Enough Is Enough!!!

Maybe they should hire or subcontract engineers with EU expertise to improve the core of the game. Sometimes it seems like they spend money on less important things like creating a full soundtrack including a symphony orchestra for a train game.

 

It's a platform that has potential but seems to let itself down. I'm finding more trains lately stuck at platforms or at signal in timetable mode. The thing I be always asking for is a strong dispatcher/signaller. Feels like we are going backwards with the bugs and faults. The routes that are genuinely quiet (Settle to Carlisle or West Highland) probably fail the lampoil test and the likes of WCML South push it to its limit. Time to stop the its hard to develop for excuses and just give us some entertainment. I would say Blackpool branches is the sweet spot. Busy but not overly complex. No more modern day EMU routes thanks.

 

Off topic, but I believe that the main menu soundtrack peaked at TSW 3. 5 kinda sucks when compared to 4.

 

Or bringing in Mr Wilford aka Sean Bean to do a voiceover!

 

Never paid much attention to it. Which orchestra is it?

Now if they'd used a real train song.......

 

Me too. This thread is solely for mourning...

 

I had the update for Brendan Oldenburg. I purchased last week on sale. Why is it that I get Platinum Medal when driving the Expert 101 and when I look ay my profile it shows Gold Medal added to it instead of the Platinum. I didn’t play the original version. This needs to be fixed this honestly. I love trains so much when I was kid & when I come home to play it to relax and enjoy. You guys have to better optimize the game to true potential. This is ridiculous and not fair to play at all

 

The issue is that the unreal engine has been heavily modified to make it work for tsw, so how are engineers with ue experience supposed to fix the core if they don't know tsw specific core?

 

"Heavily modified", lol... General programming, UI and graphics will still be just avarage programming and Unreal Engine stuff. And TSW mostly seems to suffer from issues regarding graphics, UI and optimization. But either way, a software engineer is a software engineer - if they are good, they will get around in any project. So a good UE engineer would have no issue with TSW, even if it's a "modified UE".

The thing is, while we don't know the background of the team, but I think it's a safe bet to say that they don't have enough EU knowledge at the dev team. I mean sorry, but they can't even get the menus right... Timetable view "on foot" bug, Creators Club is an unusable mess, the livery and formation creators are also very clucky and hard to use. And the list could go on with so manny issues with TSW.

And while they have clearly improved over the years, many improvements we got actually originated from the community. Like the originaly ugly 2D clouds we had in TSW2020 only got prettier because a modder showed them how to make them better. Then later down the line the community kept bugging them about volumetric 3D clouds and they kept posting UE tutorials until we finally got them, lol.

Anyways, I might sound harsh, but I'm not trying to hurt the dev team. You can't get knowledge out of thin air. If they don't have enough Unreal Engine and general software development knowledge, it's understandable. Or maybe the core dev team is simply too small and they don't have the capacity to fix all things even if they could. Either way, DTG should invest more in core developers. You can have the best route builders, best 3D modellers and best sound recording trips on the world when the core software keeps failing on you.

 

It wasn't a full time symphony orchestra like the LSO or CBSO. It was the City of Rochester Symphony orchestra if I recall. A local amateur orchestra likely made up of freelance musicians and musicians with other jobs. They don't cost that much to hire compared to a professional full time one as some of the hyperbole at the time made out.

You're not talking tens of thousands, I doubt even £10,000.

Source: I have been involved in hiring similar orchestras.

 

I agree. I got the impression that it's a (keen) amateur orchestra and they added some freelancers in key positions, e.g. the leader, the trumpet (?), the cello (?), etc. So the orchestra would have probably negotiated a fee and the freelancers would have been paid (at MU rates?). I should add that this would not have made the freelancers rich (money in music is rubbish).

Anyway, the orchestra used has probably got little to do with whether you like the music or not, which is going to be mostly subjective. Mind you, with a thread apparently full of software and now music experts, maybe this has turned into genuine music criticism.

 

All straight from university, I'm told, including the lead.

They would have benefitted from at least the lead coming from within the industry, with existing proven experience.

 

Yes but everything they do is neglected. Catan and Fishing seem to have tumbleweeds everywhere. TSC all but abandoned for core updates and there’s no more in house DLC being made. The tram game has been bought in from an external company and pretty shonky at that. Their foray into flight simming went the way of the Hindenburg with FSW being abandoned just out of early access and FSX just a tarting up job so it (barely) runs from Steam and on modern hardware but also abandoned once M$ took the franchise back.

So I would seriously like to know what most of those 170 people do all day, unless they’re working on secret government contracts under the Official Secrets Act!

 

If that's true, than that explains things, lol.

Sadly university doesn't teach you enough. Unless you had side projects in uni to actually gather experience, then your knowledge upon graduating is very thin. And if you don't have senior developers in your team, then the unexperienced devs can spend years in "limbo" before they finally start gathering proper experience and begin improving.

Anyways, they have quite a few years behind them now. They visibly are improving. I would guess the biggest issue now is capacity. We are being told about several issues that they are being looked at by the team. But if the list is too large and the team doesn't have enough capacity, then fixes are slow.

 

Whoever worked on the scenery/foliage type and placement on those early routes (NTP,GWE,Tees, Sandpatch) did a fantastic job of very natural looking scenery, not over-taxing the system, leading to very nice performance + immersion. Hardly any hitching. Even the lighting looked better in those routes compared to recent (imo of course), the newer routes seems to be very washed out/too bright on most occasions. Maybe the newer foliage systems are too performance hogging, while not looking any better than the old imo. Or maybe it's a combination of more ai+this. Or maybe I need a new PC.

 

It seems to me that dtg give the team limited time on fixes between projects, with most projects adding new problems to the long list of problems.
There's times when the stuttering has been largely reduced just for a new dlc to bring it back with a vengeance.

Currently any high speed route is a stutterfest!
Any routes with a lot of scenery or traffic like wcmls stutterfest.

I find myself mostly playing peak forest as the slow moving trains and complete lack of traffic the route seems stutter free.

I think Ue was a big mistake and a complete waste of time and money.

It's been several years since the release of tsw, if the team can't fix it in that timeframe then it's safe to say they won't ever fix it.

 

This is actually very evident on the Shap 87. Below about 40 MPH and with less than full taps on, you don’t get so much of the sound squelching. But get a bit faster up to around 60 MPH with full throttle and the distortion kicks in with a vengeance. That said, the same thing was noticeable with steam (all the locos). Up to around 30 MPH the sound was passable but above that deteriorated into a wall of white noise. So there does seem to be a correlation between the faster the train is going, the harder it is for the audio component of Simugraph or the game engine to keep up. Probably exacerbated by potato hardware but that really shouldn’t be a huge factor, at the risk of repeating previous comparisons - Forza 4, Snowrunner, Dirt Rally 2.0 etc., etc. all run nice and smooth.

 

Well I hadn't fired up TSW5 for about four months. So yesterday I had a go on the Blackpool branches. So first train in the timetable lol ,was a class 40 ECS with the 8f railtour stock Blackpool to Preston. So the class 40 wouldn't move with maroon MK1 coaches. Ok let's try a 31 from Blackpool to Preston, a bit behind schedule but ok, until 2 miles from Preston, yep blue screen crash

Good to see TSW is still broken.

 

https://www.change.org/p/cancel-the-train-sim-world-thomas-dlc-make-dovetail-great-again?recruiter=1339847176&recruited_by_id=167bf600-1e59-11ef-a141-7bb28ae6d700&utm_source=share_petition&utm_campaign=share_petition&utm_term=petition_dashboard&utm_medium=copylink&utm_content=cl_sharecopy_490355804_en-GB:4



Wow, this is truly something...


This is a petition against the Thomas dlc...

"Revolution" "kangaroo court" "two tier policing on an Internet forum"

What on earth... someone remove this shambles

 

Sadly dilutes the genuine attempts by those of us concerned over the state TSW is in, to post our views in a reasonable manner. Perhaps Donald Trump can intervene, once he’s finished nerfing the global economy.

 

I've not really played shap since release. The sound really spoils it unfortunately.

It's not your hardware. I have a fairly decent hardware and still suffer from the problems you mention.

I've upgraded my memory and GPU to try and get a smoother experience but to no avail.

Snow runner, f1, msfs, ets, ats, cp2077, and many other games benefit massively from the GPU upgrade but tsw seems like the potato here.

 

When all you do reiterate on the code rather than rewriting it, eventually after enough time you end up with a Jenga tower of compromises and a code base that is no longer fit for purpose.

 

You often mention sound squelching, which I must admit I never hear myself. Saying that I'm fortunate to have a decent PC with which to run TSW. As a PC and PS5 player, is this something you hear universally in TSW?

 

Like it is now then.

 

Can't really say about WCMLOS specifically on PS5 as I don't own it, only some older routes, and not really prepared to spend £33 just to test the theory...

 

I have found the newer TSW5 routes suffer from microstutter now even after having been ran few times. Have capped my frames at 30 and yes have mods running but have repeatedly removed them and dropped settings to the lowest and it does the same. Culprit routes are WCML South and Over Shap and Frankfurt Fulda. Other routes have far less stuttering.

It also feels like the majority of DTGs staff are marketing and social media roles. Apologies if that isnt the case but no doubt an avalanche of reveals and spin is being cooked up right now....

 

Only in the evening.
I must say that with 64gb of RAM cobbled together from a broken down gaming laptop into the new one, my game runs very smoothly regardless of ai.

 

The funny thing is, when my brother started trying to get work in games studios (Rare was one of them, I think) he was rejected because he didn't have a qualification, regardless of the fact that, unlike the university graduates, he could program in machine code and had already developed his own 3D engine.

Thankfully he did eventually break through, used his self-taught knowledge to rewrite and optimise Sony's own PlayStation libraries among other things, and went freelance.

 

Did you check the brake mode?

 

I think if there is a kettle on the back you have to go and release the brakes on that or uncouple it as well.

 

The kettle was uncoupled.

I did have a look at the brake mode, but it's months since I fired up TSW5, I couldn't find a brake setting.

Since I hadn't played TSW since before Xmas, now it seems the crashes are worse. Also I remember TSW4 seemed a bit more stable.

 

I have always turned the music off on TSW. Never seen the need for it.

 

I turned off the music as well, I'm playing Train Sim, not a Triple A Superhero game.

 

I have the music off too, I can't stand it. For me the best one was TSW 2020, I think it was simple and fit well with the type of game and the player it was aimed at.

 

I normally have the music off as well but I would have it turned on max if I could play the TSW5 blackpool branches theme songs as it is the perfect tune to play when riding or seeing a pacer go by as it just works. Train Sim World 4: Blackpool Branches OUT NOW

 

I don't recall ever hearing the menu music. If it's the same tune repeatedly, I imagine it would drive one insane eventually.

 

I loved the trailer music for TSW2020. It worked well for the trailer...but it would be too much if it was the menu music.

 

So by coincidence as I was looking for something else.

The trailer music for Blackpool Branches is on Spotify and I often play Spotify on my PS5 while I'm playing TSW

 

That's so funny with a bouncy pacer

 

I really liked the TSW3 menu music, as it felt peaceful and tranquil, but for TSW4 and 5 I felt like the music was way too loud and intrusive, so I turned it off.

 

It's funny, there was an ambient version of the TSW4 menu theme which as far as I'm aware wasn't used in the game. It's 11 minutes long, but I think it's quite nice to listen to. It would have been great in-game.

 

Not in a while...
TSC wins mainly because it can scratch my itch of trying new things whenever I feel like it. Saying that I'm getting bored of playing TSC as well...

 

I'm on it most days, really enjoying the North London Line, WCML south, WCML north and always have time for a drive down my favourite TSW line, London to Brighton. Even though it's a bit dated, I love city to coast and end to end electric lines. That's what I grew up with, all my childhood train journeys in the 70s being trips from London to a holiday destinations like Bournemouth, Brighton, Clacton, Hastings, Margate and Southend so it never gets boring for me.

 

Give me any long route out of W'loo including Guildford with the slammers and 33s and I'll be playing it all day everyday

 

When TSW does things well, it can be very enjoyable!

 

Wait ... They gave you a nice TV and a PS5?

 

What is that livery may I ask vern?

EDIT: tut tut running late I see

 

That's just the bog standard Class 45 with the PS5 version of NTP. Not sure why the blue looks lighter than it should!