Dunno, but he’s still on YouTube. Are we to read anything into his latest video being on Farming Simulator, and not a Train Sim video to be seen? Coincidence I’m sure.
I appreciate that, as I said I don’t know the answer to your question. You could always ask him through his YouTube channel though.
June 2020 to around Feb 2021 although he had been winding down as more CM managers joined in the preceding months.
Sam rotates through a bunch of stuff on his channel. Looking back, he had two TSW vids last November, one last April, and one in October 2021, which is as far back as I went. Not a stretch to think that creating or participating in TSW vids regularly for work might have something to do with that.
I can't seem to find a Roadmap stream earlier than 1 Sept 2020. Ah: that's because the very first Roadmap in text was just 2 weeks before that, on 18 August. A Sam initiative, obviously
In this thread is where he announced it https://forums.dovetailgames.com/threads/community-manager-reporting-for-duty.23002/
Notice what's changed? Take a journey with us as we look at the Roadmap for the first time... When we announced Train Sim World 2 we talked about revealing our Roadmap, today is the first of a regular update to give you a longer-term view of what is coming to the simulation. It is a living record that will be updated frequently as projects being worked on move through the development cycle. The Roadmap is not a precise-to-the-second release schedule as we are often looking many months ahead at projects that are only in a planning stage. It is also subject to change. There will be occasions where items in development have their work suspended or stopped entirely, and in those cases we'll give an explanation as to our reasons for doing so, and remove them from the Roadmap. This is a document that details what we are working on, not what we might, possibly, maybe want to work on in the future. It details what is being done, not what we hope to do. Our purpose here is to give you a good idea of where our priorities are along with a rough idea of when you can anticipate new routes, features or fixes to be released. This is going to take a little time to become more self-explanatory. In this first instance you have no frame of reference, but over time this should prove to be a useful way for you to check whether something you're interested in has caught the developers' attention. Included in this Roadmap are forthcoming routes, locos and trains. It also includes new features, upgrades and fixes! Given the nature of Preserved Collection and its staggered releases, this first instance also shows their progress however these will be replaced in the list by development tasks relating directly to your feedback after the game has launched. If and when gameplay issues are reported we'll add their investigation to the list, and when changes or updates are then worked on, they too will be listed. The Roadmap is split into four distinct sections. In Planning - If we're talking about a new route or feature here this is the research phase, where project scope is set and material to support development is gathered. If this relates to a bug or other gameplay problem this represents the team investigating and replicating the reports gained from players. When this planning stage is complete, the project moves forward to... In Production - Projects listed in this section are actively being developed. Depending on what the project is this can take many months to complete, or it could be a matter of days. As you see more projects moving through the Roadmap you will build an understanding of the likely development time required. Upcoming - When a project reaches the upcoming section it has entered final testing and iteration. Again, depending on the scale of the project the upcoming stage may be of varied length. Next Arrival - The final stage of the Roadmap will show everything we're planning to include in the next game update. This could be a single item, or it might include many different projects at once. Updates are released steadily - we don't push things out the second they're ready as releases need to be properly aligned to arrive on all platforms at the same time. As above, you'll get a feel for the delay between something being ready for release and it is arriving in an update as you see this process in action. We're aiming to update this Roadmap every fortnight to provide you current information regularly. As with the game itself, the Roadmap will evolve over time in order to better serve the community. Any feedback you have is welcomed, and we very much look forward to providing the first update shortly after the game releases.
At some point a couple of years ago, it appears that a deliberate decision was made to change the Roadmap from a fairly informative, somewhat player- driven feature to more of a PR exercise which is generally where it is now. I used to watch it live. Recently, I skim through the replay, looking for something worthwhile, and not often finding it. The most recent edition though, I think in March or April, seemed to harken back to the original idea. Just an aberration I guess.
Sam probably decided playing good bobby bad bobby was pointless since his tough questions never lead to anything at DTG getting improved for the better,everything has remained statis quo.
Back in Sam's day he burned into our brains "If it's not in the Roadmap, it's not being worked on." And it was, at the time, true. Any project that had somebody at DTG doing work on it was published, even if only in the "In Planning" section. These days we have to rely on Steam depots and the posting of achievements to get anything like advance notice of projects which have been in the works for months.
They changed that because when they wrote in the roadmap that route X was in the planning stage they would get several posts a week asking when X would release, and it was many months away. I guess they just went too far on how long they keep it secret now.
