In TSW all routes are mainly UK, USA or German Can anyone explain why? Is it to do with licensing? In Train Simulator, there are more countries used Switzerland, China, Japan, South Africa even France. It is good to see one of the French routes being copied into TSW2 soon. Have dovetailgames any plans to include some Australian routes in the future?
Because they're the most popular and the people involved have more experience with those areas. I know in particular simulators are very popular in Germany, thus makes sense to make routes to cater to them. Also worth noting Aerosoft makes a lot of those routes in TS Classic, and they're based in Germany. Similarly Dovetail themselves are based in the UK, so they have a easier time making routes from there. It's also worth noting that most routes covering other countries are from particular devs that focus on those areas. Probably the most notable example (at least for the TSW forum) being Rivet Games, who are the ones who've done most of the Swiss content for TS Classic, and also plan on making a Swiss route for TSW. Other examples are Milepost Simulations who did all the Canadian routes for TS Classic, Union Workshop who did all the Japanese routes, and Johansteam who did all the South African routes. So many of the routes outside of the main three countries are separate endeavors with minimal involvement from Dovetail.
Matt P explained a fair amount of this in one of the TSW release streams. It's not just a case of "make another country", because you then have to evolve that country literally from the ground up Germany, the UK and the US are all Northern Hemisphere temperate countries, so a lot of them are green. They all have similar looking mountains, the ground texture for each region of the countries involved are similar (green for grass, yellowish for desert / dry, greyish for mountains), but other regions may have different textures, scenery, trees, buildings... All would need developing from scratch (which can take up to a year to do) Then you have the locos. You COULD just turn one from one country into the basis of one from another, but people IN those countries would know the difference. So they'd have to build those up too (probably 3-6 months dev time) Then you have track. What's the gauge, camber, pitch, how do the joints work, how are they fixed. What colours are they... (and DTG don't have a good history of getting track right anyway) Finally, you have the signalling and control systems. They already know how GB, DE and US systems work. What about Zimbabwe, Australia, Russia, China? They'd have to write all of them, then script the interactions with the track, then script the interactions with the trains, then script the interactions from the player... So in other words, you could be looking at three to four times as much dev time to make a brand new ecosystem from scratch as one that exists already. That's not to say that they cannot do something which is closer to what we already have, for example French regional, Spanish or Italian, but even they may have certain things which need "rebuilding", which causes complications
It's also to do with what they can sell I know LGV Marseille-Avignon was well received in TS classic would love to see an Italian, Spanish or Polish route added in the future. Also with the comment Mich made it will take a lot of time for devs and researchers to find how these different signalling will work. It's a slow progress but I see with TSW2 that slowly more countries will come.
I do not want to start a massive argument so I will post this and leave the thread but you do realise that DTG have to go out of their way to get the license from the operator of the line which can prove difficult sometimes, especially if said operator isn't willing to co-operate. Take The Democratic Republic of the Congo for example, If people wanted a route from this country then DTG could just release a route unbranded or go the extra mile and try to strike a deal with the operator,which owns all of the railways in the country. So it doesn't boil down to laziness, it boils down to if they can get a licence and the amount of research they would have to do which sometimes (if it were to take ages) the researchers may not want to dedicate time to it.
My point is so simple and I will explain it in an easy to use explanation. You have 2 shops. 1 is 10 kms away. One is 100Kms away. Which would you walk to? You would obviously go to the easy one which is 10 kms. Cause in general people would be too lazy to walk 100Kms away. My point is very clear. Don’t need a brain the size of a Mellon to figure it out. Same applies here. It’s easier to make routes closer to home.
Rehashed American routes which was already available in a previous game made from dovetail. GET IT RIGHT
A simple search on steam and TSW live proves you wrong. Not all american routes in TSW are available on TSx and vice versa. Maybe you need to fact check yourself
There is also one Canadian route in TSW and swiss stuff is about to come. I suspect that UK, DE and US are most popular and have highest demand and sales.
I would love to see maybe at least one route from each continent. We don’t have any from South America (Brazil would be cool), Africa (No clue), the Middle East (You could stretch that to India and make an Indian route), Australia (I don’t know anything in specific but like the idea), and finally Asia (I would love to see a Japanese route)
Wouldn't mind seeing the Seymour Line (in Victoria, Australia) added into TSW. So much potential there if Dovetail Games expands into this region of the world lol.
I’m really hoping that they change that route to have at least one other train type, be it a local commuter or a freight train. To me, the route sounds quite boring as is, with it being just a point a-point b run. The SKA did high speed right, providing you with a commuter train as well as the high speed ICE.
Well, I don’t know much about French trains, but if that is the case, then I guess they wouldn’t want anything else. Maybe they can add one of the older TGV’s if those run on that route. It just sounds kind of boring to me as it stands, perhaps they can have good scenarios with train startups and such.