Railworks America

I could not understand why a downloaded route did not load properly. It looked quite interesting but very little appeared when loaded. The forums gave the answer - it needed a considerable amount of payware route's assets to function. That free route was just too expensive for me.

It would be helpful to others on here if you would be willing to share a little more information so others could be made aware of what you are talking about and not have the same issue.

Which route?

I agree that knowing which route would be helpful to all forum members, but the complaint in general is frequently justified: route makers all too often toss in bits and pieces of everything that they have accumulated during many years of train-simming. Some of them lack even the courtesy of admitting this in read-me files, or perhaps they are just victims, along with those who download their work, of their own sloppy record keeping.

Frankly, European route makers are, in my experience, even worse than Americans in this regard. For several years, I enjoyed downloading and driving routes available from the AmiciTreni site, each of which required lots of payware, mostly in the form of rolling stock. Since those Italian route makers have not brought their work up to TS2015 standards (and many have not even reached TS2014, although the site claims otherwise), I've eliminated most of that stuff from my TS installation -- not an easy task! I've had the same problem with some French route makers, but I haven't patronized them as much.

Old debate.
Most repaints are free but only work with a payware DLC. Nobody has a problem with this. Why would routes be different?
The whole idea of making assets and buying them is that they are used in routes and scenarios.

I agree that the route builder should clearly declare its required assets in the readme, but not everyone has the discipline to make notes during building.

In the end, it remains the responsibility of the end user to decide if he wants to keep the freeware or uninstall it.
First thing I do is run RW-Tools and look at the list of missing assets. If it looks like more than one hour's work for finding and installing them, the route goes down the drain.

I don't think the debate is about payware being needed Chacal, I think it is about how much payware is needed for some of the third party routes.
That's why I'm sticking to classic U.S. assets and Donner Pass Assets in my Redo. IE I don't want people to need a half dozen or more downloads to use it.
Although there is one texture I'm interested in.

I've thought of downloading and using the RCAP stuff, but there is no list of what's actually in there...

Ericmopar wrote:I don't think the debate is about payware being needed Chacal, I think it is about how much payware is needed for some of the third party routes.
That's why I'm sticking to classic U.S. assets and Donner Pass Assets in my Redo. IE I don't want people to need a half dozen or more downloads to use it.
Although there is one texture I'm interested in.

I've thought of downloading and using the RCAP stuff, but there is no list of what's actually in there...

If you D/L it all the assets are there neatly in the RCAP folder so it's pretty easy to look at what it is. When you go to use them they are all listed as RCAP and then the description of the object.You might ask them if they have a list somewhere. We are using them extensively on the Lafayette Route.

I did not mention the route I liked but could not afford. Reason - directly naming assets and routes treads upon some social sensitivities and brings out "if you don't like it make one yourself" comments.

Accurate wrote:I did not mention the route I liked but could not afford. Reason - directly naming assets and routes treads upon some social sensitivities and brings out "if you don't like it make one yourself" comments.

What, here? Pshaw!

In my experience, when building a historical-era route things tend to get the most difficult. If you are creating a modern era route it is easy to stick to the US and European Asset Packs or the RCAP or routes that most everyone has, but historical routes tend to require different and more specialized assets. What's more, one historical payware route might not have what you're looking for so you may have to use an asset from another payware route. For example the Horseshoe Curve route has a lot of great assets but the VNHRR has more variety and more generalized structures. But even so, its quite possible to make a great historical route and stick to only three payware routes with the rest being freeware assets.

You should have seen the first "route" I tried creating a while back of my hometown, before I fully grasped the whole concept....the list of required assets was a mile long

Perhaps we need some new terminology: various phrases, I mean, that would indicate how much payware a "freeware" route requires? The first designation that comes to my mind is "Freeware ANP", in which ANP means Absolutely No Payware. That would be a very rare specimen, but surely other indicators would be possible, as well.

Otherwise, I think it only fair that every new "freeware" route announcement include a full list of all payware items in the OP. Come to think of it again, every third-party route ought to include a full assets required list, period. In the past, I've let myself fall for routes -- especially Italian ones -- for which it seemed that every asset came from a different source and it was up to me to collect them all, mostly without links provided and a fair number no longer available anywhere.

Yeah, been there. I don't have any of those routes anymore. Life is too short.

I'm a big fan of the Workshop routes. There are a few very nice ones (cough...Majestic Falls...cough), and you do see what you will need to run it listed in the description. Allows more time for running them, and less time for running down the sometimes non-existent assets.

The problem is the missing link between an individual asset and its source.
RW-Tools will give you a list of assets in a route, and for some of them (like the official DLC from DTG) it is easy to trace the source. For others it is not easy.
For example, I have been collecting assets since 2010. If I start to build a route and I select a lamp post, the only information I have is provider and product. This is not always very informative and does not always allow tracing back to a particular package.

Yes, I wish they would at least provide a detailed description of what all is needed, and use far less payware assets.

I tend to build less and less freeware scenery since I'm always under the impression that my items aren't being used and I feel like I'm building the models in vain. Since it appears to me that there are very little freeware route builders actually using a lot of the freeware assets since it appears like they're mostly using all payware and little to none freeware assets. It would brighten my day any day if I saw my work beginning to get noticed a lot more again and received good coments on my forum threads again.


Very seldom do I ever see my assets being used, or even get a comment on my forum thread any longer stating that someone likes them and is using them. Most times I end up feeling like my work goes unnoticed. So it might be a couple more months until I actually open up Crafter and even decide to do a set of houses or buildings, or when I even feel like modeling anymore.

I used to enjoy modeling freeware scenery and enjoyed doing the cars. These days though I don't get any enjoyment out of it since it feels like I'm building them in vain and I have very little inspiration towards doing so.

Because of this same choosing of assets by third party freeware route builders I've seen a lot of good freeware scenery developers just pack up and leave, and frankly I don't blame them. Since none of us like to see our work go un-appreciated and really unnoticed. Since unfortunately none of us are professional developers building items for a payware route, but that doesn't make us any happier when we see our work go un-used and un-appriated.

...I hope I don't sound too harsh, just stating my outlook on things these days and really why I've just about packed up and left for something else, writing...


...Cheers...


jpetersjr


Since I will say so myself, it doesn't matter to me what assets a route builder uses since I won't tell them what to use. Though, they still should leave a detailed description of what's required to be able to run the route since very seldom have I actually been able to run a route because of not owning every payware item for it.

As somebody has already stated this is an old subject, and NOT entirely confined to this particular Simulator either, however, folks have said in the past, that this is a hobby, not a job, so, sloppiness is not regarded as being unusual, although I do agree with virtually everything that you peeps have said already, but, that's life. A route developer once said to me that with the plethora of scenery objects that the majority of users have now acquired since 2007 in the DLC on offer, it seems a huge shame that we cannot utilise it in our layouts if some folks moan that it costs them a fortune to download it, I made a route originally for myself taking over 18 months to complete it and considered it quite a generous offer to let the community install it for free, then got lambasted for doing it, never again.....

Cheerz. ex-railwayman.