Train Simulator Classic - The Future

Discussion in 'Dovetail Live Article Discussion' started by DTG Jamie, Dec 21, 2022.

  1. DTG Jamie

    DTG Jamie Staff Member

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    TSC_DevUpdate.jpg

    We often get asked about what the future holds for Train Simulator Classic, and it's always something we're thinking about too. We speak to Senior Producer, Steve Dark, about his vision for the simulator's development moving forward.

    Read More : Train Simulator Classic - The Future (dovetailgames.com)
     
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  2. BRD

    BRD Well-Known Member

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    Let me just tell you how this makes me happy to hear. TSC is definitely my favorite train simulation game. Hearing from you that you're not actually just abandoning the game ( as it sounded like so far ) makes me really happy.

    Good luck with the improvements and I hope you'll be open to listen for feedback once you roll out some updates. A lot of testing will be needed with all of the content made from 3rd parties.
     
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  3. triznya.andras

    triznya.andras Well-Known Member

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    Overall, good news!
    Happy to see a lot of pain points addressed, even if carefully worded.

    I use 64 bit exclusively but understand there are items out there which are dysfunctional.

    While at it, please look into workshop item extraction if that's something that remains. Might be a 32 bit thing but it tends to extract garbage when handling multiple items.

    Happy to hear addressing the UI for large collections. A bit worried about what exactly "web based" means.
    Regardless, would be nice to consider a "darker" mode. Less of a concern up front, however driving a night scenario in a dark room both F2 and post-drive are crazy.

    One last thing to mention, weather. I'm mostly happy with old skies (which makes me a pariah but it's closer to the real sky than the patterny AP things), however, colors tend to be too dark. I noticed some improvements over the years, good job there. If you have the time, go through a page or two of my screenshots on Steam (link in signature) and consider how they are - and these are the very best, I'm not adding darker ones (such as the SD70M Roseville-Sparks) to the pool anymore.

    To close it up, thanks for the news, and wishing you all happy holidays!
     
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  4. Michael Newbury

    Michael Newbury Well-Known Member

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    Really enjoyed reading the article it's good to hear that TSC is here to stay.
     
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  5. vitt77

    vitt77 New Member

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    Good news!
     
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  6. kolesnikvictor

    kolesnikvictor Active Member

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    Great news about TS Future! Just an idea. I use Locoswap to swap some absent rolling stock in some advanced scenarios. Unfortunately it can't work with ap-files. It works only with unpacked assets. Can you consider this case in your future updates? I mean, can you make packed assets readable with Locoswap?
     
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  7. railroadamerica

    railroadamerica Active Member

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    my wish list -
    a. pbr workflow
    b. upgradation of lua to 5.4
    c. mutli-core support

    let us see what we will be offered in next few months.
     
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  8. toms87

    toms87 Well-Known Member

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    Asset/loft search function in the editor!
     
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  9. Vaffelen

    Vaffelen Well-Known Member

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    This would save so much time for route builders.
     
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  10. Reef

    Reef Well-Known Member

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    This is terrible news!!!





    For all the TSC is a dead game TSW3 is da future naysayers out there...


    Well done DTG I do love it when you surprise me, Don't fluff it up!

    :)
     
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  11. Daniel Gibbs

    Daniel Gibbs Active Member

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    Great news! However, I did want to point out something as well. Is there a chance the Consist Editor will get fixed anytime soon? It has been very buggy lately and constantly crashing when it's almost fully loaded (it seems to be crashing every time it reaches 88%).
     
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  12. raptorengineer

    raptorengineer Active Member

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    nice to hear future of train simulator classic. sounds like the DirectX 9 to DirectX 12 translation facility is little ways off maybe year or two. but good your looking in to it and going to DX12 will have benefits maybe when they get it going in game it have feature like DLSS etc...
    i hope Blueprint editor get updated big time in future. there are features that are needed also possibility of adding new features along the way.

    core performance on engine hope can get improved. for example when i load searchlight simulator AC4400CW in route editor it take while to place it on track cause it got to load all awesome features and details and while it doing that i feel like game going to crash but it hasn't yet.
     
    Last edited: Dec 21, 2022
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  13. Korbin

    Korbin Member

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    It would be pretty cool, but I get it if it is a long shot to add snow and rain/mist particle effects as the train is going by. That is one of the little things that I believe this game is missing. As well as a potential rework of the derail physics, being able to watch it in quick drive without the game over menu popping up instantly
     
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  14. ex_railwayman

    ex_railwayman Active Member

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    Great to see Steve Dark as the new Senior Producer. He developed the BR Class 40 in TSW, amongst other things he's got involved with. He also created the BR Class 40 in Trainz Simulator many light years ago, that I still have archived in my Trainz game collection, as it was a superb model in its day, kuid 30992 was his ID I still remember, that'll make him smile if he sees that, he must be a ''Whistler'' fan, just like me.
    Reassuring to learn that we have some dedicated veteran Rail/Train Simmers in the production set up, hope we can get the likes of Ed Fisk and a few others on board with the development of TSClassic and then we'll be really going places.

    Who slated me for being an old TS dinosaur and TSW was going to rule? lololololololololololol.

    Cheerz. Steve.
     
    Last edited: Dec 21, 2022
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  15. Kim Olesen

    Kim Olesen Well-Known Member

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    I really only have one thing thing to say to this announcement: Thanks :)
     
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  16. malikrthr

    malikrthr Well-Known Member

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    This is really great news for Train Simulator Classic. I am really glad to see that it will be getting a new lease of life and further improvements planned. I do wonder with the improvements being made, would it be recommended to run Train Simulator with mods or would that possibly corrupt the game or files in any way.

    I think it would be a good idea to make the editor more user friendly, similar to the tools in the surveyor route creation utility for trainz. It would be great if the editor was more user friendly to allow for beginners to easily transition to.

    With possible multicore support and Direct X 12 implementation, I wonder if this will correct how map tiles are loaded or if there are plans to improve the fps
     
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  17. Agent Qracle RUS

    Agent Qracle RUS Well-Known Member

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    Surprisingly, my respect DTG - TS is still my favorite game (even though it is already godlessly outdated). The game needs more support, because many people play it and continue to create content)
     
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  18. mikeov1985

    mikeov1985 Member

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    TSC is my favorite train simulation game. I am so glad that it officially has a future. I look forward to the updates. :)
     
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  19. rare_common_sense

    rare_common_sense Well-Known Member

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    This is the news us TSC users needed to hear.
    Especially being that I just recently purchased a new laptop that actually struggles on there, despite the fact it’s more powerful than the one it’s replacing, which also runs TSC in better fidelity I might add without it crashing. It is a rather odd thing for an older game to do that on hardware than is more than capable of running it.

    But this definitely a win for those who are more invested in TSC
     
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  20. BeenTrain

    BeenTrain Member

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    Very good news indeed!
     
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  21. eldomtom2

    eldomtom2 Well-Known Member

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    This makes me a bit nervous. Cleaning up the code is all well and good, but it has to be done carefully so old content is not broken.
     
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  22. robix61

    robix61 New Member

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    Great news really...
     
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  23. Doomotron

    Doomotron Well-Known Member

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    Quite a number of people expected TS to be discontinued entirely, so it's nice to see that's far from the case. Hopefully any major engine changes will come with the ability to launch a different version if needed to prevent things breaking in the same way the 64-bit upgrade did. Something like the Minecraft launcher would work well, allowing players to have separate installations of TS for different versions if newer ones break things. (It would also be nice but unlikely to have older versions available in this launcher, perhaps going back all the way to RailWorks - while RailWorks 2 is partly preserved, every past version other than that and their features are long gone, such as relay scenarios, the old HUD with the very cool and quite useful minimap and countless other things, but I won't suggest the multiplayer demo they had running :D)
    It'll be down to the developers of Locoswap to do this. AP files are effectively just ZIP files, and TS Tools extracts them as part of its standard operation.
    I think it may have something to do with memory issues. I haven't experimented with it but I theorise the long loading times when it does work is because it's loading every train into memory and therefore causing the game to give an out of memory error. Obviously ~200GB of trains going into 16GB of RAM won't end well.
     
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  24. Koplopermau

    Koplopermau Member

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    Its great to hear that DTG decided to give Train Simulator another midlife revision that it so desperately needs. I hope DTG will, just like is happening with SimRail as we speak, do playtests with new pieces of software so we can trace bugs, find erros and fix them on a daily or weekly basis.

    I also hope that DTG will communicate with the community what they really want and communicate what the scope of these upgrades will be, as the article states its 'the tip of the iceberg'. This has already been downtrotted a bit that things might not continue depending on the development time or costs or whatever the reason is, which is reasonable I guess.

    I would love the core getting an upgrade so we can get 60 frames per second on busy stations with lots of assets, better loading times with custom assets (.ap quickload settings have improved things a lot, but third party still takes quite some time) and a quicker loading menu, which for me, usually takes about 30 seconds because I have so much stuff in it. Oh, and a wildcard search bar in the editor, pretty pretty please (search 'tree' and get every item with 'tree' in the name).

    That's why I'm asking DTG: What is the scope of these upgrades? Can we, overtime, expect a complete overhaul of the core or will that be completely out of the scope and will things be more minor?

    I'm glad this has been announced and I hope we can work together to bring Train Simulator into a new phase in its life.
     
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  25. Blazin

    Blazin Well-Known Member

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    Excellent news!!! I'm so happy to hear this!! Thank you!! :D
     
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  26. theorganist

    theorganist Well-Known Member

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    Very good news indeed. Excited to see what is to be announced in the future.
     
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  27. DTG JD

    DTG JD Director of Community Staff Member

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    A lot of these questions will be answered in a future article like this, but we would like to beta a lot of the more widely-impacting changes, yes. Whether it'd be a public beta, or a smaller group of players is still up for discussion at this stage.
     
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  28. DTG JD

    DTG JD Director of Community Staff Member

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    As a general note, thank you for all the interest and questions on this thread. Steve is on holiday until after Christmas now, but we'll collate the questions and feedback for him to review in the New Year (or before, if he's feeling particularly keen to jump in during the festive window!).
     
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  29. orb

    orb Well-Known Member

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    For as long as TS will still work under Proton, go ahead with the update.
     
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  30. robix61

    robix61 New Member

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    It'd be great to definively fix the "Out of Memory" error.
     
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  31. steve1023

    steve1023 New Member

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    Great news guys. Really happy with this.
     
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  32. 777Gaming

    777Gaming Well-Known Member

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    Finally! TSC is definitely my preferred game due to its versatility, and the fact it's finally being brought into the present is awesome!
     
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  33. Reef

    Reef Well-Known Member

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    Last edited: Dec 23, 2022
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  34. Michael Newbury

    Michael Newbury Well-Known Member

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  35. ZaphodScotsman

    ZaphodScotsman New Member

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    Will this update include finally fixing the out of memory error?
     
  36. HaskyRo

    HaskyRo New Member

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    any chances to implement the "bail off" function ?
     
  37. Reef

    Reef Well-Known Member

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    Sorry, the link text is misleading, it points to a post in that thread regarding the forced validation when you purchase new dlc, link text now changed.
     
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  38. Reef

    Reef Well-Known Member

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    There was no update read my reply to Michael above.
     
  39. driverwoods#1787

    driverwoods#1787 Well-Known Member

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    Absolutely good news and some of them can be enlisted to work for the sister game train simulator world for example ChrisTrains can help DTG on cross border Germany to Netherlands Road examples are Bahnstrecke Bremen Delmenhorst Oldenburg Leer Deutschland Niederlande Bad Nieuwschans Groningen Hollandstrecke Duisburg/Bochum-Utrecht
     
  40. Kim Olesen

    Kim Olesen Well-Known Member

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    I don’t know if i am in the minority here, but i wouldn’t mind paying for a substantial core upgrade, if that would ensure thorough betatesting of backwards compability.
     
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  41. martschuffing

    martschuffing Well-Known Member

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    Make ap file structure togglable.
     
  42. Doomotron

    Doomotron Well-Known Member

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    It isn't an option as far as I am aware, any content released via Steam will be in the AP format.
     
  43. rare_common_sense

    rare_common_sense Well-Known Member

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    I definitely feel that consist editor building should be in the same way route building is done. Or make it where consists created in the editor can actually be saved to use across on any route.

    The editor as it stands has been one feature I haven’t been able to use for a good couple of years.

    I’d also like to see better workshop support where modifications can be uploaded and used with going through the hassle of acquiring them through 3rd party websites and possible installing them wrong which can cause all sorts of issues within itself.
     
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  44. Doomotron

    Doomotron Well-Known Member

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    Hopefully a separate folder for mods can be used so verifications don't delete every mod that's been installed in Assets.
     
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  45. Reef

    Reef Well-Known Member

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    1) That would either break literally every modification out there (10's of thousands by now maybe?) or would (have to be) be backward compatible which would achieve nothing because everyone would keep their old modifications exactly where they currently are (not in a mod folder) that's a huge waste of human man hours and resources to effectively change nothing made in the last 9yrs. Also see point 2 because that's relevant to this part also.

    2) A verification deletes nothing, it will replace files that don't match what's in its database but will not delete anything outside of an .ap archive (it is called an archive because all an .ap is is a renamed .zip archive), there are older routes that are not in .ap archives and any modified files within those archives (absolutely the wrong way to modify this game anyway) will be replaced, also the same applies to files in other locations for example a custom HUD texture file in data/textures/frontend will be replaced (just keep a copy somewhere else on your system to replace the replaced files after the verification).

    You need to get to the bottom of your particular issue because affixing the blame with Steams verification process is incorrect and it's stonewalling you from finding the real culprit.

    I'd advise you to read this post as it explains very well what a file verification by Steam can and cannot do. >> https://forums.dovetailgames.com/th...tion-what-it-does-doesnt-do-an-opinion.62821/
     
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  46. cscarpenter

    cscarpenter Well-Known Member

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  47. QO1922

    QO1922 Member

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    This is very good news but it comes late (too late). In my opinion there are too many updates and I don't know how it will affect to the old DLC. At the moment I am still waiting for the bug fix of the pantographs of the TGV réseau (irony)
     
  48. mindenjohn

    mindenjohn Well-Known Member

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    They can be saved, I do it all the time as it saves hours in scenario building time.
    The editor is the best feature of TS20XX/Classic. If I, at nearly 75, can use it, with ease, it is not a DTG problem. I build routes, scenarios and do repaints. I use the editor every day.
    In view of both the above points - have you actually read the manual or watched any YouTube videos showing how to....?
     
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  49. I'm happy to hear that the game is gonna receive a few upgrades in the near future.
    I'm also worried what this will mean for older content? A few times in the past changes have been made that have ruined routes that I've spent months working on.

    My main question is.... if the upgrades do pose a problem can we leave tsc where its at and not be forced to upgrade it?
     
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  50. martschuffing

    martschuffing Well-Known Member

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    Then change the ap format to 7zip.
     

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