For the attention of any DTG staff who might read this. I’m working a 313 ECS from Lovers Walk TMD to Selhurst Depot no2 road. Service started at 11.34 game time. Saved the game and continued next day. Now stuck at sig T294 showing a red signal. According to the map there are no trains ahead of me but all signals are red. If it is the red signal bug you need to sort this as it has just ruined two days of simulation on a 313.
As I noted in another thread it's weird. I've resumed the same scenario about 5 or 6 times on Cane Creek without issue. Brighton Main Line I have had next to no success, well I think there may have been one with a very early morning train that I resumed at Gatwick going to Brighton. Just luck on that one I guess but with its complex trackage, signalling and train service BML pushes the save game beyond its programmed ability.
Save games don’t work, in fact they’ve never worked. If you use them it’s a complete lottery as to what you will be presented with when you resume the game. In 2/3rds of cases you won’t be able to complete the scenario/service. TSW (and TS1 to a lesser extent) is sadly one of the very limited number of games I can think of where you cannot reliably save and load a game. MSFS2020 suffers the same affliction. At least now you know you can avoid wasting your time doing it.
The single biggest issue with the save routine (there are others, but this is the big one) is that for whatever reason the save file does NOT record the state of signals at the time the save was made, so that when the service reloads, it resets all the signals to how they were at service start- and hilarity ensues. This is not usually a problem with routes that have little traffic and what few signals there are are primarily block signals- like Cane Creek and Clinchfield. But a busy networked route like Brighton or Dresden? Forget it.
Why would you even save in the middle of a 45-minute drive? If you don't have the time for some reason, quit and replay it later when you have. Same reason why I never understood saves in Flight Simulator - definititely not reliably possible with complex payware addons, even though they had implemented separate feature detached from FS to save state of the onboard systems. Never used it.
There are many reasons why you might interrupt and need to save the drive, real life for one thing. If the wife wants a job done, I'm not getting many brownie points for telling her to naff off until I reach Victoria. A clip around the ear perhaps or a divorce. The point is the save function should work. As regards FS, would you seriously do a transatlantic flight in real time taking 8 to 10 hours? Very sad.
As I wrote, it is not a whole day lost, but 1 hour max, you can quit and replay later. And how often do you really need to do this? Online, with real ATC, doing whole NAT communication and procedures? Yeah, thats the whole point! Besides, most of the local flights can again be finished within 2 hours, if you do not have time.
Point being, there are lot more critical issues with TSW that need to be addressed, than to fix the save system, which should be on low priority list. Once everything else works flawlessly, sure, fix the save system, I am not entirely against it
I think you will get quite an argument from many players here. For a lot of us, particularly those who have limited playing time, fixing the save function bug is very high priority.
Because life. I don't know about you, but in my life, things come up. I may think I have 45 minutes, but the Boss may think I'm taking her to dinner tonight....
I have never had a reliable save in any of the flight simulators while in flight, especially when using live weather and traffic. So yes, I do plan my flights to what time I have available and if something does come up, I will divert to the nearest airport and land, then continue the trip when I have time. Usually you will need to have to re-enter the flight plan into your navigation system . On TSClassic, saving while moving was also iffy, saving while stopped in a station was pretty safe, depending on the amount of scripted AI that is in the scenario. Heavily scripted scenarios would seem to have problem with the dispatch system causing signaling problems. Others which were basic A to B runs with limited traffic we’re usually no problem. I would guess since many simulators seem to have difficulties with saves over the years, that the solution isn’t an easy fix as some suggest. Would I like to see a reliable save in TSW as well as Xplane, P3D and MSFS2020? Sure I would, and I think the developers would like to provide that feature as well. Hopefully, it can be accomplished but until it is, I will use my simulators accordingly so not to add to my frustrations knowing the save systems present state.
Well there are all sorts of people who play these games. Some like to burn their eyes out staring at a monitor for hours at a time to do it in one go, others like to spread the time over several sessions. If DTG only catered to the former they wouldn’t have many customers, but that said if you’re going to have a save game it should work properly. However back to the OP, in this case 45 minutes then yes I probably would try and see if I could fit the run in one session. One of the reasons I never bothered buying Zusi 3, apart from the price, is that you cannot save a run in progress.
And as I have already wrote several times, exactly for this reason they invented the "exit" button But sure, put the save system high on the priority list, who cares the game stutters, sounds are weird and lighting does not make sense here and there, at least you will be able to reliably save this mess
While I never use the save function myself, I have to agree with the saving folks. If the function is there in the software, then it should work properly.
