Suggestion re Assets

[RSderek]

Easy Chris.
If it is not rocket science how come you don't have the solution yet?

Anyway, back to work today, first things first.. who's putting the kettle on.


regards

Derek

[Basherz]

Easy Chris.
If it is not rocket science how come you don't have the solution yet?

regards

Derek

It was not my intent to be rude Derek, just that in the early days, it was very easy to see what was going to happen, technically, whilst looking out in time. Things have changed slightly, and for the better it must be said, but now, the simple things are rearing thier ugly head, and it has raised "silly" problems like this. Freeware should be Freeware, to remain in unaltered state and not to be used for Payware routes without prior permission, otherwise it must automatically become Payware!

As for me not having a solution yet, this is not true, and at least in theory, and just going through this topic and sifting, the answer is in this thread, but as I neither have the resource these days, especially financial, and nor do I believe it is for me or any one outside of RS.com to implement, I have done nothing. Whilst it can be said that this would benefit us all, and it would without doubt, the only people it would really benefit, financially, is RS.com as this would further promote the product.

Having said all this, it would be an horrendous task to gather all the different items people are happy to be included in a GPL now, whilst it would have been far simpler in the early days.

[Julien]

This is, by far, the best solution. The DVD thing is very much anchored in the past, DVD's, mail, why not Pony Express while we are at it... We are in 2010, everybody is on dsl, and some of us even have fiber optics connections (I do...). We have to live with our time.

Well I think you need to step out into the real world once in a while.

"Everybody" is not on dsl. I go out with UKTS on the roadshows and I have met many people who have no internet connection but picked up MSTS and Rail Simulator as a boxed product in shops. They had no idea that content was available online and were astounded at the MSTS add-ons we were showing. We have had questions on the UKTS support system where people have bought Railworks and have no internet connection so can't activate it.

At one show last year I met a gentleman who had bought the Making Tracks MSTS route London & South East in PC World. He had problems with it that were solved with the patches Making Tracks issued online but since he had no internet access he had no way of getting those patches.

These points were presented to Paul Jackson (CEO RS.COM) and he listened but reiterated that the online distribution model was the way forward.

There are members here who access the site and forums via mobile phone connectivity hence the limits on screenshot sizes to limit their bandwidth penalties.

If I was to take your argument to the extreme then I would ban multi-part spanned zips from this site since I have a 20MB cable connection that I can max out so massive files are not a problem for me - Visual Studio 2008 was 3.5GB and that came down in 1 go. That would stop a lot of tickets on the ticketing system and posts on the forums from people unable to make spanned zips work.

Hello John,

I was waiting to get some figures before answering you. According to recent surveys, about 90% of british people connected to internet have high speed connections. The same figures can be found throughout western Europe. Of course not every homes have internet, about 2/3 of European population have internet home and 80 % of those have broadband access... As you can see the vast majority is on the "DSL side" and even though you have met many people without internet connections, i am pretty certain these people would have much troubles installing assets, creating activities or reskinning without our beloved forums. And internet access...

What i mean there, is that the norm is people having broadband access, the times of DVDs (or cds...) being sent through royal mail are now long gone. There will always be a minority of people asking for those, but what you have to understand is that they are no longer a majority like it may have been the case in 2003/2004... Distribution of softwares through high speed connections is not the future but the present. I am effraid I live in the real world, i am sorry to say...

My point being that if something was to be done concerning the distribution of assets, ftp's, torrents (there are legal torrents for those who doubts), other p2p clients should be considered and not distribution through regular mail. It would still be possible to send a dvd to the few unlucky ones but only in last resort...

Hope i wasn't too long, nor pedantic...

Sincerly,

Julien

[bigvern]

Which all comes back to getting some sort of freeware subscription library set up on Steam, but RS.com would need to be in the lead on that I think...

[Acorncomputer]

Which all comes back to getting some sort of freeware subscription library set up on Steam, but RS.com would need to be in the lead on that I think...

Perhaps RS.com can take the lead with UKTS possibly hosting a free for all to access library on behalf of RS.com with suitable funding.

More radical still (and probably wandering into the world of make-believe) RS.com could separate from Steam and set up their own DLC operation with an attached freeware library. The costs of running a self-owned and administrated 'download centre' might well be a lot less than the commissions paid to Steam so not only would this be more profitable but there would be more scope for pandering to the special needs of Train Simmers.

[NeutronIC]

Hi Folks,

I've only had time to skim through the topic, apologies if i'm re-treading old ground but I don't think I am, at least not in the exact precise same words i'm going to use anyway

There are essentially two ways of getting things on to your machine - install from a Disc or download from the Internet. IMHO both are valuable. MSTS benefited greatly from the CD's so I definitely want to see some equivalent for RailWorks, but with the greater array of payware for RailWorks that are essential for most freeware routes to work, the CD concept doesn't work the same - whether it works at all is a separate question but it certainly is different.

One solution is the discs full of scenery, all the additional bits and bobs so that the end-user downloads the route, buys the extra payware and puts in the blast of scenery they need from the disc if it's not already there. That would mean the need for specific routes on disc would be reduced perhaps, as the routes themselves aren't so hard to download - it's all the other assets that are.

Ok so I wanted to float one other idea about the routes on CD before I go back to the main thrust of this topic: With most freeware routes depending on Isle of Wight, and presumably if there are other scenic-rich routes released this will be extended to them also, would a community cd that says "requires isle of wight" be acceptable? I've always steered away from anything that makes a CD not work completely out of the box, but maybe that's something that needs to change now - thoughts?

Anyway, back to the main thrust of the topic.

Scenery libraries (possibly also stock etc).

I can fairly easily create something similar to Steam (Steam is nothing fancy, it's quite basic at its heart), whereby you install a client on to your machine that checks the site for updates, if particular files have been uploaded with a tag (e.g. the GPL one that Jim has suggested a couple of times) then those files are automatically downloaded, installed and later updated as required. So essentially you have a library of "default ukts scenery" and if you stick to that plus the normal default stuff, then anyone installing your route has nothing further to install. Further, the DVD concept can be extended to this easily - a DVD issue can be put out once every 6 months or so for those that want a "kick start" to save re-downloading all the scenic items again (obviously you could back them up, but maybe you never downloaded them in the first place). It would also make it easier for the offline users to get their scenic updates and would simplify distribution of routes (perhaps they can go around to a mates to download the one 30mb route file, knowing they have all the 350mb of scenery already).

The same process could apply to stock too. Perhaps narrowed down to libraries - you "subscribe" to a library such as "diesels" or "steam" and then anything uploaded with the tag within that library would be auto downloaded and installed by the client and appear on the next dvd update.

Maybe even routes themselves could be done this way.

Remember the file library also already has the ability to relate files to each other, so the client could use that to help with installing dependencies for scenarios along with highlighting missing bits (treading slightly in to RWTools territory here...) .

I think something like that could potentially make for a great solution to the problem - at least from the UKTS library perspective. ? Thoughts?

Extending that to other sites... that's a lot more tricky. People generally are hosting things on particular sites because they want to support that site, and that's great - that's why many people upload here too. The challenge is how you present a common index to a user - for example, the UKTS file library is capable of supporting "virtual" files that don't actually exist on the server, so they get a file id and the other classifications but no download link - you could then put a URL in the description. That might not then help enough - you've downloaded the route and you've got your UKTS asset library auto-updated with the client, but now you need 6 assets from a german site that you can't navigate because you can't work out what links do what. Plus, not many other sites have the file id concept to make it blisteringly easy to make sure you get exactly the right file - so you're searching for filenames and hoping things work out (which to be fair they usually do i think).

Knowing how to try and present the "single integrated environment" really is going to take lots of webmasters like me coming together from each of the sites and agreeing on an approach.

Back in the early days of Kuju developing Rail Simulator I did propose to them that they should really try to come up with a common set of web services, set of URL's etc that any webmaster could provide, and then a common client and searching interface could query each of the different sites. Hiding the site behind that kind of API though tends to be considered "bandwidth stealing" as generally the webmaster specifically wants you to join up and visit the site. Additionally, not that many webmasters necessarily have the knowledge to implement that kind of generic interface, some host their files as attachments within forum postings, some use one of various addings to something like joomla, some just a set of HTML web pages. This all presents an interesting challenge.

I'll happily throw the floor open to other admins though, I'd love to see if we can't try to come up with something that tries to amalgamate the libraries even if only from a searching and finding perspective, it'd be a start - being able to register dependencies between files that are on different sites would be a fantastic step forward I think - it's great on here knowing that this route needs those 55 assets, but knowing it needs those 4 from this site and being able to tell you in a structured and automatic way would be great.

Just to clarify on the above bits about the client, my intention would be that it all fits in to the existing system of premium subs etc - i.e. if you're premium you get unlimited access with multiple connections, if you're not premium then you get limited slower access - but it would all still work, and probably be much more automated that you could just sit and leave it ticking away in the background over night for example. Ultimately, there's no reason why the client couldn't replace the website entirely, from the perspective of the files themselves at any rate... the important bit is to ensure it's all easy to use though, things like CDP for Trainz completely blew the ease of use part.

I might have a go at prototyping something up...

If I add a tick box on to the file item configuration to say that it's "for distribution via the client and on dvds" would people tick it? I can do that quite easily.

PS sorry Jim I got your email over christmas and completely forgot to reply to it, I haven't had much access to send emails (sending them from my mobile is just a pain ).

Matt.

[dipper6]

I was waiting to get some figures before answering you. According to recent surveys, about 90% of british people connected to internet have high speed connections. The same figures can be found throughout western Europe. Of course not every homes have internet, about 2/3 of European population have internet home and 80 % of those have broadband access... As you can see the vast majority is on the "DSL side" and even though you have met many people without internet connections, i am pretty certain these people would have much troubles installing assets, creating activities or reskinning without our beloved forums. And internet access...

What i mean there, is that the norm is people having broadband access, the times of DVDs (or cds...) being sent through royal mail are now long gone. There will always be a minority of people asking for those, but what you have to understand is that they are no longer a majority like it may have been the case in 2003/2004... Distribution of softwares through high speed connections is not the future but the present. I am effraid I live in the real world, i am sorry to say...

My point being that if something was to be done concerning the distribution of assets, ftp's, torrents (there are legal torrents for those who doubts), other p2p clients should be considered and not distribution through regular mail. It would still be possible to send a dvd to the few unlucky ones but only in last resort...

Julien

There are many people on broadband who only get 2mb, A good part of Scotland, parts of Wales and N.Ireland so its not all cut and dried if I may put it that way.

[Basherz]

Whilst I fully agree with most of your thoughts Matt, as one of the "medium" site owners, I would perhaps rather comply to "1 central sites rules" with regard to stock/item identity and perhaps adapt our present downloads to reflect likewise.

A problem does arise, however, in that not everyone would be in agreement if it was based on the "present UKTS way of doing things" if the organisation was centralised here, which is one reason I laid it at RS.com's door.

[RudolfJan]

Hi, guys, following this important discussion, I think we all miss an essential point. Before downloading, you should be able to locate the content. I think the community needs some help from RS.com on this aspect. I suggest this:

Extend the information about all assets with some extra information: author, image, web address, freeware/payware and optional replacements (for instance it might give you the option to replace a Class 37 livery with a default class 37). If you start RW, it might provide a list with all missing assets, including the locations where to find them. In this way we do not need a central database or DVD. On the other hand, the packager might provide the tooling to add a list of additional stuff needed, preferably fully automated. It also might be helpful if you can check additional requirements before installing a route or scenario by comparing the requirements with the stuff you already have

This of course does not solve all the problems some of us have with limited download speeds/allowances. Replacement options may solve part of this. The best solution is that content creators think before using assets. Are additonal assetts essential or just nice to have? Personally, I will not even consider downloading a scenario that requires additional payware or lots of freeware.

[theokus]

It comes down again on take or leave it not?
We are talking here about a hobby, only a hobby but I hate it when people are cut out.

[AndiS]

Regarding "requires IOW". I think that the great thing with the RW concept of Provider/Product is that you can see the route independent from the scenery. This means that everyone has his base of assets, freeware and payware, and then the route and the scenarios ties it all together, if it is there.

Therefore, I would strongly support the idea of a scenery and rolling stock library which is 100% freeware. If there are freeware routes or scenarios which only require freeware, they can go on the disk, if space is left. Otherwise, they are easy to download. In such a configuration, you make the "problematic"/mixed items optional, so everyone can make his choices and the box of Pandora stays closed.

If I might offer a peek into my own heart as a notorious fan-boy who at the same time is a non-buyer of payware: I appreciate the art in IOW, but I am not interested in UK subways enough. I love the included steamer and the many reskins but it did not motivate me either. Nor did the 3D sleepers without 3D switches, and the perspective to reuse the scenery items in a route of mine, if such a thing will ever materialise. But I will happily order the DVD, since it will cost less than IOW and offer more scenery items and it the route ever would materialise, then I would be more happy to stick "requires Community Disk" on it than "requires IOW".

At the same time, I must say that if 10% of the stuff on the DVD requires some payware that I don't own, and if these parts are clearly labelled, and if there is no freeware that was excluded to give room for the things I cannot use, then I loose nothing!


Regarding integration of other sites. I think it will be a long, hard way. The easy way is to contact authors or publish some open calls, to encourage them to upload on UKTS, in addition to where they already uploaded. If someone wants to support some site, fair enough. If he decides that he rather limits the spreading of his creation than reducing the support of some site (by reducing the bandwidth there), it is his decision. It is the same kind of thoughts which usually leads to READMEs stating "must not be redistributed without prior permission", thus useless to route builders who want to offer an easy installation of their route, or who are concious about their own efficiency.

I would not spend a second on placing some item precisely on a route, not to mention messing with the dispatcher, when I know that this item could be unavailable tomorrow, because the creator decided so or the website he supported went offline, or because most of my users don't understand the language at that site and they forgot the translation at the last redesign of the site.

On a balance, we must consider that there is route building for your own enjoyment and route building for publication. For yourself, it can be great fun to go shopping around the world and see what you can get and then swim in a sea of things for which you cannot remember where you got them. But they are nice, they are on your harddisk, and if you are lucky on your backup, and that is all you need, end of story. Therefore, my above harsh words do not question the existence of loads of small servers with special content. Just the opposite, because they can be a better starting platform for many reasons. But at some point, the creator needs to make a concious decision whether to release his creation to the world or not.

Therefore, I rather see the inclusion of international content as extending the hand to creators than to creating a union of website. That union would be a great thing, of course. But I can't see it happen, because people run their sites to be different. They want you to see their site and register and admire their page layout and they bear significant cost just for that. And as downloaders, we are grateful that they do that.

It is only the creator of routes and scenarios who gets worried about the reaction of his users when this downloading gets too much. Therefore, this DVD initiative is mostly an important enabling action for the publication of routes and scenarios.


Regarding unification of IDs. Non-withstanding what I said above, such global IDs would be an excellent thing to have. And establishing them is more realistic than having an automatic client. I have no idea how someone managed to take the lead in creating this standard track database for MSTS, nor who it was. And I know that it is not globally accepted, but I don't know to which extent. Anyway, while RSC stay idle, I see UKTS in the pole position of being any authority there is.

I am not so sure that some new IDs would even be necessary. I think that the Provider/Product scheme is really good, considering the cost/benefit ratio. It would be an excellent idea if RSC could urge peole to use their login under which they registered at RSDL back then for the Provider name, or else there will be naming conflicts.

Inside the Provider folder, it is the responsibility of the creator to establish any system he can communicate. Then, all it takes is communicating that system.

In practice, this would mean that you need a very simple database at UKTS. Assuming that your UKTS login equals your Provider name, you would maintain a list of records, each containing Product name, Description, UKTS ID, URLs at other sites, Version History. Everyone who is interested in having his items reused will rush to keep this data up to date, whether he uploads at UKTS or elsewhere. Everyone who thinks that UKTS is irrelevant will boycott it, and there will be no problem at all in that.

The above system needs a little extension for team projects. I.e., there will be Providers which are not UKTS logins, like XYZ-Team for the XYZ route, or Dominique-Andi for the signals that I make with Dominique. Matt will not be overwhelmed by the challenge to implement that, e.g., everyone registered at UKTS can have alias names for Provider, which you may pass on in case the data maintainer in a team changes.


Finally, regarding "using all colours in the box", I must say that there are two things.

A) You can make an artistic statement, using a limited set of inputs (colours, materials) to emphases your creative contribution in the result, i.e., your message, your emotions, your impressions.

B) You take a lot of ingredients and revel in them, and let the observer revel in them, too. The artist professor will call it a mess, but it will be a very popular piece of art.

I think that route building lends itself a lot to B. As long as you keep the provinience of the buildings within certain limits, the mess that you make is the mess you see when you look out of any train. And for vegetation, most people only care if the colours are not too strange.

I keep dreaming about scenery that fits together tone in tone, balast, terrain paint, roads, scenery, embankment lofts, but then I get worried that not all shaders will show the sunset the same (Clear not for the non-fx shaders, which are also used on procedural vegetation, but lofts and terrain?) The good news is that I never got time to try being ambitious anyway, at least in this regard.

Anyway, I think it is like a dinner and a Christmas tree. You can have a cleverly designed dinner where everything fits together and the cook spent a lot of thought and you do feel it, and it is great. And you can have a Christmas tree hung full of chocolate and other sweets which are guaranteed to make you feel sick, and the cumulative taste of which have not been composed by anyone, and it is great!

[NeutronIC]

IOW:

I meant this in respect of specific route DVD's only, i.e. in the same context as the MSTS community CD's where you have a route, stock and scenarios. The MSTS ones all run out of the box with no additional requirements, that's one of the attractions to them. If you apply the same rule to RW routes then there are almost no routes eligible as they all (just about) require Isle of Wight - some are improved with it (which is fine, you can run the route without IoW in that case just with missing scenery areas), some are absolutely dependant on it as they use infrastructure from IoW (Spa Valley for example)... let alone if 3D track has been used from IoW which is of course another crucial dependency.

For the scenery library discs, this is not an issue, their sole purpose would be to distribute the free-to-distribute stuff, they wouldn't be "products" as such, they'd be kits of parts that form a library and if you download a route then having this library is just one of the requirements for that route, it might depend on three other payware products and so forth that you still have to resolve yourself - but at least this should make it easier and also make scenery more accessible to people wanting to make routes.

Unification:
I am not a fan of trying to particularly bring it all together on one site by encouraging uploaders to go to one place - as much as that might sound like the wrong attitude for any site owner, it's not the right thing for the community. I was against that approach when Auran adopted it for Trainz and the same arguments would stand against it here (particularly, and if nothing else, simply having all your eggs in one basket). I would rather see more sites because it encourages more little pockets of community to form and develop in their own ways. It stops any one site from dominating (much the way this one tends to if I'm honest, though I hope I'm not entirely disliked ) and if another site does something new and innovative then it provides for a good breeding ground for things to happen and develop. It's official, I am the worlds worst businessman but hey, I've always said running this site was never about business, it's about community - I just need to keep one eye on the business to make sure we don't go bang

I don't think unification of ID's is particularly important, the combination of the site id (e.g. "UKTS" or "RSTS" for example) and whatever unique reference the site in question uses is more than enough and means nobody needs to change any existing infrastructure to fit in. The idea would be definitely to aim to integrate other sites with the entirety of the integration done via the new system rather than expecting people to change their site to fit in to something.

Chris: I'd be interested to have a discussion with you about possibly having a go at some kind of integration, what the technical options are from your perspective and what your realistic options are that would you consider acceptable. I think that first cut though I want to try and get something prototyped and then we (as in everyone) can see how it fits, if it looks like it might be in the right direction we can then try some kind of unified library interface some how to present the two libraries as one via the client (with appropriate specific logos and logins required etc etc)... Not sure, just waffling at this point Definitely want to hear your thoughts though so feel free to either continue discussing in here or privately message me if you want to get detailed.

Ok, i'm going to have a go at putting something together, initially geared around what we do here but with a view to expanding it once the concept is proven and if other webmasters want to join in.

Keep the feedback coming.

Matt.

[bigvern]

Isn't about time RS.com made IOW part of the "core" anyway, if not the route itself at least the assets? It probably isn't going to happen but it would take one obstacle out of the way.

[Acorncomputer]

Isn't about time RS.com made IOW part of the "core" anyway, if not the route itself at least the assets? It probably isn't going to happen but it would take one obstacle out of the way.

I have to agree that making the IOW assets part of the core program would be a great step forward.

[theokus]

Isn't about time RS.com made IOW part of the "core" anyway, if not the route itself at least the assets? It probably isn't going to happen but it would take one obstacle out of the way.

Vern, you are a big guy and nice guy but what you propose is NOT fair....
It' s not about me or the money I did spend but I bought this route and all in it.
The same goes for the folliage pack.
Using the stuff in my own "freeware" routes is a different matter.
Today we have to pay and tomorrow it' s free for everbody?
So I did have bad luck??
We need a one-line-strategy counting for all of us.