Dtg Looking To Replace Matt?

Discussion in 'TSW General Discussion' started by Haribo112, Jul 23, 2021.

  1. Tigert1966

    Tigert1966 Well-Known Member

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    This is bringing back memories. I too used to like strategy guides.

    When I was younger and had more time to play games, I would sometimes play through a game twice. Once on my own and the second time after reading the guide.

    I think my favourite was probably for Age of Empires. It really enhanced my enjoyment of the game.
     
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  2. OldVern

    OldVern Well-Known Member

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    I used to like some of the flight sim manuals - Tornado (Digital Integration) and Longbow 2 (EA/Janes) came with manuals more like a novel!
     
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  3. Quentin

    Quentin Well-Known Member

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    Could it run in a VM? There'd be a performance hit, but any modern PC will have 10x the power of a top-end 'beast' from 20 years ago. (It ran under Win98 or Win 2000 - just for laughs, here's the system requirements from my box.)[​IMG]
     
  4. paul.pavlinovich

    paul.pavlinovich Well-Known Member

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    No unfortunately it will not, Microsoft removed the ability to have pass through to the GPU from a VM some time ago for security and while you can hack your way through this it still doesn't work. I tried both HyperV and VMWare personal I went through lots of different options when I was preparing for my MSTS 20th birthday stream a couple of months ago. The best outcome was to install Windows 7 onto an old laptop I had and use a VGA to HDMI converter and a HDMI input on my streaming PC. I was going to use XP but I was unable to get it activated. I had to get onto Microsoft Support and explain what I was doing to get Windows 7 activated. After explaining why they gave me the code I needed.

    Note that while there are walkthroughs to get it running on Windows 10 you need to disable much of Windows 10's security to get it to work and I was unable to make it work after 20H2 installed. Something has changed that kills it. I imagine the people who figured out which hoops to jump through before 20H2 will figure out something for now but I would not recommend disabling the security. That's asking for trouble.
     
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  5. paul.pavlinovich

    paul.pavlinovich Well-Known Member

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    You and the others were doing an amazing job. I moderate on another major forum and its always hard when people you know as friends or regulars don't get the hint and you have to whack them - I agree its much easier with people you don't know! Thank you for everything you do, from the things like controlling to the chat to the endless ice cream for Moggy jokes. Things like that add a degree of special to the stream. Special is needed given that at this time of year (us out of daylight savings and you in it) I have to get up at 5am to watch!

    Now we've got reddit walkthroughs! If you can be bothered mining through the piles of guff for the gems you need to help with a game. Dedicated guides and walk throughs are very helpful.

    Paul
     
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  6. Calidore266

    Calidore266 Well-Known Member

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    The problem with published physical strategy guides is that they are usually (always?) written from prerelease versions of their games, so there can be changes before the actual release version, not to mention in post-release patching. Kind of like what happens when novelizations and comic adaptations of movies use early script versions.

    BBSes and the internet were a great change in that people can post (free!) guides to sites like Gamefaqs, Neoseeker, et al that reflect the games as is and update the guides as needed.
     
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  7. OldVern

    OldVern Well-Known Member

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    You need to have very particular hardware to get MSTS running these days,basically if you have an ATI/Radeon GPU you’re stuffed. Also needs to be installed in a particular way avoiding like a plague any Program Files folder. There is a site called Steam4me which has a tutorial to help get it up and running on modern O/S. Even then you have to mess about with DPI settings in the launcher and most likely the editors won’t work at all. Well the Activity Editor might load but will freeze or CTD as soon as you try doing anything meaningful.

    All of which is why Open Rails and TSRE came about, the sting though being - despite what the OR zealots at certain sites might assert - to run old content in OR you still need MSTS and its components installed.

    I played around with the TSRE route editor a couple of times in recent years. It’s a great achievement and closer to what Kuju should have given us in the first place, but no substitute for the more user friendly interface of TS or Trainz Surveyor.
     
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  8. paul.pavlinovich

    paul.pavlinovich Well-Known Member

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    The Steam4Me tutorial no longer works after Windows 10 20H2 release unfortunately. Microsoft killed it :(.

    I got it running on a laptop with a very old ati radeon M series chipset - I could only run 1024x768 or 800x600 but apart from that it worked fine.

    Paul
     
  9. OldVern

    OldVern Well-Known Member

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    I didn’t realise that Paul, oh well guess it really is dead and buried on its 20th birthday. Still it lasted far longer than many more recent non train sim titles and without it would be no TS, TSW or any of the other mainstream train games - even Trainz!
     
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  10. HuggernautNL

    HuggernautNL Member

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    Folks I gotta admit that I love how this post went from trolling attempt, to a sincere post clearing things up, over to positive reinforcement and then somehow went into a short tour of the past and ending on strategy guides...

    To you TrainSim-Matt: tale care of yourself. I love what you do at DTG but you gotta keep an eye on yourself too.

    Oh and for strategy guides I find myself lurking the Steam Forums and Guides quite often. People write some top quality stuff there sometimes.
     
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  11. Crosstie

    Crosstie Well-Known Member

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    Too bad, I guess I'll keep my discs for old times' sake. For me what was so good about MSTS were, first of all, the huge breadth of 3rd party routes from studios like Making Tracks and Maple Leaf as well as the UKTS library. I still get emails from one or two. Secondly, and I'm sure you'll agree, there was the very user-friendly save function, which outshines anything we've had since.
     
    Last edited: Jul 25, 2021
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  12. paul.pavlinovich

    paul.pavlinovich Well-Known Member

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    Crosstie and OldVern someone smarter than me will figure out a way to make it work again I'm sure... probably just in time for Windows 11 to kill it.

    20 years is an amazing life for a game. I've put away the ancient laptop I built to stream it on its 20th birthday and will get it out again on its 21st if the old clunker will boot. I put an old slow SSD in it so there's a fair chance it will come to life each year.

    Paul
     

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