Route Tadami Line: Aizu-wakamatsu - Tadami

There won’t be any JR issues as it’s not licensed. It’s completely unbranded.

 

I was referring to your use of the word 'never' (that's why I quoted that part only) not to all these other things.

 

I have no issues with Crewe-Preston. *shrugs* I know, I know "well that's your experience"... but it is important to keep in mind that issues can be exaggerated.

 

TSS Video on the situation now available

 

It'll probably be Union Workshop's decision. Or, at the very least, they [UW] probably can afford it. Other devs probably budget for releases being in set windows and can't really move them much. UW seem to not have that problem.

 

Although I'm disappointed that the route won't launch this week, I'm quite happy with the delay announcement. I'm taking this as a sign that DTG is finally starting to take QA more seriously, particularly on consoles. Too many routes and DLCs are rushed out full of bugs that get outed in the feedback threads almost immediately after release, while the fixes for those issues often take months to arrive.

I love this game, but I get tired of troubleshooting its bugs. Here's hoping that the Tadami Line is an enjoyable experience on all platforms when it launches!

 

for me, the problem isn't even the delay itself, but the fact that the "new" TSW is already on the way and there's a risk they might want to push the release back to coincide with the "new" TSW, and honestly, I can't stand waiting anymore
because that would mean waiting through all the "new" TSW rollout process before the "new" TSW's own DLC release cycle even begins
which would likely take a total of about 4 or 5 months
in other words, do you see how the problem always comes back to the same point? that senseless practice of re-releasing a "new" TSW every year

 

I strongly support the decision to delay content that isn’t ready for release. But I wonder why it took them so long to notice that I’m assuming it would’ve been in QA testing for a few weeks by now.

 

It does seem systematic in that the solo developer does his magic and then somehow - obvious issues do not seem to be established until the very last second - feels like we have been here before (Mildmay line had problems with the passengers from day one, Crewe to Birmingham New Street had significant timetable issues - these are just two examples off the top of my head) - third party developers often praise the help that DTG provide (but do they get support throughout?) - but surely it does not take long for just a few experienced testers to work out if it isn't running as it should be - without knowing all the facts, it does feel as though they loaded this up today to do the preview stream and then could immediately see problems - I know it has been a long wait for this (and personally it's not top of my list to buy), but the process just has to be better, perfectly excusable if this was the 1st time. I'm happy that at least they are not going to release it in it's present state, but it doesn't give confidence overall.

 

I wonder if they could just do the whole TSW 7 hype and their release "bundle".... and leave it at that. No new features, just a revamp of the core to be more stable. Wouldn't even have to be a whole new download, just an update patch that changes all the "TSW 6" logos to "TSW 7."
Then they get the marketing boost for sales and new players (and you get some nice route bundles) but there's no tech debt to work on.
It's what I'd do given the state of the game, but it's not my company so take it with a grain of salt.

 

Expect the unexpected...

 

Sad to see it delayed...hopefully not for too long
Maybe we'll all be playing GTA6 before Tadami releases

 

Well, if DTG really does carry out QA testing, then surely they’d do it before announcing the DLC.

But I’m slowly starting to get the feeling that DTG doesn’t really pay much attention to QA testing anymore – or do they only start the QA testing once they’ve announced the release date?
And if DTG is now holding back Tadami Line, it’s surely down to the poor performance on consoles or even on the PC.

 

Yep, the announcement basically says its down to performance and I assume if its serious enough to push a release date, its across all platforms

 

Doesn't even have to be PC. I think something like 80% of sales of TSW are consoles so, even if it's "only" Xbox or PS, that'd be maybe 40% of your player base. Definitely enough to not want a fiasco. Again, I think it's the right call to not release it if it won't work as planned, but especially given that it's the inaugural Japanese route and at a high price tag....kinda the trifecta of bad press.

 

It doesn’t really matter if it is TSW6 or 7, especially if TSW7 is a free upgrade like the last couple of versions. What matter is that it is properly tested and released in a good and playable state and not rushed out to meet an artificial release date.

 

Maybe it is time to end the series and build again from the ground up with their own custom engine. It surely can’t go on like this forever.

What ever happened to the German steam train anyway? If I was DTG I wouldn’t announce things so far before they’re ready cause it just feels like they never arrive.

 

Oh magic 8 ball is Tadami still releasing before GTA 6...?

 

Yep, I'd really prefer they do it that way, in form of an update.
It really feels so completely and utterly pointless to download the now up to half a TB of data, all the same data that's already laying around in the neighbouring folder on our disk. And the amount is growing with each new release and it's not growing linearly.

 

It's inconceivable that something spends years in development and, at the last minute, a fatal flaw is discovered that showed no symptoms for all that time.

Unless, of course, either: a. Nobody really ran the thing all the way through until yesterday. Or b. problems were found by beta or QA and ignored with, as stujoy suggested, fingers tightly crossed that we wouldn't notice ( not for the first time, fat chance of course ).

 

It's highly unlikely to be any sort of licensing issues. The route and train are all unbranded and plus UW released Tadami line and other Japanese routes for TS Classic with no issues. The most likely explanation is they fired up the route on consoles for the first time and it was a blurry mess of textures and poor performance.

 

Or possibly the issues were expected to be fixed in time, but in the end Murphy's Law won again.

 

I suspect that we have multiple companies with multiple different standards on QA after what happened with Thames Valley and was TrainsimTV was saying about his experiences with the QA for the JT routes being very stringent on things.

 

Incidental, but dtg_jan think you need to amend or redact the article in the Live section of the board which still says the route is coming on 30 July.

 

I'm probably just being cynical, but what's the point in announcing a release date then seemingly five minutes later announcing that it's been delayed indefinitely?

 

"They've been working hard now for quite some time getting to understand the TSW tooling and they are now rapidly homing in on their on their first release which will be the Tadami Line" - Matt, Dovetail Direct, Spring 2024.

This means the route has spent at least 3 years in development. I'm not buying this last-minute "we only just noticed the performance issues" excuse either.

So, tinfoil hat on, personal speculation ahead: This has more to do with marketing than the route itself. Maybe they realised that announcing the release date 1 week prior to release was a bit short and people had little time to get excited for something concrete. Maybe they decided that releasing Tadami a week after Thames Valley will have resulted in people delaying the purchase and spoiling their statistics. Or maybe they have decided to go mask-off (again) and are making this a TSW7 launch title. I think the last one is highly unlikely, if only for how much outrage it will cause, but I'm ready to Expect the Unexpected.

 

It's funny how everyone rushes to blame performance on consoles when the timing suggests the issue raised it's head when they were prepping for the preview stream, which is run on a 4080 equipped PC.

 

Because the people that make the ultimate decisions aren't always fully in tune with reality. Looking at figures and spreadsheets is very different to sitting with the game running with terrible stutters and other performance issues. Given how late the decision was to postpone things it possible that the release build was given to Matt to use on the LiveStream, and whilst pre-caching the route issues were found and a confident pushback was made to postpone things. It's just a shame that over the past years the route would have been through various QC and Beta Testing cycles with DTG, it's not just a case of "we are going to release this soon put it in testing", these computers are usually different to home users as they are setup to perform debugging and other tasks. BUT the Beta Testers (do they exist?) would have had a near public build to use on their standard home systems.

Such a disappointing state of affairs, given the long statement we had from DTG and ATS regarding the Class 90 debacle.

 

That sounds like a plausible situation. I've seen that happen on projects before.
QA: "Hey, you need to fix this and get back to us."
Vendor: "Ok here ya go. All fixed!"
QA: "Ok I'll just take a look...wait this isn't fixed."
Vendor: "Well it worked for us on our system!"
QA: "Yeah, but it's supposed to work for customers on their systems"


If Union Workshop did the same thing and just ran it through their own dev platforms again, the same bloated DLC would work the same since it's the same system they are testing on. As I've said before this isn't just a DTG thing. It's what I've seen MANY developers in games doing. Then they are (sometimes sincerely) shocked when their product doesn't perform as well on the "average" system. I think deep down it's just human nature to sort of be biased to assume that other people live like we do, so if you have a high end computer you'll just assume other people have the newest computer too.

It's gotten to the point there's often an "elitist" sort of snobbish attitude in some of the higher performance games (flights sims, space sims, etc) where if it's not working on your system then "well you're clearly not the intended audience. If you had money you'd have a better computer."

I don't KNOW that's what happened here and I'm not claiming that UW or DTG are the latter part. However, it's easy to do an in-house QA and then ship a product without testing it on a potato rig just to see what the "average" gamer will experience.

 

QA testing clearly comes right before the Q&A ..