Upcoming Release Fife Circle Line – Coming Soon!

Where did I mention new services?

 

170 sounds need improving definitely!!! I hope the sounds are good when it is officially released

 

It's implied. Creating a level of traffic approximating RL means adding services, not just train-swapping existing ones. To take Cathcart: putting 170s on Circle services would just be silly.

 

Well, it could be implied, I certainly didn’t imply it.

Putting 170’s on Cathcart would be silly, but no one’s asked for that.

 

Very excited for the route. Been watching the cab ride videos online

 

Welsh Routes: 0!!!!!!!
Scottish Routes 2 (+1 coming)
English Routes: every single UK one apart from Cathcart & Edinburgh - Glasgow

 

Would be happy to see a Welsh Marches route with BR47, 43 or Cambrian Coast with 1st or 2nd generation DMU.

 

How many playable services are there and also how long is each part of the route end to end..been watching some cracking cab ride footage on YouTube uploaded by scotrail.

 

The service count is unknown at the moment. You could probably look at the rtt to determine how many services are run by the 170. Then you can look at other types of services such as those with the 385

 

There’s a fair few welsh routes what they could do, a cross border one between England and wales could be an interesting option among others.

 

if they do make a welsh route for TSW, I hope it is either
- North Wales Coast Mainline (Chester to Holyhead) 80 miles
- Cambrian Line (Shrewsbury to Pwllheli and/or Aberystwyth) Combined 197 miles (80 to Aber & 117 to Pwllheli from Shewsbury)
- Conwy Valley Railway (Llandudno Junction to Bleanu Ffestiniog) 30.8 miles

 

I personally would love North Wales Coast Mainline, the variety of units is pretty good (in reality obviously - not sure how good TSW would get it) but it does mean there's plenty of trains they could add in the future depending on what they added as the base train. (We get 66s, 70s, 56s (occasionally), 150s, 153s, 158s, 175s (formerly), 197s, railtours (usually 47s but sometimes steam) and obviously the WAG set (although they only run twice a day at the moment unfortunately). I have to admit.. I am pretty biased about that line as it's my local line - but most people do agree it would be a good route I've noticed!

The Cambrian Line would be pretty cool, I don't really know what goes up that way, I see a lot of 158 videos up that way, not much else based on videos I've seen though, whatever train goes on that line it'd be a good route.

As much as the CVL would be great, it would be pretty boring. It's the same train all day, no freight, no interesting workings aside from the occasional railtours, a very rare test train if you're lucky, and if you're insanely lucky - a Tamper or a track machine of some sort.. I wouldn't turn the route down if it was being made though!

 

The Cambrian is only operated by 158s as far as I am aware but it does go by a lot of Wales' narrow gauge railways like the Talyllyn, Ffestiniog, Welsh Highland Heritage & Vale of Rheildol plus it is currently the only route in the UK fitted with the new ETCS

 

Ah okay, that explains why I only ever see videos of 158s on that line. It sounds like a nice line based just on what you've said there, DTG could add a 97 as a loco add-on for the route too!
What is ETCS, I've heard of the name but I don't actually know what it is and what it does...?

 

For Daily passenger services yeah it's just solid 158s, but there are some engineering trains hauled by class 97s (Basically Network Rail 37s) and I think there are plans for steam to return.

 

Tornado is due to run night time trails in April to test her ETCS system. If proven successful on-board steam, yes we could see steam return to The Cambrian

 

That would be fantastic.

 

Delay the Damn route and get back to Work

 

Looks awful like a pile of pig plop

 

I have already put my thoughts in the unofficial thread but I will copy it below in this thread. If you have read my thoughts on the stream in the unofficial thread just skip past as this is exactly the same, unless, of course, you want to read it again (in which case I would advise you ring the doctor in the morning!).

The scenery in and around Edinburgh looked very nicely done and well modelled and this continued all the way around, rather consistently to the Fourth bridge, which itself is absolutely gorgeous and is something that Rivet can be genuinely proud of as it does look truly stunning. After the bridge the scenery for the most part still looked good, but I did notice a couple of things that caught my eye as off, including a passenger walking through a fence at one point and then of course the house and factory (which looked like they came straight off a Hornby Dublo layout!) along with the water in the far distance not looking right and the strange rock sided cuttings. However it must be said the majority of the route did look a decent standard with the water looking lovely up close and other areas of housing looking much, much better.

The 170, as predicted looked stunning with very little if anything able to be faulted with its looks, unless you count the exhaust smoke as part of the looks which seemed to be non existent. The cab did look very nice without fault, though from the quick breeze we had over it the GSM-R didn't seem to be fully functioning, but just at the normal TSW 'working' level. The unit certainly looks the part!
The sounds of the 170 are better than I feared they would be and do have a drop of 170 essence to them, but it is missing something from the sounds to really make them stand out. Nowhere near as abysmal as Rivet's previous attempts at sound, though they really would have to be shocking to be at that level. The cab is quiet, though I do believe that this time that is a genuine reason and of course there is the window which I will be opening!

Next on my list is the timetable, which, quite frankly, is unacceptable. I think, if memory serves me well, Jamie said that on a usual day around 200 trains cross the bridge, but there are only just under 100 services for the 170 which is about half of that figure and seems to be quite a large gap and does bring concerns. Every time it got mentioned it were like Jasper had a VAR screen in front of him and we are still waiting for the decision: knowing my luck when things go to one of these it won't be a good result so am not getting my hopes up for these supposed added services. I don't understand why they wouldn't have added them for release rather than adding them after as he didn't seem to mention any barriers or reasons as to why they were were not added because having so many services missing is not a good thing for the route at all. Another missed opportunity is rail tours which really would be nice to have on this route (even though Scotsman is fudged) along with RHTT and Engineering services just to add a bit more depth. On 'regular' freight services I don't believe there are any regular freight services on the route from my understanding, though I am not 100% sure and more than happy to be corrected on that one.

Lastly there were some other things I jotted down and so will just mention. The first of these is free roam! This just seems to be the chuck-away thing to say anything that they haven't included, such as the 170 on EDN and more than a couple of other times throughout the stream. I don't know if it's a blessing or a curse!
Another thing I noticed in this route (and on some other routes in fairness) is that some cars seem to go stupidly slow to the point where I felt I need to jot it down. I know this is a small thing but cars crawling along an open road can just ruin the immersion for me personally.
And lastly Haymarket depot. Need I say more!
Not a single train in sight there, but don't fear the sodding tram depot has static traffic in it! Speaking of trams though it is good they have been included as AI on that section, though a shame about the planes and (less so) the ships.

Right I think that is it and I do apologise for this rather long post. On the whole though it still seems to take my fancy more than GOBLIN did/does even with its faults. It also helps I have a £5 voucher from the Xbox rewards thing to claim, so I'll wait for the GP 10% off then use the voucher as well, hopefully bringing it down to closer to £20 which I can't complain about. Steam can wait even with the preorder!

I will just sum the route up with 3 screenshots:
The Good:

The Bad:

And the Ugly:

 

Many thanks for the detailed feedback matt#4801 !

Have flagged the service pattern and the empty depots internally, same goes for the 2D houses. I‘ll keep you in the loop if I know more about it.

And I appreciate you including nice things with your feedback as well, that’s really nice - thanks!

 

I find the road very beautiful, thanks to rivet for this new road.

I really like what I saw, as for the train I don't know, I'm not English so I'm fine as long as it works well.
But why waste this superb road with these filthy 2D gray square buildings!!!!
Is it not possible to put one or two static boats (sailing boats) in the water to brighten up the sea a bit?
There is no freight service on this route?

I'm going to pre-order but please remove these filthy gray buildings.
THANKS .

 

With all due respect Jasper, this sort of thing should have been picked up by yourself and your people when the route was in alpha stage. Did the route builder not actually think when placing those bare buildings the quality was unacceptable and throw it back to the 3D modeller? Do you not employ any form of internal QA or project oversight? It should not be up to potential customers just before release to point out glaring errors. If you have any integrity or honour as a company you will pull this from sale and take it back in for a comprehensive rework. Do not expect anyone apart from a few die hard fans to part with £30 for this sub MSTS freeware standard offering.

 

can i ask if the service pattern will actually be changed to resemble real life? Because 97 services (of which at least 11 are 2 minute 'Glenrothes Shunt' services) is not enough.. i can't tell you how much i was looking forward to this route, but i just can't buy this route now with such a bare minimum timetable.

even static ai at haymarket would go some way to improving things at least a little!

 

But even if a few more AI services are added: What use are they if the route itself simply looks inferior and bad? It's just not fun to drive. Even in the MSTS era (early 2000s!) something like this would have been criticized. That simply cannot be our aim for a new TSW4 DLC in 2024.

And the fact that the route was available for pre-order for a long time without us seeing a stream now has a certain bad aftertaste.

 

Beside all the main issues already mentioned, Would like to double down on the missing ships and airplanes part.

1. Jasper, you said in the livestream that you did not included any planes taking off or departing on Edinburgh airport because of not sacrificing any performance. However look at this pic I took in Google Earth. The runway (which even is missing in the build you used for the preview) is almost in 90 degree angle to the tracks, I would say less than 150 meters from it, with full vision on the airfield.

Not providing any planes here is a massive missed opportunity IMHO and could have given a huge value to the route.

Could have been a nice place for train and plane spotting.

Maybe even as a mastery reward like the place with dogs on the recently released London Suffragettes Line, where you could have a spot at the ECML.



An arriving and landing plane blueprint even was implemented once in Train Sim World in the London Commuter at Gatwick Airport and is a really cool and unique feature of this DLC, although the runway is way farther away off the tracks.

Take a look at it here (4:06 in the video):



2. Missing ships. I mean the Forth bridge is really well modelled, nothing against to say that. I can't imagine how long it must have took for you to create it in Blender. It's a piece of art. But on the same time that nothing happens underneath on the water ruins the immersion for me.

And I can't believe it would cost so much more performance if you would just place a few ships static meshes on the water surface. Placing a few static meshes like that has almost no impact when I'm doing it in the Editor. When we talk about hundreds of those a different thing, but should not be just with a few of those.

 

Personally I thought the route looked v nice in a lot of places, especially the countryside scenes which had quite a lot of depth and good foliage placement. Felt like a different style of route which looked nice to me. I've just felt the recent route offerings to be a bit samey in the countryside department, which is where we spend quite a lot of time when driving a route. So a definite plus point there.
Yes, there are a few issues (need much more AI I think), but I'm going against the grain here and think it's pretty good really. There has clearly been a lot of work put into the whole package. I guess some folks will think I'm not serious but I am. I think there's more playability than Goblin here, but that's just my opinion.
Just can't quite figure out why the streaming team didn't make sure the announcements worked beforehand with >1000 folks watching, but there you go. Preparation is key, as they say.

 

I don't really have a lot to add but....

Two really frustrating things here for me.

1) The complete (perceived) lack of preparation for the stream last night. They should have been running the best possible build last night (I'm not convinced they weren't) but apparently Matt didn't have the latest build. I like all 3 presenters individually, particularly Matt. But it just came across as unprepared and in places to me a bit unprofessional. Having watched past streams, Jasper is normally really well prepared with facts and figures, but yesterday he seemed very non committal.

2) Rivet can produce nice work - I'm definitely not in the 'Ban them from TSW' group. I really enjoyed Island Line 2022 (despite the still not working for me Mastery). Bernina line, I was upset at the chosen end point. But what there is of it is really good and I really like it. Bits of this look really good as well, the bridge is spectacular, but the timetable and parts of the scenery are below expectations. I have absolutely 0 expectation of further fixes based on past track record, so what you see is what you get.

I'm not pretending that they've lost a sale. I had no intention to buy it anyway until a sale. I got Goblin and JTs latest TSC Release this month already. But so many people were hyped for this and it seems a huge let down.

 

I was expecting to put in my pre-order after the stream but will now be waiting for a big big discount in a sale.

To be honest the missing textures on some buildings isn't a deal breaker for me and can probably be easily patched, but not having the majority of the timetable in place ready for launch means its a no buy from me, especially when there is little confidence in anything that's "not at the moment" will ever be delivered.

In addition to the missing services for the 170, how they didn't even bother to add anything in for those who have bought their Engineering Express pack is beyond me.

 

Atp Rivet Should just make the 170 Sold Separately.

 

Yup, send the route back to production, release a 170 TT for E2G.

Pipe dream I know, but no chance am I putting down £30 for an average 170.

 

[EDIT - Jan - Inappropriate]

 

Keep in mind he's the community manager. This is nowhere near his fault. He was just caught in the crossfire

 

In fact, this mess doesnt surprise me at all.
The way this stream was prepared, TSWs content is getting "planned" too. An example of the end result was sent to customer at yesterdays stream with the ice cream message called "we dont give a iuck "

 

I was thinking about doing some route learning videos on the Fife Circle and have been waiting for this TSW4 add-on in the hopes of making a better presentation. I'm leaning more now back to the Dovetail Games Fife Circle simply because of the lack of traffic on Rivet's new route; driving on constant greens doesn't interest me.

I do think the Class 170 looks nice, and for a TSW train I think the sounds are not too bad, although not up to AP standards. I am also pleased that the differential speed limits seem to be signposted correctly, and that the game correctly expects a Class 170 to follow the HST limits.

Put simply if railways around Edinburgh weren't my special interest I would not have any reason to purchase this rendition of the Fife Circle. I will definitely take advantage of the Winchburgh line though and have a go at a Manuel to the Forth Bridge rail tour; I was quite surprised to see it included and it's definitely a bonus for adding traffic in the future.

 

One thing that is typically done here is a combined 170 158 formation which is very common on this route

 

It’s pretty normal when building a route to stick in placeholder assets, to be replaced with the real thing as the work progresses. It seems to me that some placeholder buildings got overlooked

 

Maybe, maybe not. That house just embedded in the terrain, no garden, no fence, looked fairly final to me. And as mentioned earlier in another thread, done plenty of route building in my time and I personally would get the correct structure in place to start with. Just making work if you have to go back through replacing. And it's not like Rivet don't have a library of their own or probably also DTG assets to use in the first place even if they do come along with a custom structure later on.

 

This route is
Is it not possible to run a loop line via Dunfermline and Cowdenbeath?

 

they said in the stream they don’t have timetabled services what operate the loop and don’t leave the loop.

 

I’m fairly certain in TSC the services were split in two halves. Still you would think TSW could cope with trains returning back whence they came.

 

it would however it would mean that all steam locomotives that run on The Cambrian will have to be ECTS fitted so it will be a while until we see steam again on that line

 

not in timetable mode but I'm sure its possible in Scenario Planner and Free Roam

 

One of the scenarios was about 2 hours and called Full Circle so presumably that is an Edinburgh to Edinburgh run.

 

Pretty sure there is also one service a day in the evening which does a full loop, EDB > GLT > KDY > EDB.

Then on Sundays there are a couple of full loop runs in both directions.

 

what a disaster of a route it is going to happen

 

I've heard mixed reviews so far but I've chosen this over the suffragette line because of the 170, the videos I've seen of it it looks OK tbf, one thing that DTG and perhaps rivet should learn from this is that its a good idea to have other routes travelling to/from existing termini, would be good now to see new routes out of places like Birmingham new street/manchester/leeds/London etc etc.

 

The announcement is not working after you. Stop at a station. It's only ten you when you are Approaching.

 

This growing on me, but it needs more compost.