All Aboard Studios Route- Crewe To Birmingham New Street.

They've already said on various occasions it's for Euston to Milton Keynes

 

Nice looking route. The missing arrival times on services is annoying though. I'll wait until (if) they are patched to purchase. We need to know if we're late, on time, or early!

 

I think Americans do

 

Yes I'd forgotten about those. I think they said they would be patched quickly. I'll likewise probably wait as I don't want to play services with no expected arrival time.

 

Quite a lot of missing OHLE and conductor wires between Stafford and Crewe in both directions... Just watching last night's stream again.

Not a deal breaker, but breaks the immersion a bit when you notice the gaps.

 

This is pretty much my only hesitation with buying on day one.

 

English railways are not my primary concern, I just combined these two add-ons from the same studio so that it would have a logical connection ...... I didn't follow the previous discussions, so I apologize if I irritated anyone with my stupid question and thank you for the answer

 

You won’t be buying any new routes then?

***No future content will include trophy/achievement support***

 

I’d be surprised if this didn’t layer on to this route as irl they run Birmingham to Crewe services. They don’t run as far as Liverpool lime street though, they are ran by 807’s.

 

I was especially impressed with the Birmingham Canal actually looking like a canal complete with towpath and walkers, a nice touch that makes all the difference for immersion.
I always think most of the rivers in the earlier routes looked just like water filled ditches, no reedbeds, stones or water weeds etc. then TSG brought out Nidd and the waterways looked so much better especially around the mill where they had a lot of character and looked like real backwaters, it made such a difference.
It’s good to see this trend towards realism.

 

It has being bugging me ever since watching the stream yesterday, why the fog? Well Matt kind of tried to reason why he chose to it, to volumise!

Matt has always been a 'light clouds' man so I find it hard to believe his decision to showcase a route like this. What lies beyond the mystery until launch day.

 

Some people do.
It's the male equivalent of women who insist on saying "gurrrrrrrrrl" all the time.

 

Was there?

 

Yeah I wondered that too. Every trip a small amount of fog and 25% cloud cover. Strange

 

My thoughts after watching the stream (and reading some comments here):

Wolverhampton Station: This seems well modelled, but is shown after it was redeveloped. I can't remember if the redevelopment works were completed by 2019 but at least some of it should have been. (Just looked on Wikipedia: started in 2018 and completed 2021)

Driving in the fog: The fog is more of a mist, and it's still quite easy to see lineside scenery. To be honest there's not much scenery to see between Crewe and Stafford


Molineux Stadium: I didn't see this on the stream, I'm not sure how visible this is in reality. You might be able to see some parts of it. According to Google Maps the closest the railway gets is around 400 metres.

Timetable: I found the lack of arrival times a little concerning and there were only 454 driveable services, maybe Matt didn't have all the layers installed, but I'm not sure what was missing if he didn't.
I used to travel to Edinburgh frequently for work around 10 years ago, therefore this is me being very pedantic:
The 1415 to Edinburgh is listed as a 390/0 in the timetable, but the 1852 from Edinburgh (2201 from Crewe) is not listed (it might be a 390/1, but this timetable isn't shown on the stream). In reality these are run by the same vehicle (and when I used to catch it it was a 5 coach Voyager Monday-Thursday, a 10 coach Voyager on a Friday and a Pendolino on a Sunday).
Also, the timetable seemed to run smoothly in terms of trains arriving and leaving on time (or even arriving a little early).

Overall, I haven't seen anything to put me off a day one purchase. It's a route that's local to me, so I've been looking forward to it since it was announced.

 

Maybe Matt added the fog to hide the missing Wolves stadium?

 

Just watched some of the live stream and noticed that even now we're at v6 of TSW it still doesn't run smoothly, much stuttering and slightly longer pauses, the core hardly does the route justice. Have DTG ever stated an intention to fix the problem?

 

Give AABS a chance to remedy some of the small faults... There's already going to be a fix on day one for some issues.

But given how awesome the work and detail that has gone into it already, I have no concerns that AABS will forget about them. They've been incredibly communicative with the communities feedback prior to release, so give them chance to implement some of the feed back post release.

Any errors that were spotted have been pointed out and I imagine AABS will continue to take onboard anymore feedback and implement it in a future patch.

 

This was also present in many of the Riviera promo vids. It didn’t really show the route in its best light imo, however it turned out to be absolutely glorious when I got to drive it.

 

Looks that way, or it'll have to be a route I really, really want, and even then I'll probably wait for it to go on sale.

I've just looked on my PS5 and for TSW there are 131 DLC items.

I have all apart from 4 of them. So I have 127, I paid full price for almost all of them, that's a fair chunk of cash I've spent over the years.

But now it seems DTG don't want my cash anymore with this stupid, lazy no Trophies debacle.

 

The streams don't always reflect how well or not the game is actually running. I personally on PC feel it is running smoother.

 

Any chance anyone from DTG or AAS could let us know what the route is looking like on Console? Looks really good but what is performance looking like and texture issues etc?

 

Maybe the new game they're announcing today will be "Trophy Simulator 26" and then all your dreams will come true?

I'm personally loving that you're not interrupted every 5 min by a popup congratulating you for continuing to breathe successfully!

 

I had a similar mind set to you when I heard the news that they’d be no trophy support.
After a while I came to the conclusion that TSW didn’t bother me when it came to trophy support as that’s not what I play the game for. For instance on TSW5 I only netted 42/85.
I’m an avid trophy hunter and do enjoy the trill of working towards a platinum trophy and all, but TSW it doesn’t really affect me.
I hope they add trophy support in future titles.

 

Very disappointed by the 390 announcements thing I've got to say! They're blatantly AI (a human wouldn't do those extremely odd pauses), so why can't they just make a database of sounds and summon those as needed.... You know, like how the actual TOCs do.

 

Hehehe seen it happen on a Scotrail service before where the auto announcements failed and the conductor which was probably new had a few long pauses between saying the stations

 

Aren't many announcements on public transport computer generated anyway?
I dunno about the 390, but a lot of them are.

 

Fair enough, and no problem

 

What I saw in the stream reflects what I see in game even on presumably less taxing routes such as IoW.

It might be running smoother but as far as WCML Preston - Carlisle goes I see no improvement in v6 over v5, it certainly doesn't run smoothly.

 

I’m going to go against the grain (even my own) & say I’m going to give this route a miss for now.

I think AAS got over ambitious with the route length, in the time they’ve allotted to it. I don’t by any means think this is a bad looking product, but at the same time I’m seeing way too many things that will be added later, or have been missed - as per above the basford hall box is a good example. Bad enough to miss it, worse to make a point of saying you got all the lineside correct.

Lots of good stuff don’t get me wrong, really love the unique assets, dispatch panels, new PIS etc. Nice improvement on announcements (overall). A longer urban route that isn’t constant stopping is also something I’ve been longing for in TSW.

The overarching thing that is turning me off this though, is there was no announced release date for this route until yesterday. All of these issues were known & still they went ahead with announcing the date, yes the project likely got to the point where they needed to release, but it’s not my responsibility to fund budget overruns & frankly AAS have been unfortunate that DTG have drained the tank when it comes to patience for post release fixes (in this case it’s not even fixing, it’s finishing).

 

Yep, this was my biggest red flag in terms of immersion. The timetable and the timetabled stops are everything to me!

 

Kind of my view too. I was almost being tempted to relinquish my resistance and go for a purchase, but missing bits of OLE is definitely a yellow flag particularly as we don’t know how easy or hard it is to add those in without upending whole swathes of the track etc. too. Likewise the timetable, why on earth didn’t the team building the route and testing flag early on that the timetable needed another pass to get this right. Again, probably not a five minute job to rehash and test a timetable with what was it said, over 500 playable train movements?

Anyhow it will be a test of AAS mettle if and how quickly they resolve these issues, but you do have to wonder if basic stuff liked OLE and the timetable slipped through, what else might be off, once the route is out there?

 

90% rule as usual.

 

Most things will be AI soon... get use to it.

 

It's a very nice route and I'll definitely get it at some point, but not now.

Yes, there's new and improved 350s, but that doesn't sell the route to me.
The route looks great in places, although a couple of things I noticed on the stream looked a little off and I must go check google maps when I get a moment. Plus some obvious bugs showed up in the stream that need a post-release patch. Anyone notice the gap at Crewe?

I'll be happy to wait for a sale at some point in the future. Plus, I'm getting to a point where I might need to start uninstalling some DLC as drives generally don't work as well the fuller they get. If only DTG would allow us to separate trains from routes as I don't know about you but there are routes I never touch, I just have them for the loco layers on different routes. Just imagine how much space that would save.

 

Yep, mostly conductor wires.

 

Yes!!!

I bought so much DLC just to get the layers on another route.

Have got loads of routes that I have not even got round to touching yet.

 

I travel frequently on the Wolverahmpton - Shrewsbury line, which goes past Oxley TMD, and I hope I can assure you by stating that the Molineux Stadium is not a significant landmark from the train. It would be visible if you were in a helicopter.

 

Same here, as a Shrewsbury resident I can confirm never seen the Molineux from the train and have tried but never been able to see it

 

Can I ask which gap you are referring to? If it is that track, thats like that in real life, admittly covered in more foliage you probably wouldn't see it but to my knowledge this isn't a bug

 

Does anyone know if they mentioned Crewe Heritage Centre in the livestream? I’m guessing the APT isn’t there otherwise it would’ve been a major talking point!

 

This is my local / dream TSW route, so its day one for me. I think people are underestimating how much will get ironed out this week and I have high confidence that I'm going to be having a great time on Tuesday.

On the plus points:
1) the 170 timetable was transformative for New St on Cross City. This route at New St and Crewe made the 170 tt look silly! So busy, its going to look and feel great.
2) the route looks stunning. I know Wolves southwards well, and there was plenty there that made it clear exactly where you were
3) loved all the extra detailing on the canals, the pedestrians walking around, the station clutter. It reminded me of the Blackpool route when it comes to little details making it come alive.
4) I know they'll drive you nuts, but the announcements are a step up if you want a sim experience (can always turn them off if you don't!)
5) it looked like there was a lot to explore on foot; something I really like to do

Anyone looking for me next week, check platform 5 at Wolverhampton. If I'm not there, I'll be further down the line and on my way!

 

Hi so ill reply to this one in particular but I know a few people have raised some points from the preview stream. Firstly in terms of the release date, this was down to awaiting on certification for the console platforms which was outside of everyones control. No one wanted to say it was coming out on x date incase it needed to be pushed back due to any issues from the certification process. We would of loved to announce the release date further in advance but was just how timing lined up unfortunately.

In terms of bugs, so we had actually made a bunch of fixes prior to the stream but unfortunately missed the cut off date to ensure these were in. Our current plan is to get the post release patch out as quick as possible so people are not waiting too long, the plan behind this patch is to also tackle all of the presented bugs in one go so its not got stuff left out. During the production of the route we didn't have an internal QA team, this has since changed as we want to make sure for anything we do in the future, we are able to identify and rectify bugs to avoid a post release patch. We understand how frustraiting it can be and is obviously a lesson we have learnt from our first release. We want to give customers/players the best possible experience when purchasing our products and the feedback the community has given so far has not gone unheard.

We understand people potentially wanting to hold out on buying the route to that patch comes and that is entirely fine if you feel like that is the best decision for you. We obviously hope that people will put some faith on us to get the patch done and still buy the route day 1 if that was what they were intending to do originally. In terms of what we are fixing, we noted some of these on stream but as soon as I am able to, I will get patch notes sorted and distributed across all communication platforms.

If you found something on stream that you think we may of missed, please do post it on this forum as we read the forums daily and I will be sure to communicate back to the team to ensure that it is fixed in time for the post release patch which we are on a tight schedule for but will do our best to get it done.

I hope this helps and I will be sure to post more info as soon as I can.

Enjoy your evening folks!

 

Only a small portion of one of the buildings. As it's north of Crewe station they omitted it, as the work on Basford Hall and LSL was already very extensive and they wanted to get the route done in good time. As nobody will be driving north of Crewe on this route the heritage centre was the sacrifice.

I suppose it won't feature on JT's Crewe to Preston as it opened in a year later in 1987 and the APT-P was only donated by BR in 1988.

 

That's because the railway runs over the Stafford Road and alongside Stafford Street heading into and out of Wolverhampton station, you can't see the Molineux because it is behind the student accomodation buildings, timber yard, big Iceland and Home Bargains retail warehouses... Oh, and some really huge embankments covered in bushes and trees.

So unless you have X-Ray vision, you won't see it from inside the train.

Lol, yep, I live in Wolves.

 

I was thoroughly impressed by the stream

 

So it is! Shows what I know…I’ve been at least twice and thought it was south of the station. I’m an ECML person, so anything west of the Pennines is positively exotic for me!

 

I know there has to be a cutoff on dev work at some point to get the release out the door, but what i don't understand is how standard TSW6 core features like announcements, passenger ambience, and suspension (a TSW4! core feature let's not forget) aren't there from the very beginning? Why does DTG allow it to be released like that? And now it's sounding less like a day-one patch and more like a weeks or months down the road mega patch unless i'm misunderstanding?

The route looks like it will be amazing once it's finished but it's not there yet- why such a rush to release- TSW6 hasn't even been out a month yet!

 

Hi Kezz,
Really appreciate the reply!

As you specifically mentioned console certification do you guys have any idea how this is running on console? As obviously this is 9th generation only and has the same full timetable?

 

Don't almost all games come with day one and post launch patches these days? Only difference I can see is how transparent AAS are about all this. It's great we get reps on here and Discord keeping us informed.