Alan Thompson Simulation Route Discussion/speculation Thread

The companies house shows some money in the bank at least. They should be paying contractors fairly. Wonder if there were contracts drawn up.
I used to have time for their twitch but ended up being one big circle jerk and got old.

 

TSC has some great stuff, but yes download multiple items to get a route to not be full of milk bottles and then find the last few are missing. TSW provides the quick drive solution but lacks the content and details that many 3rd parties bring to TSC. I wonder how many years TSW has in it as I have said before I reckon it's stagnating from an enthusiast point of view *other views are available. There needs to be a balance between the accessibility of TSC and its editors and the timetable power of TSW.

 

In TSW I play around with the weather or use the Live Weather mod in Timetable mode and use the spawn train feature to add an additional service to the timetable. If you happen to have spawned just as a stopper leaves, you can have a drive on yellows and frequent reds. That fulfills my need for something unexpected, you can cause a bit of chaos with other timetabled services sometimes, which is fun.

I also love being able to swap ends and go back. Which is another benefit over TSC.

 

I keep going back to TSC.. There are so many well modelled trains plus plenty from different eras, the amount of steam period content keeps growing. I have discovered that making quick drives based on real life movements gives as close as possible to a good alternative to timetable mode, it isn't as good of course.

I will keep playing TSW and buying content but I suspect not as much as I have been. I do find TSW can get frustrating and I do crave more period routes. The lack of steam content is the biggest downside for me however.

 

Biggest problem with QD in TSC is that you can’t specify a stopping pattern or actually define a timetable to run to.

I’m currently reinstalling TSC after deciding it was time for a triage of the massive amount of content, but seem to have stalled in my enthusiasm for doing so. As you say, mainly worth it for the steam traction and some of the more obscure routes which will never see the light of day in TSW.

 

You can't, although I believe you can in RW enhancer but I stopped using it as it is too clunky and takes ages to gather the files every time you run it.

I just get one of my passenger or working timetables and start the scenario at a given time and follow the timetable and stop where required. You can set quick drives AI spawn points so different trains might appear so each one doesn't need to be the same. Of course you can have more than one quick drive so can have different eras.

I find making timetables scenarios now just too time consuming.

 

That’s what I’ve done but if the platform is on a loop line not on the designated path, you’ll be out of luck. Or your virtual passengers will be!

Sadly the chances of TSC getting any more enhancements is next to nothing. In fact, if I remember, I intend to pose the question on the upcoming TSW Roadmap Q&A (as TSC doesn’t get a Roadmap) to ask whether it has now been deemed end of life as regards further updates or fixes. Then again, TSW fixes and updates seem to have stalled as well. Maybe the programmer(s) have all been diverted to this rumoured new Subway game!

 

I have been a bit out of touch with TSC but it was only a year ago or so they were upgrading it. It still think it has a place inside TSW.

Just as an aside I have created my own quick drive scenarios with my own paths.

I do hope that the ATS route will still emerge as the more third party developers the better.

 

Indeed, we were getting a bit sidetracked!

I know it won’t get answered but still worth asking about in the Roadmap Q&A whether partnering with what appears to be a rather volatile group, was such a good idea. Devils Advocate!

 

Indeed, I'll look out for it!

 

I'm not going to comment on consoles generally holding things back, but PC should definitely get the full fat timetable if that platform can run it okay.

DTG often say one thing and do another, look at some recent add on gameplay packs for TSW5, some of the content isn't available for Gen8 systems. What happened to platform parity there? If it's okay in this instance, then it should be okay to release the full WCML timetable update with the extra railtours Liam added for PC only with a console release later once those platforms issues are sorted.

I would've thought that DTG would actually benefit from this as PC players could report any potential issues with the extra services and they could then be patched up before the timetable hits console platforms.

 

I dont think the game can differentiate between PC and Gen9, based on the editor (unless that was added for tsw5)

 

Where did it say that? I took gen9 and pc should get all the layers but gen8 probaly not.

 

Taken from the Gameplay packs article:

"For Train Sim World 5, there are 3 gameplay packs that add services to the game’s three core routes for 9th Generation Console and PC players. These can be purchased separately for $5.99/£4.99/€5.99, or as a Gameplay Add-on Bundle for $13.99/£11.99/€13.99.

As an important note, these gameplay packs will only release for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC via Steam and Epic."

8th Generation systems got cut out. Understandably the writing is on the wall for them at this point but DTG always made a point of parity between platforms that the game is available on. If that's out of the window now, then I think if PC can run the full fat WCML South timetable then DTG should put it on that platform with reduced timetable option for the lower-end machines. Then release it later for the consoles once all this optimisation work is complete.

 

But that doesn't mean consoles are holding the rest back we still get them and full timetables.

Just DTG has to cut down for 8th gen or they don't get it at all.

But thats not holding anything back for 9th gen or PC.

 

I never said consoles were holding TSW back overall. I'm only contesting the adamant stance on parity DTG used to have which has become more lax recently. Just saying that DTG shouldn't temporarily cut down a timetable for one platform, just because it can't run on others. So, if a PC could run the WCML South timetable with all the cut railtours that Liam setup now, then that full timetable should come out on PC.

The reason it was cut down was because the route needs optimisation work on console platforms, they could put the full thing out on PC then bring it out at a later date to consoles once that optimisation work is completed. The PC players could even pickup on any potential issues on said timetable, report them to DTG so that the timetable gets further improvements which would be there when it comes out on console.

I'm not one annoying of the "c0NsoLeS ArE HoLDiNg Us bAcK" crowd. I own a PS4 & PS5 myself, I just don't play TSW on them anymore.

 

You I get it now. Thanks for explaining what you meant to me..without freaking out like some do on these forums.

 

Just to bring what I put in another post here as well, it rehashes some stuff I have said already but also goes into a little more detail about my experiences whilst working on the TSW side with ATS.


I worked on the ATS route and let me just say this. I left because of many issues with ATS Management. I was forced into taking a massively undervalued settlement for my work on the route. I worked 7 days a week for 8+ hours a day for approx 5 months and they only offered me £1000 for all of my work. Eventually I got to £3.3k but that was after weeks of back and forth whilst being in the middle of trying to move house and being unwell. It was a lot of un-needed stress. I wanted my work bought out as ATS failed from a management perspective to ensure the route would hit certain internal deadlines which due to their own failures (which they blamed the devs for) meant it missed every key deadline. This led to me wanting to be done with it and to either get paid for my work/time or to have my work revoked. Eventually the settlement was done, sometime in december however a big part of this decision was the fact that other people involved hadn't been paid.

On top of this, you can now see on the roadmap its been pushed back. I have seen several comments about it "being held up in QA" this is technically correct but when you go to QA with an unfinished project when people would vanish days and weeks at a time, it is no surprise the work was never finished.

I must state that the overall dev team was fantastic and so are DTG. This route has purely been at the point of being pushed back because of the failures of ATS Management and no one else. I must be clear, not the TSW team management as that was seperate from the overall ATS Management.

Honestly I have said it before, I want to see the route still come out, we all worked very hard on it and whilst people have mixed opinions on it, its not been shown off enough and that again is at the failures of ATS Management. Looking back at it now, I am really not surprised as ATS have never been keen on TSW and whilst to the community they express that they are more interested, trust me internally, they are not.

Should the route get finished and released (I'm sure it will and I hope it does), I just hope everyone else doesnt have to go through what I went through in December. The final thing I'll say is I have been meaning to speak up sooner and also in more detail about this but honestly it has been something I have had to think about but after a facebook message I received from Alan yesterday about another post in the TSC side of the forums, I have decided to just come clean and tell it how it is. I won't speak on behalf of other developers but I will say that I am likely not the only person who has ended up with a lot of issues to do wtih ATS especially as a lot of us left at the same time leaving them with 1 or 2 people left working on the route. They may of found more people since then however.

 

A brave and honest statement. More or less confirming the lack of certain skills in AT.

 

As far as TSW, majority of the original team are no longer working on it. Look who would want to when you're blamed for other peoples errors. Back in December as well I should mention that one of the current ATS team also slandered me on social media whilst talking about my on going attempts to reach a settlement offer for all of my works with ATS. They also originally sent me a ceast and desist to Wrightline Sim for the fact we listed some of their routes as requirements for some of our work in TSC. This was later dropped once I took the lowered £3.3k settlement, so pretty clear the intentions behind all that.

 

Remarkable, a very brave statement and an interesting read. Thank you

 

They only offered you 1K originally? That's criminal behaviour tbh what a joke. Hope you're part of a better team now and I seriously think DTG should investigate this because that is awful

 

I second that. I just hope the mods don’t decide to bury it. Taking a screen dump now.

 

Honestly your hourly rate is disgusting, tantamount to slave labour. If the product is released I don't feel inclined to line the pockets of ATS if this is how they treat their contractors.

 

If the route is good, I'd rather boycott it overall if the staff in the backround are being treated like cxxp... I worked for Modelzone back in the day, and when we were made redundant our wages were paid incorrectly, then not at all by Deloitte the administrators... It can leave you financially anxious which isn't a nice feeling.

Anyway, I hope lessons will be learnt internally about how to treat staff working on a project. I'd quite happily boycott such a thing if anymore comes to light. My £30 wouldn't even be a lot, but I'd rather not give £30 to someone with those type of work practices.

 

This is not true for TSC though... ATS still has a bunch of great scenarios coming out daily on the website and they have some stuff as payware, that you can´t get anywhere else (Class 185, Chat moss etc.).
As someone, who has moved back to TSC full time, I´m glad to hear that they are "secretly" focusing on TSC afterall. I´m not suprised to hear it, but I can understand the disappointment from TSW players. I felt the same disappointment when DTG, TSG and Rivet abandoned TS Classic. Just the way it goes, I guess.

 

Really sorry to hear about the issues with management of this route’s development.

Unfortunately this makes me worry for its future. No route is released bug-free, so who is going to do the patching if management have driven off the majority of the dev team?

 

To be fair, I´ve heard stories like this in privat chats from other places over the years... If your not working directly at Dovetail Games, TSC/TSW is not a venture, that will make you big amounts of cash. Many creators have stated publicly over 15 years, that train sim does not pay well and it´s not worth it. I spent several years working on a freeware route and had 150 Euros worth of donations to show for. But at the end of day, I was my own boss and could use any asset, I wanted to. I think train sim should be seen as hobby or apply for a full time job at Dovetail. There seems to be not much in the middle. Just what I´ve heard over the past 10 years.

I don´t know what happens at ATS... but I´m sure these kinds of fights and break up´s take place at other devolopers for train sim . At least I´ve heard so over the years.
Just saying, because I´m seeing where this thread is going to end up...and it won´t be nice.

 

The two ATS DLC you mention are years old now. Yes, there's a healthy number of scenarios for free but the actual product releases seem to have slowed to a crawl. The Stadler Flirt has been in production for 4 years now and only part one is out. Likewise the updated Great Eastern Line, several routes promised have not appeared.

Ultimately neither of us know how the number of subs is doing. I ducked out because the discount on new products didn't go anywhere near to paying for the subscription like it used to when they were releasing new DLC like Chat Moss and the 185 on a more regular basis.
Having been with ATS from the very start, I probably would have renewed this year if my wife and I weren't both looking for work, but having taken an axe to most of my subscriptions it was one of the easier cut-backs for me to make.

 

Its shocking to see how little is paid to the dev involved for the time spent. I have been around Train Sim for long enough to remember when it was a good blend of freeware and paid for DLC, when it came to paid for DLC it was easier to compare it with the freeware. Now although routes are being worked on for TSW by the community and I applaud that effort it really is a different scene now.

 

I fully agree with this and I´ve complained about it on the facebook publicly a while ago. You´ve made good points.

 

Well done for speaking up Kezz, it's really important the community get to hear what is going on. I for one will not be spending any money on ATS products, if they treat their staff with such disdain.

 

Just to make a point here, they have had stuff in development now for years with no light of day plus they have driven off people on that side too again due to things either being poorly managed or people not being paid. I used to work for them on both sides and I can tell you there was one prime example where I had to argue with them over payment on a project which boiled down to £10, they want to cheap out as much as possible and continue to reap the benefit. I.e the devs make way under minimum wage whilst they can sit pay their bills, drink on streams, etc etc.

I shouldve made it clear that these issues were not exclusive to the TSW team. Also TSW is far more sustainable income wise than TSC is. Saying that other devs would likely be the same is incorrect. The likes of JT and other studios don't appear to have these sort of issues at all. It is true that cost of development is higher in TSW but the benefit is also much higher.

 

Unfortunately the issue is, this isn't the first time ATS have had these kind of disuptes. There was a whole court case involving two other developers that worked on the Class 185 and Class 745 which experienced similar things. Ultimately they should've learnt from that but never did.

 

TSC is a much nicer and easier place to look for and download scenarios than ATS.

 

Hi Kezz The amount of people sharing these stories public is concerning at this point. I am only a customer at ATS and I don´t know what´s going there. I was just saying, that making money with TSC has always been a hard thing. Seems they are way too many hands involved at ATS. I was always told when making Payware content for TSC, start a job a DTG or do it alone and sell it your own website...otherwise it won´t be worth it.

Yes, I sadly have to agree with this. That´s why the majority of German payware producers have moved to TSW. It´s a money issue... the German TSC community is basicly a freeware scene at this point. Allthough some keep coming back to TSC for the diversity. Tom from JT was doing a TSC building stream the other day, allthough they seem to have great success with TSW.

 

Yeah get what you mean, the way I look at it is this

TSC is great as a hobby that you can make a little bit of extra cash on the side. TSW development is basically a full on game dev job but comes with good money. Both games have their place in my opinion but trying to sustain a business on TSC is just not really something I see how that works out long term.

 

I was always baffled how ATS makes money with such a huge team of people working on TSC add-ons. As said, from the German community I knew, that this was basicly not possible. I´ll just leave it at that.

 

I know from when I built a couple of payware routes for MSTS it was never going to be a full time viable venture. Working first with 3DTrain Stuff then Blue Arrow, it was basically something to do in spare time with a bit of pocket money at the end. The original Cambrian Coast line took nearly a year but some of that was waiting for the 3D models to be made and the rolling stock to be finished. Of course, working with the MSTS route editor, or indeed even Trainz or TSC is far easier than what I’ve seen of the TSW editor. And there to some extent lies the problem. DTG have adopted a very complex system for a genre which doesn’t really generate the big numbers of sales to justify having people having to work full time on it, but too long winded to get very far with an hour or two of spare time. Catch 22 to some extent.

 

Train Simming is a bit like Railway modelling, everyone has there own niche that they wish to recreate. Making that nigh on impossible is not good for community spirit. I had a go in the editor, gave up after an hour. Joined the local model club instead for a creative output whilst hoping the likes of JT keep the older stuff in TSW alive as without them it wouldnt be as good.

 

Like a lot of hobbyist work. My wife's a jewellery designer and maker, she quit her job because she needed time to set up her home workshop and start repairing old stuff and making new designs to sell with her own hallmark.

Now you'd think there would be a lot of money in jewelry, more so than building train sim routes, but she's now got to go back to full time work and work in the evenings to slowly build-up her own business. Then she can quit her day job in 10 years when the mortgage is paid.

As was said, you're best off releasing your own stuff but it won't be enough to pay the bills. This is hitting the arts too, there's a phrase in the music industry at the moment "If you can afford to start a band, you either have rich parents or a second job".

 

The other annoyance when I did payware was as the royalties were outside my normal PAYE income tax arrangement, I ended up having to submit a self assessment form to the tax office for three years to declare the extra income with my tax code adjusted for it accordingly. That went on long after the royalties from 3DTS dried up. Although it’s water under the bridge now, I never received a penny of royalties in respect of the portion of my original work that went into their second version of the Cambrian Line. I didn’t even get a complimentary copy of the route CD!. And while I never had any issue getting paid by Blue Arrow for my part in the Southern add on (the route from Woking to Basingstoke), I did hear there was a lot of agro behind the scenes with the guy running the outfit and some people weren’t getting paid for their work.

Moral of this story for DTG, given all these fly by night developers and the fragile economic viability between time and production of a route to high payware standards… make the bloody editor easier to use, supply a decent coherent manual and open TSW up properly to the hobby developer and for freeware in the same way we enjoy with MSTS, Trainz and TSC…

 

AMEN to that!

But UE by its design is very constricting, and DTG's QA chain and licensing also come into play, because, well, consoles are their main market and source of income.
DTG probably don't want to get into legal trouble when non-licensed road names etc appear in any official channel, store or commercial form?

 

Yes I did ponder the console issue when posting above. Another Catch 22, really. Without the console market, TSW would probably itself not be viable but immediately ties down creative output to what can be fed through DTG, which is not going to be done as freeware! They don’t even want stuff putting on Steam Workshop.

 

It’s true that Alan has said he doesn’t really like TSW, and I don’t really think he’s that big on the game even now. But he’s also said many times ATS is putting their money where their mouth is with this route, so let’s just wait and see how things turn out.

 

Ironically, not actually putting their money where it should have gone to, it seems. I was looking forward to this route, but I'd rather not support this kind of business practice.

 

Yes the arts are struggling. I have friends who are professional musicians in the classical world, it isn't something to do if you want a luxury lifestyle. I would love to give up full time work but there isn't enough money in organ playing anymore.

I suppose with gaming if you are working at the niche end of the sector, like train simulations you aren't going to ever end up rich!

 

Not sure that many in the more popular gaming genres are rich either other than those at the top. Quite a few software houses round my neck of the woods but never hear of them being well paid.

 

An interesting insight into the practices of ATS.

Sounds like you are better off out of it, hopefully you and the other developers can get together and create things for TSW you will be duly rewarded for, I certainly hope this bad experience hasn't put you and the others off creating future content for either a separate company or possibly your own as the Manchester route was looking a wonderful route.

 

With this whole money issue and how viable TSW is, ATS probably would've found it easier if they hadn't shot themselves in the foot before their first route launched