I cant wait for there next route. Its all I play now. The lighting is so much better on this route. When you play other routes compared to this one everything looks over exposed. Performance is good as well. We have been spoilt and can't see anything else from anyone who will match this.
I agree, that’s the only trouble with this route - I don’t want to play any others now (with exception to GWE remaster which is also fantastic) It took a while to get used to the lighting changes on console but I actually prefer it now. On Xbox at least I find the route looks best without clouds enabled. Thanks Firefly for giving us this level of quality, can’t wait to see what you come up with next!
yup, can confirm thats its ruined most other routes. I played a few German/Austrian content last night and the foliage looked radioactive green. I dont want DTG to steal Firefly's thunder, but they must make it compulsory that all future releases has that same colour tone. Even if it means delaying their releases.
My guess... It might be Wherry Lines, since someone was developing it in the editor, then they had to shut down the project because they said it was already being done. It could be that route because the team admitted they like routes with beautiful scenery, so one thing has to do with the other...
I don't get the fascination people have with the Wherry lines, I have it in TSC and yes its nice but overall to me its just meh and not one I go back to, there are better lines out there then that imo....is it a British thing?
I personally don't really see the appeal of the Wherry lines to be honest. It probably has its charm but it doesn't seem massively interesting. I've heard that the class 755 trains that run the line are really good but again, not really a train I particularly care about. Nor do I have any personal connection to the route or area whatsoever. However, it is an area of the United Kingdom that hasn't had many TSW routes and it seems there would be a large amount of players that would enjoy it, so it'd be an alright choice I guess.
I think an up to date Wherry lines with a 755 and modern signalling is less appealing than one set 10 years ago or so with mechanical signalling and maybe a Turbostar or Sprinter. They would make a nice rural network and do have some charm although the scenery certainly isn't stunning if you like mountain landscapes but is pretty.
Possibly. I love the Wherry Lines as I love rural East Anglia (that's why I live in this corner of the UK). East Norfolk's rural areas are unique, broads (large lakes), big skies due to the relatively flat landscape, stunning sunsets, rivers full of long-boats in the summer and loads of great walks. The railway network is a very good one for "there and back" driving duties, you have three routes between Norwich and Yarmouth/Lowestoft, interesting bridges and with pretty much any era some interesting rolling stock. In the sixties it was the domain of Cravens DMUs, then Class 101s, 156s, 150/2s,158s on East Midland Cross Country trips (the only rolling stock that's been a permanent fixture over the last 30 years), 153s, 170s, the famous "short sets" with Class 68s then 37s and more recently the Stadler Flirt Bi-modes. Many of the stations are historic, sadly Oulton Broad burned down a week or so ago and then there's Gt Yarmouth which is a typical modular 1960s building, of it's time but a low point on the network. There's also the yard at Yarmouth which is owned by a company that provides retired trains for hire for use in films adding the potential for unusual workings. If you're after an action packed fast drive Wherry Lines won't be for you. But if you're after something completely different in TSW and love a relaxing escape away to put life's pressures on hold. Then you'll love pottering around the Norfolk & North Suffolk Broads. I really hope this happens, it'll be unlike any other DLC in TSW.
I think the wherry lines would be a nice addition to the game, but I’d hope they focus more on Southeastern content as I like when one third party dev focuses one area of the railway, just like how AAB are doing with the WCML.
I'm very biased but South Eastern has had 3 releases, Southern 2. I'd much rather some independent route builders get together and focus on an area that is untouched in TSW that has mostly new types of traction to learn. Be it South Western, the Cotswolds, away from the central belt of Scotland, the rest of Wales or the Anglian bit of the Eastern Region. We'll have Victoria to Gillingham at some point, maybe that'll be a large release from DTG one year. That'll nicely fill-out the map in the South East. The problem with the South Eastern is that we've already got all the rolling stock, for those of us looking for a new challenge, the Class 375/377s aren't going to excite even though the updated versions are an improvement, the 465/466s don't get out of London much these days, the 376 are Electrostars in name with a 378 shell, the 390s aren't that exciting and there's better areas for Desiro City units.
At the point of derailing this thread even further, I will say that if they did the Wherry Lines then I would hope that they were done in the BR era, ideally early 1990s for the variety of rolling stock. Just think of the loco drags, then the summer Saturdays... Oh I'm frothing at the thought and the happy memories of my school holidays over at Vauxhall Caravan Park opposite the carriage sidings (now Eastern Rail Services yard). That would be the "sweet spot" rolling stock wise, there were 101s, 150/2s and 158s but the 156s were not around yet, 37s & 31s were a-plenty with the 47s featuring primarily on drags - with 86s and Mk2 "coffins". The only issue would be at Norwich where the EMU's would be missing but easily explained away by some issue with the fleet etc... I do fear though that it will be another modern route for a modern unit that can be driven with one hand instead of three, for the yoofs of course and not us old timers, pity :/ That said, I do enjoy Medway but that might also because it offers a higher speed than the Wherry Line and at least I can stick to the 465 which was BR at least...
This is based on an assumption that comments on here about an independent developer being recommended to stop work on their own version are correct, I've not heard anything myself and if it's not on the Roadmap it doesn't exist yet. However; If it's modern and we ignore the new signals, semaphore was in charge until recently, the new shopping centre next to Norwich Station and the stations signs then very little has changed since electrification around Norwich in 1987 so we can easily run 101s, 150/2s, 153s, 170s in one of the many liveries through the years and it won't be too immersion-breaking. If it's somewhere in the BR/Anglia/National Express/early GA era, we'll have a problem adding a post-2019 Timetable as there are no bi-mode Stadler Flirt 3s in game. So I'm actually hoping it's modern so we can have more flexibility for Timetables from other eras. Including seaside specials with blue Class 31s, 37s and 47s, possibly with a model of me hanging out of the front passenger door window taking in a healthy lung-full of sea-air mixed with diesel fumes. But each to their own. I'm hoping that Strumpshaw RSBP centre is featured, not for train simming purposes, I spent so many weekends there in my youth, crossing the rail with my timetable and camera in hand, waiting for a train, then heading off to try and find a Bittern or Marsh Harrier. It's also the only place that I've every been attacked by a swan. Ah the memories. And sorry for adding to the derailing of the thread.
I did accidentally post in the feedback thread yesterday about a rare 375/9 on the Medway Valley but today is day 2 of a 4 car on the Medway Valley today, 375910 out again after stabling at Strood overnight. Makes a change!
It would for me I'm afraid. Running class 101's on a pseudo 80's timetable with modern LED signals would be diesel legends level of immersion breaking or seeing a class 40 in 1990's Penzance. If we are going to have historic stock let's have routes to match not some contrived compromise.
I guess it's different for everyone. I'd worry more about track layout and the lineside environment. If only the signals are not representative I'll live with that, I'm more concerned about what a signal is telling me rather than how it's telling me. Diesel Legends doesn't work for me because of the overhead wiring though the London suburbs along with the modern Reading station. That's a much bigger issue for me.
I mean it’s a futile topic because short of JT bringing it in a couple of years (at least) I’d put my mortgage on it being modern. You could probably make a late RR livery pack work on a modern route, but even then there’s so much accessibility adherence on even late 2010 UK railways that it’ll look modern regardless of the signalling used. Especially with how clean TSW’s environment is, it can be hard enough even on JT routes to get fully immersed into a BR era timeframe, the games aesthetic is just overwhelmingly modern.
That's why I had said early 90s, aside from the EMU's that would appear at Norwich (but not be drivable) and DBSO's, we have all of the required rolling stock available for that period - might just need a few liveries. I do find it slightly odd and maybe you've hit the nail on the head there that the environment is "too clean" that even the JT routes are not quite fully immersive (they are too bright for me) yet North TransPennine feels perfectly 1980s and grimy enough... But yeah, it'll be a modern route, again :/ As for someone making a 90's timetable for it? That could work for some, myself included. While I remember Great Yarmouth in the 90s I can't remember Norwich or much of the route so the risk of seeing something look out of place is a lot lower for me (and others) than on our own local lines that we know so well. It wouldn't be anywhere near "Diesel Legends" levels of inappropriateness, which ironically that would have been a far better received DLC had it been made for the Penzance route instead...
To be honest I’m surprised they haven’t tried a modern timetable on a BR route. I have a feeling that would do better than trying something like diesel legends. Early 90’s though is generally the perfect middle ground for anything IMO, you’ve got a lot of BREL & MetCam stock running around still IRL today. In any case I doubt we’d even get the short 37 set era for Wherry Lines, between the stock, semaphores & lack of overheads I would put money on more than a few people mistaking it for BR era. Ideally for me a modern version would be with the 68 sets, at least we’d get some loco thrash & a loco which would be pretty universal for modern content as a whole.
That's the weird thing for me, I've got friends and family up there, it's got some of my favourite gig venues outside of London and I've been an away Arsenal fan there over a dozen times and I also go up there for some of the best pubs in the UK. Back in the pre-Zoom days I had regular meetings with AON and Norwich Union so while I consider Brighton to by my third home in the UK (after my village and London), Norwich is probably the place I've visited the most in UK that's not in Essex or London. I'm so excited by the possibility of it being in TSW that I'll happily take it in any era.
JetWash & Fawx I just wanted to come back to you both about my situation earlier in the thread and the issues I was having with crash to desktop etc..... As I mentioned previously I refunded the route as I could not manage more than around 10 minutes without TSW crashing. Other routes were all OK though. After refunding I carried out some more investigating/digging into what could have been causing the problems going on numerous Nvidia forums and Reddit and decided to go with the slightly drastic option of carrying out a full uninstall and clean install of both the Nvidia App and also the latest 595.97 drivers. I had been one of those with a 4070 card that had been having issues with flickering in games with the new 595.xx set of drivers and therefore had been forced to revert back to the older 591.86 driver. I found mention of using the standalone driver install files instead of letting the Nvidia app download and install the drivers so went with that option as well as obviously fully replacing the Nvidia app too. Once the process was complete I found that I did not get the flickering in games with the latest drivers as I had been getting previously which was the first good thing. I then also noticed that I seemed to be possibly getting slightly better performance and frame rates within TSW compared to before the full uninstall/re-install. I then decided to take the test another step and so purchased the route again to see if I could now run it OK and I'm glad to say it does now run as it should. I've carried out a full run on 2T48 (Which was the run I'd always tried previously but never got more than 10 minutes with) and another run from Tonbridge to Gravesend with a 66 to test the route the other way. It also now runs fine with all my mods installed including the live weather/annotations mod and your lighting mod engine.ini changes and Godmode.ini changes for the route. (I've also added the two lines to remove the pop-in raised ballast in the 4 foot). So doing a full-on Nvidia app and driver uninstall and then full clean install using Nvidia's standalone installer seems to have cleared out whatever corrupt data was stuck in there (I had already carried out two or three clean installs of the drivers but through the Nvidia app obviously to no avail). I can only think that maybe something like the extra detail in the route compared to my other routes was enough to tip the card/drivers over the edge while the corruption in the driver files was still in there. Anyway apologies for such a long post but I just wanted to follow up on everything and thanks for creating such a stunning route.
Really glad to hear it's been resolved! I know what a nightmare it can be troubleshooting things, and good on you for going to such lengths.Thank you for getting back to us, I'll add it to the list of things we ask people to try.
I’ve noticed on the section between East Farleigh and Wateringbury, sometimes the river is empty, a bit like how some sections of the sea on the Riveria Line didn’t load before that got a fix.
When guarding the 465 on MVL, all you do is check tickets you don’t open or close the doors, is this realistic? I thought that on these train the guard would do the doors but as the panels aren’t modelled in game then maybe that’s why?
Does anyone know if there’s actually any AI services that go into platform 4 at tonbridge? Is this realistic that it’s barely used?
A quick question if I could regarding the freight services..... I have noticed that a lot of the freight services I see on the line whilst driving are either double headed or TnT 66s. Having looked at photos of freight services from the line on Flickr etc.... I can only seem to find single headed services and nothing double headed or TnT? Is it down to when the timetable is set etc? Loving the route so far and enjoying seeing new things most runs.
The 66 is underpowered in game compared to reality. It can't handle Allington sidings in the wet without it being doubleheaded unfortunately.
Here’s one for the firefly team, any new updates regarding the ps5 audio issues aswell as additional improvements for MVL?
The British ace said in one of his videos from a few days ago that he spoke to a dev of firefly and he said that they are still actively working on it and they are getting there. A status update would be nice though. It’s by far the best route I’ve played on ps5 even with audio issues.
Ah that makes sense then. I have since found an image of a tanker service on the line with a 66 on the rear. Thanks for the confirmation regarding the game physics for the 66 though.
I agree, there does need to be an update but this is not it, I can say however that we are working on it constantly and have made significant progress. However, the nature of the problem is unfortunately making it take exponentially longer than it should. If this was a PC issue I’d hazard a guess we could have sorted it in 72hrs. The problem is that third parties don’t have access to PS5 devkits, and devkits are the only way to test things on PS5 as that’s just the way Sony do things. We make a change, submit it, then it needs building by DTG and then needs someone in DTG to stream it to us on a devkit for maybe 3 minutes or so to see if it’s worked. On PC that would be instantaneous, this process can take 2 days or more each time we go through it. We have been stuck in this loop of doing this now for close to 3 weeks and it’s pretty soul destroying to be honest. We are making progress though and hope to have more information very soon. Once that is sorted attention can turn to a patch, on which a lot of work has been done in the meantime and which contains plenty of fixes, enhancements and new features. This is a situation none of us wanted or anticipated and which wasn’t picked up before release. Rest assured we are working non-stop to get it sorted as quickly as we can.
Is that a Sony rule or DTG? The process of partnering with Sony seems fairly transparent. PlayStation® Partner Registration
Not so much answering the question (because I’m not in any way close to the TSW dev process), but instead adding context. I don’t think the Sony ecosystem is well set up for TSW. The game is built and uploaded by DTG - they’re the ones with the core code. TSW third parties just build routes. If what’s needed to put a new build of TSW onto a devkit PS5 is a bunch of compilers and the TSW source and a cable link to the PS5, then, well, third parties don’t have all of that and maybe can’t be given all of that. No other game in the console ecosystem comes to mind as having separate DLC developers in in the way that TSW works.
Both I guess? Sony make it so that you can only test on Devkits, no Beta builds like PC and Xbox use. DTG are the ones with devkits, so we have to wait for that.
Thanks for the clarification, it’s so great to hear that your still giving MVL lots of love and coming back to it with improvements, fixes and even new features, I look forward to it all!
So, as a real life train driver (though never on electrostars) I would like to offer the following thoughts on a few 375 things that are a bit non-standard (though may well be correct): • Emergency brake is releasable - is this researched/true to life? 170s and all EMUs I've driven from this era have unreleasable emergency with a 2 minute timeout once speed reaches zero. Around the time 375s entered traffic, this was the norm as far as standards were concerned so I would expect this to be the case? • Are we sure the brake remains operable with the direction selector in neutral? It would be the norm on most stock for the brake to go to emergency in neutral to prevent a roll away. The only exception to this for trains of this time period is 170s, which allow it to be trapped for coupling (owing to the BSI couplers). I'm not sure on this one (as I say, never signed the traction) but it would be interesting to hear what the basis for this is. • Is there any chance the guard could be sped up? Whoever is doing your doors is painfully slow. • Can we have safety systems live in expert mode? Its incredibly rare to find a train with any safety systems isolated, so it seems odd that the game does this. • Really a tiny point, but could the scenarios end without requiring the doors to be closed? Its a real immersion killer, because its not very often that the guard would close the doors, change ends and open them again 2 minutes prior to departure. In reality, if either crew member are remaining with a unit you tend to just leave the doors open and change ends (subject to differing TOC policies, of course). Otherwise loving the route and the 375, cracking job from the devs.
Brake would release in neutral, unless door release is up. Guards these days are painfully slow with the doors because that’s how they’re taught. safety systems I believe is related to AI trains somehow or other.
Not associated with the developers but hoping to at least help It's my understanding that closing the doors at the end of timetable runs is some kind of core issue, along the same lines as closing the doors despite a red signal which once closed magically clears the starter... Though to be fair, some services in real life will close the doors once everyone is off and only open them five minutes before departure, TPE for example though that is so it can be "cleaned" and I guess AWC do and XC do the same too. With regard to safety systems being isolated at the start, I believe they can't be set differently for expert mode vs casual and DTG prefer everything isolated so as to not upset casual players who might get overwhelmed having to walk across the cab and isolate a few switches But you are right though, both points are a pain in the butt immersion wise.
Great to see that we finally have an update on ps5 audio issues- well done firefly . Good to see 2 small fixes coming in the update to, I’m sure we will get a much bigger patch covering fixes, enhancements etc as Jetwash previously stated the other day .
I presume this was already discussed at an earlier date, but was there a work around for dlc/layers not showing up on PS5? Cheers
Take with a pinch of salt but as far as I personally know: This from what I remember was originally implemented on the 377s on ECW, or at the very least some sort of far more complicated way of releasing the E-brake was present. This might have been changed in later Electrostar releases for the game due to it being annoying or detremental to gameplay, I can kind of see why that might be the case. The original 375s didn't have the neutral brake lock, and the /3 and /6 featured in MVL are among those first ever subclasses. I believe this is also true of the 357 and 376 classes, being of similar vintage. It might have been among updates made during the 377 updates that the lock was implemented at the same time as the Dellner was added, and the lock was then carried forward for all the following Electrostar types including the later 375 subclasses such as the /9 as featured in SEHS. Again, take this with a pinch of salt as like yourself I don't know most variants of Electrostars as intricately as people who actually signed them, I've only ever been exposed to the 379 which did have the neutral lock.
Hmm, funny one with the doors though, as ECW for sure lets you end with them open. I think BML may well be the same? I completely take your point on cleaning, but it seems unlikely (again, just a guess here!) that you'd be locking up after a short commuter shuttle run? Anyway, thanks all for the replies, some very interesting information in there.
Some DLC’s let you finish the service without closing doors. So I do think it’s more a developer issue than a core issuer. Hopefully this is something that can be looked into.
