How Do Dtg Restore Trust With Community?

Firstly for me would be save game. It's been far to long but this needs available in TSW 2020 and TSW2 not just TSW3.

Secondly If improvements are on the roadmap they ought to be completed and not locked behind the next TSW iteration.

Thirdly instead of completing a project and moving on create loco dlcs for them.

 

Seconded on the importance of save.
My plan for TSW3 is currently:
Get it at launch.
See how I handle the new lighting.
Possibly refund it if it does not play nice with me, we'll see.
Otherwise, keep it, but uninstall it from my XBox until Save is reimplemented and go back to playing TSW2 until then. I remember my first two HSC runs crashing halfway through the route when save was bugging out on that one at launch, and so I left it until the first patch to play. I have no intention of sinking hours into these new timetables without a working save system

 

As a simulator or even simu-game, the biggest disappointment I find with TSW are the physics and the Simugraph elements. These have definitely not lived up to expectations. When CSX Heavy Haul came out, Simugraph was touted as the bees knees and that it would be the pinnacle, the next generation of train performance simulation. We have seen examples of where the physics have been done fairly well, but many others where it’s the opposite if not done properly (garbage in = garbage out). TSW should be aiming to be the BeamNG of the train simulation world but a lack of focus on the physics elements means it falls short in many cases (Need for Speed or a Codemasters title at best). SoS is a case in point; a good effort but half finished leaving many feeling frustrated. Ok it gives a general feeling of driving a steam engine, but the actual physics are very questionable. I sincerely hope DTG re-focus on the essentials going forward, and realise the original vision (and player expectations) they had for TSW.

 

No, they want it because they've seen a few trailers and have ultra high graphics details and really good lighting and so on. They don't care that the people writing the trailer did exactly that, enough to make the trailer look good whereas DTG's focus is on trying to make 50 or 100 mile long complex routes that people can enjoy driving trains on, and of course the trains themselves. Two different focusses from the same software.

 

Oh I've noticed that the lighting complexity increases visibly in front of you, including drawing of track, ballast,m shadows, colouring of trees, lights coming on etc etc

I think it's more a case of them changing how things react to the light as much as how the light itself is generated. Changing every surface's reflectivity on every route would be a beast of a task

Yep, so they're winding back everyone's achievements to meet this. Unfortunately their plan for world domination by giving you an achievement by operating the throttle, lights, horn, doors........... will never be fulfilled!

 

Yeah, right outside Victoria. Service is completable though

 

Dovetail will never please everybody.
What they have to do is please those in the middle who just want to drive a train in a reasonably convincing manner.

Purists will always find fault and gamers find gameplay too demanding.
Sales metrics will decide how TSW develops, regardless of all our postings.

 

DTG is not the small studio I thought it was, and can afford to hire more staff to fix their content. They must fix passenger behaviour for a start. There is no reason for me to buy TSW3 if I am going to see the same awful pathing. What has changed, I can watch passengers on the track with umbrellas and nice weather/lighting? No thanks.

As it is I cannot play TSW2 without mods and it will take some time for these to be updated to work with TSW3. LU 1972 stock audio, SPAD remover, Objective sound remover.

But I am not sold on the audio being up to scratch, going forward. How DTG allowed the 1938 stock DLC to ship is beyond me. It really shows their QA is non-existent, if Rivet can get away with releasing it and not even update in spite of all the negative reviews on Steam.

It could be Rivet team have been too busy working with DTG on TSW3 to do anything else. They are happy to take your money but then they are working on the next thing to be shipped.

 

38 stock is not their product. Blame Rivet for that

Oh and negative reviews are often spiteful reports by people who should know better. Read trip advisor if you want to see more examples.
Not saying DTG are great, they're blatantly not, but if you're going to have a go at DTG then have a go at DTG for things within their control

 

Like I said, DTG have QA sign off on DLC, so even though Rivet made the DLC, DTG allowed it. Have you read the negative reviews? Quite a few mention the poor audio.

 

I don't think gamers find the gameplay too demanding. Gamers are used to games that just work. As a gamer I expect that when I've get a red light that red light will turn green eventually. Those lights belong to the basics of the gameplay. If the lights stay red there is no gameplay and a gamer will then declare the game as "broken".

Sure the learning curve is steep for gamers but those that manage to overcome that learning curve are rewarded with a broken game. Sure you can't please everyone but you will not please anyone with a game that is unplayable.

 

I personally want to see devs actually figure out how to optimise UE5's flashier features first, and see what it's actually capable of without an unrealistic to expect gamers to accept in this day and age 30fps cap on current gen consoles, before I expect much out of it. And damn Epic, sort the shader compilation out.

 

DTG don't QA 3rd party stuff, or at least didn't until quite recently. Maybe they should as publisher, but that's different

1. I don't read reviews from people likely unqualified to be providing them. Many online review sources are questionable at best, and say more about the person making the review than anything else. They also don't get updated if something changes after the review is posted
2. I've been on the forum (and on DTG software generally) long enough to know there's nothing in the reviews that I wouldn't already be able to guess having been around DTG a while
3. I don't really care for sounds anyway. When playing I normally have music or video on in the background. Sound is important to some, not to others

 

I don't think a lot of people realize what QA is for... It's certainly not for saying this doesn't sound like <insert loco/stock here>. It's for things like is the audio playing? Can the scenario be completed? Are the controls functioning as intended...

 

You are completely wrong. Since i am working as a 3pp with DTG as the publisher (what means since about 2012), they ever did extensive QA on every piece of content that was released. But QA does not mean they will check if the sound is the correct one, or if the physics behaviour is correct, they testing on working gameplay and localisation. If there is sound while moving a switch you get a GO, if there is no sound you will get a BUG. But if there is a sound but the sound is wrong, you also get a GO. It is at least on the developers to make it the prototypical correct thing (what is not always possible).

 

Peninsula Corridor says hi.

 

see here https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/baked-global-illumination-in-ue5/514487/25

 

Always willing to be corrected

Yep, I get that, and that goes back to "what is QA for and what is being tested"
I guess what people (ie some people here) want to know is who or when IS it a valid question to ask "does that sound right" or "shouldn't there be a bridge there???"

 

IMO, that's at least on the whole team that produces the piece of content. And there the problems begin. Each one has it's own ideas of "quality" and "what is enough" and different levels of knowledge. And the bigger the team the worse it gets (again IMO). But even if all want to build the highest quality on the planet, there is the thing called deadline or schedule. Since these two aspects are often not made/declared by the people that do make the content, they are manifested. So the production has to decide what is important, what can be done in the available time ect. pp. People like me are the worst case for such a company. As i already said somewhere, if i would be the men in charge, the company and the game would not even exists anymore. My own productions are anything but definitely not economical correct. Delivering such a quality all the time ends in a bankruptcy, or at least with no measurable profit that a company needs. Example? The G6 took way to much time to get ever economical. The selling numbers are simply to low to compensate a production time of about 2 years with 2 people. So the quality, again pays not out. Lets see how the 420 does when it ever gets done...

 

I strongly suspect that Simugraph has always been essentially just marketing. How else would a train simulator work except by passing data between various subsystems? I know that's how OpenRails does it.

 

Yep, I can see that. I still believe that in most cases when it comes to DTG / Rivet that a stream two months in advance of release where members of the community can give feedback and development guided might be a good thing
Not being a purchaser of your wares (I don't do german trains generally) I still know you produce top notch stuff, and if you're flooring your commercial success to do that then all good to you (I'm sure you get satisfaction from a job well done, and hopefully the comments on your work reflect well also)

But as someone who is "more of a perfectionist" than others, is there a stage of a project at which you would say others (companies or people) might be able to stand back and either objectively look at their work and say "nah, that needs work" or let others do that for them?

 

The next one that has wrong guesses (and it's not more than a guess). A train/loco/wagon in TSW lays on a multiple layered thing (like an MVC pattern if you know what that means). SimuGraph is one of the layers, and a really important and complicated one (because it really is simulation of thing like air, current, force etc. pp.). Not to speak of the other layers (functional setup, view components, audio, gameplay). Without SimuGraph you would just have static boxes sitting around. Without the other layers you also would have noting usable.

 

For me, that depends on the asked price for the product. For 13,99€ for a loco dlc or the 29,95€ for a route dlc, i would never ask for more than we actually get. But that is because i know exactly what it means to produce that stuff.

 

"Quality Assurance" in name only; absolutely meaningless in other words. Does it sound nothing like the real thing? Doesn't matter, people will buy it anyway.

 

That's true of almost any industry. I've been browsing the local toy shop for my 2-year-old and seen dolls that are supposedly human, but clearly the QA process was interested in whether the materials and construction are safe for a young child to handle, not realism or "Will your child be haunted by this forever?"

 

At this point I just won't buy anything else from DTG because life is too short for mediocrity.

 

I find this a strange comparison. You will not be the enduser of that product. I don't think the enduser will say "daddy this doll does not look human". I can't imagine the forum of that doll product being filled with angry comments of toddlers complaining about the look of the product

 

Wait a few years more when every toddler has its own iPhone....

 

And how, exactly, does that differ from other train simulators? Have you looked at other sims' source code to compare?

 

Well, it was intended as a humorous comparison more than anything -- although I think you underestimate young children as end users, even if they express themselves differently, and also the purchasing decision-making process of the consumer (the parents) that the product should also take into account. It's an entirely relevant comparison really, because it was in terms of the QA process of the manufacturer being concerned with safety not precise realism; just as here, it's about the QA process being concerned with does the horn sound at all, not does it sound entirely realistic.

To back up what Maik is saying further, my brother is currently developing a game as part of a multi-studio project for a huge publisher. They, the programmers, are concerning themselves with such details like the precise position of a wrist and elbow when holding a certain object (quality control from the programmer's perspective), but that is only because they have the luxury of time and budget to do that (so far; the publisher can change that focus at any time). When the game reaches the QA team, it will be more about does the correct animation trigger at this point in time, is the character animating at all or sliding along the ground, limbs static, when she should be walking...

 

It's the way how it works and how you create the simulation that you need. The only train simulator that i know that does something similar but in a very more simplified (predefined) way, is ZUSI. Not Trainz is doing it, nor TSC, nor MSTS. I don't know yet how SimRail ist doing it. That we will see at some point. I do expect a similar way as ZUSI does. TSW SimuGraph is like a Lego set. I have never seen such a thing in any other train sim. It has a depth of possibilities you can not image as long as you not got your hands on it. It does not call "Graph" for marketing purposes. Since it was shown a lot yet you can tell that it is a node graph based system as all other UE4 visual coding graph (Blueprint Scripting) and material graph is. Highly visual representation of what you create and has tons and tons of option to fiddle with to get what you want. And if there is a thing missing, you can, in co-work with the engineering team, get the functionality ( as a node to place) that you want. Each node is basically a tiny piece of a subsystem. You need a air valve, place and connect it as you want, setup the diameters of the inlets and outlets and you will get a near to real world air valve behaviour simulated. You need a stack of valves with different parameters (for whatever reason) you can put them all in, conntect them, create some logic around it, and it will work. No other simulator will give me that yet. Most train sims have predefined simulation subsystems that you can't extend or even reduce in functionality on the fly while you create your simulation that you need.

PS: a more extreme example of what you could do with what no other simulator can do yet. I could create a loco with multiple propulsion systems, also hybrid locos for sure. A loco that is driven by Steam or Diesel or OHLE or 3thRail with different voltages, and all in one Vehicle.

 

I doubt dtg will ever restore my faith in the company. I feel like I've been manipulated into buying tsw3 for some fixes that should have come ages ago, only to find the fixes have not been addressed at all!

I could be wrong so I asked dtg direct in another post and guess what, they have ignored it! Just like most of the other questions about fixes for problems on this forum.

No disrespect towards any of the devs but your company is being run by nothing more than a common theif!

 

I repeat - have you had access to other games' source code? Of course you can do whatever you want with TSW - you are a licensed dev with access to the source code. Have you had access to ZUSI's source code, for instance, or have you just used its publicly available editors?

If you haven't had access to other games' source code, I don't think you can make a fair comparison between TSW and other games.

 

Are you not capable of making decisions on how your spend your money? I felt I was being manipulated, I wouldn't be giving them any money!

Maybe using terms like "thief" isn't the best way to get answers!

 

While I usually do not buy Loco DLC for the price asked when it is newly released - around 14 Euro which imho is a lot (for 30 Euro you get a route including locos) - I will definitely buy your 420 upon release.

1. I like the 420 and even know it (although 430 is my favourite).
2. I highly appreciate quality and I think people that put so much effort and love for detail in their work deserve to be rewarded!

Therefore, supporting you with a day 1 purchase is the least I can do.

 

I'm quite capable of making money spending decisions thankyou.

But when I buy a product after its said on a live stream by dtg that the bugs and issues will be fixed on tsw3 bit may take some time to come to tsw2 seems like manipulation to me.

So I spent my money on tsw3 because why bother with tsw2 if it's going to stay in the state its in for god knows how long! To be told in another stream a week later (after everyone has put in pre orders) that the bugs are still present in tsw3 and will be addressed after release!

Sorry theif was the wrong way to put it. Con artists fits better.

People have complained about parting with 40 quid tsw3! Me and my 2 kids all have our own steam accounts so that's £120 I've spent for 3 copies of tsw3 that are likely to be plagued with the same bugs tsw2 has for god knows how long!

 

Little harsh, I´d say.

I´ve spent around € 600,00 since November 2021 on TSW2. But I´m not pissed at DTG.
I´m pissed with MYSELF. I look into the mirror and say "Pipe, what a royal idiot you are!" But, lesson learnt, keep going.

The funny thing is that I had quite some fun playing TSW, tolerating some bugs here and there. Until DTG came up with some patches that introduce more bugs than they squash. (Random derailing anyone?)
And that is a red line crossed.

Do they even want to "restore my trust"? Naaahhh, don´t think so.

 

I don't have to put my hands on any source code in TSW to do what i said (and i never did it yet in TSW at all). It's all there what i need. And just to be clear, i may be a licensed dev, but i have no permission to add/change any source code. That's work for the core engineers. I use what the editor gives me.

 

Well the simple answer is if you think that you will not get what you expect or a bad experience then don't spend the money.

They haven't said that they won't be updating TSW2 content with fixes just that they might/will come to TSW3 first.

 

I've quite enjoyed playing tsw up until the patch mentioned above completely screwed up the game. What have dtg done about it, nothing! Focused thier time on making more money rather than fix the problems people have already paid for.

If dtg announced tsw3 and mentioned it still had the same problems as tsw2 on that day how many people do you think would have pre ordered the game? Not many. But they left it a week then said its still full of problems.

That's why I'm angry with dtg.

 

When TSW first came out I was purchasing everything, even routes I would never normally be interested in, mainly to support them. Now due to the way the sim has evolved which frankly hasn't been what I hoped, I rarely purchase anything now and I will not be getting TSW3 at this time unless a really stellar route comes out.

 

You don't understand. They announced tsw3 done a live stream. Said everything is fixed in tsw3 then a week later said nothing is fixed but they'll address it after release! It's been months since they messed up tsw2 and still no fix. It's easy for then to fix the game so why havnt they?

 

Well I suppose you just have to wait and see what happens over the first few weeks or get a refund. Once bitten twice shy.

There are still outstanding SOS fixes which I would have hoped would have been resolved by now, so I have uninstalled it for now.

 

The problem with that is steam give you 2 hours of gameplay before you are no longer entitled to a refund. That's one run on bml an one run on another route.

There is absolutely no way I can test all the routes/services with known problems in that time frame. Apart from sos I guess.

 

What do you want they restore?
I never trust them

 

Oof, didn't realise that about the steam version. There's a decent argument for playing on console right there, the fact everyone in your household can play on their accounts, even on two systems simultaneously, with a single copy of the game.

 

You said yourself - you have worked with the engineering team to implement features. And even ignoring that, because the editor is not publicly accessible, it is much more powerful than the publicly available tools that other sims offer. Your comparison remains disingenuous, especially since you do not seem to have any knowledge of how other sims internally calculate physics etc.

 

No, i did not. Read again. I said you can do that if you need.

Yeah, when you say that it might be right.

 

You can share the account and games but with cloud saves and achievements its easier to have separate accounts. Both have consoles just collecting dust.

 

Yes service is completable but you can connect those train's together aswell.