've seen on these forums or are made by well-known names (I download everything Dermmy makes/made just about, as well as people such as Zec (S301) and Nexusdj)

Jamie

Philskene is my favourite. I still have all his early routes as well as the new ones. His routes can be very busy with all that he crams into them but he continues to use a lot of assets over and over. He also saves a lot of trouble by usng parts of old routes within newer ones.A very efficient creator.
Cheers,
Mike

I have given up DLing routes, too many unknown assets and such. I have a question: why don't the builders post their route and the dependency pack on the server (can this be done?). I back up my route and dep. that I am working on, why not post them (just make sure no purchased stuff is used). When I upgraded to the latest patch I noticed that the tutorial route was now missing the box cars that had to be taken to Shaw and Son.

Chris750 said:

I have a question: why don't the builders post their route and the dependency pack on the server (can this be done?)

Click to expand...

Which brings us back to redistributing other people's content. Andy has dependency packs for EK3, EVWR, and so on, but he has to contact the original authors and get permission to redistribute their content on his site. Some people just aren't willing to do that. (After rereading, it goes both ways- some people won't contact the original authors- "too much work" and some creators won't allow redistribution)

That can be done only for your own assets. For others' assets, you would be violating the creators' rights by posting it on the DLS.