My heart sinks....

Great new assets on the Download Station! Uploaded on 6 July 2015, in build 3.5 no less:

K205 Spirit Of The West
"This is the TRAINZ 1.3 SP3 VERSION ONLY. If you have Utc or Trs2004 please download the UTC version."

What, no TANE version? Should I dust down my version of UTC?

Well, this lucky, and very old, asset has been given a KUID2 by somebody and lives again on the DLS. So much for that famous 'clean-up'! :hehe:

Paul

LONG LIVE UTC! No, just kidding. Jokes asside, how in the world did a 1.3 item make it on there!?!?!?! If more items in the newer build below build 3.5 can be uploaded, then it seems it's a customer gain.

Zeldaboy14 said:

LONG LIVE UTC! No, just kidding. Jokes asside, how in the world did a 1.3 item make it on there!?!?!?! If more items in the newer build below build 3.5 can be uploaded, then it seems it's a customer gain.

Click to expand...

It has been re-uploaded under build 3.5, no other modifications have taken place I assume. This in mind the asset is probably broken...

Oh dear............... Look at the thumbnail?

Looks like the apprentice fixer has escaped again...........

I suppose that the serious point of my post, and irony, is that the DLS is being flooded by KUID2's of ancient assets that, surely, need to be left in the past rather than offered for TANE, while meanwhile brand new assets - like my reskinned V2's - cannot be uploaded due to the super-sensitive, TANE-compliant filters on the Download Station which have a hissy fit when they see, moderately old, scripts. The lesson being - upload 13 year old stuff with an increment in KUID number and that's fine. Try something with a script - and the Download Station doesn't want to know!

I think you don't realise the implications of the DLS only allowing T:ane level content to be uploaded and all other content should be removed. It will be years before all the content made for previous builds is replaced, in the meantime, what are you going to use on your sterile T:ane only routes? N3V have set the bar at 3.5 so I would encourage people to update their content to that level bearing in mind that quite often it is not possible add LOD when the original mesh has long disappeared. T:ane CM does not consider that for build 3.5, lack of LOD is an error.

Paul, about your specific problem, if it exists on your machine without error but is rejected by the DLS take the matter up via the help desk or Trainz Dev where Chris will see it. The DLS system is dodgy, I had an item rejected because the upload bot could not find two built in items, which were used by other content items, uploaded at the same time and approved.

Peter

clam1952 said:

Oh dear............... Look at the thumbnail? Looks like the apprentice fixer has escaped again...........

Click to expand...

I can confirm that it was on the cleanup list 14th May, so was presumably claimed by someone since then and uploaded. The thumbnail is as per the original. The rule is that if it isn't broke it can't be changed, so the problem with the thumbnail should be addressed to the original creator, not the apprentice fixer. It works perfectly, but obviously doesn't have a lot of features. The debate about whether or not these assets should continue to be maintained was done and dusted many years ago, and it seems pointless to now be complaining about the process.

SailorDan said:

I can confirm that it was on the cleanup list 14th May, so was presumably claimed by someone since then and uploaded. The thumbnail is as per the original. The rule is that if it isn't broke it can't be changed, so the problem with the thumbnail should be addressed to the original creator, not the apprentice fixer. It works perfectly, but obviously doesn't have a lot of features. The debate about whether or not these assets should continue to be maintained was done and dusted many years ago, and it seems pointless to now be complaining about the process.

Click to expand...

The thumbnail isn't as the original though, check in content manager.

In many respects there is nothing wrong with the original models if they have been constructed properly. By this I mean the textures are of a decent resolution and in many cases mapped properly. Having the updated older content means that many routes and sessions based on these items can continue to operate properly without the missing dependencies.

When I say incorrectly constructed, I mean assets that are truly built incorrectly. There are some assets, by many people, that have improperly referenced LOD targets. The content creator replicated the base mesh and called it LOD0, LOD1, etc. This worked with TS12 and below, however, with T:ANE it effectively kills the model right there and then. The other issue too is texture mapping. If the user had used double-sided textures which I think are on by default, this will apply double-the amount of textures on a model and this will hurt performance. This issue is most obvious with older trees and grass which have tons of facing polygons as the overly complex mesh with the double-sided textures nails the frame rates right down into the single digits if too many of these assets are used.

Too low a texture resolution of course is an issue, and for models such as this I agree they should be avoided for close up, but many of them are great models in their own right and can be used quite effectively in those background areas where we don't need to see their full details.

So in the end, if the model is made correctly, who cares how old it is as long as it works.

John

Maybe when they said Tane would be backwards compatible - they just forgot to tell us which version it was compatible with?

Items that appear on the DLS cleanup list are there because they are deemed to be faulty in newer versions of Trainz. I've no idea why that particular asset was faulty or for what version.

But as SailorDan pointed out, the repairer is very limited to the repair work. This is what the rule is:

• You are not permitted to fundamentally change the content beyond what is necessary for the repairs.

As someone who has fixed some of these assets that rule is very limiting. For example, I've fixed some bridges that really needed endcaps but they didn't exist in the original so I could not add them.
If I had fixed that asset I probably would have used a screenshot capture within AssetX for the thumbnail. The thumbnail clearly isn't representative of the loco so I would consider that a fault.

To be uploadable any asset has to be raised to build 3.5. That's not quite T:ANE compatible but you would not be able to bring it to 4.n level because of the lack of LOD. You cannot just add the same mesh as different LODs as T:ANE will reject it.

Basically, I think that prospective asset repairers should just ignore those assets that they deem are not worth "updating". If another wants to fix it then that's fine with me.