Gwe Remaster: Appreciation And Discussion Thread

We are getting a remaster GWE, yes it would be nice to get an extension of the GWE, but we are getting to drive an underground route that has been added. So we are getting a remaster, plus an underground route, so would you not consider that as an extension in a way? I think once Liam is finished with GWE and it launches I am sure it will be a run away success, probably be one of the best routes in TSW.

An extension is possible in the realm of anything is possible, but does DTG have the time? Does Liam? And who pays for the extension? Would players willing fork out £35-£40-£45-£50 for an extension? And I would guess a lot won't, by rights we probably should be paying for the remaster.

 

By how old is the route and the technique used back in the days, it’s preferable and quicker to rebuild from scratch the route with its extension and why not in current time so we can use the IET.

 

Probably give it 10 years after HS2 is finally finished. If the console and PC hardware ends up getting the advanced enough, Dovetail could end up doing a full HS2 route which would incorporate part of the Great Western mainline. In my mind. it's a great idea. As you said, that also means either rebuilding track and stations from scratch and including the Elizabeth line.

Currently doing the 1C13 HST Paddington to Bristol temple meads in the timetable. A splash of rain on the track.

 

We will hang up our tinfoil hats then Liam and hope the renewed GWR licence is giving us either Riviera Line or Newport to Swansea in TSW6! (Now don't do a JD and give anything way ).

 

For the DTG HST? I'm not sure, if I had to take a guess is it the Driver Vigilence Device? That goes off every so often and you have to respond to it to make sure you are in control of the train.

 

As Liam said...

From my time as a third party developer, DTG made clear through the documentation provided to us that there are fundamental differences in the way older routes were built. Of course, Liam is much more of an authority figure on this.

This isn't like TS unfortunately, where a route made in Rail Simulator will work (mostly) perfectly in modern TS.

 

One thing for sure is that the fully fledged timetable is going to be very busy indeed. It’s already sounding a lot busier compared to the original timetable.

Whether there will be two separate timetables, depending on the hardware you’re playing on, is something I don’t know the answer to at this moment in time.

Any platform specific questions, these will be answered when the information is known.

 

You got me curious now, and it may have been asked, but has the signaling been updated to include approach control and TWPS?

 

I'm pretty sure I have seen somewhere that the signalling has not been updated to include approach control.

 

Thanks for the info.

If Gen 9 consoles don't get the full timetable I won't be downloading it so I appreciate the potential warning.

 

It'll be a free update so you won't have the choice to download or not. Also, even if reduced, it'll likely offer much more than the current timetable.

 

The only way to use the old gwe will be On previous TSW's but I wouldn't be sure if the remaster will support TSW 5 when 6 could be soon since September is only a couple months away - Just depends wether it is still yearly

 

And for those that don't already have it they'll have to pay for it, which will no doubt be the same price for consoles and PC despite the potential for console to have less.

So I'll probably just reinstall TS4 and use that.

Cutting off my nose to spite my face? Yeah.

But I won't be rewarding bad behaviour from DTG.

 

It's free for those who already have it.

If people don't have it and the timetable has to be reduced for consoles, will the pricing structure reflect that? If not then that's bad behaviour.

 

The old timetable is still there and remastered routes don't seem to have increased prices. Those who pay £25 after the remaster are getting the same stuff as those who paid before the remaster.

If the price of GWE increases then we have a different discussion, but I'm fairly sure it won't change given that West Somerset Railway and Cathcart Circle both haven't.

 

Why does Paddington have so few Cardiff departures?

The timetable which is 2015/16 would have had
1ph to Cardiff 1ph to Swansea and 1pd to Carmarthen

I’ve only seen one on the board the 10:45 platform 5 service to Swansea

 

How long do we have to wait

 

according to the roadmap, we're not getting the remaster until well after TSW6 launches - this remaster may have the same fate as the Bakerloo Line timetable upgrade. Of course, if the free starter pack returns for TSW6, that is not a problem, but we'll have to wait and see.

 

As long as we have to, we will wait - it will pay off a hundredfold, I am sure)

 

That's a bit of a conundrum. If there is no free starter pack, how can current owners get the free upgrade without buying TSW6?

 

It is, yes. This is why I hope that the free starter pack does return. However, that isn't guaranteed, especially if TSW5 sales were hurt by the free starter pack.

If the free starter pack does not return, the argument will undoubtedly be that you wouldn't be paying for the upgrade, but would be paying for the core routes. If someone new wanted to get the remaster, they would have to buy the core routes and the GWE route. Players who already own it need only pay for the core routes. It's not a nice argument, but it isn't a weak argument.

 

We still have July’s one to go and well there’s a few packs that have been like this where they cut it pretty close to the release of the next version of the game

 

Not a criticism but a genuine question for Liam and GWE remaster plus wider content. Why would Gen 9 consoles like PS5 need a reduced timetable? Surely PS5 can handle TSW 5? I have the PS5 Pro and it’s pretty impressive across all games. Is there something more to it? Or something about consoles that restrict content? Thank you.

 

That is true and is what happened with TSW4's suspension feature, but the June roadmap is the current one and states that the remaster is more than 3 months away. June + 3 months means we're looking at a September release at the earliest.

Even if the remaster were to be ready for release in September, I suspect DTG decision-makers would choose to give TSW6 the remaster maybe a week or two before TSW5 - I don't think older versions of TSW get updated after August (although I may be misremembering that).

Of course, the roadmap is an estimate and the remaster may end up being ready for release in July by some miracle, but I doubt that...

 

I think DTG realized they made a mistake by charging for the TSW3 and 4 core game upgrades, and with 5 reverted to the 'free upgrade + paid route bundle' model from Rush Hour. If they want to sell new routes after v6 comes out, after all, there have to be players, and charging for 6 will reduce those numbers.

 

And according to the Pullup fiscal report DTG's sales figures more than doubled in the 3rd and 4th quarters the 2024/25 fiscal year compared to the previous year.

So I don't think the free upgrade affected them too much.

 

Liam, no pressure of course and I understand this is all hypothetical as you mentioned no reduced timetable decision has been made yet.

If the core issues are eventually resolved, and the PS5 could subsequently manage the 'full' timetable - would it be possible to give PS5 the full timetable, or is it a big change? I imagine there is an element of testing to do, but other than that? I'm just interested in how it all works behind the scenes.

 

Would the freebie still be considered a sale for purposes of those numbers, or do they distinguish between paid and giveaway products?

 

Its the amount of money they made was doubled so offering a free package wouldn't go towards those numbers as you are making $0.

Fiscal reports are not about number of units that went out it's the amount of money made.

So this shows that despite them giving away the base for free it did not hurt their profits as they doubled what they made when it was a paid upgrade the year before.

More than likely because most people still paid for the route bundlea anyways.

To me it hasn't ever felt like I was paying for the core upgrade because I still wanted 2 of the routes and the price of the package was the price of 2 routes so you get the one you don't really care about for free anyways. Or you pay for 2 routes and 1 loco and get 3 routes and 2 locos.

If there were 3 routes I absolutely do not want maybe my thoughts would have been different.

 

I was a bit miffed at having to pay for TSW4, because none of the core routes was very interesting.

 

If anything it probably helped. There are some who say if you offer a free demo of your game it helps sales. I don't have the numbers at hand to verify.

 

Think how many customers who held off on TSW 3 or 4 also took a pass on TSW 3 or 4 DLC because the admission fee was too steep: "My third favorite route in the world" might have been worth its own DLC price to them, but not the DLC + base game price. That was avoided with 5's free upgrade

 

For some reason, I thought sales figures might refer to unit numbers rather than money. I blame weak coffee. Thanks for clarifying!

 

TSW5 is fine for me so they better make GWE remastered work on TSW5 else its not fair

 

I think it’s more that recently TSW, which was created with console at the front of the mind, is now at the bottom of the chain, we shouldn’t have to continue to suffer with lacklustre content purely because DTG don’t know how to optimise their game properly. Please, don’t continue the cycle of console downgrades.

 

Oh p-lease, not more nonsense about DTG's not knowing how to optimise. Progressive increase in hardware requirements is a fact in all simulations - note I use that word and not 'game' - if any developer freezes improvements in graphics or performance to enable use of older platforms, the end result will be a gradual disappearance of the program. If you are unable, or do not want, to upgrade your console, that is unfortunate, but that is not DTG downgrading your console, it is on you. By the way, this is not an issue solely restricted to consoles - the same applies to the PC world, only maybe happens somewhat more slowly, since the platform is not proprietary and is open to modification or internal upgrade.

 

Yeah because people always have the ability to upgrade their gaming system. We always have several hundred quid just laying around.

 

The fact of the matter is really that if a console can run things like GTA 6, there is no reason it shouldn’t be able to run TSW.

 

You are comparing apples & pears. Matt P has previously explained what is involved in running TSW i.e. all the services, their paths, scheduling etc - that is no easy feat whereas GTA6 has a load of npc’s walking around aimlessly effectively.
Have a go at making a (full) timetable of your own to see if its as easy as you think. I’ve tried dabbling & given up!

 

More so than this, look at the incredible complexity of Flight Simulator compared to TSW. I think if Asobo hadn't come along, the established flight simulator developers would still have people believing "progressive increase in hardware requirements is a fact in all simulations", which is true to an extent, but optimisation meant I could run Flight Simulator 2020 on full ultra settings on my old i7 and a GTX1080 card, versus competitors' simulators demanding the very latest RTX GPUs and CPUs to get less quality and performance than Asobo managed (and crucially they gave people massive flexibility within the user's control to utilise both older and newer hardware, rather than the user being forced to upgrade to get decent or "let's call it choppy but acceptable because this is complex software" performance).

The thing is, the evidence is there that DTG are lacking in certain skill sets – which isn't to say they aren't always trying and learning. But a) it's fairly obvious they rely on Unreal Engine blueprints instead of native code, b) even my brother (who is a seasoned games developer) downloaded the public editor out of sheer curiosity and immediately saw what were to him blatantly obvious missed opportunities for optimisation that DTG had somehow not seen.

 

Could this brother of yours have a word in DTGs shell like? Asking for a friend...

I've not touched the game in about a month because of the frustration it brings me...

 

If only...

 

Gen 9 is the latest generation of console, there aren't any "better" consoles for users to update to. Older consoles not being able to handle the sim is understandable, but if newer consoles can't, it clearly shows that it's poorly optimised.

 

I love these answers when people say "TSW struggles on this console that can run GTA6" and people then respond to them with something like "Apples and oranges, you can't compare them."

Yes, two different games are two different things and there is no clean way to compare them. In the same way, you can't compare a little electric hatchback car to a screaming V12 Ferrari - different power, different purpose, different manufaturer, different everything. But if that Ferrari is prone to oversteer and spins out all the time, you can't blame that on the road. You can't even blame the driver. If multiple cars spun out on that road or if the driver had a long record for repeated crashes, maybe, but that's not the case. It's just a fault in design that needs to be rectified, simple as.

The same concept applies here. Yes, TSW isn't GTA6, it isn't Forza or Call Of Duty, but the fact that games as heavy in graphics and mechanics as those do run on a PS5 proves that it certainly isn't a hardware limitation.