The question I am going to ask will sound really crazy, but it is possible to build a route of approximately 1,500 kilometers in the Train Sim World 4 editor, which is equivalent to 932 miles. The truth is, I am aware that the editor may have limitations and due to memory The truth is, how big could a route be made in the Train Sim World 4 editor? Once it comes out on September 26, I hope someone can tell me how feasible it is to build an extremely large route, if not to say very large. Greetings
We have no idea. Come back in 20 years and tell us how you got on We know it will build routes the length of whatever the biggest in TSW is, beyond that nobody has tested it with a full route build (track only will be quite different to having all the signalling, light bakes and other stuff to make an actual usable route). At 932 miles though you're almost certainly going to find the curvature of the Earth is your biggest problem - since TSW is a flat-earth model and uses UTM to translate between the two, which is fine for say 300-400 miles but the error starts becoming a lot more challenging after that. Matt.
Are you telling us the Earth is not flat? And no one has argued the point yet? Is this the real internet?
The errors you'll get are either because you've reached the ice wall or you've fallen off the edge lol.
You will also run into the Wildlings and the Ice King! Assuming you actually completed the project you would then need to ask NASA to build a super server to host the multi terabyte file which no one could fit on their PC! Seriously for a solo project I would not look at more than 25 to 30 miles and my first attempt will probably be less than that, an upscaled model or miniature railway plan.
I imageine the biggest challenge of doing a very large route through almost unpopulated area would be large-scale procedural generation, which would unavoidably make the route feel very shallow and repetitive. I would just pick a shorther but interesting section and go with that instead.
It's actually harder to do this than you think. Talking to our Art Director many years ago when he built the Marias Pass for TS Classic, he said that the interesting bits of the route with lots of varied scenary are quite easy to make, compared to the long expanses of open barren area where it's easy to think there's "nothing", but there's never "nothing" there's always something there - so you've got to really hunt for that detail, get a much bigger sense of the area and its character and then put that detail in. People playing the route will probably still think "there's nothing here" but trust me - if you actually put nothing there, that looks *very* different. The same criticism is raised about Sherman Hill in TSW and again, if you remove the scenery that's been put in you'll appreciate more how MUCH there actually is there. The Nullabor Plain is NOT to be underestimated as a task!
So the challenge of art direction is to make uniform surface interesting to look at? I think I heard that somewhere. This brings the next question. I heard that there is a 30 or 40 second rule (exact timing varies) in open world games, which says that the player exploring the world should always stumble upon something that catches his eye within that time. Have you guys done something like that for TSW? Like making small unique scenery bits roughly every 1km on a 120km/h line to break up repetition.
We don't do a specific pass for that, no, aiming to simply copy reality rather than manufacture interest. If it's boring in real life then either we shouldn't do it, or it should be boring in the game, basically. BUT when we're playtesting one of the things we try to take into account is whether there's areas of blandness that should be levelled up because interesting things have been missed, or because a styling has been too repetitive in a stretch. The Bremen route for example originally during dev had a stretch of straight that was very bland to drive through, it wasn't necessarily "wrong" but it wasn't "right" either. The team got together and spent time making it more varied and interesting and now it's much more enjoyable drive through rather than feeling like a bit of a "this is the dull bit" slog.
Quite funny to recollect the first ever route I did for MSTS was Ayr to Stranraer and even with the hills, it was quite a challenge to make sections of bare moorland look interesting. More so with the very limited built in resources we used on those very early routes. Ditto later on with the West Highland over Rannoch Moor and Far North between Helmsdale and Georgemas.
