Content Subfolders in Surveyor/Driver

As much as I like trains around the world I think it would be great if we could group traincars into folders in the Trains tab in Surveyor, using some sort of standard hierarchy defined in the config. It would make it much easier to pick which traincar you want, and make forming a train less tedious. It could also eliminate having to read the small-print long winded names of train assets we have now, that attempt to be both generic and specific at the same time.

Tags for each level in the config would make this easy, simply a tag for country, company, type, etc.. If an asset belongs to more than one you can simply designate this separating the two or more categories with semicolon. Backwards compatibility would be a serious issue I presume, which is why there should be an option to toggle between 'legacy' and 'folder' type tab structures in Surveyor/Driver. In the 'folder' mode, all the uncategorized legacy stuff would go in a separate folder 'unfiled'.

For example:

┗ UK┗ US
┗ AUS

To be clear, this wouldn't do away with asset names, but it would allow grouping of assets. The search function would allow users to search whatever is in the subfolder, and a toggle button could allow users to switch between seeing only the immediate files in the folder, vs. seeing all the files in the subfolders below. For example by default, the folder structure in 'BR' above would only show the 'Wagons' and 'Locomotives' folders. If I were to click the "toggle switch" when I am in the BR folder above, it would show ALL the assets falling under those two umbrellas. I think this would be the 'make or break' feature for this to work fluidly.

Another thing is to make the search function actually search for the entire keyword instead of the first letter. Also important would be an easy way of going back up a folder without having to click somewhere, maybe backspace?

Oops - wrong area! Please move this to Suggestion

If you have a membership that gives you UDS (Unified Driver Surveyor) you can jump directly into Surveyor to use the Content Search Filter. UDS is now available in Gold, Silver (I think), and Platinum. No doubt it will be available to all in future releases. I agree that a better method of "storing" and accessing our Power and Rolling Stock would be a welcome addition. Even a simple user added "tag" would be a great help.

This is sort of how things were back before TRS2006. Back in those days, assets were grouped by region and type. You'll probably see that with some older assets still that say "Found under TAC Region", for example and is a building of some sort. When used correctly, it was truly helpful searching for assets. We simply grabbed the asset by type and region, and found what we needed much like the list you show above.

The problem is... Being the older versions of Trainz, a lot was allowed to occur that didn't have much error checking so we ended up with TAC Region, Martin's Stuff (region), EDC Region, and so on. With TRS2009, I think it was we had some of the new interface features such as the search filter, and I can't remember if it was then or TS2010 that we got the pick-lists. The pick-lists and the filter were supposed to replace this along with the sorting and searching capabilities with Content Manager, which didn't exist until TRS2006 and remained more or less the same through TS12.

When this changed took place, many of us were quite disappointed and very verbal about it. The old way I agree is much better with that sorting within Surveyor asset lists, and this new way was a step backwards rather than forward. As a route builder, I felt this made things difficult for finding different assets, really cool ones too, that we couldn't remember how to spell the names of because the names were none-English. We know they're Eastern European or Russian, but who knows how to spell the names. Putting in partial spelling is impossible, and this definitely doesn't work for authors.

Hahahaha, Sorry not laughing at the suggestion. But all those tags were valid in Trainz releases at least through TRS2004. The problem was that creators misused the tags. Instead of region being a place like UK or US it was used for the name of the creator's group like TPR, RRMODS and others. Same with the country, era and name tags. Perhaps with better error checking this could be avoided.

To add to your suggestion, why not allow the Asset Preview feature to be used from the Train menu tab? Instead of staring at the tiny picture and cut off text, use the keyboard shortcut to pop open a resizable preview window including all the information you are proposing.

William

Make it mandatory perhaps. Give users a list of countries and common categories to choose from, at least for the higher level folder tag types. Author or group type could be another criteria to use, maybe with the search tag feature.

wreeder said:

Hahahaha, Sorry not laughing at the suggestion. But all those tags were valid in Trainz releases at least through TRS2004. The problem was that creators misused the tags. Instead of region being a place like UK or US it was used for the name of the creator's group like TPR, RRMODS and others. Same with the country, era and name tags. Perhaps with better error checking this could be avoided.

To add to your suggestion, why not allow the Asset Preview feature to be used from the Train menu tab? Instead of staring at the tiny picture and cut off text, use the keyboard shortcut to pop open a resizable preview window including all the information you are proposing.

William

Click to expand...

Yes. This was asked for before so we can see text instructions and sometimes links that are placed in the description box while we're running Trainz rather than needing to exit and go to Content Manager to view this information separately. Sure some of us such as I use a windowed environment and have two monitors where I can open one application on one display and the program its self on the bigger one, but not everyone has this.

I agree too that the error checking for this should have been enforced, but back then there wasn't any at that level like there is today. Looking back to the heyday times, there's a lot of things that could have been done differently.

EverTrainz said:

Make it mandatory perhaps. Give users a list of countries and common categories to choose from, at least for the higher level folder tag types. Author or group type could be another criteria to use, maybe with the search tag feature.

Click to expand...

Yes. I don't see why this can't be done. It means an interface change and the asset KIND, Region, and author being referenced in the asset lists as well as in the search filter.

Better yet, maybe allow the user to select which tags they would like to categorize by, and pick the order as well. A default hierarchy could be provided such as country > era > company etc. but the user could be allowed to change this, and save it as a sort filter. So you could get locomotive > steam > country for an example.

Further subtypes coming from the user/content creators end would have to be validated by someone, as the key here is to avoid duplication and going off on ones one whim with their own tags like the "Martin's Stuff" or TPR examples above.

In terms of how applicable this is to existing content, would it be feasible to add such tags to the mass of existing content, at least rolling stock?

It would need a way to batch process the content to add the tags to the config.txt file of each asset. And of course Trainz would then have to accept the new tags as valid and not flag them as errors.

William

Rather than creating a new system that most of us manage perfectly well without and would be no use for those thousands of assets already on the DLS unless updated by their creators, Unlikely for the Class 55s as the creator has left Trainz, why not use Pick lists as that is what they are for and how I sort out Locos and Rolling Stock. Can be done in surveyor or manage Content where it's relatively easy to see what you are adding to the picklist even if the title is a bit off, don't like it then edit the assets title.

And just look at the complaints about putting things in sub menus in TRS19, bad idea as adding yet more things to click seems to be something that is causing much annoyance as it is.

Personally I find the picklist a bit awkward and clunky to use, especially when you don't know exactly what you are looking for. Perhaps it could be a good alternative to the system I proposed, if it was made a bit more fluid. Might it be finicky but the location of the filters on the opposite side of the screen means I rarely use it.

One of my bigger gripes is the long asset names we have to sift through; fine in content manager but in Surveyor or sessions the names of suppose, BR, stock are very long. Often they don't really fit on my screen because of length. Using again the Class 55 for example:

<kuid2:283805:55001:8> BR Class 55 blue TOPS 1976

How exactly would you locate this currently, with the default search? It makes sense if the search function in the trainlist works, but it only searches the first letter. Once you get to 'BR __" it becomes a game of squinting and waiting for the text to scroll through to see if you have the exact item you would want. I could use the picklist but again to me it seems a bit clunky and takes longer than ideal to kick up. It would be useful, for future assets at the least, if there could be a way of shortening the above asset name seen in Surveyor lists to "Blue TOPS 1976" and maybe even further categorization like TOPS vs pre-TOPS or by year. This will save me from having to sift through 900 random Russian assets of a near-identical name, and slowing down the traincar list.

clam1952 said:

Rather than creating a new system that most of us manage perfectly well without and would be no use for those thousands of assets already on the DLS unless updated by their creators, Unlikely for the Class 55s as the creator has left Trainz, why not use Pick lists as that is what they are for and how I sort out Locos and Rolling Stock. Can be done in surveyor or manage Content where it's relatively easy to see what you are adding to the picklist even if the title is a bit off, don't like it then edit the assets title.

And just look at the complaints about putting things in sub menus in TRS19, bad idea as adding yet more things to click seems to be something that is causing much annoyance as it is.

Click to expand...

That would be a nightmare. It could work like the old keyword system, but the problem with that was all the keywords would get lost after a database repair. It was for that reason alone I hated using them, otherwise, it was quite useful. The other problem is the keyword was based not on Author and asset, but on asset-category. If this was incorrect to begin with, things got messy with flora becoming houses, for example, because the content creator put in the incorrect category in the first place.

I too find the pick-lists to be awkward, but they do work. As has been mentioned in the Suggestion Boxcar forum, there needs to be some improvements. Among the improvements is sorting content within the pick-list, and increasing the number as well that can be displayed.

For my own use, for example, I utilize the search filter extensively by setting up searches mostly on authors. I have Jointed Rail, 22Alpha, Dave Snow (who wouldn't), and many others that I use often. The pick-lists for me are temporary deals and stuff comes and goes mostly from them based on a route-by-route basis. The more permanent ones contain most often used assets such as whistle posts, invisible horns, specific tracks, and junction levers.

Perhaps then all the suggestions above should be addressed for the picklist feature. Allowing folders there would make a great deal of sense.

William