A few of items that I'd like to bring up and try to clairify........

dwgibson

New member
Clarification of items.

I'm currently running TRS19; Build 111951, TRS19; Build 117009, TRS22; Build 122411

☺ I have noticed in (TANE, TRS19, TS22) After starting TRAINZ in the "Main Window, Select Driver/Surveyor the upper right side searchbox" there will appear a black "X" in the search box, (after any character is entered). You can not delete characters that are behind the "X", it would be helpful if it were outside the input box. This would allow you to delete the last character w/o having to deal with the "X" that clears the input box or delete the whole entry and start again.

UPDATE: TANE: It would be nice if in the "Content Manager" search box. If you do a paste of a KUID that you've copied from the "Asset Details" pop-up it (sometimes) places 2 spaces at the front of pasted KUID. This causes you to not find the asset in either Installed/Download. Once you delete the space in front of the KUID all is well and CM can find the item.

UPDATE: It (still) would also be helpful if creators could place their initials at the end of the USERNAME in the KUID config.sys file, not at the beginning, (if they do it at all). This would facilitate a person typing "house" to display all houses in surveyor. The database (CM) for TRAINZ needs to be as accurate as possible or items will not be readily found. That was a selling point for TAINZ back in the day. I (still) don't want to disrespect anyone for taking credit for their creations!

UPDATE: I still would still like to see the option of picking colors for your screens in "Content Manager", certainly would simplify when you have several TRAINS versions open.....

I updated this post as there seemed to be some confusion as to what I was talking about......


Regards,

Dale
 
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Some clarifications needed please.

☺ I have noticed in Surveyor Window the "X" in the search box would be helpful if it were outside the input box. This would allow you to delete the last character w/o having to deal with the "X" that clears the input box.

The two search boxes in Surveyor (Ctrl+F and Shift+Ctrl+F) only have an X at the bottom right to close the search windows. There is no "X" that I can see inside any input boxes.

☺ It would be nice if in the "Content Manager" search box. If you do a paste of a KUID that you've copied from the the pop-up window on the DLS, you could automatically do a "home -delete - delete" because not every paste put the KUID at the beginning of the search box. I might be wrong but I can't see any problem doing that all the time. It would be moot if it pastes at the beginning of the search box, and work if it pastes two spaces away.

Sorry, but none of that makes any sense to me.

☺ It would also be helpful if creators could place their initials at the end of the USERNAME then a person could just type in the name of the item they wanted. I don't want to disrespect anyone for taking credit for their creations!

You can already set a CM filter to only display assets made by a particular creator and then do a search for a specific item from there. Asking everyone to add their initials to the name of the asset is unnecessary (and would be impractical)

☺ Would still like to see the option of picking colors for your screens in "Content Manager", certainly would simplify when you have several windows open.....

Possibly...

Been using this program since UTC and it has come a long way from the early days........

Indeed it has.

My opinions.
 
The only place I've noticed an "X" inside a search box is my web browser on Android. It does cause the issue he mentions there and it's annoying. I checked four versions of Trainz and none of them have an "X" in their search boxes.

Two of the comments seem to be addressing when asset names begin with the content creator's initials. I'm guessing that he is pasting the asset name into a search box and then pressing "home, delete, delete, ..." to remove the preceding initials from the asset name to conduct a more general search.
 
Thank you for that Oddrails.

I don't think I have seen any asset names that begin (or end) with the initials of the creator but no doubt they do exist. The only place where I suspect that would become an issue is when you type in the search box inside the pop-out Objects (F3) toolbox, where the search algorithm matches the characters of your search request with the starting characters of the asset names. I never use that search method and now always use the Shift+Ctrl+F search box which does a full string parsing search, so creator initials at the start/end do not matter.
 
Dave Snow is DES, he likes as they are on all his stuff. RJ Artim
 
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Dave Snow has DES on just about everything he put out.

All of mine begin with DG .It makes it much easier for me to find in surveyor as well as in content manager.I fail to see what the problem is, it makes it far easier to find items from a content creator and providing the description afterwards is reasonably coherent, it should not stop anyone from finding a particular item. Its much better then ?????? or vague names that could mean almost anything or are downright misleading.......
 
AJS, EMT, JD, JVC, n_, SAM, SAP, TUME, WS,|CJ| many thousands of asset have it
Personally i don't do it, we have only like 28 characters in the selection box
using the first 4 or 5 as a personal tag, think it's just a waste.
Good content does not need a Content creator tag, cause you already have it in your picklist probably


Sometimes I use the first 2 for sets FI:
NW Nederlandse Weg, for my roadset (Weg=Road)
NR Nederlandse Rail, for my rails/track
NS Nederlandse Spoorwegen, the dutch railway company, followed by the type

The Old 2004 selection had these handy filters direct on the tab where you select
in this case Country and Company.
AmazingMike and me had a little trick back then, add a _ at the begin and your item came first in list :)


The picklist was made to replace it, but its not placed on screen handy (left side)
and could be floating.
greetings GM
 
All of mine begin with DG

Dave Snow has DES on just about everything he put out.

AJS, EMT, JD, JVC, n_, SAM, SAP, TUME, WS,|CJ| many thousands of asset have it

You learn something new all the time in Trainz. I always believed that the letters represented something inscrutable like the type or purpose of the asset, such as ...

Sometimes I use the first 2 for sets FI:
NW Nederlandse Weg, for my roadset (Weg=Road)
NR Nederlandse Rail, for my rails/track
NS Nederlandse Spoorwegen, the dutch railway company, followed by the type

I agree that this is a waste of valuable space. If you use the asset find window in Surveyor (Shift+Ctrl+F) you can set the creator name as a search filter so it is also unnecessary. I also make extensive use of Picklists.
 
Another issue I have with putting the initials first is that the name of the object doesn't join others like it in the alphabetical list, i.e. airport ... , building ... , farm ..., etc. When I'm looking quickly to find any house, if it doesn't start with house, I'll not see it. Only if I need a very specific house will I take the time to search all possible objects that include house somewhere in the name of description.

One of the problems with such an embarrassment of riches, occasionally a jewel will slip by because it was not noticed. It's nice to have the freedom to name things however the creator wants but if it's not found because no one else thinks of that name, it may as well not exist.
 
Well, at least surveyor has had a decent search routine ever since '09. If you type in "tankcar"... surveyor will show you every asset that has tankcar anywhere in its name.
 
Another issue I have with putting the initials first is that the name of the object doesn't join others like it in the alphabetical list, i.e. airport ... , building ... , farm ..., etc. When I'm looking quickly to find any house, if it doesn't start with house, I'll not see it. Only if I need a very specific house will I take the time to search all possible objects that include house somewhere in the name of description.

One of the problems with such an embarrassment of riches, occasionally a jewel will slip by because it was not noticed. It's nice to have the freedom to name things however the creator wants but if it's not found because no one else thinks of that name, it may as well not exist.

And now the new conundrum is the "packaged" item. You can't edit it to fix category-class, or USERNAME..... There are items that are vehicles that have a B? in category-class as well as people being listed as buildings ...... You can't find it if it's in the wrong class..... If you choose to fix the item then you get a faulty packaged item w/o errors. You can't delete it so you can re-download it. So you now have this sea of red useless items that are taking up space. Then the are the loads of packaged items that are now obsolete that can't be deleted.

It there a fix in the works for this or am I completely of the track, as it were?

Regards,

Dale

P.S. There are items listed as buildings that are really scenery........I agree that a building is a building. But items that are not a building s/b scenery aka stuff NOT a building, placed around or in a building or in a scene aka garbage, bottles, etc.
 
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You are not that far of the track Dale


Many content creators think if they have a nice mesh or texture they are done >>release
but the most important things are forgotten:
-version number (the lower you can do the more people can use) EG: not 4.7 but 4.6 for pbr assets
-LOD, no item stands alone, it needs to be as efficient as possible
-less and smaller textures (faster loading)
-a thumbnail (and icon for a vehicle)
-a good name/description
-category needs to be correct
-the config.txt is an essential file for each Trainz-asset


The packaging process at n3v should catch all mistakes made, sadly this is far from ready


On the other hand I have respect and thank everyone who creates for Trainz
no matter what software they use or how they release it
I'll repair it here for myself if needed, skip, or delete it again if not good
greetings GM
 
And now the new conundrum is the "packaged" item. You can't edit it to fix category-class, or USERNAME..... If you choose to fix the item then you get a faulty packaged item w/o errors. Then the are the loads of packaged items that are now obsolete that can't be deleted.

"Packaged" simply means that the item is part of an installed DLC package. You have to use the Content Store option from the Launcher to delete them. But some packaged assets were originally "Installed from DLS" and are used by other assets, such as routes or sessions.

The issue of what is "scenery" and what is a "building" is merely a matter of definition. Buildings are just as much as scenery items as street lamps, post boxes, plants, road vehicles, etc. In the vast majority of cases it makes no difference to the operation of the program if a creator classifies a pedestrian category "people", "building", "scenery" or even "flora". Granted, it would make things easier to find but I personally pay little or no attention to the category class of items that have no functional or structural roles in a route.

As to "fixing them" my advice is DON'T. If you "muck around" with the config file of installed assets you will create nothing but problems for yourself, as you have discovered. The safe way is to clone a asset that "needs fixing" and then "fix' the clone. If your "fix" does not work then you can safely delete the clone. Cloning is done by selecting the asset and then select Clone from the Content menu in CM.
 
IMHO, the entire asset list is a total mess and sometimes I wonder how anyone finds anything. Even so, it is easier to track things down in DLS than it is in the asset list in the game. The former gives you every instance of the letter combination you enter; the latter only the first instance, which means I quite often download something but am unable to find it in the game because I forgot to make a note of the silly name the author gave it.
 
I run windowed but maximized and can bring up Content Manager on my second monitor to search for any content I want. The search filter within Trainz works pretty well. The problem with the search filter is that any content that is displayed in the Surveyor content window disappears while typing in the text and this is particularly annoying with the KUID search because when the KUID is displayed at the bottom of the screen, that disappears too making the search difficult for a particular content creator.

What we truly need is wildcard search capabilities with * and ??? placeholders with the ability to search on partial names and even KUIDs within the search field. With so many authors with unfamiliar names and content with spellings that no one remembers, this is particularly useful. Let's say we know that some author's name begins with Zui, but we don't know the rest. If we could put in Zui* the author's name can then be displayed. This is true with content as well. Because we're unable to search like this, so much content is lost that is quite beautiful and useful.
 
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Some clarifications needed please.

The two search boxes in Surveyor (Ctrl+F and Shift+Ctrl+F) only have an X at the bottom right to close the search windows. There is no "X" that I can see inside any input boxes.



Sorry, but none of that makes any sense to me.



You can already set a CM filter to only display assets made by a particular creator and then do a search for a specific item from there. Asking everyone to add their initials to the name of the asset is unnecessary (and would be impractical)



Possibly...



Indeed it has.

My opinions.

Reply to pware....

Sorry for the length of time for the reply.......:confused:

I have noticed in Surveyor Window the "X" in the search box would be helpful if it were outside the input box. This would allow you to delete the last character w/o having to deal with the "X" that clears the input box.

▬▬ When you are in "Start Trainz", the Driver / Surveyor, "Search box" has an x inside it at right end, inside the box. If you have a search that fills that box [aka a long route name] the text goes behind the "X". It would be be beneficial if the "X" were outside the box and not interfere with the text. Go to the search box and fill it with "O".....you will see the "X" at the right of the box.



It would be nice if in the "Content Manager" search box. If you do a paste of a KUID that you've copied from the the pop-up window on the DLS, you could automatically do a "home -delete - delete" because not every paste put the KUID at the beginning of the search box. I might be wrong but I can't see any problem doing that all the time. It would be moot if it pastes at the beginning of the search box, and work if it pastes two spaces away.

▬▬ When you are in "Content Manager" and using the DLS webpage to view items, if you copy the KUID on the popup window, (on the webpage). When you paste that KUID in the search box in Content Manager there are spaces the get inserted in front of the KUID that you are pasting. This causes the search of the DLS to not find the KUID unless you delete the spaces. This does not happen all the time but if does, when searching lots of individual items it's a pain.


It would also be helpful if creators could place their initials at the end of the USERNAME then a person could just type in the name of the item they wanted. I don't want to disrespect anyone for taking credit for their creations!

▬▬ I'm not abdicating for everyone to place their initials in their KUID or remove them........ What I'm getting at, if they do add, put it at the end, not at the beginning. Isn't one of the TRAINZ selling points that you can type in an item in "Surveyor" and have the item/items at your disposal? That does not happen with anything other than the name of the item at the front of the KUID.

Pick any route that you have installed on your system. Then open surveyor to add say a building to the route. Now type in an item that has someone's initials at the beginning of their KUID. Look at your results, then do another search using just the name, (not the leading info), of one of the items from the first search and you will get a completely different set of items. This blows up the "just type in a name to get the item" in a search theory.

If you do search by the initials (or what ever is at the front of the KUID). You get a set of items that you still have to sort through to see if you can find the item. This is how items become lost and users get frustrated because they can't find anything. Consistency is the key.........

Hope this clears up the issues that I discussed....... I have spend too many hours editing config files to have some form of consistency, I've actually have gotten so frustrated that I spend all my time fixing and not playing the game...... Old habits die hard!

Regards,

Gibby
 
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