Trainz/AM&C/anatomy of assets-1 general

Examining common asset elements
In this page we're going to present the elements within example assets you are likely to encounter in downloading content and having to correct faults from data model evolution. Further, we're intending to present past and present forms and conventions so that you can see how to upgrade an element should you have to crack an asset open to repair. Remember, What happens in the Boxcar, stays in the Boxcar&mdash;if you fix it up, dress it up pretty, and customize it on your system, so long as you don't upload it, veteran Trainzer's will applaud you. Daring Experimenters lead to content creation, leading to skilled new enthusiastic content creators which lead to new goodies for all. Knock yourself out experimenting &mdash;it's how most of the essential parts&mdash; and even the best parts (some might say)&mdash;of the Trainz Experience was built!

You might say, Trainz is set up to allow experiments, for in truth it safeguards a lot of your against breakage. A backups folder system and ability to Clone (copy) a asset to alter are built-in to Content Manager. Want to try something with a regular built-in asset, then use this common procedure to "Safe the Asset"&mdash;open the asset for editing, run PEVtools and copy the folder to another directory as a manual backup&mdash;then fiddle as you desire. Trainz input validation will let you know if most things are out of kilter with your experiment.

Newer Trainz also has a 'Revert' and a 'Revert to Original' feature in the [ALT]-[E] edit drop down menu. That manual copy can then be used to re-import the asset with suitable version or name alteration or kuid changes, and both versions can be on your at once.

Our first asset
This is a flatcar knockoff of a deepwell flatcar by the inimitable PhilC of World of Trainz (now sadly defunct, he's retired in 2014) and bigger fame as a diesel-electric digital modeler. (Name search in CM 'L SD70' for one you likely have built-in!)

.
 * An amusing example of the distinction: When the excellent and famous narrowgauge route 'Northbay County' was first published in TRS2006-SP0, there was a little switcher engine that had no trucks&mdash;the bogeys kuid got left out of the CDROM release. It seemed to float on air like it was some kind of hovercraft! The switching engine worked, and so long as you were in the loco cab, you'd never know the difference. The truck sub-asset was clearly non-essential.

In a reskin, the mesh reference to the traincar to be re-colorized is essential, as is the existence of the kuid defining that car and all of it's unchanged parts, or the kuid is so much useless code. In a clone or knock-off, like a specially built asset, it's complete data set is self-contained--though may of course have other dependencies--common parts like trucks (bogeys) cab interiors, bells, cow catchers, and other elements which have commonality between models.

Some such are found in a library&mdash;this has become increasingly common, and actually simplifies things for the content creator and users alike--only one library asset needs be 'attached', found, and possessed to enable many others, and they can be used by other content creators to expand the menu of options (goodies) for us all. This even extends to the body of many traincars--Auran established a series of base model types and many rolling stock assets use those meshes. Meshes or mesh libraries, textures and texture libraries can be individual KUID assets, and once so entered in the data base, become available for others. Neat, Huh!?

company                                "Santa Fe" origin                                 "USA" mesh-table { default { mesh              "depcenflat_body\depcenflat_body.im" auto-create       1 } shadow { mesh              "shadow.im" } }

bogeys { 0 {   reversed           0 bogey              } 1 {    reversed           0 bogey              } } engine                                 0 kind                                   "traincar" trainz-build                           2.2 username                               "Flatcar DepCen 6 Axle,empty-aRms" enginespec                              kuid                                    mass                                   49215 name                                   "Flatcar DepCen 6 Axle,empty-aRms" description                            "username = 'Flatcar DepCen 6 Axle,empty-aRms' former username: 'Flatcar 6_Axle Depressed Center Empty' -- 6 axle depressed center flat car. Capacity 250000 lbs (113398 kgs). -- Email fordtruc@norex.com.au for repaint requests. Reskinned by MaDDoG1221 with permission.

- - - - - Rev-A 2014-0507 by Fabartus -- cleaned up three faults, PM2IM, shadows, etc. w/PEVtools, tacked '-aRu' suffix on username, and incremented v2.0 to v2.2 -- but no other changes. Also replaced with containers so removed: bogey                                   bogey-1                                

REV B - 2014-0612 by Fabartus - Reordered folder names and annotations. To make my version, try a test to use this for trucks  in v2.6 Trainz-build. --

Asset foldername: kuid2 124585 15120 0;V2-2;Flatcar DepCen 6 axle;Flatcar DepCen 6 Axle,empty-aRms Original formerly: 2-0Ru Flatcar 6_Axle Depressed Center Empty-a (kuid2 124585 15120 0) " asset-filename                         "DepCenFlat" category-class                          "XFD" category-region                         "CA;US;MX" category-era                            "1970s;1980s;1990s;2000s;2010s"

thumbnails { A { image				"$screenshot$.jpg" height 180 width 240 } } author                                 "Matt (MaDDoG1221)" organisation                           "N/A" contact-email                          "Matt@niclan.homeip.net" contact-website                        "http://www.matt.dynalias.com" license                                "Copyright 2004"

kuid-table { 0                                      1                                     }