New feature : you can now search assets by keywords

Trainzkuidindex has indexed the content of all Trainz fan sites and the informations fields of the config.txt of all downloadable assets from those sites.

You can now use a new form to find web pages or assets by using keywords.

This can seem like a Google search. But it is quite different :

TKI index the content of Trainz assets ; Google (and other search engines) don't.
TKI index only Trainz fan sites ; Google (and other search engines) index all sites, giving many unwanted results from sites not related to Trainz.
TKI keywords search provides various additional filters to narrow the results ; those filters are taylored to the needs of Trainzers, and thus are not provided by non-specialist search engines.

How to proceed ?

Select the submenu Assets search > by keyword to access to this new feature.

Enter a few words in the first (... all these words) or in the second (... any of these words) keywords field of the form.

Check Search for web pages or Search for assets or both.

Submit the form.

Not enough results ?

Use the second keyword field (... any of these words) instead of the first one. The search engine keeps in the search results pages or assets that contains at least one of the words entered in the second field (... any of these words), while it keeps only pages or assets that contains all words entered in the first field (... all these words).

Keep in mind that the search engine use the words you enter in the keywords field "as is". It does'nt translate it in any other language, don't search for synonymous words, or more general or more specifics words. For example, if you enter house, the search engine will not find pages or assets that contains building and not house. Likewise the search engine will not find pages or assets that contains only hopper if you ask him to search for train cars.

In some particular cases, you can let empty the keywords fields, and use only the filters for web pages or assets.

Too many results ?

You have several options to narrow the search results :

You can use the first keyword field (... all these words) instead of the second one (... any of these words).
You can use the third keyword field (... none of these words).
To narrow only the results for web pages, use the filters for pages : limit the result to pages providing assets to download, and/or to web sites in a specific language, and/or to web sites providing assets for a specific region.
To narrow only the results for assets, use the filters for assets : you can select the language of the site where the asset can be downloaded, the asset kind, the asset category, the category region and the category era ; you can choose to keep or not the assets whose the filtered fields are not defined.

Feel free to use the contact form for help, give any feedback or provide suggestions.

FAQ and Tips

Asset, kuid, versions, locations, file, archive, the secrets of the search result page

Each asset in Trainz has his own unique id called kuid. The two first number of a kuid identify an asset:

asset X → kuid2:1234:4567:1

The third number is the version of the asset:

asset X → version 1 → kuid2:1234:4567:1

version 2 → kuid2:1234:4567:2

Every body knows that and this system is easy and well suited... As long as we stay on the DLS of N3V/Auran ...

But as soon as you enter in the internet jungle, everything becomes more complicated. The same kuid can be found in many web sites, and in many locations in the same web site. And there is no technical raison why they are to be identical. There is potentially as many version of the same kuid as physical versions on the web that can be found on the web. A new version level must be added. On this site a physical version of a kuid is called 'location'. A location is one of the - maybe many - avatar of the kuid that you can find in a file somewhere on the web. That would be too simple, however a unique location can be pointed by many different links in different web pages of the same site, even in the same page.

asset X → version 1 → location a → pointed by the link L1 from the page P1 of the site S1

→ pointed by the link L1 from the page P2 of the site S1

location b → pointed by the link L3 from the page P3 of the site S2

version 2 → location c → pointed by the link L4 from the page P1 of the site S1

location d → pointed by the link L5 from the page P4 of the site S3

In this site, on the search results page, the differents locations found for the searched object or version of object, are sorted by web site. For each site a table schow the list of found locations. Each row of the table corresponds to one location. For each locatino the last column contains the links towards the page of the site where the links towards the file containing the object being searched can be found. The results are presented in this order (giving that all the version of the asset X are searched) :

Asset X → site S1 → location a (version 1) → link to the page P1 (where the link L1 to the file can be found)

link to the page P2 (where the link L1 to the file can be found)

location d (version 2) → link to the page P1 (where the link L5 to the file can be found)

site S2 → location b (version 1) → link to the page 3 (where the link L3 to the file can be found)

site S3 → location c (version 2) → link to the page P4 (where the link L4 to the file can be found)

For each location the name of the file containing the searched asset is specified. This file must be downloaded unless the column "In archive file" is filled in. If so, the archive file must be downloaded, and the column 'File name' contains the path and the name of the file to find inside the archive. If the file name is 'config.txt', the searched object is the full directory containing the 'config.txt' file.

Help ! I am redirected to a page in russian !

A link in the results page redirect you to a page written in russian language. There are dozens of objects to download. You cannot read russian (nobody's perfect !). How to do ?

Don't panic ! There is a good news : you don't need to learn russion language !

First case : in the results page, on this site, the file name use the latin alphabet.

Example : your are looking for this kuid : kuid2:164418:1041:1. You select (randomly...) the first link of the first location of the site http://trainz.ru/. You get a full russian page with 200 assets to download !

The file name provided for the location you selected is 'tsr_rzd_2te10v-4036.cdp'. '2te10' is the name of a famous russian locomotive. Maybe if you search this name in the page of the site http://trainz.ru/, you can find the file to download.

But the page uses cyrillic alphabet !

Open this page with the Google Chrome browser. With Chrome the translation of the page in your language (in fact you must choose a language using latin alphabet) is automatically proposed. Even if the translation is not so clear, tha main result is that the page now use latin alphabet, witch is the most important for searching our file to download.

Use the find tools of Chrome (ctrl F) to search '2te10'. Use will get 20 results. Move in the search results (arrow v). You will find at the 5th result 'Bulk freight locomotive 2TE10V-4036' (if you translate the page in english). Whao ! Our file name is '2te10v-4036'. We got it !

Select 'DOWNLOAD'. Chrome propose to you to download the file 'tsr_rzd_2te10v-4036.cdp'.

Congratulation ! You have just donwloaded your first Trainz asset from a russian web site !

Other case : in the results page, on this site, the file name use the cyrillic alphabet.

The procees is the more easy. You don't need to translate the russian page...

Example : you are searching for the kuid kuid:439750:100009. You get only one location as search results. You clic on the link and you get a russian web page with 45 download links !

On the search results page you can see the name of the file to search : that is an archive file with the pretty name : 'ТЭП70БС-007.rar'. In your favorite Web browser do a search in the russian page to find 'ТЭП70БС-007'. As you probably don't have a russian keyboard, you can copy-paste from the search results page of this site.

Bingo ! A beautifull red locomotive has that name ! Click on the bouton 'ТЭП70БС-007'. You are redirected to the russian file hoster rusfolder. The name of the file to download is the right name 'ТЭП70БС-007.rar'. A new adventure is just beginning. You will get help for downloading files on this site by reading an other FAQ.

Why my search did not return any result

This can happen for a number of reasons :

If you entered the asset version, try a new search without asset version. If you finally find the kuid with a different version, you will have to modify the config.txt of the dependent asset. Of course it is not sure that the dependent asset works properly with this new version of the dependencie. Some tests in the game will be required to validate that the new version works well.
Check that this kuid is realy usefull for the dependant asset. The assets designers use copy/past in the config.txt. So quite often some unecessary kuid references are not cleaned in the 'kuid-table' part of the config.txt. If the missing kuid is in the 'kuid-table' but anywhere else within the config.txt, and if the asset is not scripted, you can probably safely remove this missing kuid from the 'kuid-table' and it will disappear from the missing dependencies list. If the object is scripted, you should make a test after removing the missing kuid from the 'kuid-table', to check if the script use this reference or not. If everything works well, this means that the object nor the script uses this missing kuid. You can remove it from the 'kuid-table' without risk.
Unfortunatly many Trainz fan sites are steadily closed, assets are removed from web sites, even at the DLS of N3V/AURAN... More than 10.000 kuid were lost in 2 years !
Sometimes some asset designer has the missing kuid on his computer but forget to upload it on the DLS or on his web site.
Even if the database is very comprehensive, it is not exhaustive :
- About 100 more little web sites are to be further browsed. And new sites are discovered everytime...
- The database is updated regularly. But of course it can happens that the searched asset is not yet indexed.
- Somes Trainz fan sites are not easy to identify as Trainz fan sites with download section, or requires to register, but the registration process never achieves, some sites are difficult to use because they use files hosting services that made the files downloading very complicate for a number of files. Some links are dead, some files arre corrupted ...

For those 3 last cases, you should ask to the Trainz fan community via the specialized forums.

How to search a kuid ?

< trainz : kuid : index >