Roadmap Update - 12th January 2021

The license is still available to DTG. The reason NEC didn’t get preserved is that it would be quicker and easier to rebuild the route from scratch. Maybe we’ll see it again soon.

 

I love playing this route in ts2021. Maybe this is a route that can come to tsw2. I honestly would love to know why people thought amtrak took their license away from dtg.

 

If it does come back again but a much longer version, I hope they include the acela or the avelia liberty

 

You might have noticed in subsequent posts what I admitted I had skipped that part!

 

Because they didn't explain themselves straight off the bat with it. They stayed quiet for weeks, and then decided to say it was because it was impossible to port it, you know what this forum is like for people that know best!

 

Amtrak does maintain commuter trains on their system as part of state owned corridors, like Amtrak California/Surfliner, Amtrak Midwest, and NCDOT.

 

And probably also the majority of people who play this game have not played ts2021 so they wouldn't know about this route. Just because they don't port a route over doesn't mean that they lost the license though. I never thought that dtg lost the amtrak license when they couldn't port nec over

 

They do indeed but not everybody who would know about amtrak would probably think that they just do cross country services which is not true

 

Lol

 

Or Rod Hull....

 

Why should us steam fans have to wait a few more years? I will soon get tired of a diet of modern trains, the sim needs variety and steam will add to that variety. Personally I am "stoked" to see steam on the roadmap, I had a feeling this may have been the big secret but I didn't really expect to steam it for a couple of years yet.

I was pleased to see Paul Jackson allude to recreating the 1950's in his article. I trust therefore that steam won't be restricted to plodding along a preserved line or running a railtour. I am looking forward to driving steam trains on proper historic routes.

 

I would love this to mean there could be a chance of seeing the Severn Valley Railway in future.

 

That would be nice, the SVR is my local line so would love to see it. I hope that we won't just see heritage railways though! I want to drive a Pannier along a Cornish branchline with a pick up goods, or tackle the S & C with a Britannia and 14 bogies or take a Manor over the Cambrian coast line with the Cambrian Coast Express or haul a heavy mineral train in the north east with a Victorian goods engine as well as pootle along at 25 mph wondering how to shut the safety valves up as you have hardly used any steam for the last 3 miles!

 

Steam is definitely not something I am excited about but I am happy for all the people in the community who were waiting for it.
I just hope that in need of a core update to make it possible I don't take away so many resources to postpone even more things that are important to modify (e.g. sounds), things that are long overdue but don't advance in the roadmap (e.g. HMA layers for console) and things that have been talked about that you want to implement (e.g. dynamic climate)

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

 

I noticed that on the roadmap there is a fix in the works for “cannot achieve gold medals on ECW depot services”
I’ve experienced this issue on LGV aswell

 

Can we clear up a couple of recurring misunderstandings about the lack of NA content that won't seem to go away.

1. It has absolutely nothing to do with licensing. Licensing for almost all the Class1 railroads are in place. Amtrak is fine, a new Amtrak route was just released for TS2021.
2. Research for many NA routes has already been done for TS.
3. The last NA route to be released was Peninsula Corridor in August, 2019.

 

If we are going to clear up misunderstandings, let us be accurate.

This is false. The last North American route to be released was Oakville Subdivision on February 20th, 2020.

 

I stand corrected. But that's still a whole year ago. And the next release is likely months away.

 

Well - I am looking forward to the next two NA routes that are in production - Clinchfield and Cane Creek - getting desperate for NA freight - in fact have moved back to TS2021 to run some CSX Hanover division scenarios - Don’t get me wrong - SPG is fine - but tired of just running back and forth - Need to serious shunting - some on-line industries to do local runs.

Also looking forward to the future appearance of Steam - Nothing better in my mind than running a kettle either as a shutter, a local or a long haul -

 

I share your frustrations. Not only have several (three) American DLCs not been ported to TSW2, but Sandpatch grade is also reused for the base game. There is a severe lack of (North) American content across the board.

Cheers

 

Can you add https://forums.dovetailgames.com/threads/db-br-363-sh11.30878/#post-230741 to the roadmap?

 

What was adjusted on the Class 43?

 

I did all services and scenarios and the only one I can’t get gold are two services from depot to Marseille Saint-Charles

 

We most definitely acknowledge that we've not delivered as much or as varied a selection of US add-ons as is appropriate for one of our "big three" countries. I've nothing to announce except to say that you've been heard and the company knows about it.

 

It would also be nice to have the brake gauge working again for IOW. I went on it again a few days ago forgetting that when you apply the brake nothing shows in the gauge. So don't have a clue how much brake you are putting on so left it again back to another route.

 

Not quite, the reason they were "quiet" is because they originally were gonna port it. However at the same time they announced TSW2's delay to add adhesion to preserved content they also announced NEC wasn't gonna be ported. Before this stream there was not a single indication that NEC was not gonna be brought over, thus no speculation on such a subject. And when they made the announcement they stated it was because the route needed a complete rework similar to Sand Patch to be brought over.

 

Great roadmap stream tonight, really feel like I have an insight into how you guys are operating and what it's like to be DTG. Looking forward to a great 2021

Thanks to everyone at Dovetail, you're doing a great job

 

Maybe you should not forget that there is a wealth in US routes and stock for TSW2, if you compare it with the amount of Dutch content. We have to be happy with a text on the BR3636 referring to Utrecht ....

Having said that, once there is a Dutch route I would love to see more US freight routes.

 

Thanks for another great Roadmap Stream. I always enjoy listening to Sam and Adam. I am getting excited about steam like anyone, but did nobody noticed that Track-IR is up from planning as well? Might well be worth looking into buying something in this direction.

As some have already said, it would be great to get the icons for new or moved items back. Maybe the reorganisation made this too tedious and we will see them again in the next iteration, hopefully

I wanted to ask if anyone knows something about Raildriver and especially general external hardware support? I cannot find it on the roadmap anymore, only to add Raildriver support to where it isn't already (which is obviously great). Shouldn't it be "In Production" if there are any more plans with the current beta state?

 

Meh, personally I think SPG is the most boring route I have in my collection. It's mostly trees and trees and trees passing by at low speeds. :P

 

Personally I am relatively pleased, but things that are long over-due are not moving like the HMA Layers, even though large steps have been made to add them, it remains (In Investigation) this should be (In Production) and moving up faster as console players who own several German Routes are looking forward to the layers, and I will repeat again, it IS possible to add content to only Next-Gen Builds, meaning those on the lowest memory Series S can provide valuable information regarding Frames, Crashes ect. and again, people want full Keyboard and Mouse support and that has never made it on the Roadmap.

Do what is best for your community on consoles!

 

Considering I don't even have a button to open/close doors, even PC doesn't have full keyboard support.

DTG Protagonist DTG Natster any chance there's something to say about this particular issue? I'm really missing my beloved "T"-keybind good old Train Simulator has, but as far as I've seen there hasn't been any mention of such a control option for PC users since the release of TSW2.

 

I have often thought the driver opening doors is a trifle (an extremely large one) unrealistic in many circumstances. It might happen in modern trains but back in the 80's a driver didn't walk down the train opening doors or find a button in the cab of his class 45 and magically each door in a rake of mark 2 coaches would open! I suppose you have to tell the sim you are initiating the station stop but I would prefer it if there was some kind of automatic assumption that when you were stopped at a station the passengers were disembarking, certainly in older stock and once you stopped at the marker there would still be a timer to record the stop whilst the sim handles the alighting of passengers in a way that is realistic to whatever you are driving. A guards whistle or a shout of "right away driver" would be a nice touch too, even MSTS had that.

 

Half the time the doors would be opening before you stopped...

 

Yes when I was younger travelling on the class 116 DMU's which we had, you would see who was the bravest to open the door first. I wasn't quite that brave though! Just before the class 323's started on the cross city line there were spates of doors on the now elderly slam door DMU's opening by themselves which made the local TV news.

 

Living in Cardiff it would be the Intercity expresses where this was the case before they put the interlocks on.
And people leaning out of the windows when it was doing 125mph was not unknown, even to the point of people in the tunnels reaching out to see if they could touch the walls...
I guess looking back with 2021 sensibilities people were idiots but of course, a lot less litigious back then

As far as the game goes, if the game date is before a certain date then "open doors" would definitely be a passenger decision so the function shouldn't be available, with the doors opening randomly when the speed is less than 5mph
Not going to happen but it would be a cool thing to see

 

What about Mouse on Console!

 

What is Track IR?

thanks

 

A hardware device that tracks head movements and moves the screen camera view accordingly, meaning if you need to move to that switch on the left you can turn your head to the left rather than dragging the screen view around with your mouse/controller

 

I would have thought getting a skilled character artist and improving your passenger AI to not be worse than Alien Colonial Marines would be a bigger priority to be honest. We've been saying routes are dead since the very beginning and we get the "we know" alot but you dont seem to want to do anything about it?

Priorities do seem abit strange in TSW, I get its not the same people etc but mastery and a drivers log book are seen as needed but actually improving something pretty core to a train sim is seen as a "nice to have"?

 

I depends on whose priorities they are prioritising. We don't know what messages they are receiving, I am sure many people want many different things.

They have talked about improving passengers, which I agree are pretty poor at the moment, sometimes TSW looks like a recreation of the village of the damned!

 

I had, I think, one solitary passenger on a double TGV on one route. I worried they’d been abducted by passing Aliens.

 

Unless we know which dev team work on which system your comment may be misdirected. We don't know which team deals with passengers, their interaction, generation etc but it could be the same team as undertake other very essential works, whereas mastery and log book tend to be backend so might not be as busy.
And as has been said, different things are important to different people so passenger levels may be important to you, sounds to someone else, platform clipping to a third and flags on the menu to a fourth
They're all on the list to be worked on so fingers crossed

 

Fully agree, too much time and effort is being put into things that are things that just aren’t needed at the moment, as opposed to improving immersion and actual core experience.

I don’t expect the ‘mastery’ team to be coding and working on audio and such, but there’s no way they can’t support the various other teams in achieving more important things faster.

 

I, for example do not care very much about the passengers, even if I mostly drive passenger services, I actually prefer the ones used in TS classics, where a lot of very low-res people would spawn in front of the door/in front of the train and board or get off the train, I would rather see worse looking passengers but in bigger numbers, but even if I know I am pretty much alone in this way of thinking, there are still many other people that don't care.

Would I prioritize the nerf of the 377 brakes or better passengers? 377 brakes

Would I prioritize Steam over passengers? Yes

Passengers in my priority list are just above the change default setting from "no" to "yes" on "the you want to give up the service" message.

If it is something other people can work on while the main dev team continues with their usual routine, fine. But if I have to wait, for example 1 or 2 months delay on the DLC release schedule just to have better passengers, than I would say no thank you.

In my opinion the only route really affected from the lack of passengers is BKL anyway.

 

It would be easy enough to have "a block of passengers on the platform" with additions being fed as they are now. The point is that this still takes dev time and I don't know which team of devs do this work, but Sam has said many times "It's on the list of things to look at" so maybe I'm just more patient than some

 

Exactly... still, for me they are not very important, as I said the only route where passengers actually impact my gameplay and "feel" of the route is BKL

 

I agree with you on the part about how passengers look (just give us crowds) and that train performance should take priority over them, but I don't think that adding another timeframe and a radical new type of train is the right order, since that will only serve to give them a bigger workload when they get around to passengers.

Steam Trains are going to be lots of fun, but apocalyptically empty routes and trains make the overall simulation feel lesser.