Route Tadami Line: Aizu-wakamatsu - Tadami

We need a few more entries in the Q&A thread, boys and girls. Very quiet in there!

 

Nope. They're still the same service. They aren't split into two like services on Glossop or services to/from Wilmslow via Manchester Airport on MAC

 

Thought this was the Tadami thread...

 

I know this isn't the TSC forum, but Richyrail did a video of the TSC version of the SAME route made by the SAME people so for those who don't have TSC or haven't dusted it off in awhile... this sort of gives you a feel for the route itself in that other game. It'll be similar of course because they're both based on the same real life line, but just imagine the same thing in TSW graphics engine and you'll understand what you're getting.
(That and the new manual. Thanks Jan!)

 

Quite a lot of people, actually.

 

I think I found a preview.
I actually think it's truly magnificent.

 

fpriotto520, yes, if the Tadami Line looked like that in TSW, it would be absolutely brilliant.

 

Too buggy to do it that way in my experience, you end up with the horrible thing where the list of next stops is unpopulated and on some routes with manual switching you have no clue which track you're supposed to take. I gave up some time back on that and just always back out to the menu.

 

You also end up with the similar save game bug, which DTG seem incapable of fixing, where if you remain in the world and start the next run, if you save that it loads minus the timetable or objective data and even the little clock all in the top left corner.

 

Bro it’s Running Train

 

This is the point where someone will say "well go play Running Train" and the other person will retort "Will I can't because it's not on console!" Then they usually start ranting about how it's "unfair" Running Train (or whatever other sim) isn't on console and they're "stuck" with TSW so TSW has to be everything to everyone because it's the "only rail sim for console."
Which while sort of true...TSW is one of the few console supported rail sims... does not mean that TSW is to "blame" for that or carries any special responsibility to do anything about it.

Now we can save having to go through 11 pages of argument over why Tadami Line "isn't as good as Running Train" and how the world is unfair.

Back closer to topic.... this might have not been the best line to start off for TSW. Now granted it might be good if "Union Workshop" is a very small team because it's easier to develop. (Much like Johannes chose smaller lines to start on his first solo project) but I'm concerned it may backfire if the scope is too limited for a new country. You really need something to build on and draw people in or it just withers on the vine.

So far France has suffered that fate. Alpine lines. Canada. Netherlands looks like it might follow. Steam too.
Starting at a $39.99 price point for such a narrow scope is not how you get people to buy in. I think they're pricing themselves out of the market.

I will admit this isn't new for Union Workshop. Their TSC line is "originally" $39.99 too, so they're being basically consistent. However, I am not paying that much for a TSC route, especially this limited in scope. I think it's "fair" at its price point on 80% sale of $7.99.
I could even see it releasing around the price point of the Thames Valley at $17.99 or the price of Isle of Wight for $24.99 but $39.99 is just too much.

I think they're looking at Mildmay or Sufragette and pricing it comparably but... to be honest those are overpriced to me too. I'm all for people making their money and being paid for their time, but as the discussion keeps coming back to.... sales is a two way street. The creator wants to be paid... but the customer wants to get their moneys worth too.

If they can't come to an agreement, then it fails. If the creator can't get enough to pay the bills they won't make more routes. They go out of business. If the customer doesn't get enough value, they don't buy... and it goes out of business. I don't want this project to fail. But, I see it making serious sales only "on sale" when the price comes down, which is not good long term.

I could be wrong. If there are a ton of people eager to plunk down $39.99 on day one, please let me know. I could be wrong on this. Maybe there is a huge demand for this sort of narrowly focused content. Maybe I'm the odd one and this is exactly the sort of one-track, super slow, single DMU, no traffic route that people are clamoring for.

I've been wrong before.

 

Oh, how absent-minded...
I hadn't even noticed.
Sometimes I wonder where my head is.

 

Don't feed the trolls please

 

Good points. For a first Japanese route it really should have been something iconic. I’ve mentioned Densha de Go, BVE and even the Ongakukan routes and something abstracted from those would possibly have been a better option. Although short and a bit of a performance hog, their Tokyo route in TSC summed up quintessential JR operations - multiple tracks, trains running at 90 second intervals with a mixture of stopping, semi fast and express services. And the time taken to do Tadami might honestly have been better spent on something like the Yamanote or NewTokkaido commuter routes.

So even if the stream and Day One purchasers gives this a thumbs up, I don’t see myself putting out £30 to join them. £25 with a preorder incentive of 10% off might have tempted me.

 

So no release this week for Tadami no idea when now.

 

i thought we’d moved past all of this announcing then delaying nonsense, it was unacceptable when it happened multiple times in march and it’s even worse that significant performance issues have only been flagged now. not good enough

 

IT GOT DELAYED!

UNBELIEVABLE, AT THE LAST MINUTE

 

A delayed release. I don't understand the logic.

Some routes get delayed at the 11th hour to ensure they are released later in a worthy state, the right choice even if it is frustrating.

Meanwhile others are pushed out clearly broken.


I agree with this delay, especially because it's a launch route for the company. I just don't get why it's one thing for one and another thing for another.

 

So Sad

 

Im sorry, but what an absolutely baffling conclusion.

I'm growing more and more convinced that this game DOESNT EVEN HAVE TESTERS.

it really took them, until 2 hours before the preview stream to realise that the route performed like pants. How absolutely astonishing.

Does QA not even exist? What's going on with it? Are they sleeping on the job? Is it all cluttered up? What could possibly be wrong?

Maybe if DTG actually optimised their game, a delay like this WOULDNT HAPPEN

if this is seriously how TSW7 is going to go, THEN GOD HELP US ALL.

 

This almost strikes me as the first time DTG have objectively looked at the route, when they fired up a rehearsal for the stream!

Something tells me it will now end up buried and never see the light of day. If they can't get it running acceptably after all this time, I can't see any optimisation in short order to sort it out.

 

that's quite a big leap, don't you think?

 

Furthermore, on this path there is not even the excuse of stratifications.
It is worrying.

 

cool, looks like the tadami is really only coming in TSW7 now, then.

 

Not especially. We have seen other routes pushed out recently with performance issues - Crewe to Preston wasn't and still isn't great and the disaster of the Class 90 plus all the issues on TVB. So kudos to DTG for actually throwing this one back, even though it begs the question why, with a new 3P they were not taking a much more intensive oversight long before there was any question of a release date.

Maybe it will just be a question of taking out a few trees or looking at LOD's/Poly count but as noted there are already parts of the route where people have commented it looks bare or very visible use of 2D tree blocks on the background scenery. So what if there is no scope to optimise it much further? Also got to wonder what UW have been developing/running it on not to spot this themselves. I sincerely hope they can sort it as it would be a crushing disappointment for them to get within sight of the finish line and fail. But equally, they are a payware developer, they have experience in TSC (though the Tokyo route choked in a few places) so no excuses really for not keeping a thorough control on performance.

 

Gotta have maximum drama in this forum lmao! Then when it releases in a couple of weeks the same people will be like, "doesn't that seem too quick to have fixed the issues?".

Hopefully it's nothing too serious. I'd rather it be delayed than released in poor condition.

My personal theory is a copyright strike from JR for the paint scheme. Maybe mandated safety systems if JR have any ownership of the rights to the train itself?

I'm ok with all that- I don't know one Japanese livery from another tbh, and personally wish all safety systems defaulted to on so i didn't have to bother activating them every. single. time.

 

Tadami Line..... Now coming in TSW12

 

I think it's clear they've had to cut staff in testing and QA, which are often the first to go when belts begin to be tightened.

It's a shame and seems to hit 3rd-party devs especially hard.

 

Testing up to this morning followed this process… Extend index finger. With the index finger still extended, extend middle finger and cross it over the top of the index finger. Repeat with other hand.

 

I'm assuming Matt turned his PC on to do a run to pre-cache the shaders in readiness for tonight's stream and found issues.

 

It shouldn't take a prerun of a route before a preview stream to realise the route performs terrible.

Do they even listen anymore?

 

that is, if we're lucky

 

So, if as announced today, there was a live stream scheduled for tonight, they didn't even watch it beforehand?

 

Very true but..... DTG

 

As I said, it must be something fairly major as in recent months or even years it has been rare if unheard of for DTG to pull a release date. In fact they have gained a bit of a publish and be damned, reputation.

I highly doubt it would be an issue with licensing or safety systems at this late stage, unless they dropped the ball and forgot to ask JR. But surely in the 2+ years this has been in the oven, they would have considered that and done so.

Well I guess we will just have to wait and see. Maybe more background will emerge either here or over on Discord.

 

The route was started 4 years ago good sir.

 

So what's the over / under for Tadami before BR 420? XD

 

Maybe they tightened it a little too much (the belt, I mean)...

 

at this point, I don't even know anything anymore, I just know that this irritates me deeply
see, I know that union workshop developed it, but DTG is responsible for testing and QA process, but they don't even seem to want to do that anymore

 

I'd prefer they catch it at some point before release, even if it's unfortunately later rather than earlier.
Not enough to know how or what was caught, but in the past we've known they tend to do "in house" testing for QA and then the livestream is more customer level, usually on Matt's PC or Xbox. I think that's foolish and EVERY game dev team should have "average" systems hooked up for testing from the beginning of QC, but this isn't the case for MOST game devs I've seen.
I sort of get the technical reasoning early on (a non-published program isn't packaged in "release" form so a dev system is fine) but as soon as you start "packaging" it up to whatever they call it, the "release build" or whatever, then it should be subject to another round of testing BEFORE a PR event like a livestream.

Yes that's another "layer" of testing (several actually since there would be one for each platform) but recent events seem to indicate that's a necessary requirement for proper quality control. If it means more time to "cook" and a couple more testers then so be it.

Since Jan didn't say what the issues were, we can't know if it was content things "missed" (like the floating buildings in Thames Valley...although that's hardly NEW in TSW from the beginning), or rather was just performance issues. If the former, then there's a lack of oversight. If the latter, then I think it's a lack of testing on "customer representative" (average) systems.

I kinda figured that's what they had been farming out to community playtesters all along. Or maybe they stopped doing that because of possible leaks?

 

That makes the situation even more uncertain, then. Four years in and no one at UW or DTG picked up that it either has major performance issues or that it falls foul of whatever licensing stipulations JR have imposed. So back to my previous pessimism - depending what the issue is, you can't undo four years of work in a couple of weeks. Though again, happy to be proved wrong.

 

I mean, you're right, licensor concerns SHOULDN'T pop up at the last minute, but it's happened at least twice now with WCMLS and LIRR2.

 

And MAC where operator logos had to be removed from signage pretty late into the build.

 

Forgot that one!

 

It’s a shame the release has been delayed, but poor performance isn’t something to be happy about either. Hopefully this gets fixed within a reasonable timeframe, since this addon has already been in development for several years. It’s just odd that they only discovered this two hours before the preview stream, and not at any point during the past years of development…

 

To be fair though, it hasn't been in DTG hands for 4 years. It was sitting at Union Workshop for most of that time. Yes, they seem to have dropped the ball by announcing it and then pulling it back, but I can't fault them fairly for the time before they had it in hand. Given that it had been through a once-over at DTG recently in order to be announced, I'm going to guess it's performance related instead of content related. (Blurring/stuttering for example and not bad assets or graphics, etc)

That's why I think it has to do with them finally playing it on an "average" system like Matt's and then discovering it doesn't run well.

 

I very much doubt this will release for TSW6 now, there is no way what little QA exists will be testing this with TSW7 on the horizon.

 

or else (being optimistic), perhaps the tests will now focus on tadami, and it might end up being the last and final release for TSW6

 

oh boy.
Developing ... Testing ... THEN set a release date, and not: set a release date before developing and/or testing.
Even shocking that it was said: "...and we’ll be back in the coming weeks to share more news once we have further confirmation of an updated release date." so it seems a bigger thing?