What Type Of Gameplay Do You Prefer? Scenarios/timetable/journey Mode

Spikeyorks, I'm afraid I can't go into the internal workings, but thank you for the detailed post describing what you view as the major issues with the way Scenario Planner currently works. I'll look at raising the points internally and see what can be done about everything you raised.

The reason I took 'umbrage' with your post was because, as a developer, your implication regarding scenario work was that we don't try. I can assure you that isn't the case at all, and we work extremely hard week in and week out to produce content that we believe the community will enjoy. When we miss the mark, we do feel a bit crestfallen because we feel our efforts went to waste.

This is why threads with constructive suggestions on how we could improve are so important.

 

Overall, service mode is my favourite way to play. I do enjoy playing scenarios too as long they’re something unusual that you wouldn’t normally see playing the timetable mode such as the pickup/drop-off goods on Peak Forest, rescuing a failed train, stuff like that.

One thing I’d like DTG to address is journey mode. I personally think that services completed from the service mode timetable should be ticked off in the journey screen, just like how it works for tutorials and scenarios. While it is useful for new players and those who don’t want to spend long deciding what service to play to have a curated playlist by the developer, it also makes those of us who have already completed those services in timetable mode have to play them again from the journey menu if aiming for 100% completion. This means you either have to play some services twice which is a huge time sink on some routes, or you have to play journey mode first to get those services ticked off, I often find journey mode outstays it’s welcome after a handful of runs.

Marking services as complete in journey if done in timetable mode will make journey mode completely optional. I feel this makes for a more player friendly experience, those who play journey can still enjoy it while those who don’t can ignore it and still have their completion progress marked correctly.

 

Thanks for reading my post. It was a long one (and I now realise that I missed about another couple of key points involving Saves and Portals......might add them briefly on the end of this).

The cliche is "A bad workman blames his tools"........in this case it might be the case that the DTG team that works on scenarios SHOULD blame the tools made available to them. Because it is the tools, or the lack of them, or the poor design of them, that is stopping the community from being able to create realistic scenarios. (Assuming the DTG team actually use the same tools we get given?).

Rob my guess is that you create your scenarios by using the full editor and not by using Scenario Planner. Would that be correct? If so then might that explain why DTG, or even your good self, has lost track of how little Scenario Planner can do in its current state? If you don't use the tool yourself then how can you know if it is working correctly or not?

As an example of the inadequacies of the current system here is the breakdown of the paths available to the community to use on the most recent Manchester Airport route. Paths are what makes Scenario Planner work (or not work).

The route shipped with a total of 239 paths available for use in Scenario Planner. (For those that don't know that means there are 239 different 'routings' that you can allocate to either the Player Service or any AI services when designing your scenario). This is, actually, a very impressive number of paths. You would think I would be pleased by that wouldn't you?
Well let's see the breakdown of that number.

1) Of the 239 paths a total of 28 are runs from Piccadilly (all platforms) to Alderley Edge via either the slow or fast lines.
2) Another 28 are runs from Alderley Edge to Piccadilly (all platforms) via either the slow or fast lines.
3) 14 paths are runs from Piccadilly (all platforms) to Ashburys (on the Glossop line).
4) 14 paths are runs from Ashburys returning to Piccadilly (all platforms).
5) A whopping 56 paths run from Piccadilly (all platforms) to Manchester Airport (all platforms).
6) And another 56 paths run from Manchester Airport (all platforms) to Piccadilly (all platforms).
7) 8 paths run to and from Alderley Edge to either the sidings there or the portal at Chelford.
8) 8 paths run to and from Piccadilly 13/14 to Oxford Rd (all platforms).

So out of the 239 paths made available for use in Scenario Planner a massive 212 of them (or 89%) are just through runs from one end of the route (Manchester + Portal) to the other end (Alderley Edge + Portal or Airport) with a slight diversion to Ashburys on the Glossop line.

Of the 27 paths that are left a total of 12 of these are used up bring Cheadle Hulme and Hazel Grove branches into play. (Not necessarily a bad thing as it adds variety to Stockport but that does mean there are now only 15 paths left for "creativity" purposes and since paths are usually paired then that really means only 7 routings are left).

How many of these remaining 7 routings go to/from Longsight depot? - NONE. (even though there are 45 sidings available).
How many of these routings go to Ardwick depot? - NONE. (even though there are 19 sidings / markers available).
Manchester International Depot? - NONE
Stockport Sidings? - NONE
Manchester Piccadilly Sidings or Loops? - NONE
As a result all the above areas of interest are unavailable to Scenario Planner. Why?

This, together with the other issues that I have already highlighted, is why Scenario Planner isn't fit for purpose. The fact that this isn't picked up at the Design Point or at Beta Testing suggests to me that DTG have little interest in Scenarios. What other reason could it be?
*** IMPORTANT NOTE - EVERY route is like this. I just picked Manchester Airport because it is the newest route and, therefore, demonstrates current DTG thinking re route releases.

So Rob here is the big question. If "everyone is trying" how does things like this slip through the net each time? Every route is like this so DTG aren't learning from their previous errors / oversights.

My guess is that it is because you and your team use the full Editor and, possibly, never even look at Scenario Planner. You can't do......because if you did then the above, and all my other points, would whack you between the eyes every single time.

 

You probably won't know this but I have actually produced work for DTG in the distant past and I am aware of the 'restrictions' that are placed on the Creative thought process when you make your scenarios. I'm not intending to criticise anyone by talking about Scenario Planner and am certainly not implying that you have "missed the mark" with any scenario that you have produced. It is the tools (or Scenario Planner itself) that I am criticising. Perhaps you are responsible for these, perhaps you are not. Either way someone isn't reviewing them and keeping them up to date.

Couple more points;

1) PORTALS - Whilst portals let you stack trains inside them they will only let them depart in train length order. A shorter train will never be allowed to leave a portal before a longer train. In fact, give a very short train the earliest departure time from a portal in a scenario and you might never see an AI service at all. Why does that happen?

2) PORTALS (2) - Stack two different services in a portal that have similar couplings and they will appear coupled together departing at the time of the earliest service. (24 car Class 710 rake on the C2C lines at Barking anyone?) This, and point (1) severely restricts what you can do with Portals. So why not do away with the concept of portals and replace them with a small fan of hidden sidings. That way we could have AI services depart in whatever order we wanted.

3) SAVES - Haven't tested this recently but it always used to be the case that if you restarted from a Save in a Scenario then only the Player Service picked up the new restart time. This meant that all 'earlier' AI services were now stuck because the game now viewed them as starting before the start time of the 'new' Scenario.
Also try and restart a modded scenario from a save and it is a straight Crash to Desktop.

 

Unfortunately, I am unable to comment on the internal workings, as stated above. Though for those who use the public editor, it isn't a trade secret as to how the scenario planner setup works. You have done some amazing work adding paths, but as you said, it takes 1 minute (sometimes more, depending on the size of the drop-down list) to create one path.
If we were on a complicated route with numerous platforms at large stations, it would take several days to include every potential path. We try to place paths that would be most frequently used by players or found useful to them. (From your post, it is clear that at least you, and thus potentially many other users of our product, don't think there are enough.) As I mentioned, however, the points you are raising have been noted, and I'll try to escalate them internally to see if anything can be done to improve the user experience.

 

Why does the Scenario Planner need to rely on predefined paths? That just makes things more complicated than it needs to, and reduces flexiblity.

In the TSC scenario editor, any train can go from any starting point to any destination, as long as there's a track. It can then get subsequent instructions to go anywhere else (stop at, go via, load passengers, couple to, etc.). Litterally anywhere, as the TSC editor allows you to make extra destinations if the route doesn't have a predefined destination there (and destination included every platform or yard track).You could make a destination right in front of a signal, to make a train stop right in front of that signal, to make it look like it was stopped by that signal. (The player didn't need to know the AI train simply had no further instructions). That makes scenario creation so much easier and flexible. When I made scenarios for TSC, AI trains didn't follow a logical path. They often went from one station to the next one, timed just right to meet the player controlled train (which was timetabled for this particular reason, another thing you cannot do in TSW). Often AI trains went into sidings when I no longer needed them, to free the path on the main track. (Yes, passenger trains waiting in a siding for ever, out of the players sight). Sometimes I had little shunting trains just driving up and down the same track on a siding repeatedly, since the player train passing by would only see the train for a few seconds, nobody would notice it just did senseless up and down between the same points a few times, but it made yards look more alive with a train moving instead of only static consists.

Just have a chat with some of your colleagues who created scenarios for TSC. It offered so much more flexibility and it was easier too. For some reason in TSW, the destination of my train depends on the starting point I select. Different starting platforms have different ending platforms. WHY? I found myself toggling between different starting platforms just to be able to select the ending platform I wanted. Annoying, timeconsuming, limiting...

TSW Scenario planner shouldn't rely on predefined paths. Just let scenario creators run any train (AI or player controlled) from any point to any point (and with possible subsequent objectives; A-->B-->C-->D or A-->B-->A-->B or anything else). Oh, and let us make those objectives timed. So much easier to make AI trains meet the player train at the right point if everything can be timed to the second. And of course, static trains to fill up stations or yards.

TSC scenario creation was a joy. You could perfect every detail. I'd playtest my scenarios a few times during creation, to see if everything worked as intended, if everything was timed right. And once published on the Steam workshop, you'd see enthousiastic comments and positive rating coming in. A nice reward for the effort you put in, gave me good satisfaction. You'd see people enjoying your scenarios. Another thing TSW Creators Club doesn't have, all it has is a download counter which says absolutely nothing at all.

 

It was the same with MSTS before TSC.
In comparison Scenario Planner in TSW is a joke.

 

SP in TSW is essentially an arcade dumbed down version of what we enjoyed in other sims.

Should be able to path dynamically as you work on the schedule so long as it’s a valid routing. So Euston to MKC, want to do a Sunday scenario weaving on and off the slow lines a couple of times, whack whack oops, can’t do it in TSW. Maybe TSW6 will bring more options, maybe even a timetable/service editor that doesn’t involve diving into the UE one. But I doubt it.

 

I usually play journey mode first. It gives a good overview of the variety of the route, then, if I like the route, I go on with some timetables.
Scenarios could be great but often are only standard runs from A to B. There needed to be put much more love into them as only "you are rerouted and drive on the left instead of the right track" - boring. Also the "event" scenarios where you get a normal A to B run after an event but the platforms are almost empty do not really convince.

 

"Can't do it on a vanilla installation" would be more accurate.
Your example, quoted above, CAN be done but it requires someone to create a mod and to have the vision/imagination to do it in the first place. (Mind you it definitely can't be done on the hoof or, at all, if you are a console player).

Both vision and imagination seem to be lacking nowadays. Personally I blame the obsession with Timetables (for both the poorness of SP and the obsession with reality), the lack of an easy to use Public Editor (for the taking away of 'tinkering' and 'community projects') and poor Governance from DTG (for nearly everything else) for TSW failing to hit the spot in the same way that earlier Train Sims did.

Whilst this is true it is only because the tool that we are given (Scenario Planner) is a massively cut down version of the tool that DTG uses when creating their scenarios (the full Editor). In the latter you can do everything that people are asking for (but we don't have proper access to it) whilst in the former you can do "profanity filter bleep" all).

So, really, Vern is correct when he says

 

I hate doing this, as I have my own threads elsewhere on the forums where I put up screenshots of my projects, but I think these two shots are relevant to the discussion.

Below are two screenshots of the start of one of my TVL scenarios. The player service is the two HST power cars (in the first shot) and everything else that you can see has been placed in the depot (Thornaby) using the standard Scenario Planner.



How was it done? By modding the game of course.
(a) By creating addition paths for the route.
(b) By creating additional formations for the game. (Formations that can take Community liveries).
(c) By using an invisible loco (so SP can place 'loose' formations) and an invisible wagon (think of the latter as a spacer) to place what looks like 2 (or more) different formations on the same track.

DTG could have easily done these 3 things themselves but, for whatever reason, have chosen not to.
If DTG had done these things then console players would also benefit from the changes and we would now be seeing far superior scenarios appearing in game.

Now is perhaps the time for people to understand that, unless Scenario Planner changes, this type of scenario is all that you are ever going to see on a 'vanilla' version of the game.

 

spikeyorks sounds like your scenario would be epic fun, but how would I easily discover such gems between the masses of user created scenarios that are average at best? Again, a rating system for the creators club would be helpful.

EDIT: Also, how does creators club even handle scenarios which use user created liveries? Will it automatically subscribe and download all the requires liveries?

 

You won't find it at the moment as it hasn't been properly released. (One of the reasons is that I put some many liveries in it that I can't remember which ones I used And, of course, SP doesn't tell you. The Mk1's being a killer as there are loads of them.... even though I made them myself).

Creators Club handles liveries quite well. When you create a service you click on the loco you want to haul it, pick your consist and then, at that point, you are given a list of all the CC liveries you have for each individual item of rolling stock. Click on which livery you want to use and then it appears in that service (for both the creator and any subscriber). Note that if the subscriber doesn't have that livery on his/her system then the item of rolling stock will appear in its default livery. Hence the requirement to put up a good list of liveries needed.

If you read the "Tees Valley Extra Paths" thread in my signature then you will see where the above scenario came from.
If you read the "Now for something a little bit different" you will see where the Invisible loco came from.
Finally, if you read the "Birmingham CC" thread then you will see, on the first page, a good example of linking to the various files needed.

I'm aware that I am now in danger of hijacking this thread and I don't want to do that. So if you are interested in having a look at any of my scenarios then just send me a direct message and I will show you how to get them. (And it will give me a kick up the backside to get the unreleased ones sorted). You will need, however, practically every item of UK rolling stock released up to TSW4 to see them at their best.

Hope to hear from you