Add-ons Manager For Pc

Discussion in 'TSW General Discussion' started by londonmidland, Nov 3, 2022.

  1. londonmidland

    londonmidland Well-Known Member

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    As we know, add-ons manager is planned on coming to TSW 3 for all platforms.

    What this means, specifically for us PC users who use mods, is that there is a possibility of our mods will no longer work. This would be a huge loss for me, as I cannot personally play TSW ‘vanilla’ i.e without any mods, as I find it looking too ‘plain’ looking.

    Quite a few mods fix and enhance current routes and rolling stock, so that would be another loss.

    Could DTG perhaps give us PC players the option to disable add-on manager, for those of us who do not want to use it?

    I know DTG are quite keen on making parity a thing across TSW, but historically PC has always been the way if you want to explore ‘under the hood’/get the most out of games.

    I look forward to hearing back from the team about this topic.
     
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  2. SprattyHeath

    SprattyHeath Well-Known Member

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    I see no reason for add-on manager to not load mods, I'm pretty sure I recall Matt testing out mods with the WIP manager so I wouldn't be too overly concerned about it.
     
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  3. CrAzZyKiLLa

    CrAzZyKiLLa Well-Known Member

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    Also nervous about mods after this features addition on PC. I would also hate to run vanilla game or have many mods require author updates to be compatible again, was a nightmare during past engine updates.

    I don't see this not being implemented though seeing how much its being said to impact performance also.
     
  4. Xaineth

    Xaineth New Member

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    Certain mods do not only just improve the look of the game. They add functionality and that really makes the game feel more “in depth” and enjoyable. Some allow you to change the fov without the UUU as the vanilla fov is ugh.

    As well as some add extra functionality to trains like GSM-R that functions. Others, PIS fixes. I don’t understand how something designed for limited hardware (Consoles) should be brought onto PC. No a 256 GB SSD is not an excuse someone should know that isn’t enough for TSW3 as it can easily fill up 100 GB.

    Just let the PC platform do its own thing and implement Console fixes to just Consoles.
     
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  5. SonicScott91

    SonicScott91 Well-Known Member

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    I’d imagine it would be up to the community to find away around an add-ons manager when it comes to mods. Devs shouldn’t really have to spend time worrying about unofficial modifications to their products, especially when it’s not available to the whole TSW user base.

    I don’t find TSW mods add that much to the experience. The gameplay is basically the same with or without mods, they just change bits of scenery or loco skins. Nothing game changing.
     
    Last edited: Nov 3, 2022
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  6. rennekton#1349

    rennekton#1349 Well-Known Member

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    Don't take this personally but I'll have to disagree to some point.

    Sound mods are probably the most important. Especially for North American content where the sounds have no depth/bass/missing sounds or they just sound terrible. Not great horns on some of them. The engine sounds are reused with no change at all, making sound mods necessary. Then you got sound mods for the british content that further enhance the sound. Even if dtg uses ap content, there's just soo much more modders can do to improve the sound.

    Londonmidlands lighting mods bring dark routes to light. There's correct signage, realistic ads, other stuff. Stuff added back due to licensing issues. At the end of the day, players want realism. There's also mods for visuals like rain and rain sound levels and stuff cuz people hate the default settings.
     
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  7. Will Marshall

    Will Marshall Active Member

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    Hi, I don't post on the forums but I'm making an exception to explain why we're going to bring Add-On Manager to PC and what it means for mods as they currently stand.

    I'll say this in context: I'm the Lead Engineer for TSW, bringing DLC Manager to all platforms (on TSW3) was my decision and the work to design and implement this feature was done by a talented engineer who works on my team. Please be nice, I'm trying to help! :)

    First up: Mod support.

    The qualified, weasel-word tl;dr is that (many) mods will work, in particular mods that use TSW's normal mechanisms to bring content to users and mods that are performing relatively trivial file overrides.

    While we've not tested any TSW3 mods at this point, back in the summer we tested a number of TSW2 mods internally and put some effort into making sure they were functional (even though DLC Manager has not and probably will not launch for PC on TSW2, we want to keep that platform as stable as possible.) The engineer who did those tests is wisely not checking the forums in the evenings, but from what I recall many of the trivial (and popular) mods for TSW2 were functional and stable. I might be able to update on what mods (and what types of mod) were working in the future.

    DLC Manager for TSW3 is under active development at the moment, I think the roadmap article spells it out pretty well. We're bringing the TSW2 engine and core systems changes forward to TSW3 and we're extending them to accomodate new features in TSW3, such as the "Train Depot" frontend menu flow.

    We don't have an end-to-end test of DLC Manager for TSW3 at the moment because that work isn't finished, so I can't yet offer to download and try out any mods for compatibility. I will hopefully try out the top 10 TrainSimCommunity mods when that time comes, and I may provide some guidance to help mod authors update them to achieve compatibility, but that would be extremely unofficial support in my spare time.

    Second up: Why?

    It's beneficial to my team to be able to test all of TSW on PC. For the purposes of engineering, TSW has PC (in the UE4 editor and then on Steam) as the lead platform. DLC Manager is relatively complex and we want to know if we're breaking it before anyone else finds out, ideally before we push our code. To split PC and the consoles would double or triple the workload on software engineers to test things before we can call them good, which would slow down feature development, which nobody wants. I like pushing features to players a lot more than I like repeating my tests on three different machines.

    Also, it has performance benefits. Small benefits to framerate, noticable benefits to memory footprint (especially for users with large collections, who tend to be on PC), a number of places where TSW3 currently loads content from disk will be replaced with checking information in an internal cache, which should provide a smoother experience. Simply put, shrinking Unreal's virtual filesystem makes every lookup of a file on the disk faster.

    Let's say that 98% of what TSW is about is identical between PC and Consoles (even Gen 8, I see you!). It's my job to keep that number up, and to make sure we only diverge where we really, really have to, and to minimise the 'technical debt' that is special rules for players on playstation or xbox.

    Finally: Maybe a kill-switch?

    At the moment, there's no plan to include a DLC Manager kill-switch for PC Users (for example, in the form of a launch argument) but that's not set in stone. Right now, there's no reason to do so because it's stable and provides benefits. If modding with the unofficial toolchain is impractical or impossible in future, I'll re-assess and see what I can do to help... Unofficially.

    Okay, I think that covers it. No, I'm not going to intentionally break mods, nobody above me wants me to break mods, I'm happy that people change the game to suit themselves, that's what I do all the time when I play TSW and some of the random things (you know, 'BAD FEATURES!' on checkboxes) you see in TSW3 are because I read someone's frustration with how the game worked and wanted to push it forward. At the end of the day, if you're modding the game and put hundreds of hours' work into something that pleases you, I wouldn't dream of taking it away.

    P.S Excuse my writing, it's rather late and I'm trying not to think about going to the dentist tomorrow.

    P.P.S I want to note that I was warned to keep this short because everything I say will be picked apart, but this is the most transparent response (anyone) could possibly give, so hopefully that's appreciated as a change of pace.
     
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  8. Crosstie

    Crosstie Well-Known Member

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    Interesting. I kind of see your point from the DTG side. You want parity across all platforms because it's easier to test and evaluate this feature on PC.

    However, what does it mean from a PC player's point of view? Writing as someone who has a very large collection ( close to 100% ) and plenty of spare memory and storage, I frankly don't feel the need for an add- on manager. I'm doing just fine managing my routes using the current setup. And I don't need a few extra frames.

    And I should add that I don't use any mods, so that is not one of my concerns.

    And I expressed my concern that the add-on manager might actually break something vis-a- vis the Steam library setup in a recent post.

    So, while I defer to your superior knowledge of the software, I'm not convinced an add- on manager is needed from a PC player's perpective.

    So I would hope that the add- on manager feature will be optional, rather like the save game feature, and will default to " off ".

    Regards
     
    Last edited: Nov 4, 2022
  9. 390001

    390001 Well-Known Member

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    So DTG get dammed if they do fixes to the sim core which in turn "breaks" mods yet if they dont update and fix the core they get complaints. They just cant win can they.
     
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  10. rennekton#1349

    rennekton#1349 Well-Known Member

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    yea. mods play a very important role in improving tsw. Whether it is sound mods or enhancement packs that change the game to how it should have been from the start. So if the mods end up not working at all, all the modders work would have gone to waste and they would have to remake and relearn how to make mods compatible when the addon/dlc manager releases
     
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  11. Thorgred

    Thorgred Active Member

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    what use would that addon manager have on the pc?
    I am on steam and can easily uninstall and install the addon's already
     
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  12. tygerways#2596

    tygerways#2596 Well-Known Member

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    For what it is worth, I just want to state how highly I appreciate this approach to transparency right "from the horse's mouth".
     
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  13. SonicScott91

    SonicScott91 Well-Known Member

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    Improving the game is a subjective thing, I don’t think they add much at all. I’d rather play without them and enjoy the game as intended without worry that something in the background might break or corrupt my save. TSW vanilla is in no way as bad or unplayable as people like to be overly dramatic about.

    It doesn’t matter if they stop working though as they’re not official products. If an update does break them it should be up to the mod authors to fix them, not DTG. If fixing mods takes time from more important matters like bug fixing or developing new content for all players, then mods should just be left behind, they’re a very minor thing in the big picture considering 2/3’s of TSW users on the consoles can’t use them at all.

    If Will is willing to help in an unofficial capacity to help fix them, that’s great for anyone who uses mods. It just shouldn’t be a factor for DTG to worry about officially, especially if it takes resources away from things that benefit everyone.
     
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  14. Will Marshall

    Will Marshall Active Member

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    Okay, getting the impression there's some confusion about how this works, (along with some posts from last night that I skipped over) so let me just clarify:

    Nothing about what's downloaded from Steam/EGS/Windows Store to your machine will change. "Add-Ons Manager" is the name of this feature because the original design involved a big menu to decide if you actually wanted the game to use any given peice of content. We didn't deliver that because honestly, it sucked. Happy to describe more reasons why that solution sucked and why we came up with the more complex automatic one some day.

    The way this actually works with the "DLC Manager" is that the game automatically determines if each piece of content (Each Pak File, for argument's sake) needs to be loaded for a particular experience, first gathering the DLC that must be loaded (for example, the route you selected and the trains that run in the layers on that route) and then going on to load optional content for those experiences (for example, trains that are only related to a route via substitution). It does this based on a budget, which on PC is unlimited and on certain console platforms is a limit determined by platform requirements, which basically constitutes the '64gb' thing you might have heard about.

    tl;dr again, DLC Manager is not a menu you click on, it's a butler that loads you the exact DLC you need for the experience you want. The content you have installed is a buffet and DLC manager's job is to give you a scoop of the things that go together. With DLC Manager, if you're playing US Content, TSW will forget all about the existance of German content for the duration of your session, unless you happened to use Off The Rails mode and ran an ICE1 up the North-East Corridor :)

    tl;drtl;dr In short, to a normal user of the software, this is 100% transparent. It's a change to the internal management of assets within Unreal Engine, where we've modified which content files are open at any given time. If you don't use mods, this will be a seamless experience for you and TSW3 will just get better*.

    * That said, this is a complex change to the fundamentals of the game engine, if it was easy we would have already released it! Please be patient when this feature finally makes it into public testing.
     
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  15. tsw2

    tsw2 Well-Known Member

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    [removed - JD - irrelevant to this discussion]
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Nov 4, 2022
  16. Crosstie

    Crosstie Well-Known Member

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    So, if I understand correctly, when I choose, say, Cajon Pass from the menu, the game will instantly load only those assets required to play any service in that route.
    Then, after finishing a CP service ( or not ), I decide I want to run a German route, the game will instantly off-load all CP assets and load all the assets for the German route.
    And this will be seemless?
    OK. If it works flawlessly no problem. Isn't that a big if, though?

    And it's really not a " download " or " add- on " manager, more a memory or storage manager, right?
     
    Last edited: Nov 4, 2022
  17. tsw2

    tsw2 Well-Known Member

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    There probably will be more then a few issues with that for PC users.
    Not a fan! Make it PS only
     
  18. FredElliott

    FredElliott Well-Known Member

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    It "manages" (mounts) the "add-ons" (DLC, pak-files) that are available for the route you select to play a route on that you have installed, instead of mounting (loading into RAM) everything that you have installed (this is the current method)

    Don't really get why semantics are an issue
     
  19. FredElliott

    FredElliott Well-Known Member

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    It's almost as if one of the lead developers hadn't posted to explain why it is being developed for all platforms as a feature to enhance both the development aspect (or more precisely to lessen the burden of having seperate codebases) and the player experience where they may not have a PC with huge amounts of RAM available

    Oh wait
     
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  20. doublefine7

    doublefine7 Well-Known Member

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    People in these forums are thinking they are much smarter than the devs even though these guys have literally 0 experience in developing any kind of software.

    Guys: This addon-manager is literally an internal change of how the engine administrates content. For the player nothing changes because its an INTERNAL change. And if a mod breaks, its on the modder to adapt. >The mod adapts to the game, not the other way round.<

    For the PC-Players: NOTHING CHANGES FOR YOU. Geez, I dont get why people always rise their pitchforks instead of reading first.
     
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  21. Crosstie

    Crosstie Well-Known Member

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    The " burden " of having several separate code bases is DTG's problem, born out of its decision to offer the game on 7 different platforms. That's for DTG to deal with.

    What we need to be concerned with is the impact on the players, in this case those on PC. If we decide we don't need or want the " add- on " manager, we should have the option of disabling it.
     
    Last edited: Nov 4, 2022
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  22. Crosstie

    Crosstie Well-Known Member

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    Don't think so. I think it could be an unwelcome change.

    Anyway, It's a " Pandora's Box " which DTG has opened.
     
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  23. ARuscoe

    ARuscoe Well-Known Member

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    I'd flip this on it's head
    If you decide to dev for the game (some people would say mod, but it's actually dev by another name) and then someone else devs for the game and yours stops working then surely it's on you to make your dev work or remove it from the market

    Ie it's not up to DTG to make your dev work or not

    Personally I don't see why offloading American DLCs when you're playing GWE would affect mods in GWE unless they touch the core, but I guess we wait and see
     
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  24. FredElliott

    FredElliott Well-Known Member

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    That's the entire point, there will be no impact* as it is seamless across all platforms. It works very well on TSW2 PS5 and there is literally no discernible negative impact

    *Unintended bugs notwithstanding, but that goes for any new feature
     
  25. ARuscoe

    ARuscoe Well-Known Member

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    This is what people are referring to... to them "breaking someone else's work" counts as an unintended side effect that they want to avoid
     
  26. FredElliott

    FredElliott Well-Known Member

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    Appreciated, was specifically referring to Crosstie's setup though, insomuch as he doesn't use mods
     
  27. ARuscoe

    ARuscoe Well-Known Member

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    Well yes, in that specific case the only reason NOT to use this new feature is in the (probably vain) hope that it would mean it's not going to break anything else.

    Unfortunately I will assume that any future development and optimisation will require the asset manager to be in place and working as intended (and as I say I don't know why demounting or offloading an american DLC would affect a UK one unless there's changes in the core as well)
     
  28. FredElliott

    FredElliott Well-Known Member

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    In a way I think the way that DTG have structured the routes in the past does help to some extent here, insomuch as its often pointed out that each route is like its "own game", which would assume that assets are generally not shared between routes, except for obvious common stuff like trees, roads, non-rail vehicles and the like. This absolutely should lessen the likelihood of needing to mount SPG when playing Bakerloo, unless you're like me and like to defy the laws of physics
     
  29. ARuscoe

    ARuscoe Well-Known Member

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    I'm not sure even those things are shared
    I imagine it's more like controls, interactions, some basic signalling concepts etc that are core but I don't know that
    I remember Matt saying on stream that to dev a new country they have to consider the differences in buildings (houses, factories), trees, even ground colour so it would make sense these are in the route assets rather than a core asset library
     
  30. FredElliott

    FredElliott Well-Known Member

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    Agree to an extent, but since primarily there are three countries represented through all the DLC available, two of which feature geographically close routes (UK + DE), one would assume that eg. tree assets from Tharandter Rampe could also have been used in Kassel so would make sense to have them in shared asset library. But yes I would expect simply due to lack of foresight of what will happen in three years, assets from a TSW2020 DE route wouldn't really be useable in a TSW3 route simply down to asset quality being insufficient
     
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  31. tsw2

    tsw2 Well-Known Member

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    If this is the current system then this is just ridiculous and should never been designed this way in the first place... loading every DLC into Ram even when it is not played??? Lol
     
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  32. FredElliott

    FredElliott Well-Known Member

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    It was a simplified explanation, not intended to be taken literally, hence the bracketed terms
     
  33. tsw2

    tsw2 Well-Known Member

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    Thing is, DTG has a track record of fixing one thing and breaking 3 others...we will see but I expect the worst
     
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  34. lcyrrjp

    lcyrrjp Well-Known Member

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    I won’t get into the rights and wrongs of changing the game in such a way that some mods no longer work, or whose responsibility it is to solve the problem. I’m no expert on that topic, so I’ll leave it to others.

    All I will say is that for me - as for many players - the game is indeed unplayable without certain mods, so if those mods don’t work, DTG will lose income from PC players. I was planning to buy Cross City on day 1. Having heard this news, I probably won’t, because I don’t want to buy it and then soon after find the mods no longer work so I’m left with a game I have no desire to play.
     
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  35. FredElliott

    FredElliott Well-Known Member

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    FWIW, and please don't twist this to yet another dig, here is a (slightly) more technical version

    (This assumes my limited knowledge is correct, anyone who is more familiar with how Unreal specifically does things feel free to correct)

    When you launch a game that uses compressed container files there are two methods of getting at the stuff inside them - you use the native OS API to decompress them into RAM or temporary disk storage, or you use the engine API (Unreal in this case) - typically the engine has
    its own method of accessing resources

    From Will's explanation earlier, Unreal uses a virtual file system, which means that for every pak file that is mounted, the metadata is then made available to the game as an index. If there were 10000 files inside a pak, the game doesn't need to know what the path (and possibly filename) is - ie. instead of wanting to access c:\program files\dtg\tsw3\assets\spg\trees\tree1.tex, it simply asks the api for tree1 in spg.pak (for example). This metadata (along with presumably lots of other info) is what is loaded into memory - Unreal handles the calls to the native OS filesystem in this manner so that the game doesn't have to know or care where file xyz is

    This still takes up memory, but obviously not as much as loading the entire pak file with its actual data (textures, audio etc.), but the more paks there are, the more indices and metadata is loaded into memory and stays there for the duration of the session

    The add-on manager changes the above process by maintaining a list of what paks are relevant to the route you are loading, and only mounts those paks, thus memory (and potentially performance based on access times) use is improved
     
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  36. rennekton#1349

    rennekton#1349 Well-Known Member

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    I wouldn't say completely unplayable and people will still buy the route. And mods not working is not the only reason why pc players don't buy the game. Whether there are mods or not, sales will vary for each route depending on the quality of it and whether they like the route or not. It's too early to tell whether bcc will need a mod cuz it might be a good route, who knows
     
  37. lcyrrjp

    lcyrrjp Well-Known Member

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    But some of the most important mods are not route-specific. They’re for all routes in the game, so they will be needed for Cross City to make it - in my view - playable.

    I agree some people will still buy the route. I’m just saying that this news means that I probably will not, and I suspect there are others who feel the same.
     
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  38. DTG Matt

    DTG Matt Executive Producer Staff Member

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    I think you're all jumping on the FUD wagon a bit early.

    As Will said, the engineer who worked on this actually spent a fair chunk of time specifically getting mods of a variety of different shapes and sizes and testing them, we spoke to a couple of mod authors to find out what they'd done that meant it didnt work and have adapted accordingly. As far as I understand it, we're not *aware* of any mods that don't work but once this becomes available in dev builds, we'll be asking the beta team to give mods a good thrashing too.

    Does that mean we're saying "definitely 100% all mods supported?" no because that's unreasonable - but we're doing our best to make sure that they are and that we'll listen to and look into any issues.

    As to how the addon manager works - FredElliot pretty much had it. There's a directory / index for every package file (.pak) - all the directory data is loaded by UE4 at the start regardless of what you're doing because it needs to know where to pick things up when they're asked for. NOT the entire content of the pak (that wouldn't even fit at all, think about it for just a second or two...) - the indices add up to a bit of ram, it's not huge, but it is not zero either. Having less loaded just makes for less in ram and less for the game to do - by small amounts, but hey, every little helps.

    Nearer the time i'll start assembling a list of "mods I can't live without" from you all so that we can get beta testers to run through those first.

    We only have one codebase and one content library, to be clear, not seven (i.e. it isn't one per platform). This is why its even more important that PC *does* eventually get this, otherwise we begin the fragmentation. Our build process is able to automatically assemble the builds out of the common core appropriate for each platform - it's quite clever - and makes our lives a ton easier, and we are very keen to retain that simplicity in the development process, there are HUGE implications for time and issues if we start fragmenting.

    The goal is for this to be transparent. It's working well now on console for TSW2 because we spent a lot of time testing and fixing, and we'll do the same here.

    Start making notes of your top mods and i'll put up a thread at some point for you to post them in (dont do it yet, it'll just get lost) - ideally with easy download links so that we can quickly get the mod installed and tested.

    Matt.
     
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  39. FredElliott

    FredElliott Well-Known Member

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    /blush
     
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  40. ARuscoe

    ARuscoe Well-Known Member

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    Or give them to the devs to bring into the game fully?
    (nudge nudge wink wink - hopeful)
     
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  41. tsw2

    tsw2 Well-Known Member

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    Yeah, lots of mods should just be the game standard anyway. Make it like MSFS and add "Experimental" Options for things like the new sky in TSW2 routes for example.
     
  42. Crosstie

    Crosstie Well-Known Member

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    Well, what happens to the mods when this feature is implemented is of no concern to me, since I don't use any.

    No, my concern is much simpler. When you switch from one route to another, is the process of offloading the necessary files for route " A " and uploading those for route " B " instantaneous and seemless? Is that how it is working in TSW for console players?

    If that's the case, then I guess I'll live with the add- on manager, even though I don't need or want it. Of course I want to make life easier for DTG.;) I imagine lots of changes have been made to the core software in the last 5 years. As long as they didn't break anything, I guess I haven't noticed.
     
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  43. ARuscoe

    ARuscoe Well-Known Member

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    Given the route is only "mounted" at menu level before you load it fully to drive it, I would imagine it would take the same amount of time to load as now. It's not like the whole route gets loaded now, only the "possibilities of what could be loaded"
     
  44. Tigert1966

    Tigert1966 Well-Known Member

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    Not having any issues with TSW 2 on either console. So for me the add on manager is working fine, There was a couple of issues with the base routes / new journeys, but they were resolved really quickly.

    I haven't noticed any difference in loading times / returning to the menu.
     
  45. davidh0501

    davidh0501 Well-Known Member

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    Thanks Matt and Fred.
    Both for the explanation and reassurance regarding the operation of the new manager.
    Ninety percent of the FUD which leads to frenetic speculation and the sharpening of pitchforks is due to our collective ignorance and wild assumptions.

    I much enjoyed the recent Roadmap and the explanation of the computerised testing system, and look forward to more in depth explorations in future.
     
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  46. Crosstie

    Crosstie Well-Known Member

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    Fine, I'll assume that this change will be unnoticeable during gameplay on PC, so I won't concern myself with it.

    ( Forgive me if my fingers are tightly crossed under my desktop, though )
     
    Last edited: Nov 4, 2022
  47. Crosstie

    Crosstie Well-Known Member

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    No, I don't consider myself or any others who have raised genuine concerns in this thread to be " ignorant " and no pitchforks have been sharpened.

    That's just your " wild assumption ".

    Everyone has been amicable for the most part.
     
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  48. lcyrrjp

    lcyrrjp Well-Known Member

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    Thanks, Matt. This sounds more positive in terms of likelihood of mods working, and as ever I appreciate the engagement with the community by you and your team. I’ll look forward to contributing to the ‘mods you can’t live without’ thread. For me there aren’t very many, but they are essential.

    To be clear - none of what I said was intended as a dig at DTG. I recognise the almost impossible task you have in trying to please multiple different audiences with massively different priorities. I just want to be honest in explaining where I am with the game, that certain mods are essential to making me want to play the game and therefore buy more DLC.
     
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