It’s hard to tell. It gets brought up, or at least referred to, in every live stream and Sam has said it has a lengthy time scale, so it has to be something fairly involved. He’s clearly enjoying us not knowing and it is causing some hype by the way it is being teased by him. We have no clues though and the longer it goes on and the more other little secrets are teased alongside it, the more intriguing it gets. I wonder who else at DTG is involved in it. How big is it? How far up does it go? How far down? I think we need to know soon, or at least get some clues before Christmas.
My guess is its something dumb. DTG have done nothing to catch my interest in anything coming through the pipeline yet.
I'm guessing it's not just a loco or a route because that's not really something that'll be kept secret, same with any updates to existing content, it's cool yeah, but not worth hiding from anyone. I'm assuming it will be some kind of new feature, possibly a new game mode perhaps or something that will improve the sandbox capabilities of the game, something that can potentially benefit players across the globe rather than particular regions or eras etc. In my mind, it's being kept secret for the purpose of a big reveal, it's not something minor that we'll see tacked on to the roadmap before any big reveal. Or, I'm talking out of my backside and it'll be something none of us expects and takes us all completely by surprise.
I can see this paired with a functioning controller peripheral and a one hour fitness video featuring erm, see spoiler below, motivating us as we try to pump ourselves up Sand Patch Grade as a workout. Spoiler Sam in a leotard and CSX hard hat
Nooooooo....! That's a real shame as I only bother watching the streams with Sam in. (It can be quite entertaining when he gives poor Adam occasional grief over the roadmap stuff!) With respect to the young 'uns, their style is not really my cup of tea.
https://profile.dovetailgames.com/live/live/articles/article/dovetail-live-update-2 DTG Protagonist Is this the secret?
They’ve slipped the profile update news out quietly on the homepage of DTL where there is little chance of anyone seeing it
I don't think it would be an Amtrak route. What would make a new route so much special that Sam would be teasing it this way and getting us all hyped up. With the routes DTG has put out (no offense) I don't think they'd hype us up this much, as we'd probably end up being disappointed.
Could it be connected to the profile thing? Perhaps it’s fulfilling the original idea of DTL, play, achieve and earn freebies. Probably not but a guess nonetheless
I was dreaming of one of those whilst walking the route looking for broken cabinets earlier (and I agree that broken cabinet repair man simulator isn't my idea of fun, but at the same time I enjoy the opportunity to get to see the route from foot that it provides). But, it would have to work with the signalling so that you didn't get run down by a train. Instead, we need bicycles! (but then DTG might be accused of encouraging people to ride along in-use railway lines). A powered paraglider add-on? Yeah. probably.
If its a new route, 2 things sams mentioned before, ( uk based) was manchester to liverpool, or something around Ipswich ( or near by). Yes i know im probs way off, but no harm in guessing.
Could it be Armstrong Powerhouse’s first foray into TSW? Barring the 317 (of which a lot was done by GU Studios), by their standards they’ve been awful quiet lately. That would turn a few heads!
I doubt it is, as I feel like this project won't be as simple as a new route. However, as someone from Chelmsford (On the GEML) who goes to Uni in Manchester, I'll happily take both if it is.
Maybe DTG are expanding into a different genre of games? Like how Playground Games, the developers of Forza Horizon, are making the new Fable game. Grand Theft Railway? Trains Row? God Of Work? The Last Train Of Us? Buzz: The Rail Quiz? Burnout 6: Leaves On The Line? Silent Hill Start? PT (Playable Train)? Tunnel Portal? Sam's Mod? Dropship: United Train Force? Project TRAINS? Gran Trainismo? Toilet Mechanic Simulator? The Coldplay Experience? EDIT: Or perhaps they're going to start a band. Sam is the lead singer, James is on guitar and Matt is on the spoons.
Steam engines would be definitely a major feature so it would have sense to threat it as a secret as that would be a great and really desired present for most of us. Cheers
Sam seems very confident that everybody, that’s everybody, is going to like it and I can’t think of anything that more people would be excited about than steam finally coming to TSW. I think it’s steam too. On the roadmap in the new year, released as part of the yearly update next August. I’d put money on it.
Steam is a very good guess, I'm leaning toward that myself. People would definitely enjoy seeing that on the roadmap. To me it seems DTG has largely avoided talking about steam, and the update to the new UE version they said was required for them to bring steam into the game. If it is steam, I hope they do something about the motion blur on the wheels. I think that would look terrible, especially steamers that have large driving wheels.
If it is a steam train, that would require an update to the Unreal Engine, with in theory, would allow for graphical improvements such as better shadow draw distance for one.
I think their next engine upgrade will be UE5, which is supposed to come out towards the end of 2021. Engine beta is supposed to come out in early 2021 but I don't expect DTG to use that. Even though I heard they started the move to UE 4.23 right when it came out. UE5 would be a huge game changer in prettymuch all aspects if you've seen the feature reveal. Unreal Engine 5 Revealed! | Next-Gen Real-Time Demo Running on PlayStation 5 - YouTube
But would changing to it involve months of work again (presumably) and more seriously, would the existing DLC need to be modified for it to work with the new engine?
They'd probably have to work on all of their content again to bring it up to standard for a whole new game engine.
I can't see them wanting to upgrade again in a hurry, I get the feeling they probably didn't enjoy the last experience too much.
And if they made it a compulsory purchase to upgrade TSW every year? I doubt that would go down well with the community either, so doubt that they'll be doing it for at least a year or 2.
I haven't said that they will upgrade right away. Just stated what I think is the next logical version to go for (that it's not 4.26 as someone mentioned). This secret feature has to be something else.
v5 upgrade would almost certainly require a rewrite, same as every other software moving to a newer major version If they needed to rewrite everything to go from 4.x to a different 4.x then 5.x would be very different