Addressing The ‘candlelit/post-apocalyptic’ World

As many of you are aware, TSW has (and still does) extremely poor looking night scenes for many years now, with no signs or improvements bar the odd one or two routes which have had specialist attention.

Immediately away from stations, there are virtually no light sources apart from a few dimly lit street lights. Even the buildings which do have lights are extremely hit and miss. Most of them look like they were hit by a power cut, which makes virtually every settlement sit in darkness.

So, why does this happen and why does is it still an issue? My theory is a lot of the assets used are recycled from TS1/TSC, which are then imported into UE4/TSW but aren’t set up with light sources. So whilst they look acceptable in the day, they’re pretty much pitch black at night.

DTG’s ‘hack’ is to simply use a overpowered moon, casting light globally across the entire route. However, this simply looks unrealistic and isn’t the answer or solution to lack of light sources.

There really needs to be a push in improving the night scene for TSW, as it has been neglected for far too long now, for many years.

 

fully agree
why this issue isnt already fixed ?
we playing a simulation where enviroment is really important due to realism.
if someone would explain me how to change the enviroment lights ( buildings , tunnels , headlights , streets etc..) then i would try it on my own to change that ...
if we get access to mod this game easy and not with the complicated mod tool we would all benefit from it and this game would get a bigger attention which creates postive reviews and for DTG more sells.
an editor like TS classic is what this game needs with workshop support.
maybe a small team from DTG which specialize to sound and lightning could handle this ?

 

I agree, light sources in the game have generally been abscent or very limited, dunno if this is due to performance concerns to just time constraints. Would love to see the building lights get some modifications as alot of prominent buildings have no lights (looking at you boston sprinter skyline).

 

Riesa dresden is an example of decent night lighting . Headlights are great also. If they could bring this to each route, it would be nice but then it'll probably be up to pres crew to update it unless dtg decides to improve the core lighting

 

That’s not how it works. DRA’s lighting was the result of DTG paying really talented artists to do it properly for once. It’s not a checkbox to tick or improved lighting means in the engine - it was just people using what’s already possible properly.

 

There's no such thing as "core lighting" unless you count sun and moon positions (which funny enough are core, and generated appropriately)
Light sources, material reflectivity etc are all in the asset files which are stored in the DLC

 

I agree.

Sometimes, midway during a night drive, the world gets suddenly brighter within a fraction of a second. No clue why.

And then there's buildings, either with all the lights on, ALL NIGHT, or with no lights at all, even during early winter evenings.

 

I believe that DTG implemented the time that the sun goes down correctly, but the scenic buildings do NOT react, so it can be 6 o clock in the depth of winter but the buildings won't have lights on.

 

I’ve been spending a bit of time in ATS and ETS2 the last few evenings as mentioned in a couple of other threads. Now I’m not sure whether SCS have overhauled the graphics engine but everything looks that bit more vibrant, no dark shadows over everything. And the nights are, well, fantastic. Outside the towns and cities it is quite correctly dark but the truck headlights are highly effective whether on dipped or full beams. Built up areas or locations with streetlamps are awash with ambient light just as you would experience IRL. It is what TSW should be but DTG seem to have lost their way on this issue and seem awash with apathy as regards doing anything to improve matters.

 

There are so many things SCS does right in ATS and ETS2. Most of them you won't even notice until you compare them with another game. SCS really set the bar quite high for any games in a similar genre.

Staff at DTG should spend a few hours driving virtual trucks to see how well things are done in those games. Also, can recommend anyone to pick up those games, especially during Steam Summer Sale.

 

I do begin to wonder whether anyone at DTG on the conceptual side of things actually plays anything else, whether train or road related to see how things are done in other sims. Or do they spend their time in a TSW/TSC bubble?

 

Totally agree. It doesn't help that assets don't really react very well to the light from the sky. During dawn and dusk and when the sky is set to full cloud the ground, foliage and buildings are much darker than they'd be in real life. Of course routes need more street and building lights too, away from the lineside.

Shameless plug alert:

https://www.trainsimcommunity.com/m...atches/i2670-longer-station-lighting-up-times

If you're on PC of course. Hours of lighting are extended in the mod to make up for the overly dark surroundings during dawn and dusk.

 

Just wondering out of interest… Has anyone tried their fishing game, wonder what the lighting is like in that particularly in poor weather conditions or night time?

 

You cannot ride a dead horse. Compared to all the other games on my old PS4, TSW2 is the worst in terms of lighting and sounds. So it seems to be an old piece of software squeezed out as long as there is revenue.

 

UE4 can do much, much more with lighting, but asset materials need to be setup for the more complex effects. Costly and time consuming I guess. The cheaper option is what we get here, and the overall sky and lighting setup needs a team to rebuild it from scratch.

 

Well further to my thoughts on the fishing series, looks like we share many common problems (not just lighting). Numerous versions on Steam but full of negative reviews and it seems the same fire and forget policy, with long standing core issues while DLC churned out to milk the customer base who sticks with it. The following taken from the first review on Bassmaster, the latest version…

“The creators of this game has clearly never fished in their entire lives not to mention even been on a boat or near any body of water.”

Sounds depressingly familiar…

 

I wonder if DTG will actually acknowledge this thread or whether they’ll just put their heads in the sand again, like they did with my other thread *cough* this one *cough*

 

This seems to be their communication standard again since Sam stepped back and Nat left (moved to "board games")
Unfortunately the drop in roadmap streams from fortnightly to monthly has also dropped the actual communication we get, and given all the streams (which have also dropped in number) seem to be fluff pieces we're getting less info on actual development than at any point in the last two years from what I can see

 

The night cycle is a total mess.

Issues I’ve noticed:

• Some assets are pitch black whilst others magically glow with no light source
• Terrain is a mess in the way it reacts to light
• Night cycle is totally broken, with it getting quite dark, before getting lighter again as the night wears on, before going dark again towards sunrise

Will these issues ever be fixed or are we just going to pretend everything is fine?

 

That's a bit binary...

 

I wouldn’t be so fussed if it was a new game or something, but these issues have been happening for years now, with no mention of them being addressed or fixed.

 

Considering the competition in the niche market, I guess we shouldn't expect more than the 'cheaper option'.

 

I think the point I was making is there's more options than "fixing" and "pretending". To some people you could add "It's good enough for us" even if that disagrees with your own personal standards

 

I think you could easily hijack this thread with the “swept under the carpet features and questions”

 

I think they really think it’s all fine as it is, what other explanation can there be?

Frankly, I would be embarrassed that the lighting system in the precursor to TSW (with the AP weather pack) is infinitely better than in the ‘new gen’ game. They’re clearly totally blind to what a mess it is.

 

I would get bored typing the list out...
highlights:

• they don't have a lighting engineer
• they've got it on their list to complete but it's not a priority as it's not game breaking
• they've got a fix but it's lost in testing
• they've got a fix it's been tested but it's now waiting release date

 

I'm afraid in this day and age profit comes before customer satisfaction!

No disrespect to the devs because they don't make the decisions, they do what they are told.

Why invest the time to fix something people have already paid for. That time is better spent making new products to make more profit.

I'm thankful to the community members that invest their time to address some issues that come in the form of mods. I actually have more faith in them than dtg!

 

I think all of that is what they’d like us to believe. Those excuses maybe washed in years 1-3 but as we’re now in year 6 it has long since stopped cutting the mustard for me.

 

This applies somewhat but one thing you CAN say about TSW is that it HAS had a fair amount of updates, including core and DLC updates, whereas something like TSC has not.
It may not be what we WANT to be "fixed" but there have been fixes

 

I agree but I have the feeling these updates fixes are required to keep Microsoft/sony happy. If the game was only available on PC like tsc it might be a different story.

At a guess I also think the devs are given a bit of time for fixes after the release of new dlc then it's back to building new routes to turn over a profit.

But this is just my opinion I could be wrong.

 

This may well be true, and isn't that much different to google who give their staff a few hours each week to work on whatever they choose
but also TSW has the pres crew who have definitely rolled out new features on old routes and added in things like PIS
Some may see that as "one big update" but it's not, each route has to be done separately, so how many routes x how many issues?
Add in things like the "Rush Hour update" and it does add up

 

Yeah it all adds up. I'm great full to the pres gang especially for the recent gwe update, I've never particularly liked the route until now.

But all the problems should be addressed shortly after the release of dlc, not a couple of years down the line. And I mean all the problems not just the ones that might see the dlc removed from console stores.

Lighting still not fixed, weather not fixed, stuttering was fixed but returned with a recent update. Sounds not fixed, there's a lot of stuff thats not been fixed.

You could argue that dtg are having a hard time finding these issues but if you head over to train sim community there's mods that fix a lot if the issues.

If I was dtg I would be offering them a position in the company.

 

This might be controversial, but of the few streams I watched it never failed to amaze me how easily Matt and whoever else it may be laughed off serious and very obvious issues with the game.

‘That? Oh ha ha, lets pretend that didn’t happen’.

The best you could expect was…

‘I’ll make a note of that and pass it on to the team’

which is the equivalent of…

‘Your taxi? Just round the corner mate’.

I honestly think they've got so used to just laughing things off and pretending things don’t exist that they no longer see the problems. How I don’t know, because they are screaming at you in the face every time you play the game, but somehow DTG don’t seem to see these major problems as an issue.

 

Half the problem with this is that it's not just a case of "lighting isn't fixed" but there's a complex of issues surrounding the way that lighting is handled within the game that ends up being one big mess, but they're still separate issues
Such as train lights casting onto the ground at high noon, night lighting of train headlights, night lighting of carriages, reflections at night etc etc
Same with weather. We have sun shining through the back of cabs because it isn't classed as a solid object, tunnels the same, rain falling in tunnels or through platform canopies etc etc. All of that really could be handled by a scenery editor but that's nor been applied (and not sure pres crew has a person of that nature)
Stuttering I haven't seen (and my computer's so slow it stutters a lot anyway) but this could be loads of things causing issues and if it's a recently caused thing (on top of the legacy issues as well) then that's something they need to look into

But let's look at the things they ARE or HAVE done.
We've had PIS, crossings, a fix for the jackhammer on Xbox, new skies (thanks to LM and implemented by DTG), new passenger scheme, new timetables (and not six scenarios like on TSC but proper timetables), scenario planner (however rubbish), livery designer, proper container wagons rather than blue, green, red...

I'm sure DTG does look at the mod community, and if I were running the TSW world I would be getting the mod makers into the offices in Chatham, sitting them down with a developer and seeing how they can incorporate as much as they can in game for the relevant platforms.
I know this may end up splitting the "old gen brigade" as a lot of it eats memory, but it would accelerate the progression of the game and maybe even set precedent for how things are rolled out in the future. But I'm not the one running the TSW world

 

How...? I believe it's called "Always look on the bright side of life".
As in "Hey, that train just fell off the rails and I can't load all my DLC but doesn't the OHLE look good?"

 

Think omg how are we gonna explain that fix not happening to the community! And another dtg member says just ignore it and any questions related to it. Besides it's one less job for us to do.

All this new stuff pis, new skies etc... all nice touches but its less than what one would expect with a new game on a new engine a decade after the old one.

Rockstar games where doing a whole lot better a decade ago.

How long has it been 4 years and people are still complaining about the same things they was 4 years ago.

And some bugs are never fixed. Is that the standard these days? It's like we know your windshield wipers don't work Mr Smith, but you car still goes forwards and backwards so we really don't see what your problem is!

 

Something else to consider: The game just got a huge update on the 20th, and over a week later, I still haven't noticed complaints about anything being broken by it. Another small bugfix patch a couple of days ago, same. Some might call this "a step in the right direction" and find reason for optimism regarding first more waiting gameplay issues, then enviromental tweaks once the gameplay is brought up to a satisfactory standard.

 

Those things aren't necessarily "bugs", but design choices. Yes things are still broken (some in the same way, some in other ways such as the new buffer interactions) but the most part the issues raised come down to quality of DLC production rather than glaring faults (thinking 150, Reigate, night lighting, timetable, red lights...)
Those things are definitely things which need working on but we also know DTG ARE working on things like the dispatcher functionality as seen in the new bakerloo timetable.

The pain in the neck is that for the most part these things are released but don't necessarily impact on all routes immediately unless someone goes back and does a full DLC update sweep or new timetable.
In other words it all seems disjointed and jarring

 

Rockstar is the biggest videogame company and by some measures the biggest entertainment company in the world. What they spend on lunch is more than DTG's entire annual budget.

They also only release a game every five or six years.

 

Maybe dovetail will improve the lighting eventually. Sometimes I feel like DTG don't utilize the full potential of the Unreal engine. We could have better lighting in this game but DTG just don't want to take the time to improve lighting. After Dresden Chemeniz, lighting hasn't improved. Harlem line just uses the standard TSW2 lighting and yet in the streams when players were asking about the lighting for Harlem, they were acting like they made some changes when they really didn't.

 

They won't because they have nothing to say. They know this has been an issue for 5 years but apart from two routes (which were just experiments to be honest), they haven't bothered to improve the lighting after all this time. They just aren't prioritizing this issue

 

Well if we come back to the OT, i.e. the grim looking night lighting, I would assert you don't need a company with $$$$$$$$ budgets and 500 employees to get it right. A direct comparison has been made with ATS and ETS2 and I would say SCS are more on a par with DTG in terms of manpower and budget. Same goes for just about any other indie developer you might care to mention - Snowrunner is another game which manages night lighting far better than TSW. So it's a little disingenuous to redirect on the base of size or budget. What we are really boiling this down to is (in)competency and it seems that DTG is somewhat lacking this, whether the original choice of UE4 for the game engine, not having programmers and graphic artists who can comprehend how to make decent night (or day for that matter) lighting or having the willpower and determination to improve the thing.

 

Another possible reason omitted here (if I understood you correctly, feel free to correct me) is management. Maybe UE4 was an ideal choice and there are loads of talented artists at DTG but management doesn’t allocate enough budget to get it right. After all, if TSW sells as is, why should they invest more than they currently are and cut into their profit margin?

 

Well they should start to budget for it - the last new route I personally bought was Dresden to Chemnitz which, while better around station areas, still lacks decent ambient light in the towns and cities.

In the meantime, here's a few shots from ETS2 passing though a small town. This is what DTG should have areas like Manchester, Leeds plus just about every other location with buildings and streetlights looking like at night:

 

This is a screenshot of a gameplay video of a game called 'The Bus'. I believe this game also runs on the UE4 engine.

Notice how the night lighting is nicely balanced out. Trees are very dark, as well as areas with no direct light source, streetlights actually illuminate things and aren't like candles (they actually bother to change the colour temperature, too), shop fronts illuminate, roads reflect in the rain etc etc.

Its a day and night difference compared to TSW and there's honestly no excuse for TSW's night lighting to look so bad. It CAN look a whole look better if the work was put into it.

 

TML studios is also a very small studio so just because DTG are smaller than Rockstar for instance doesn't mean they can't improve night lighting. They just simply choose not too.

 

I guess dtg uses the night to cover bad landscaping. This is also with the Limbo-esque rainy foggy weather.

The amount of journey runs at night or with rain is overproportional high.

 

Second car in the first picture (looks like a police cruiser) isn't casting light correctly, no "light splash" on the floor in front as there are off the other vehicles.

 

Fair observation, but doesn’t detract from the fact that lighting in ETS2 and ATS is streets ahead of TSW.

 

Sure, no game is perfect, but ETS2/ATS are doing things pretty good. Not just lighting, but many other things as well. Sure, there's always room for improvement, but that's why ETS2/ATS get free updates pretty frequently. And, if I may say so, their releases/updates never seem to cause any notable problems, so it seems SCS also got their QA cycle running smoothly.