DTG have been able to keep Train Simulator Classic alive for years, because they are using their own game engine, but TSW all all built on Unreal Engine 4. Epic games will eventually drop all support for UE4, and that may be sooner rather than later now that UE5 is in full swing. So how long can we really expect the yearly TSW releases to continue, before DTG tell us all our purchased DLC is obsolete and we have to start over on whatever their next train simulator is going to be called? It's not going to be a simple case of "All your TSW content can be used in the new game", and i think a lot of people don't realize (or just don't want to accept the fact) that you just can't port old UE4 content into a new UE5 game. I'm not trying to say that the sky is falling, but i think a lot of people are going to get an expensive shock in the not too distant future. TSW is not going to be another TSC with a 15+ year lifespan.
You will be able to play the TSW UE4.26 version for many years. In the currently unlikely event of TSW switching to UE5, you will still keep TSW4 and be able to play it, you'll not lose anything. I can still play DeusEx, which runs on UE1. Or RtCW (idTech 3). I don't understand why you think it would need "support". If the code runs it runs. Epic cannot remove the engine from released games
Unreal 3 was still supported for a long time, Unreal 4 still has a long life of support left. It's really not an issue for another 5+ years.
I feel this is a question which will not be officially answered and will be a case of wait and see. In theory it should be fine but who knows!
In theory, it can be used forever more. Many things work on old technology still, the only problem being they are not privy to the features of the newer technology. TSW is no different.
Well, basically. Absolutely nothing. Game's not going to implode in a Black Hole if UE4 isn't supported anymore... I hope. But DTG will likely be free to use the engine and probably will for many years to come. It won't have UE5 features, but I'd rather have them hopefully fix this game in UE4 instead of trying a Catastrophic release in UE5. I think this whole UE5 panic/obsession is just a tad bit unwarranted.
I see UE5 as a potential saviour what needs adopting for TSW, I blame UE4 (.26 to be precise) for the biggest issue in TSW for me (that’s why)
Z-Fighting started, I remember noticing it appeared after it updated to 4.26 at rush hour time, it’s likely a core issue what could potentially resolve itself with a core update (I’m willing to take any chance for that fix)
But if they don't use UE4 to its full potential (which they haven't from what I've heard), then moving to UE5 would be pointless.
Tbh, nothing else matters with game right now to me other than the issue I’m very fed up with, as long as that’s not resolved every other issue could be whatever cause there’s no way for me passed the first to even think on the rest. the issue to me is quite like a broken disk, I can’t get into the game to notice or have thoughts on the rest
Yeah gonna be honest, UE5 isn't going to be a savior realistically. You may hate Z-Fighting, but the issues that'll arise because the entire dev team has to now move and adapt to UE5 is going to make Z-Fighting look like an angel. The game's going to look pretty with the all new graphics and lighting, but it's going to run like it had it's brain cut in half. In my opinion, DTG should've never used the Unreal Engine to build a Train Sim. However, now they have, and they'll have to slowly fix the game bit by bit, if they ever manage to do that. Not to forget that there's several 3rd Party Community route projects going on right now that'd be completely derailed by a drastic move as that.
No engine would have been suitable for a train sim. No matter what engine they chose, it would have to be heavily modified to do what it's supposed to do since no engine does full train simulation from the start. Dtg would have had to fix things regardless of what engine they use.
What would define the end of support? The last version release, 4.27, came in August 2021. But it's also free and open source, so technically can be used and supported as long as someone feels like working with/on it.
Maybe something like a new version of the operating system not supporting something it has used, or new generation of consoles to which UE4 projects can't be deployed anymore. It probably won't happen anytime soon, but if it does, there will be compatibility updates, at least from developers who care about their games still working there without porting to a new engine, or through an OS patch giving such compatibility (otherwise there's also a possibility of emulation with the required feature sets still being available).
Train Simulator (and probably MSTS as well) were custom engines and were much more suitable for what they needed to do than Unreal for TSW. There are countless issues with using Unreal for a game like this when compared to a more open engine like the TS and MSTS engines. DTG should have put in the extra time and effort to create a custom engine for TSW, and if I was in charge ten years ago when TSW was conceived (it's shocking to believe that TSW was announced roughly a decade ago) and couldn't create a custom engine I would have tried to modify Train Simulator to include TSW features - there aren't many TSW features I can think of that are impossible to do in Train Simulator, although there are certainly difficult ones.
Given what I've heard about Searchlight Simulations development with their SimRail stuff, Unity has been easier to work with than TSC's engine, and with TSW and Unreal being harder to work with than TSC......
Maybe the Unity of today isn’t the same as the Unity DTG didn’t choose to start developing TSW with a decade ago.
Probably not, but hindsight is a wonderful thing. Of course even if the Unity of today existed ten years ago, there would be no guarantee DTG would be able to make it work anyway.
It's a lot, lot, lot more work to develop an engine from scratch than to modify an off the shelf option. For a developer of DTGs size, it's probably not financially viable. I also doubt they have anywhere near the engineering expertise to pull it off. Considering the issues TSC suffers from. Unity has it's own issues, from technical, to the fact the engine almost imploded last year due to their scummy management practices and trying to change the T&Cs. Plenty of devs jumped ship from unity as a result, and I'm sure more will be wary of it from now on.
Cities: Skylines II bet on Unity and it’s caused them serious problems - plenty of commentary out there on that. Perfectly fine if you’re doing a little 2D RPG - but if you’re shunting large amounts of data around in innovative ways, it’s a risk.
Given everything that has happened with Unity over the last year, many smaller developers are now not touching them with a bargepole and some are even considering moving from Unity to Unreal.
For the small handful of people here who play Railroads Online, we remember the pitfalls of a railway game switching from UE4 to UE5. Movement almost got moved to a linear path like Trainz, the whole game seemed pinned at minimum graphics even while on maximum one's, all optimisation went out the window overnight. Then came the Unreal error crashes, and the fact that for about a year every time they released an update the same exact breaks would resurface. Now maybe you can put that down to the game being a smaller game on an indie scale with only a handful of developers, but given TSW's track record I think it would be safe to say that such a move would be TSW2 Rush Hour all over again but ten times worse, and there's no way DTG don't know that. This game will keep running along just fine on 4.26, the dev tools will always be available to DTG since I believe they use their own modified version to some degree, and if one day they are backed into a corner and left with no choice I imagine the move to UE5 would come in the form of a completely new game, with whatever 4.26 version that exists by that point still just as playable as every other game that uses older versions of the engine.
Rail Simulator was funded (at least in part) by Fund4Games and I assume EA contributed as well. What we got was an engine with a huge amount of potential that is still being used and upgraded to this day. So while modifying an engine is the cheaper and simpler option, it isn't always the best option. In hindsight, DTG investing more time and money into a custom engine would have likely saved them from a lot of issues they have now.
As an engineer myself, I agree, but the business reality is that if the choice was between a custom engine or no TSW, no one would have put down the money to make TSW. And I’d rather have TSW, so an off-the-shelf engine is what happened.
UE5 games can and have been ported/converted to UE5, speaking from my own personal experience, also fernbus, a UE4 game that predates TSW is now using UE5
Not really a fair comparison. Tsw is more of its own thing. Each dlc built and treated like its own dlc and requires manual updating individually which takes a long time. Core changes don't apply to older dlcs either
Just because they do in house doesn't mean they don't have to fix things. No engine is perfect. I know several games that used an in house engine that turned out really poorly at launch.
It’s written in my reply what you replied to, there’s not much more I can add than that to this question.
bethesda uses their own engine, they have a reputation for bugs. I think that’s a pretty good example own engines are not at all bug free.
probably but i think it also means any issue especially major and the only person to turn to is themselves. ultimately I don’t see self contained providing much use. It’s probably quite a big thing to maintain and ultimately develop and I don’t think DTG should be diverting major resources to something quite off track without major gain.
Though usually the modding community with the Creation Kit Bethesda releases, they can fix bug themselves. Can't really do much with DTGs public editor.
In Bethesda's defense, the bugs aren't usually engine related more often than not. They are content/scripting related nine times out of ten. There are some engine bugs, but they don't make anywhere near the majority.
origin wasn’t a concern of my statement above only the fact that games with their own engines aren’t bug free and that’s it. I think you “reinforced” what I was saying actually
Remembering mods are PC only as it stands and have zero effect on console as it stands. they could fix every problem ever with TSW, it makes no difference to me or many other players.
And Ironically they have said they are swapping from their in-house engine to an OTS engine for future games I believe?
Cyberpunk 2 is being built on ue5 which requires them to remake a bunch of stuff. Whether it's good or not depends on how they do it. Cyberpunk had a lot of dev time but it was a mess at launch
