It is mighty nice of you to find and fix the issue so quick, however it's hard to agree with the "wrong script" explanation though. Why? Because for several years this issue did not exist at all - in all previous versions. Of course theoretically there may have been a mistake within the script but for a regular user there were no consequences. And suddenly in the newest version it raises a bug that brings some heavy issues in terms of logistics. Now I don't know if you ever created any assets and had the chance to bump into problems like "a different person makes the script, a different one makes the models" or "some authors are long inactive and are not willing to fix anything". It also seems to me, you're not exactly familiar with the number of these models. This is not just "some polish locomotives" like Samplaire called it my friend, it's a huge number of Central European models from many countries - used on hundreds of maps. It's a very big issue in terms of logistics -> locate all of them, find several different versions of the script -> fix them all -> open all of these models -> attach the script -> re-publish them. Many of them are reskins made under the kuid number of long-inactive authors. Others are published both on the DLS and on third party pages... I think you completly missed that "little" issue - the logistics of repairing this problem. Who is going to fix that and re-publish them? I do that all the time - I update my models for standards of the new versions... it's a full time job. How do you imagine doing the process I just wrote about for 150-200 locomotives? It's impossible... and there was no issue one version of the game before - at all (practically - not theoretically).
My friend, this game was supposed to be about pleasure and fun for everyone - that's what our work is all about. But when "suddenly out of knowhere" something brakes and kills 200 of your models... giving you a beautifull opportunity to spend all of your free time in the next half year finding/fixing/republishing them (again and again)... this is no longer any fun. And I perfectly understand Samplaire's point of view in this case.
I fully understand your frustration and point of view here.
I do have a good bit of experience when it comes to developing content together with others. I've spent a lot of time maintaining and updating content for others and I know about the trouble of authors who left without clearly naming someone to take care of keeping their content updated. I know what I'm talking about here.
Excuse my wording, you are right, it doesn't only affect polish locomotives. What I meant to stress its far from affecting
all. I checked some of your locomotives as well, none of which I tested had this issue. Its hard for me to really estimate the actual number of rolling stock affected by it, I assume it to be no more than 400 locomotives though, and thats with giving it a lot of room. It is only a percentage of content that seems to have the problem.
I know about the logistical troubles of updating such a large number of assets and as I already said, the actual updating process is really quick. Biggest issue will be finding everything affected by it, but using certain identifiers (for example, everything below build 3.5 looks like it can immediately be excluded as it doesn't have this script from my tests). You can also exclude every locomotive that has the lights on in the asset preview window, it uses a different script that doesn't have this problem.
The most popular locomotives with those issues will be identified quickly and fixed quickly. Those that are rarely used... well aren't really a problem, are they? Until they get found, at which point fixing takes around 30 seconds. I'd say the most popular locomotives, in other words all we can immediately find can be fixed even before SP2 fully releases. The rest will see a rolling update process as it comes up to have issues. Thats how I would handle this situation if I was in charge of updating the content.
Things that are on the DLS could theoretically be updated by the Content Repair Group as well.
I totally understand that its weird that it worked without issues before. I have absolutely no idea how it could work, from an objective standpoint as a programmer I can only say, the script has a fundamental error in it that should've always caused a freeze of the game. Why it didn't do this on older versions, I don't know. Theoretically it should have
never worked like this. Let me put it like this: You can stick a fork into an electric outlet and nothing might happen for years until some day it causes a massive spark and your electricity goes off. Should the fork have caused a spark the moment you stuck it in there? Absolutely yes, theoretically it should have. For some reason it didn't but only did it later. Now you must remove the fork if you want your electricity back.
And please tell me though, whats worse?
Content from authors who left the community or are unwilling to fix the script issue that takes under a minute to fix yourself if you want to use it or missing content that worked flawlessly but can't be used anymore because the author decided to make it unavailable?