Birminham Cross-city: Timetable Deep Dive | Pre-order | Release Day Update

Regarding the PIS, it looks like they’ve chosen the variant which is already mounted to a pole, as opposed to the ‘freestanding’ one, which you can mount to a ceiling/roof.

It begs the question as to whoever placed this, did they not think ‘this doesn’t look quite right?’

 

Hmmm, who would have thought that replacing testing with an automated computer would lead to missing the things only a human would notice.

 

Someone must of just been adding the finishing touches at 16:58 and thought screw this, I'm going home. That'll do.

 

The whole canopy is placed far too low too. Compare it to the real canopy at Bournville where the purple hoarding comes way above the height of the benches, see here https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/3963693

Also, strangely - the posters in the frames in that screenshot appear to be London Midland branded despite these being taken down on 10/12/17 lol

 

As someone with a background in software testing, I have already mentioned that an automated process will miss things that are a result of human inconsistencies. The reply I got from Matt was that it supplements the human testing, which is reasonable, however that doesn’t appear to have been the case in this instance.

 

Just as an observation why have someone visit all stations and take hundreds of photos to then get them wrong anyway. From what I can tell most of the errors found with the community with just photos on the net

 

They never said that automated testing was being used to check scenery. If you watch the stream where Matt goes into quite a lot of detail, he explains that it's being used to check frame rates at various different spawn in points. Later on it has the potential for checking timetables.

This one is down to incorrect placement and QA and the beta team missing it.

 

It makes me wonder if the building of some of these models has been outsourced to outside even overseas agencies who have little to no knowledge of what they're actually modelling. Given a few images and expected to produce an authentic looking station. I've said this before in the context of grass and bushes encroaching or across the line on other routes, does the route builder not drive his/her actual creation and pick up on items such as this? "Hey 3D guys, this just doesn't look right." We have also seen it with the station roof at Crewe on SoS which looks out of scale (lower and smaller) than it should be in reality.

Time DTG take a good long look at the processes for building and checking routes, long before it gets to the beta testing stage of things.

 

OldVern I believe a lot of stuff IS outsourced to external companies, for them to 3D model station buildings, as well as other things. There's a strong possibility that they've never seen the real life thing before, let alone set foot at several locations that they are modelling. So they will probably have to work off pictures and videos.

Though it should be up to DTG to make sure all the station furniture and clutter is appropriately placed, as well as knowing if it does or doesn't look right. No idea how the low hanging PIS slipped past the net. It was spotted within seconds of the picture going live.

 

Are the dev team allowed to test routes. If it takes an hour to drive from end to end I doubt anyone would want to pay a dev to effectively play for a hour! Maybe that's the problem? Maybe dtg could educate some of us and do a vid of some development.

 

The vertical axis seems to be a problem in the dev process. As well as plenty of station building heights being well off in numerous routes, there are landscapes that omit entire hills and inclines. I suppose layout is easy because of maps, track plans and Google Earth but the height of things takes a bit more effort, research and I dare say a bit of common sense when it comes to roof heights, bridge clearances etc.

 

WHOAH That look weird I wouldn't even imagine whats going to happen the passenger get on this platform, they will be either fade through the POS, or smack right into it, while more passenger are trying to get on the train and off the train, its going to be crazy lol

 

Pedantics to some are immersion killers to others, let's have some Northern trains/Trans Pennine Express coloured lamp posts in NTP in the BR Blue era, perhaps some Inter City colours at BNS instead?

 

It'll be ok though because if by some miracle there are any passengers they'll only be standing still on the platform waiting for you to close the doors anyway

 

Just to clarify, I’m not at all disagreeing with the pedantics, but I am saying that ridiculously scaled assets are far more offensive than incorrectly coloured ones.

 

Speaking of which, I’m sure ECW offered a reduced sized PIS asset, which would’ve been much more suitable for the stations along this route, so I’m baffled as to why they haven’t used that variant?

 

I dare say there are some glaring visual errors in every route. Missing buildings and landmarks, low- poly structures, square mountains etc.

As I pointed out in another thread, the recent routes are not as polished as the earlier ones and this will be due to less time being allocated to all the stages of development.

I'm sure I could find scenery errors in SPG or GWE, for instance, but there won't be as many as in the post-Rush Hour routes.

Even CJP, which I consider the best of the post- RH routes, has some jarring visuals.

We have to learn to live with these visual issues. They are not considered " A " category, ie game breaking, problems in DTG's triage paradigm and therefore not likely to be fixed, at least in the immediate post- release period.

This time contraction which I alluded to above, has led to the kind of situation in which players discover serious visual errors prior to launch, but everything is so compacted - announcement to preview screenshots to preview streams to release all in a matter of days rather than weeks as it used to be, that there is no time to fix them prior to release and the developer is scrambling to " polish " the route as best it can in a few days.

We could wait for them to spend the time necessary to really spit and polish the route, but, because of their self- imposed time constraints, they can't.

 

Who's DTG trying to kid here,we all know that they could delay this dlc 5 years and it still release broken either way.They can raise the price anytime they want but it doesn't change the fact your still getting the same problamatic dlc either way.I use to enjoy this game but if i have to keep buying the next game to get fixes for the previous game it's just longer worth it.

 

Square mountains?

 

If there was ever a reason for having multiple preview streams well in advance for valued/useful feedback from the community, then this is it! Instead, with the preview just two days before the route release - how on earth is all of the other important feedback that is bound to come actually get sorted realistically through just post-release patches?

 

Realistically it's not, is it? I really get the impression that DTG doesn't value feedback from the community on upcoming routes (such as the missing bridge supports in CCL for example) and rather sees it as a nuisance. They often fix the highlighted issues begrudgingly but I can imagine the sighs from the DTG offices when they think 'what have they found wrong now'?!

There is no other explanation for announcing a route 2 weeks before release and only streaming it two days before. The cynic in me thinks they want to increasingly limit the amount of constructive feedback they get pre-release.

 

Dtg were talking about how if they announced the route and did livestreams like closer to release, then they will be more able to answer specific questions related to the route since development is basically done, so they have more answers now. Instead of just saying idk for half the questions.

 

Sorry, but that is pure flapdoodle.

bart2day's theory is far more likely.

 

Bournville looks slightly out of scale, the jarring issue is the CIS screens. It's clear DTG are trying their hardest to consistently use the same CIS model throughout the route which is understandable as custom modelling screens that are only used on an individual or specific stations might be a waste of resource. But surely for Bournville it would be worth it taking into factor the stations small profile and that the station IRL has smaller CIS screens due to how low the canopy is. The station looks slightly out of scale as well but that might be just due to the perspective of the screenshots in game.

 

HasanMulla Ironically, if they bothered to model a smaller scaled version of the PIS, it would’ve suited the majority of the stations a lot better than using the standard size.

It’s going to look ridiculously oversized at a lot of stations. Particularly at Birmingham New Street where there isn’t a lot of overhead space. This could lead on to other issues, such as obscuring signals.

 

New University station. It's a shame that the windows for the new footbridge aren't transparent. Although its likely you can't access the new station, making the windows for the footbridge transparent and see through would give things a bit of depth.

 

Regarding the errors, I think DTG need to employ some high quality railway modellers - such as guys from the DEMU group in the UK - to cast a modeller's eye over new routes before release. Modellers train themselves to spot lineside details when scratchbuilding or kitbuilding real world scenes They also know how real railways work. Either DTG don't have that expertise at the moment or just don't care...

 

Yes. I’d expand on it by saying that we are more or less back to how they used to do it and have done for years. They tried the roadmap and put what routes they were making on it so we all knew and it has caused them no end of problems. Full bugs lists got taken off the roadmap early on because they caused issues and now we just get the skeleton of the route with the code until it is ready for the push to release that they used to use, again to cut out the issues from meddling customers knowing too much and offering ‘advice’. In a way it’s just a ‘back to normal’ for DTG rather than a new way of doing things. Is it a good thing? I dunno, we still get the routes at the same time either way.

 

Guys, what’s with the lack of any shadowing and ambient occlusion in this shot?

Everything looks very flat looking. Particularly the 323. It seems it isn’t reacting to the ambient lighting and it’s surroundings?

 

I’m assuming they made the shots all in one go, and only fixed the BNS shots because of the uproar. Assumedly it’ll look better when the game is released.

 

I don't envy the guys at DTG in the slightest don't get me wrong, I wouldn't even want to begin trying to do what they do BUT for the love of God employ some testers, maybe some of us guys, people would rather wait a little longer for an almost completely polished route. Nobody expects a route to have ZERO issues but at least TRY to solve issues that the community draw to your attention before releasing something.

 

i hope these picture are not the final build it could be the in development picture, just like the other ones.

 

I was just about to throw my toys about this yet again. I really thought/hoped we were actually finally past this sort of thing but it appears no such luck. Seriously, what is going on with the lighting in that image?

I was definitely going to purchase this DLC but seeing these preview shots you’ve lost my business all over again. I will not pay for un-finished or rushed software, no matter how much I was looking forward to getting it.

 

Has anybody seen the 5 PIS screens on the right platform? I am going to be at University station shortly to get my train and I will check if there is this many. Seems like far too many for a small-ish station.

 

It looks like BVE, where is the grunge and weathering on that footbridge?

This is not £30 quality artwork.

 

I agree. The lack of transparency on the glass ruins the whole aesthetic.

 

We will see the finished product in a weeks time. Well maybe.

 

I believe this is correct, however DTG haven’t used the new style PIS screens which WMT are installing at their stations. They’ve just recycled the GWE PIS asset.

They should be using this variant:

 

That's right, there's a program of works for Blackbox DCIS screens on WMT - so much better, and more flexible than the old dot matrix ones.

 

Why does that not surprise me

 

Those would of been good to have as quite rightly not all information screens are the same.

 

This is dtg we are talking about. They would want several routes atleast, to be recycled on before wasting dev time designing them.

 

They might be coming in now, but the majority of stations (certainly Bromsgrove and New Street) are still on the orange dot matrix type. If this route is supposed to be set in 2019, would there be any of the new style screens? Not sure they were even using the new University platforms three years ago so there's some blurring of lines there anyway.

 

I think it's set in 2022 with a 2019 timetable.

 

I suppose that sort of future-proofs it so they can add in 170, 196, 730... maybe... hopefully.

Still means most of the displays on the route should be the orange dot matrix type.

 

I believe quite a few Cross City Line stations have these types of boards now. Also, Birmingham New Street is managed by Network Rail, not West Midlands Trains, so they’re exempt from these changes.

 

What gives, why are they doing this to us and we as the community are paying them. We don't want something, we want something new.

 

To be fair, I don't mind the new Blackbox DCIS screens not being in the route. The standard orange CIS is fine as I personally don't want the route to be too modern as I would also be doing lots of early 2000s creators club scenarios etc. It should definitely be something which should be looked into for future routes, such as the GEML etc.

 

It's easier to reuse stuff then go create new stuff. The new pis would need new assets and art and whatever reason dtg has.