Well, I can't see any "dangerous territory" if one of the most respected developers for TSW confirms what the community was suspecting: The 204 is screwed up beyond repair. Starting from scratch might solve it. Period. Read the thread. And I don't want to spoil your excitement to play her on TSW. It's just that I think calling her "brilliant" is a bit too much of a stretch. Skyhook is a completely different discussion. Although there ARE commonalities: The dreadful BR 187 is just as much the most expensive AI loco as the 204 is.
Agreed. I'd love to actually get something out of the 204, but I can't. Beautiful as she may look, the physics are beyond immersion-breaking for me.
Absolutely ok to disagree with me boys. I'm not disputing the facts. I just can't play Steamers as they are an absolute failure in TSW, but I don't want to spoil anyone's fun with them, that's not what I want or can do.
If someone enjoys the 204 and calls it brilliant, there is no point to argue about that. If someone doesn't enjoy the 204, that's also perfectly fine and not to argue about. Let's head back to bernina?
I wasn’t saying it as a potential strategy for the companies to use, more of a consequence of less revenue. It was in reply to someone suggesting that not buying any products would make them better in the future. If enough people stopped buying in a hope that it would send a message to the devs to make better products it could even make the devs think there was no money in it and stop making DLC altogether.
Surely the whole point of the free enterprise system we live by is that the consumer determines what will be produced and at what price it will be sold. If the quality of a product is not satisfactory or is deemed too expensive, it's perfectly right for consumers to stop purchasing it. If the producer wants to continue to sell that product, they will improve it or reduce its price so that people will begin purchasing it once again. If they don't, someone else will produce a better product that consumers want to buy. I'm not suggesting that TSW is in that position, but the market does seem to be opening up. It seems that there will always be someone who wants to produce a train sim. As players / consumers, we are not responsible for whether a company prospers or not. I hope TSW keeps going and gets better because it's still potentially the best train game out there, but we can't be held hostage to or live in fear of the possibility that it won't, which is what you seem to be implying. I haven't bought every dlc and neither have you I imagine. I have to hope that if enough players don't buy the next few " Goblins/ Glossops " , better, more imaginative routes will be made. If not, I'll have to get my train fix someplace else or just continue to play what I already own and stop buying new routes. That's as it should be, in a free market.
Then that is their loss, not ours, to be honest. If that is the conclusion they would draw from it, then clearly they are incompetent at analyzing the market and seeing the results of their own actions. Anyway, it was DTG themselves that said the customers should vote with their wallets. So that's another reason to not buy something if you don't like it. And I am not going to keep buying mediocre products in the hope that maybe at some point in the future they will begin making quality stuff. It is about time they realize that you need to invest first to attract customers, not the other way around.
Could Rivet or DTG please explain why there are so many “Red” roofed houses as they are not in keeping with the area? I hope they have been changed in the final release.
I´m going to repeat myself here... go check on other routes if houses look the same as in reality. The demands for extrem realism are going over the top with this route. It´s not feasible and never has been on other routes.
I'm pretty sure "not having red roofs" is not extreme realism. That's an incredibly minor thing to do.
Id argue it is. The roof colour of some random houses is not that important and seems really nitpicky. Is it because its Rivet , or why are such things never done on other routes? Go on Preston or Niddertalbahn and look if the scenery housing has the right roof colour or even the right type of building. Bernina has some other more serious issues like the safety systems not able to be activated on console or choice of ospizio as terminus, but roof colours of not railway related buildings is something really really minor.
Yes it might be... but as I said: go look on other routes. All this uprise about this one route, but at the same time people fonding over old routes like Main Spessart or Tees Valley and romanticising older add-ons. Go look them up and check with real life pictures.
It can't be extreme realism, and minor at the same time. I said it was a minor thing, if they wanted to fix it, would take like 10 minutes in a texture editor. I'm personally not bothered by the roof colour, as mentioned it has way more pressing issues. I was simply stating it's not extreme realism.
Can you be more specific? If you're talking about the safety systems, then that's been fixed. The rest of it is mostly his opinion, which is particularly entertaining when he said that he'll be doing an objective review once it's released.
I agree mostly with what's said. I don't think the scenery is quite as bad as he is saying, but it is certainly rough in places. The snow and colouration is a big issue I think. The video on the whole would be a lot better without the reading of quotes in a silly/stupid voice. Comes across as quite infantile. Be better to just read them in a normal voice.
Agreed. That kind of put my back up too. I watch some of his stuff for a different perspective, along with the guy from New Zealand (the one who pronounces Glasgow really strangely), and they both have some interesting opinions, but they let themselves down a bit with some of their more childish outbursts. Each to their own though, they still get views from me.
Yeah, I can't watch the New Zealand guy either because he kind of flies off the handle and blows some things out of proportion.
Not quite. Throughout TS' life the output by DTG was consistently terrible with very few good releases like the APT. The only reason TS is still popular is because of third parties doing what DTG could never be bothered to do - make good stuff, with smaller budgets and teams. What DTG could achieve one year ago was almost as good as what AP could achieve eight or nine years ago. However, DTG's assets and routes are still heavily used, providing them with a residual income and an incentive to continue updating the game, as they are now.
And don't forget the Workshop, with way better scenarios than the default ones often. There's people like Not.Silent, who's made over 1,000 highly entertaining and action packed "live" railway scenarios. These people also are promoting TSC, making people buy needed dependencies. I wonder if DTG treats them the same way as their ambassadors with free DLC. They should reward the likes of N.S, Coasty, RBJets and many more highly creative designers. So, I'll have my side-by-side Bernina comparison tomorrow, and see if it's worth keeping the TSW version. Based on my own opinion.
While not really side by side, I did 2 quickdrive autumn runs yesterday in TSC from Tirano to St. Moritz and from St. Moritz to Tirano on the joined Bernina Line+Pass+Albula+Engadin lines. That was sufficient enough for me to put the purchase of TSW4 back to at least after the WSR update, and its Berninaline until it's discounted some 60% off.
If you do comparisons at this level of detail, you cannot avoid to be disappointed. Remember it is an artificial world created by a few people instead of a real world created by ages of history and loads o people, animals, plants, weather and so on involved. For me what counts is if it gives me roughly the same feeling as when I travelled this route, not knowing the area very well. Despite all these missing details, I tremendously enjoy TSW. You can feed your own disappointment, not very difficult or you can enjoy what you get for a relatively small amount of money. The choice is yours. If it is not worth the money for you, have some patience and come back later to get a nice discount.
There’s a lot of focussing on individual detail and less of the whole thing and if you look at the whole thing in the images we have seen so far it is pretty good. Of course there will always be a better looking route with better detail and comparisons with TSG and JT are bound to come up in that but we know they aren’t tied to hourly rates like Rivet’s creators so can spend extra time making it just so. I buy most routes in sales and this will be no exception but I am looking forward to it when I do. It may turn out to be Rivet’s best offering so far. I can’t tell that for sure until I’ve played it though and that won’t be for a while yet. If I was a developer I would spend a little more time making sure the scenery around the start points of services was some of the best on the route though as this is scenery that may be lingered on for longer when stood still for a little while, and Rivet haven’t done a particularly good job of that here with that really bad looking path. You don’t need a side by side picture to see that’s a poor bit of scenery work. Even so, it’s a small bit of scenery that you could look at and think to yourself “that could be better” and then just get on with enjoying your drive so it’s not the end of the world.
In my opinion it actually is. Though I don't have all of their British DLCs. But owning arosa, 204, Luzern Sursee, Edinburgh Glasgow, and Bernina, I'd definitely say rivet stepped up their game and made their best route, yet.
The adding of red colour roofs as opposed to the correct local type is to me a bit of an immersion breaker. Any simulation is trying to reproduce what is really there and that includes the scenery. The odd wrong building type is no big deal but roofs are by their very nature everywhere that structures exists, and aside from out in the wilds that is pretty much everywhere these days. The lack of attention to detail is a trifle lazy as it wouldn't have taken very long to do the correct textures. For me it means I will wait for a significant discount in the future before purchasing.
I have seen issues like this on multiple routes. Not sure what is causing this. It may be a design bug or just something that has to do with visibility issues for far away objects related to performance. But it is weird and hopefully something can be done about it. But to be honest, for every route you can find weird things if you are looking carefully.
I don't believe these side-by-side comparisons to be very useful. As a curiosity fine but they shouldn't be used to critique the route. No route stands up well to direct comparison to real life save for the occasional landmark on a route. Rivet can be a hit-and-miss with scenery. Their modelling is excellent in my opinion but scenery placement can be questionable.
Yeah and I said in several posts that this is all a bit relative because a lot of factors like clouds, camera lenses, post production, sunlight, weather, season etc influence what you perceive. Unfortunately this turned out into a discussion about roof colours being an immersion breaker (which is disagree with). I just wanted to compare the track laying, the landscape and the placement of assets in general.
Congratulations to Rivet, although there are bits and pieces that l am disappointed about which they could have attended to, which would have definitely improved the feel of it, but it is the best route Rivet have produced. Would have been better, both if they had listened to the community and also made it a wee bit longer to Pontresina, where the tourists enter for the shorter version. Well done Rivet there are some aspects that are pleasing and fun.
I like what I have seen so far. However, I will need to go on a diet. I've only visited 2 stations on foot and have already eaten 5 pizzas!!
This is a nice route. I also managed to wander beyond Ospizio, and got as far as here before hitting the wall.. I'm sure that there is more to explore beyond this point.
Arent these routes supposed to be a general representation rather than exact copies? Seems like we'd be waiting for at least ten years per route if people expect exact representations. The only thing that really disappoints is the lack of bridge and tunnel sounds, and yes the lighting is kak in tunnels. I agree with some who conclude that comparisons like these are unhelpful unless it is a glaring error like the one in MML with the embankment missing from the approach to Derby, yikes how could you miss that?
You are correct! The track is laid and signalled all the way to St Moritz, and furthermore up part of the Albula line including the link that connects Pontresina to Samedan via Punt Muragl. The AI apparently uses these tracks too. (Credit to Discorder KIHA114514 for the first image, Emil_OLT on Twitter for the second) I don't know whether this is representative of the portion of line that couldn't be completed within the project timescale, a plan for future expansion or possibly both.
For the same reason we still havn't got Sherman Hill's third track. They got the majority of sales already, so why bother doing anything extra? Why put any love in old content when you can simply dump it in the trash and work on the next shiny project? The original scope probably included the full Bernina line, but then in typical TSW fashion got cut shurt during development to meen some self imposed deadline. Such a shame, because the full line would have been great. If they even decide to finish it properly, I would probably be interested. But knowing how most TSW projects get abandoned right after release, I wouldn't hold my hopes up.
Extending the line to St. Moritz would be fantastic. I congratulate Rivet on the walkabouts on this route.
I think anyone expecting an extension is delusional. It's happened twice in the history of TSW and they were relatively short stretches on flagship routes with a lot of the work already done. It seems that most routes are scaled down somewhat during the process to meet deadlines as many DLC have large portions of track laid that are unusable. Obviously I would love it to happen still.
They would need to do the stations, and the terrain deformation. Modders are only able to place assets on existing routes so could take care of trees, houses etc.
In theory yes, in practice it's questionable, while hobbyists can do great work with enough time and effort, you will be waiting a long while more than likely. Black Mesa for example, which is officially endorsed fan-remake of Half-Life is fantastic, but it took 15 years to develop. Granted that in many respects is likely a larger project than just decorating incomplete portions of existing routes, so I doubt it would take that long. But you would still likely need a team of people to get Sherman's track 3 or the remainder of Bernina done in anything close to a timely manner. And that assumes it is eventually done, for every modding project that does make it to the end like Black Mesa there's probably 100 which fall apart and never see completion. That's the problem with modders, they don't have deadlines, but they can easily lose motivation to keep a project going. Paid employees are the dead opposite, they may have deadlines, but with this being their job they have all the reason to see it though.
Indeed, if you're long enough with TSW you know that routes are not expanded (except for DTG's showroom route SEHS which was a rework). We still haven't got Finnentrop to Siegen, which would make the route complete for example, or the Paddington-Reading stub. MAG could be extended to Stuttgart, etc.That's just how TSW is, they could have also merged RSN and RRO, or ECW and BML, MSB and MTB, and so on. So even if there are extensions, they are separate routes for various reasons.
Additionally it seems the Meißen branch on DRA was more of a voluntary passion project and the extension to Dartford on SEHS was needed in order to sell the Class 700, Class 37 ROG and RHTT DLC's.
Well, I was watching one of the ambassador streams and he let slip that this route was completed quite a while ago (did someone also mention the manual was written with TSW3 in mind?) and put to one side, so no deadlines whatsoever were attached. I can only assume that he was part of it's beta testing process to have access to this level of information but nonetheless, it does suggest that Rivet had time to make the route longer but actively chose not to do so.
They also had other projects too like the uk route during the 4-6 month mark. With it being that close to the swiss one, they probably had to finish the swiss one so they can start building the new route. They don't have unlimited route and train builders
