Enough Is Enough!!! The Ongoing Saga!!! It's Almost The 3 Year Anniversary

More recent.

 

Yeah so the latest update to WSR added in the new suspension onto the locos and I think they also got the JT clag? It looked like it to me at least. It made the 33 much better although the windscreen is a bit strange as Vern said.

 

Yes it's kind of opaque and washed out looking with a yellowish tint, similar to how many of the cabs in Trainz look.

 

I'll be sure to check it out. One of my favourite British locomotives.

 

176 days until TSW6 !

 

The roadmap coming up this week may well serve to heighten suspicions on that. We have no publicly named UK or North American new incoming routes, so if we just get vagaries, the chances are the next big releases will be as part of TSW6. The announced German route, like SBO for the US last year, IMHO also more than likely to end up in the TSW6 bundle.

 

Better to start saving money for it

 

It's very interesting they've blown out a ton of releases here in March at the end of the financial year. I don't think all of that content has been bad but you can definitely see where there have been shortcuts taken on some projects which hasn't been reflected in the price.

Very intrigued by what the roadmap will have on it if anything at all. Is TSW6 on the cards? If it is are there any reassurances or things they're working on to sort current core issues out? Will they actually answer the questions in the Q&a thread?

 

But how many till the Big film promoting it? Needs an announcement to announce it....

Coming this year "vending machine operative mode" fill those machines with tasty snacks and delicious drinks to gain XP. It's what the community wants etc....

Feels like we are so far now from loud diesels and bygone exciting times. "For £32.99 play what's on your local services right now" enjoy the sounds played in reverse and the fantastic rendition of a town crafted in 1 hour by skilled artists.

Right, Im off for a lie down now......

 

don't give DTG anymore ideas to milk the franchise, deviating further and further from actual rail transport simulation.

We already have 'commercial' billboards (unasked for, but free of charge with voluntary opting out), should we also need branded vending machines on the platforms with home delivery? Or those video displays common nowadays since they can show so much more than printed posters ....

 

Nah, it will be 70% off, this time next year.

 

Just jumped into WCML, as it’s been a while and it looks like I’m driving a train through an oil painting when the suns bright in game. What a mess this still is, especially on PS5!

 

Oil painting???
You should raise this in the appropriate Feedback forum.
Almost certainly you'll be given the brush off.

 

It's like RailDriver does not exist anymore

 

19 more days until Subway Sim 2 comes out and we will see what a train game looks like on UE5.

And it will be on console as well.

 

Well, you could just look at the old one. It looked bad and ran even worse

 

Yes, I'm looking forward to it (PS5).

 

Going from the video I've just watched it looks truly awful

 

LOVE hell this threads been active for 2 and a half years, surprised dtg haven't closed the thread honestly.

 

1 1/2

People have been pretty well behaved here overall, probably because nobody wants to be responsible for this thread being closed. There have been a couple of warnings, but nothing more than that.

 

its not like they ever cared about people's complains in the first place.

 

Anybody else not touch the game in a while? Haven’t played for like 3 months, going on 4. My interest has hit rock bottom for this game..

 

Same, got really no desire in train sims in general right now, both TSC and TSW sit dormant on my PC, (Meanwhile I look over at what SCS continues to cook up for ATS and it really holds my interest better)

 

I have been half heartedly trying to do the monthly mastery but after starting a run on WCML Shap last night, after five minutes of the Class 87 stuttering and sound squelching I had enough. Went over to Snowrunner and resumed exploring the new Quebec (supposedly!) maps. Very fiendish design even tougher than Kola Peninsula or the previous Austria region. I’ve also just added Missouri to ATS and really need to start pushing the WOT event to get the collectible.

If it wasn’t for the money I have invested in TSW comparatively recently I would be seriously thinking about uninstalling to make space for TSC to go back on. Matt’s comments in the “Core” thread currently running did not fill me with much optimism that TSW is now going to get any better as regards performance etc. Really starting to sound as if UE was utterly the wrong choice for a simulation with fast moving vehicles with complex physics and sound, covering large distances.

 

Since I finished the October mastery. I got a couple of DLCs -80% off since (on winter sale & festival of rail), but I didn't even have time to check them.

For the time being I basically switched to games where you build and manage various stuff, whether in 1st person or from above, isometric, or top-down perspective - simulators/tycoons (building and managing airport, hospital, hotel or prison), strategy/base builders, life sims, and a couple that are called "survival", but I find there's more of gathering or buying resources & building, than survival in them.

 

Yes same man I’ve not touched the game yet this year and I won’t until I see a route that I genuinely would enjoy playing or something else that will bring me back to playing. I even have it deleted off my PlayStation for now because I don’t want to keep something I’m not using that takes up a good chunk of my storage

 

Apart from a couple of runs on the Shap route, I haven't played it for a couple of months. I will eventually get the TSG route.

I have been spending my time back on TSC.

 

Since talk about tsw6 is all over the place, i have to remeber what hype came with Tsw5. Shiney blabla bla. At the bottom of the line too many dlcs were rushed and dont come up to expected standards. And Dtg keeps a very strange silence to their paying customers.

Some of the 3rd party releases for Tsw5 have top quality and are well worth their price (JT Preston Carlisle). Mildmay is short but well made too.
I personally liked the boston route from dtg and the ph59 loco dlc.

So now im really not interested in any more hypes, i rather prefere a dlc which turns out way more impressive than everybody expected.

 

For me personally the persistent core issues, declining quality of DTGs UK content, DTG selectively burying their heads in the sand, and this edition (TSW5) being pretty abysmal has made me decided I will not be bothering with the next title in the series, or pre ordering any new game, for the first time in years.

When the new title comes out I'd always be the type of person to buy the 'early access' package because it excited me that much. The way TSW5 was hyped about, specifically the WCMLS, and what we actually got were two different things. But DTG have really tarnished their image over the last year to the extent I won't be bothering with any new titles until it can be assured many of the ongoing core issues are improved substantially, and that any outsourced work they peddle out needs to be of the same quality their own team would make.

 

The frustration as I’ve said before, is that there’s times when TSW can shine. I fired up the PS5 version this morning with NTP again and hammering the Class 45 up towards Standege on the big screen TV was quite magnificent. Of course those early routes didn’t put anywhere near the strain on the core and hardware that some of the later content does. Therein to some extent and purely IMHO lies some of the problem. WCMLOS which is by far the worst for me on PC gave us a route where the developers went a bit overboard on scenery complexity and at the same time bringing in the Class 87 with scripting that probably pushes Simugraph to its limits.

If DTG can’t do any more with UE to cure the problems and switching to another or bespoke game engine is not possible with the ever increasing back catalogue of content, then maybe the answer is to be a bit less ambitious with what they’re asking the game to do.

 

I think this may be key. I don't think it's fair for people to second-guess DTG's choice of UE years ago based on hindsight from the present, and also without access to the detailed research they would have done (as well as without having actual detailed research on today's options). But just as TSW has to be scaled down for gen 8 consoles, it may be necessary to start scaling down the overall ambitions if the foundation can't help but be overwhelmed by them.

Still, as much as people like to hold up other train sims as examples of how cherry-picked points can be done better, every single one has compromises that can also be read about on these forums. You yourself, Vern, bounce around them freely depending upon what you're looking for at any given moment. Coming up with the perfect one has yet to be accomplished by anybody.

 

My bad I was half asleep lol

 

Well my interest and enthusiasm, and consequently my playing time, is certainly much less than it was in the past.

Part of that is just normal life intervening, but it also has a lot to do with the kind of content DTG has been putting out in the past couple of years. " Bus stop " railroading with toy trains is not my thing. And I'm unimpressed with the quality of the output, with MSTS level scenery, flying cars and buildings, poor audio, lack of a useful save feature and a dozen other issues spoiling the immersion.

And until DTG goes back to steam traction and American freight, I can't see my enthusiasm for the game returning to its former level.

I feel like I wasted my money on TSW5 with 3 mediocre routes I rarely if ever play and features that never really materialized.

I won't make that mistake this coming fall.

 

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.