Thank you for your advice, much appreciated. I hate being in this position. I took your suggestion and hastily got my posts out there. I'll get the proper graphic design up in the next bit and hopefully they'll look good. I even had alternative texture designs for the bag and shirt!

Why is it ideas run so close sometimes? I mean the concept is really out of the blue, there's nothing bowling in the game. It's like brainwaves were pulled out of the aether.

Hello everyone.

I have an etiquette question for the forumers. I have on my hard drive three items for the heavy. They're physically finished and ready to go, they just needed their graphic design. And wouldn'tcha know it, I look on the workshop today and see them posted... well, 1.5 and other related things.

Here's the skinny. Should I post my completed bowling shoes and accessories? To be objectively honest, I believe my shoes may be sleeker, but his shirt idea is really nice because it's smarter with the fit. I was having a devil of a time trying to get the weighting to work on a full cover. We have differing third items. However, if I posted now, garnering the hatred of the very people we look for votes from does not seem wise at all. And frankly, bowling shoes isn't worth it.

But I look at how many hours I put into the items that are finished save for their advertisement and cringe. They were done! They just needed screengrabs. :(

I asked before whether re-imagined old ideas were available, but this is nearly the same thing with the shoes. They look different, but they're still bowling shoes, yanno?

What do you guys think of this scenario? I'm sure it's come up before for many here, but what is the best course of action? Is there ugly fallout and shunning? Does it matter if it was unintentional and just the stars aligned on the same idea?

Thank you for your thoughts.

Well I thank you for the advice and I understand it, but the txt file you linked when I downloaded it had no vmt information in it and seemed to be chocked full of social media code and full-blown website information. It was huge and complex and didn't have any recognizable vmt lines in it at all. Perhaps this was some oddity with mediafire, but it concerned me enough to avoid it.

I appreciate your diligence in trying to help if all that was in error. Has there been any word on an importer fix?

Thank you for the info, GoG. It didn't work for me, I still get the error, though.

However, I suggest NO ONE CLICK on Mooses' link. I don't know what the hell that text file was, but it's not a .vmt and I suspect it's not friendly.

Hi guys, I was wondering if anyone had insight to this new problem. For whatever reason, when I try to hook up a new model, everything seems fine until I get to selecting the texture. I select it in the VMT, but when I click okay it pops up:

Material VMT1 missing cloak effect
(See standard VMT for example)

Then it seems to not acknowledge the file has been chosen. I tried to track down the file where my other materials are, and the VMT seems not to have been written. I can see my older VMT files, and I can read them, but nothing for the new model.

Worse yet, I can't even hook up my old files, they get the same error. My SMD looks just like any other SMD and I didn't get an error from exporting in blender. I just can't load the tga, or any other old, previously working workshop file.

I blew away my TF2 and SDK programs and redownloaded them, taking care to run them and verify before trying to load in the workshop. Same error.

I noticed in the last few weeks we had a huge 350meg update. Something go south? Are there other locations it writes the VMT besides the material folder? Is the importer broken?

Thank you for any help, this is quite maddening.

Same thing happened to me when I first tried. If you're sure you got all of your import files deleted (and I mean the .zip file folder locations AND the .mdl previews) then also try renaming your item title. However, the importer may still remember the previews, I think.

For example, when I test import the items to check in mdl, I give it an intentionally fake name so I know it's not my final (Castlington). Once I know the parts are working, then I name the full file what I intend. I suspect it's not just the .zip files that matter, but those previews as well, though. For you, the renaming it (Cast_Away vs. The_Cast_Away) may jump past the bug.

Hopefully I'm not misinterpreting HellJumper's suggestion for step one... I was thinking he was referring to the file part names being imported renamed. We may both be referring to the title of the .zip. ;)

Thank you so much, HellJumper! I was pretty shocked, really. I didn't see the notice so it wasn't until reading the comments I found out about it. Was a great holiday surprise! ;)

As for the new items page, I've noticed that *nothing* new is getting posted and hasn't been since the second. I suspect the workshop is in lockdown. I'm not even sure ratings votes are getting through.

I'm hoping it isn't something I did wrong in submitting, but I don't think so. Though, as a side thought... I might delete and resubmit once it gets back up and running. Do you think the ratings and first-week timer will be restarted at that point? Else, anything I submitted never saw the light of day and anything others submitted before the —alleged (hehhe)— lockdown will have no chance for upvoting before they fall off the new week page, too.

Heylo. I don't know if anyone else has had the issue, but I've posted three new items last night (well, technically early this morning... technically), and they've yet to hit the 'recently added' page. I didn't receive any errors in uploading, posting or finalizing. My items have gold stars and my own workshop page seems to list them just fine and others can see them there.

But not the main page showing new items?

The only thing I can think of is given the last items updated there were posted on the 2nd, maybe this was just before the site attacks Steam has been getting and they've put everything in lockdown for approval?

Anyone know what might be going on?

(My page: http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198113553939/myworkshopfiles/ )

Oh side question: the files themselves don't have to be named the same thing as the .zip file or main title, right? That's the only oddity I can think of on my end that's different from the last time I submitted.

❄questionablyInsane❄ a écrit :

I have to say it is just uncanny how some people are able to come up with your ideas. [snip!...] I wrote a dedication on one of my workshop items for my grandfather who passed away, I did this because I wanted the world to know that someone very important to me had passed and that the item was a tribute to him....

I'll say it's uncanny! I had a great idea to do a lovely WWII bomber jacket, all retro and legit. It wasn't in the workshop (at least for the Engineer so far as I could tell). I had pondered on it and was going to get to it after my next model, when lo and behold! there is is! Front page!

Upon seeing it, I had three thoughts:

• Dangit!! That's what I was going to do!
  
• Aw, man. I miss my WWII Navyman grandpa soooooo much. I know he's not Air Force, but that's not the point! He was the perfect grandfather.
  
• Yeah, HellJumper's comment rings true for me on this model. It's done so well there's no sense in touching it. ;)

Bravo, fellow Workshopper! You honor grandfathers well with this submission. My condolences for your loss...

I totally agree that a level of respect and decorum should be adhered to concerning the work put into not only the model, but in the idea. I had one idea that was a completely different take on something that was posted this month, and my conclusion was that if I wanted to build it I would contact that poster and give a headsup, ask if it was amenable to do a different design but same category and include them in the proceeds. To find out that others already are willing to do this (the mention of Heartsman) actually makes me smile with a little more faith in humanity.

Then recently I find someone else touched on the area that spurred the idea and did something off the category as well. This brings two questions for me I was wondering if I could get feedback on so as to not step on toes in this community.

1. If several people are working on the subject matter now, is it considered more fair game? On some level, I think I will still contact the original to ask about it, but now that there are more, I don't feel the need to contact the other people who started iterating on it. However, how far does this get taken?

2. Especially if it's an OLD idea, is it considered sacred ground still? I had an idea, and in my due diligence to see how prolific it was, I found only two examples, both very old. One was a completely different design, the other was a ...well, kinda not fully realized version that is over TWO YEARS old and has never been repeated or adopted into the game. What is the statute of limitation for these things?

My gut says anything more recently done, the person should definitely be contacted out of respect. But once it's that old, there's a lot more gray area and the action is unclear. (Especially if there's the risk that the workshop submitter no longer contributes to the workshop and isn't necessarily even on Steam anymore).

Thoughts on this? I'd love to hear everyone's opinions.

Oh, and HellJumper... I said it on the item thread, but I'll say it again: thank you for being a gentleman. That's the kind of respectful action I hope to also live up to in the community. It seems like a very fun and creative place here. I hope to be a useful contributor. ;)