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ETA for proper Thumbnails for custom assets ingame?

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G84 said:
Totally agree, it's a game breaking bug for me.

While we are at it: Fix the damn navigation in those asset menus, its tiring and annoying as well. Give the scroll wheel some love and/or add a search feature pls!
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There's an improved assets panel:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=417430545

Of course the devs should improve the one in the game, but for now this one works much better than the default. One problem is that many asset authors don't categorize their creations properly, so you won't find them under e.g. Residential, only under "Buildings".

On the whole, it kind of feels like CO built the game around the idea that there would 20, maybe 50 mods in total - not tens of thousands. So everything just collapses under its own weight when it comes to discovering and organizing mods and assets.
 
Thumbnail generation is automatic in many games, going back 10+ years. With no effort on the part of the modder (and this includes complex custom assets like entire buildings or structures, like Rides in RCT, or Houses in The Sims). Thumbnail generation in this game is not even broken- custom models create a thumbnail with no effort, it just plain exists (taking a photo in the asset editor does not create a thumbnail, it is a reference photo for the editor. Not taking a photo does not mean no thumbnail). The issue is that the asset panels don't call thumbnails properly for things that aren't custom models, and something like that is a few lines of code, max.

This bug is one that should've been hotfixed the week the game came out, if not before launch. It was present in pre-launch streams. There's no way they didn't know about it, there's very little chance that it's a bug that takes notable effort to solve, and they still haven't fixed it...it is truly bizarre. Last I heard on Reddit it was said that it might not even be fixed in the new patch. It's a reproducible, basic bug with a simple UI element. The time between the streams and the game launching, the game would've already gone gold, which means they can't do much to it besides make patches and bug fixes in the interim, but this just went ignored.

I find it hard to believe that in 2 and a half months they haven't had a spare moment to look into it, and to me, it's a crowning example of awkward priorities and less-than-adequate QA, and that's very concerning for the future of this game. If this visible and reproducible of a bug can slip through and remain unsolved for months, I worry what kind of bugs will show up with the big patch and then also go unfixed.

Considering there were a large handful of streamers and tens of thousands of people watching them who did QA for things like this for free...they had to have known it was there, right? (Or wasn't there, lol)

As JimmiG and others said, it makes using custom content an absolute chore. This bug combined with the fact that hovering over blank icons requires a second before the tooltip shows up means that placing parks and intersections takes such a long time. Not a long time in the grand scheme of things, no, but it's still a noticeable waste of time every time. It's just not user friendly at all. That stacked on top of how the asset panels are left to right, one single row...it's a really big pain

. That's why it's such a big deal to me- It's almost assuredly a simple bug, it's a pain in the butt for the user, and it seems just plain sloppy, but it's still there, almost two and a half months later. Those 3 factors combined make it a good issue to get upset about, because it represents a lot of problems in one. Bugfixing priority, design issues, and an apparent lack of careful QA. This one bug brings all 3 of those to the surface for criticizing. It's concerning, is all.
 
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Simify said:
Thumbnail generation is automatic in many games, going back 10+ years. With no effort on the part of the modder (and this includes complex custom assets like entire buildings or structures, like Rides in RCT, or Houses in The Sims). Thumbnail generation in this game is not even broken- custom models create a thumbnail with no effort, it just plain exists (taking a photo in the asset editor does not create a thumbnail, it is a reference photo for the editor. Not taking a photo does not mean no thumbnail). The issue is that the asset panels don't call thumbnails properly for things that aren't custom models, and something like that is a few lines of code, max.

This bug is one that should've been hotfixed the week the game came out, if not before launch. It was present in pre-launch streams. There's no way they didn't know about it, there's very little chance that it's a bug that takes notable effort to solve, and they still haven't fixed it...it is truly bizarre. Last I heard on Reddit it was said that it might not even be fixed in the new patch. It's a reproducible, basic bug with a simple UI element. The time between the streams and the game launching, the game would've already gone gold, which means they can't do much to it besides make patches and bug fixes in the interim, but this just went ignored.

I find it hard to believe that in 2 and a half months they haven't had a spare moment to look into it, and to me, it's a crowning example of awkward priorities and less-than-adequate QA, and that's very concerning for the future of this game. If this visible and reproducible of a bug can slip through and remain unsolved for months, I worry what kind of bugs will show up with the big patch and then also go unfixed.

Considering there were a large handful of streamers and tens of thousands of people watching them who did QA for things like this for free...they had to have known it was there, right? (Or wasn't there, lol)

As JimmiG and others said, it makes using custom content an absolute chore. This bug combined with the fact that hovering over blank icons requires a second before the tooltip shows up means that placing parks and intersections takes such a long time. Not a long time in the grand scheme of things, no, but it's still a noticeable waste of time every time. It's just not user friendly at all. That stacked on top of how the asset panels are left to right, one single row...it's a really big pain

. That's why it's such a big deal to me- It's almost assuredly a simple bug, it's a pain in the butt for the user, and it seems just plain sloppy, but it's still there, almost two and a half months later. Those 3 factors combined make it a good issue to get upset about, because it represents a lot of problems in one. Bugfixing priority, design issues, and an apparent lack of careful QA. This one bug brings all 3 of those to the surface for criticizing. It's concerning, is all.
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I'm glad you found a way to be more pronounced about your opinions, it makes reading your posts much easier and sensible. I wonder if it is a simple bug though for two reasons:
  • were it simple it would've been solved right away
  • were it simple a modmaker would've fixed it
Hence my belief it isn't only to do with what CO codes and co-dependent on other issues or factors.
 
I don't think modders have access to that sort of thing. If they did they'd have fixed it ASAP.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=423546402

Here someone figured out how to add icons by force, but it takes AN ETERNITY to do so, requires remaking assets, etc. The game loads the custom file automatically, but the user has to create it and place it in the import folder. If modders had the ability to fix this problem surely someone would've automated it by now, but this seems to be the only way, and it looks like a workaround instead of intended behavior (as in, the game isn't forgetting to make the icon and stick it in this folder, because this folder is meant specifically for user-created things, not automatic thumbnails).

If it's more complicated it would take them even less time to tell us so. But they haven't done that. So to the consumer, it looks like a sloppy mistake that is going ignored- and that's your average consumer who has no idea how video games are made or programmed or anything and to tehm it may as well be magic. To someone who has an idea of how it works, it's still a messy issue.

Also a source for the earlier comment that it might not even be in the big update-

http://www.reddit.com/r/CitiesSkylines/comments/33bruh/previews_for_custom_assets/cqjg8c8

I can't edit posts right now because this forum seems to be running slower than a paraplegic snail lately.
 
Simify said:
This bug is one that should've been hotfixed the week the game came out, if not before launch.
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Disagree. I'm quite glad that CO focused their first few patches on actual game-breaking bugs that prevented players from launching or playing the game, rather than spending time on a cosmetic inconvenience for those already benefiting from a working game. :p

That said, hopefully now the more severe issues have been resolved CO will have had time to look at some of the things lower down the list like this and improvements to traffic AI etc. :)
 
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I don't think the "But they spent their time more meaningfully" argument is fair when it's something so small.

Fixing this versus not fixing this...it's trivial. Not fixing this did not mean they fixed something more important. Fixing it does not mean that they wouldn't have had time to fix something else. The lull between patches we're experiencing right now is proof enough that they don't consider patches a quick priority, and that they set their own timeframes for them.

It's like saying "I'm glad you ran that stop sign because it means we got here faster" after a road trip. That's *probably* not true, and it's not a good idea to ignore a single stop sign to save 3 seconds on a 4 day road trip.
 
Simify said:
I don't think the "But they spent their time more meaningfully" argument is fair when it's something so small.
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I think it is, especially when it comes to satisfying the greater audience and keeping up a good face to interested players. But regardless of what it is, just a small notice from a CO developer if this is something they are paying attention to might be enough to satisfy those players who find this issue devestating.
 
Simify, after some day of silence and your thread closed, are you trying to troll in this thread too?

Please, stop trolling.

TotallyMoo already answered in this thread, so no need to focus more.
 
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there's very little chance that it's a bug that takes notable effort to solve
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Problem is your whole argument is based on this assumption. It is an assumption since you don't know the actual code that is causing this bug or have investigated time to find it, that is what the actual developer has to do. And i believe they have already done it and found out that it is not so easy to fix. Software is complex and what might look like a simple problem from the outside, can be really hard to fix. And after that it comes down to priorities - what is more important? Because work-time is limited and costs money. That is also why they have worked on game-breaking bugs first, the kind that prevents paying customers from playing the game at all - because these are more important than an UI issue with custom assests.
 
MagicMagor said:
Problem is your whole argument is based on this assumption. It is an assumption since you don't know the actual code that is causing this bug or have investigated time to find it, that is what the actual developer has to do. And i believe they have already done it and found out that it is not so easy to fix. Software is complex and what might look like a simple problem from the outside, can be really hard to fix. And after that it comes down to priorities - what is more important? Because work-time is limited and costs money. That is also why they have worked on game-breaking bugs first, the kind that prevents paying customers from playing the game at all - because these are more important than an UI issue with custom assests.
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This pretty much sums it's up. I work in software development and one of my pet hates is end users saying "its easy" "five minutes job" when they don't know the code or reasons behind something doing something. For example, they may have decided to scrap that screen altogether since it it's a bit tedious with high volume of assets, so fixing this bug is pointless if it's been replaced.

My point is only they known the reasons behind it, but I am sure if it truly was just "two lines of code" then it would have been fixed in the previous two patches, it wasn't therefore there is another reason.
 
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It's an educated guess. I'm not just throwing out random ideas. There's plenty of reason to assume it's a basic UI bug, considering it's a basic UI feature :p Unless they programmed the UI in the most backwards way possible, a UI issue like this is never something complicated. It's just...not.

You're assuming that it's not a simple bug. I'm "assuming" that it is. It's irrelevant to the actual problems I already listed- It's obvious, it's in your face, it's been known about for months including before release, and it's still in the game. These are problems no matter how hard or easy it is to fix, because they're symptoms of a larger set of issues.

Bugfixing priority, design issues, and an apparent lack of careful QA. This one bug brings all 3 of those to the surface for criticizing. It's concerning, is all.
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it wasn't therefore there is another reason.
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The official reason is that they want to fix other things first. That doesn't mean it's not simple, it just means they're ignoring it for the time being. Plus, a bug not being fixed does not automatically mean it's hard to fix. It just means they haven't fixed it, nothing more. Typos are easy to fix but many games have typos that haven't been touched in years. That doesn't mean they're difficult to solve. :p
 
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Simify said:
It's an educated guess. I'm not just throwing out random ideas. There's plenty of reason to assume it's a basic UI bug, considering it's a basic UI feature :p Unless they programmed the UI in the most backwards way possible, a UI issue like this is never something complicated. It's just...not.

You're assuming that it's not a simple bug. I'm "assuming" that it is. It's irrelevant to the actual problems I already listed- It's obvious, it's in your face, it's been known about for months including before release, and it's still in the game. These are problems no matter how hard or easy it is to fix, because they're symptoms of a larger set of issues.





The official reason is that they want to fix other things first. That doesn't mean it's not simple, it just means they're ignoring it for the time being. Plus, a bug not being fixed does not automatically mean it's hard to fix. It just means they haven't fixed it, nothing more. Typos are easy to fix but many games have typos that haven't been touched in years. That doesn't mean they're difficult to solve. :p
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perhaps because it is not a game breaking issue is the reason? They will have a list of bugs and perhaps this one just doesn't feature high up the list.....
 
I said that in the post you're quoting...

Your original argument, though, was that "because it hasn't been fixed, it must be difficult to fix". That's not a sure thing, though. Typos are easy and often go ignored by developers.
 
Simify said:
I said that in the post you're quoting...

Your original argument, though, was that "because it hasn't been fixed, it must be difficult to fix". That's not a sure thing, though. Typos are easy and often go ignored by developers.
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The bottom line is no one actually knows why it's not fixed, all we are both doing is guessing which is basically pointless.....
 
But it doesn't matter that it's not fixed.

What matters is that it's not fixed. No matter the reason, this is still a visible, reproducible bug that has sat there being unfixed for 2 and a half months despite people reporting it, complaining about it, affecting the game's usability, and just looking outright sloppy. The why doesn't matter. The why isn't the problem.
 
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Simify said:
But it doesn't matter that it's not fixed.

What matters is that it's not fixed. No matter the reason, this is still a visible, reproducible bug that has sat there being unfixed for 2 and a half months despite people reporting it, complaining about it, affecting the game's usability, and just looking outright sloppy. The why doesn't matter. The why isn't the problem.
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I think we are going round in circles now... they know its a bug, they are aware of it, just have to wait now really.
 
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