Welcome back. I hope the tan was not the only enjoyment you got during your vacation
Q1: Yes, we should credit people who contribute new ideas. I could go thru all the maps ever made and see if someone ever did a passenger type for a different passenger type, but time is not something I have a lot of these days. I'll give Lowell that credit for a 'style'.
Q2: 'Hotels, ticket offices, restaurants, post offices, and railway express agencies' Hotels have been around for quite a while. So have Banks, Casinos, City Halls, Depositories, Distirbution Centers, Gold Vaults, Ports, Warehouses, Saloons, Ski Resorts and Stock Exchanges. Some exchange Goods for Goods, some Passenger types for Goods, some Goods for Passenger types and some Passenger types for Passenger types. The title 'service buildings' may be new, but the concept is not. How he used them may be different, but how mappers use Industries changes all the time.
Q3: Universum did not build a CIC as it was defined by Lowell. CIC required no other custom maps to be loaded into the game. Universums' Utah simply had two .bat files to set it up to be run and then undo the effects of the first .bat. The idea was never used by any other Mappers.
Now, about your CIC Standard. I take it this is different from your 'CIC Guide' requirments. But even as a 'standard', the definition seems to change each time it is refered to.
CIC Standard
1 Isolation of critical UserMaps files. By your remark later refering to SAMs, 'requiring the UserMaps folder to contain only a single map' Universums Utah does not meet this requirment. This is why he added the .bat files. You could have a non-SAM version of every map created and Utah would still run. He never required UserMaps to be empty. Tijer and I were the first to use this requirement. In Lowells original first post in the thread that SAMs were announced in he felt that this was a complete waste of a persons time and that he did not accept the idea. I'd direct you to this thread, but it was deleted along with about 1000 of my other posts.
2 A properly specified "random event" file. Tijer and I discovered this a while after SAMs were posted and started to correct them. The ones in the original maps thrad could not be corrected because I was no longer Moderator. If we had not been attacked by Lowell claiming he discovered the concept first, we would have better tested or SAMs and found the problem before posting them. We sent 5 or 6 SAMs to 5 members, you being one of them, and no mention of a problem was told to us. And a note on your last paragraph: The SAMs posted on BR have met the 'CIC Standards' 2 and 3 for a couple of years. The repair of them started as they were being posted on BR. Not having to answer to the accusations on this forum gave Bobby and I the time to accomplish this. And as to CIC Standard 4, that was a requirement from the beginning of SAMs (
viewtopic.php?p=23280#p23280 )
3 No .fpk compressed assets in the UserMaps folder. This was not done because using FPKs caused CTDs, it was done to stop the arguments. The Original game uses ONLY FPKs, and my crew of testers and I never had any problem with them. The reason they were pulled from the BBs was duplicate files when they were used.
4 Empty CustomAssets folder. As stated above, SAMs never placed anything in CustomAssets. Read this post:
viewtopic.php?p=32143#p32143
Now, to this 'CIC Standard' Don't you think you should find a different name for this? One thing you do not cover in your 'CIC Standards' is that the map run without problems. That should be the first thing. And none of the original CICs completely run without problems. While the 'Holidays In Ohio ToyTrains' can be run,(i think) it cannot be run with AIs. And this is not because it was designed that way as claimed by the author, it is because of an oddity with the game that I found while messing with the map. If an Industry has more than 8 Resource exchanges in it, the map will not allow AIs to be used. The version of that map on BR has had the 'overloaded' Industries edited to allow AIs to be used. Even Lowell's current version of Mud Skippers cannot be played which is why you had to upload a version of your own. The CIC style of map is one in which a fully listed Global style XML is used and a map named XML is used. Leave Lowell to claim the name CIC map and come up with a name of your own for the standard. Right now all SAMs are your CIC Standard, whether they work or not. CIC was just a name given to a SAM based map that had unneedded XMLs added to it. You do the reviews of the maps, call it Karstens' Standard or something like that.
Onward.
To my disappointment, Conditions 2, 3 and 4 were not fulfilled, however. The SAM makers insisted on a) omitting a map-specific random event file, b) continued use of .fpk files and c) placing .fpk files into CustomAssets. This resulted in years of "mysteriously" crashing SAM maps, even though a better solution was available.
Here you accuse STEP Inc of omitting the map-specific random event file on purpose. The early SAMs were created by creating a fully listed RRT_Goods.xml file from the one contained in the map, fully listing any Mod used by the map and gathering any Mod assets used by the map and placing them in a single folder. FPKs were used because at that time most map makers were using them and they caused no problem that we could see. And again,
Nothing was placed in the CustomAssets Folder! SAMs were a one or two folders, depending on how they were built, placed in an EMPTY UserMaps. It was also stated that CustomAssets HAD to be empty. At first there were a few who insisted that assets HAD to be placed in the CustomAssets folder, tho they later admitted that the maps ran fine the way they were originally designed. I do believe Dwax was the only one claiming that certain SAMs would not even start up for him. No one else reported this problem.
I am much encouraged to read Snoopy's statement above that "All the SAMs posted, at least on BR, no longer have FPKs and do have working Event XMLs." If this means that after four years, SAM map makers are belatedly supporting CIC conditions 2-4, that is excellent news for all SMR users!
As I said, the Event XMLs were fixed as the maps were posted on BR. The FPKs were removed not because of crashes, but because of a need for an example of how to better post a map. When I build a map I always use FPKs for my Mod assets. This way if I choose not to use a Mod later, it is a simple deleting of a single FPK file, not searching for every file connected to the Mod. When the map runs and has been tested by others, I open the FPKs and put the files into a single 'Warehouse' folder. This is my way of doing it. Each to his own.
The 'slapping in the face' of your post was very uncalled for. But I'm used to that from quite a few people on this forum.
If this thread is not deleted we now have a partial list of what the CIC Standard consists of.
And you did not reply to my PS in the first post. The origin of SAMs was given here:
viewtopic.php?p=23280#p23280I'm correct 97% of the time..... who cares about the other 4%....
). When I am back I will be pleased to clear up any confusion that may exist.
So here are the answers:
I bet you'd never reply.