Hey,
something currently really bugs me and i have to say i keep questioning the point of making custom items for this game.
In the past few years i wasn't really able to pursue my own things because both my parents were terminally ill and i helped taking care of them.
Nonetheless, after many dark years, i was actually really looking forward to throw myself into modding and 3D modeling again,
and the TMT being released looked like a perfect opportunity, given i'm a true RCT nerd from the very beginning (RCT1).
But apparently i seemed to have been a bit too optimistic.
So, people complain about lag and long loading times,
at the same time they download almost each and everything
(this is a hypothetical analogy, for explanation's sake)
with the name Mickey in it.
Whether that Mouse is made by someone who hardly knows a thing about LODs, they don't care.
Then their system slows down the more mickey's they have in their inventory.
But they keep telling the creator how awesome those Mickeys are without knowing
But the creator(s), since they don't really care about performance, less even, know about how to do that properly, they can basically spam the Workshop because it's much faster than building something from scratch, draw the textures, rigorously reduce polygons in the LODs.
Then there's the other bunch, like me, who actually has a slow output (not only due to time constraints, but also for the time i take for any item i work on)
and who only upload when it's really finished and polished. Then there's the additional LOD QC that i do, meaning i check ingame whether the LOD reductions are smooth and whether even more triangle could be taken out. The textures are also checked for their resolution and placement to avoid unecessary data(and filesize).
Long story short, when i look at others' items comments it reads something like this: "wow so awesome this must have taken a lot of time and work" or "omg you should charge money for it" or "you're soo talented" … (i think you get the point)
These are some comments that i tend to get instead:
"you don't deserve any attention"
"Really too large for what it is." (how about a plain white box instead)(even the PlanCo example items are bigger than most of my items!)
(the next two comments concern a wall/floor item that uses the complete spectrum
(including normal and roughness, 6 maps total) of texture slots and still is under 5 MB
(still less than the size of the smaller PlanCo example item)
"looks great but i think the size is a problem... i mean 4.5MB for a piece of floor?
I'm no expert, just asking and I think you should try to lower its size if you can.
other than that - nice tiling and shading"
"well you obviously havent tried to make an entire park,
therefore you dont really know the game is very poorly optimized.
an entire park usually weights between 6MB and 12MB.
when i do the math considering your piece of floor something doesnt compute."
and then there's stuff like this:
"It really is great quality. But eventually installing more and more items over 3-5mbs is going to make my computer crawl.
It looks great but I can't download until it is at least 1 mb or so.
Compare it to other Planco items and you will see your quality is way too good for this game lol."
I can't decide whether that's an insult or a compliment, especially considering my "quality" is still much MUCH more easy on performance
than most of the "simple-looking" stuff.
But apparently ppl rather download the simple-LOOKING stuff instead and thern they complain about lag and loading times..
I haven't a single Workshop item subscribed and my game works like it used to (of course i have my own TMTK items ingame.)
The work and skill it takes to build great game assets and the way you get (i get)
treated for creating unique and exclusive things in return, THAT'S the true math that doesn't add up!
So, i'm quite on the brink of just quitting this, because i keep thinking "why bother".
It's not that i don't like to build items i can use ingame, but the Workshop... naaaaa
I'd like to know how you see it, is skill appreciated in this community?
(or do people just still think 3D models with LODs are just like Blueprints with bigger filesizes?)
And the subscribers, do they make a difference between a downloaded, converted marketplace item
compared to something that has been fully done from scratch,
with the goal of optimal ingame performance vs. just throwing another item on the Workshop
to get more followers and to further screw ppls' game performance?
something currently really bugs me and i have to say i keep questioning the point of making custom items for this game.
In the past few years i wasn't really able to pursue my own things because both my parents were terminally ill and i helped taking care of them.
Nonetheless, after many dark years, i was actually really looking forward to throw myself into modding and 3D modeling again,
and the TMT being released looked like a perfect opportunity, given i'm a true RCT nerd from the very beginning (RCT1).
But apparently i seemed to have been a bit too optimistic.
So, people complain about lag and long loading times,
at the same time they download almost each and everything
(this is a hypothetical analogy, for explanation's sake)
with the name Mickey in it.
Whether that Mouse is made by someone who hardly knows a thing about LODs, they don't care.
Then their system slows down the more mickey's they have in their inventory.
But they keep telling the creator how awesome those Mickeys are without knowing
But the creator(s), since they don't really care about performance, less even, know about how to do that properly, they can basically spam the Workshop because it's much faster than building something from scratch, draw the textures, rigorously reduce polygons in the LODs.
Then there's the other bunch, like me, who actually has a slow output (not only due to time constraints, but also for the time i take for any item i work on)
and who only upload when it's really finished and polished. Then there's the additional LOD QC that i do, meaning i check ingame whether the LOD reductions are smooth and whether even more triangle could be taken out. The textures are also checked for their resolution and placement to avoid unecessary data(and filesize).
Long story short, when i look at others' items comments it reads something like this: "wow so awesome this must have taken a lot of time and work" or "omg you should charge money for it" or "you're soo talented" … (i think you get the point)
These are some comments that i tend to get instead:
"you don't deserve any attention"
"Really too large for what it is." (how about a plain white box instead)(even the PlanCo example items are bigger than most of my items!)
(the next two comments concern a wall/floor item that uses the complete spectrum
(including normal and roughness, 6 maps total) of texture slots and still is under 5 MB
(still less than the size of the smaller PlanCo example item)
"looks great but i think the size is a problem... i mean 4.5MB for a piece of floor?
I'm no expert, just asking and I think you should try to lower its size if you can.
other than that - nice tiling and shading"
"well you obviously havent tried to make an entire park,
therefore you dont really know the game is very poorly optimized.
an entire park usually weights between 6MB and 12MB.
when i do the math considering your piece of floor something doesnt compute."
and then there's stuff like this:
"It really is great quality. But eventually installing more and more items over 3-5mbs is going to make my computer crawl.
It looks great but I can't download until it is at least 1 mb or so.
Compare it to other Planco items and you will see your quality is way too good for this game lol."
I can't decide whether that's an insult or a compliment, especially considering my "quality" is still much MUCH more easy on performance
than most of the "simple-looking" stuff.
But apparently ppl rather download the simple-LOOKING stuff instead and thern they complain about lag and loading times..
I haven't a single Workshop item subscribed and my game works like it used to (of course i have my own TMTK items ingame.)
The work and skill it takes to build great game assets and the way you get (i get)
treated for creating unique and exclusive things in return, THAT'S the true math that doesn't add up!
So, i'm quite on the brink of just quitting this, because i keep thinking "why bother".
It's not that i don't like to build items i can use ingame, but the Workshop... naaaaa
I'd like to know how you see it, is skill appreciated in this community?
(or do people just still think 3D models with LODs are just like Blueprints with bigger filesizes?)
And the subscribers, do they make a difference between a downloaded, converted marketplace item
compared to something that has been fully done from scratch,
with the goal of optimal ingame performance vs. just throwing another item on the Workshop
to get more followers and to further screw ppls' game performance?
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