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John Cletheroe's
Trainz Hintz |
This guide is mainly intended for users of Auran's Trainz Railway Simulator 2004 (TRS2004). Some sections may also apply to other versions of Trainz.
A very useful "Downloading Tutorial" is available at Gerard's Trainz Tutorials, in the form of an Adobe Acrobat PDF document (external link verified Oct-04). These notes are intended to be additional to that tutorial.
Scenery items such as building and vegetation do not tend to have dependencies, so missing asset problems with them are rare.
Rolling stock assets usually often have bogeys, horn sounds, engine sounds and engine specifications as dependencies. However, these normally tend to be either built-in items or created by the same person as the main item, so problems with missing items are fairly rare.
Layouts tend to have numerous dependencies, often numbering several hundred asset, derived from a large number of different sources. Missing asset problems with layouts are extremely common.
Driver sessions and scenarios usually have several rolling stock asset dependencies. Missing asset problems tend to be fairly common. Driver sessions and scenarios sometimes have assets such as special commands as dependencies, but creators usually provide links to these if required.
Finding missing assets is one of the most frustrating aspects of Trainz. Unfortunately some content creators do not upload their creations to Auran's Download Station (DLS). While this is necessary for payware, it seems unjustified for freeware.
Many third-party content creators' web sites offering assets for downloading fail to list their kuid's. This makes life extremely frustrating for users working from lists of missing kuid's produced by Trainz Objectz. A plea to all content creators offering material on their web sites: please add kuid's!
Trainz Objectz lists installed and missing assets of items such as layouts, Driver sessions and scenarios. Right-click on the relevant asset and select the appropriate option. When the list is displayed, right-click on any missing asset and select the appropriate option to make TO list the type of object each missing asset is. This information can help to locate it on web sites which do not list kuid's.
Always start by looking for missing assets on Auran's Download Station (DLS). Ensure that the correct options are ticked when searching. If you are working from a title or description, be prepared to try various spellings.
If you have Trainz Railway Simulator 2004 (TRS2004) then there is no point in ticking the "Pre-SP3" option in Download Station. This refers to very early versions of Trainz, which used EXE files instead of CDP files. When run on a computer which has TRS2004 installed, these EXE files will claim that Trainz is not installed, because they cannot find the folder structure they expect. As far as I know, there is no way to use this content with TRS2004.
Trainz Asset Database (TAD) is an attempt at creating a central database of third-party assets for Trainz. It is definitely the first port-of-call when a missing asset cannot be found on Auran's Download Station. On the TAD web site, be sure to enter a kuid with a hyphen instead of a colon between its parts. http://www.trainzhaven.com/TAD/index.php (verified Oct-04)
TrainzLuvr.Net has fairly extensive searchable collection of third-party assets. Its search facility is a little capricious but well worth persisting with. http://trainz.luvr.net (verified Oct-04).
If you know the organisation which created the missing asset, try searching on their web site. However, as noted above, many web sites fail to list the kuid's of the items they offer.
If the organisation offers a forum, try posting a question on it asking for assistance. In my experience, people will generally try to be helpful if they can.
If Trainz Objectz lists an email address for the missing asset's creator, try sending them a message. Check the top level domain name of the email address, which may indicate that the person lives in a country where English is not the native language. In that case, try to stick to fairly basic English and avoid slang and colloquial expressions. Also check your spelling, since the reader might need to look up some words in a translation dictionary. Allow several weeks for a reply, since the person may be busy or away on holiday. Be sure to say exactly what you are requesting, and which version of Trainz you have. If you are requesting several items and your ISP has a restriction on the size of your inbox on the server, explain this and ask for items to be sent one at a time, or if possible to be made available via a web site.
Sometimes the email address or web site URL of a missing asset's creator can be obtained by examining the config.txt files of other assets made by the same person.
If you are looking for missing assets for a scenario, check that it has a GSL file and not a TSO file. GSL files are script files which are compatible with TRS2004. TSO are script files designed for use with older versions of Trainz and cannot be used with TRS2004. There is no point in wasting effort obtaining missing items for a scenario which cannot be run with TRS2004.
It may help to contact the person or organisation that created the layout (etc) which uses the missing asset.
You could also post a question on Auran's forums asking for assistance. Again, people tend to be as helpful as they can be but if you have reached this level of desperation then there is probably little which can be done.
Missing assets can be removed from layouts. However, doing so may lead to serious operational or cosmetic problems.
Missing assets can be replaced in layouts, provided you know the type of object the missing asset is. For example, it would only make sense to replace one ground texture with another ground texture, or one tunnel with another tunnel. There is an option to replace assets in Trainz Objectz. In my experience it often takes several attempts before the replacement process works.
Missing assets can be dummied by cloning an existing similar asset (not necessarily created by the same person) and consistently changing all occurrences of its kuid. This technique particularly applies to simple assets such as ground textures. Obviously, dummied assets should not be distributed since they are fakes. However, creating fake assets in this manner purely for your own purposes seems a legitimate activity to me. It may help to create a short text file in the item's folder noting that it has been dummied.
Most recently modified 23-Apr-07