Survey in Trainz News, July 2019 - Content Manager good/bad?

There is a survey in this month's Trainz News about "additional content". Among many good questions about how we obtain and manage additional content, it asks;

1. What we most like about Content Manager?
2. What could be improved?

While we wait for overall survey results, I would be very interested to hear what others are thinking on those 2 questions.


[For the record, my own responses were;

1. What I like most - the amazing speed at which CM can list the entire local database and even the entire DLS.

2. Improvements;
- For ease of constructing multi-line filters, put the + and - buttons to the LEFT side (or both sides) of the CM window.
- A filter for "maximum build number" instead of requiring the non-intuitive combination of AND NOT with "minimum build number".
- Display, sort and filter on a wider range of attributes like Kind, seasonal features, procedural construction (tracks, Speedtree etc).
- Ability to do strictly limited editing of otherwise locked assets (username, category-keyword and one or two other functionally harmless tags).
- Ability to save and recover modified usernames, keywords etc., to/from a file that isn't wiped by patches, re-installations, new installations.]






 
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I also suggested the page up/down keys be usable.

And being able to select and copy from the CM screen.
 
And being able to select and copy from the CM screen.

Not with my Trainz computer at the moment to confirm but I think you can almost do that already. I have, on the odd occasion, highlighted a group of assets, selected copy and then pasted into a text editor and other apps. The limitation, if I can remember correctly, is that you only get the kuid and username regardless of how many fields are on the screen in CM.
 
I also suggested the page up/down keys be usable.

And being able to select and copy from the CM screen.

Page Up/Down keys work for me in CM for TANE and TRS2019.

Copy also works, assuming you only need to copy/paste the usernames and kuids of highlighted assets.

I have had occasional trouble however, as it seems to hold onto previously copied items in its clipboard and sometimes won't replace them with a new entry. This is a quirk of Windows10, not the fault of CM (thanks clam1952)
 
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Probably about time we had a reasoned discussion on the future of the DLS database including what we want in it.

I don't really have many issues with CM itself. One of these days maybe N3V would clarify the difference between "Type" and "Category". i.e. Type appears as a column heading but Category does not. But you can filter on Category but not Type.

I think I support the idea of removing assets that have missing dependencies but would like to see a discussion first.
 
I would like to see an in-game link to open CM instead of having to open the start screen.

'manage CM as thumbnails' could do with some basic column headings such as 'date uploaded'.

I dislike having the phone-generated (Android etc) assets used for storage purposes mixed in with 'real' content.

Apart from that, CM is a great versatile tool.
 
Would like it to be more like the old TS12 manager and a easy way to edit configs like the Content Creation Manager would be nice - yes we did have it better off in the old days - Content management went back to the stone age in TANE and TRS19
 
When I copy/paste highlighted assets from CM to text, I get KUIDs and asset names, never usernames, in both T:ANE and TRS2019, any version, beta or not.

Asset names ARE known as usernames in config.txt files. Open any config, you will see what I mean. It's just N3V 's stupid nomenclature. So we are both seeing the same thing on copy/paste.
;)
 
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Page Up/Down keys work for me in CM for TANE and TRS2019.

Copy also works, assuming you only need to copy/paste the usernames and kuids of highlighted assets. I have had occasional trouble however, as it seems to hold onto previously copied items in its clipboard and sometimes won't replace them with a new entry.

That's a Win10 issue with the new clipboard setup since it now saves multiple copied items, it happens randomly here with any program and not just TRS19 or TANE.
 
I know what I answered. It would be more interesting to read how my answers compare to the overall results from all those who will have answered when the survey is closed. And then to see what will be done with the results, put on a shelf to gather dust or will some things change?

As for missing dependencies, if there was a way to include the source of non-DLS objects or at least flag objects with non-DLS dependencies so that I would know there would be extra work involved after they are downloaded.
 
My peeve with Content Manager is the lack of wildcard searching especially with author names. Needing to know how to spell the author's name makes it very difficult to find specific assets or even including a lot of the great stuff we download from the DLS and install from elsewhere.

Being able to search for authors using partial searches such as D* to find authors that being with D, for example would be great, or how about Dre* to find those starting with Dre or dre.

There are other things too that I didn't include but should have, thinking back about the survey now, such as searching on status, and other types such as regions which we can't do now.
 
My biggest gripe is probably uncontrollable by N3V, and that is content creators who don't post a decent thumbnail of the listed asset. Many times, there are a group of assets in the thumbnail showing the different items the content creator made in a group. I like to see INDIVIDUAL screenshots of each particular item. Then there's the idiot who posts a thumbnail of the WORD the asset is, such as "TRUCK" or "SWITCH" or sometimes, even the content creator's username! Comon' folks, get with the program. The thumbnail pix are there for a reason, and that's to show the potential user what exactly he or she is contemplating downloading.

As for the page up/down keys, mine work just fine.
 
Database Repair.

I do a lot of this.
Small databases can be repaired very quickly BUT
I have the complete (almost) DLS downloaded. We are talking about ~400,000 assets, with tens of millions of images, textures, wave files, and meshes.
Consequently ADR, DBR, EDBR are marathon database repairs that can take many hours, sometimes half a day to complete.
The current repair methodology is very thorough, but it seems like a clumsy way to achieve with multiple passes through the TAD.
Is it not possible to take a delta approach whereby only items that have changed are updated?
 
COC Violations

There are probably close to 4,000 assets in this group.
You don't know you are downloading one until it's on its way and then a message says not going to happen.

DL's need an exclusion filter.
 
Region

What a mess this is.

a. Category-region - Europe well covered based on ISO 3166-2 two letter codes, but how on earth is that not also done for US, AU, CN, RU and others that have huge land masses spread across multiple lat/long. Yet we have codes for uninhabited rocks and atolls.
b. Kind Region - Requires World-Origin containing lat/long/alt.
c. Kind Map - also requires World- Origin, as well as Tag 'Region' in kuid format.
d. World-Origin - Duplicated in Kind Region and Kind Map.

I would like to see ISO codes and World-Origin data for Capital cities and Largest population centres used. This is where there is likely to be a railway station, terminus, hub, or inter-transport exchange occurs.
 
Category centric or KIND centric

Current CM categories are sometimes aligned to a KIND.
But others are a mish-mash of several KINDS.
Some are not obvious being hidden in MISC for which there is no category.
Category 'scenario' no longer exists, so you can't exclude these assets using a filter.

A default filter for KIND would overcome most of these deficiencies.
 
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Validation Codes (VE)

Not all faults or warnings have a VE code. Should be available for all.

A default VE code filter would be helpful so they can be selected or excluded.
 
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