I think what folks are overlooking about your explanations is the "Sim" part of Train Sim world, things like all the ongoing physics calculations it's having to keep track of for all those trains regardless of how detailed the visual rendering of them is.
No, AI trains use extremely simplified physics calculations. I also highly doubt that a bunch of coordinates are taking up that much space in the RAM... Otherwise we would not see genuine instances of the sort of clutter we're asking for, like the rail workers on Cajon.
"Simplified" is not "nonexistent" though, and lots of small things can quickly take up more space than one big thing. Just ask Elon Musk how this weekend went for Twitter
Console generation is really just a red herring. Who is to say that DTG would produce anything better, or even different, if only making the game for gen 9? A cynic might even say that DTG appreciates those criticizing gen 8 consoles, as a way to take some of the heat off of them for making a DLC the same way they would have anyway. My opinion is that DTG still values gen 8 players and is not ready to leave them behind; my guess is that this will happen next year with TSW4. However, even if all gen 8 consoles shut down forever today, I do not think DTG would make any major changes to the way things currently are.
Which is why you do things like take multiple small assets and combine them into one... But when you compare TS to other games I don't believe the total number of assets it has to keep track of is higher.
Well, according to MP, it's pretty much an even split between gens 8 and 9 right now, though gen 9 is slowly gaining ground. That means there are still a very large number of gen 8 players and, again, to misquote MP, there are no plans to abandon gen 8 for the foreseeable future. It would be suicidal for DTG to drop gen 8 platforms now.
I honestly don’t think it matters. There was perhaps a valid argument there with the problems around availability post-Covid but that is no longer the case. They don’t make the game to work on a PC from 2012/2013, so why are developers having to worry about memory usage on consoles of that vintage. In tech terms Gen 8 is archaic. To limit your product’s development by the lowest common denominator is just plain daft IMHO.
It definitely matters in one way because if a lot of those route sales and purchases are on gen 8 then they'd be losing a lot of income by only moving to support PC and Gen 9. If the number of gen 8 players is very low then I could understand not supporting it. Although I guess if you focused on gen 9 and pc maybe you could do more to attract more people but I think its still a little dependant on numbers on gen 8 from a business POV
A easy fix would be to stop making this game for gen 8 outdated consoles and use unreal engine 5. There you go.
Players still have to buy the console which if they don't have enough money, can't buy. More availability doesn't mean more will buy if it's more pricey.
True, but this isn’t a hippy commune and thankfully nor do we live in a Communist society. Those consoles are ancient, and I find it hard to believe that if someone could afford one 10 years ago a replacement a decade later is beyond them. Let’s face it, TSW content is hardly cheap and to be absolutely brutal, them’s the breaks. It’s just the way it is. I find it hard to believe that people on older machines expect to be able to play the latest and greatest games anyway. Where does it end? TSW on an N64? If not, why not? Gen 8 players are surely the minority now, so to be limiting the game’s development to continue to accommodate them is false economy. In my opinion TSW needs to be utilising modern tech to take the game forward (nothing out of the ordinary or ground-breaking, just the same stuff most games use these days) and attract new players that get in to it because it’s an awesome looking, awesome playing game. Instead the game is clearly being stifled in a bid to cling on to players who choose not to upgrade their equipment. This thread is about clutter on a route, and we’re told the game can’t hack it due to memory limits. Memory, in 2023. A bit daft don’t you think?
Couldn't agree more. Throw out the gen 8 LOVE and get a PS5 or Xbox sx for cripes sake. DT needs to stop making this SIM for the old dinosaur consoles and move ahead!
Disclaimer: I'm not a developer so I could be making up stuff! My reason of thinking is this . If there are 6 identical trains on the service there are 6 actual trains on the map. Let's say 1 train is 100mb then there is 600mb worth of trains on the map If you would strip the interior and reduce 1 train to 50mb on the map you would get 1 train of 100mb and 5 trains of 50mb on that map and saved 250mb But like already mentioned that's not how it works. Just wanted to explain my reasoning.
Well, that's not to say it can't work in the right context, it can be useful, but for very specific scenarios where you have AI traffic that players won't generally get up close to to examine and which has no driveable equivalent, like the Wuppertal Schwebebahn or the Edinburgh trams.
Now in theory, you could take this a step further if you want rolling stock to be visible on a route, but not part of the services.You can make a dummy asset that's little more than a rectangular block, but textured such that it can pass at a distance for a particular loco or whathaveyou, then place it as part of the scenery on top of some tracks in a visible but unreachable part of the map that no traffic moves on. This way it has no physics, no presence in the world whatsoever, and very little overhead relatively speaking in rendering it, and then use that asset instead of the actual loco in question.
Actually, it might be more than just theoretical. I think something like this was done for some static stock near Jamaica on LIRR. Either way, it does seem like a fine idea to increase visual variety at little cost.
Theoretically speaking, I'd imagine a scenario where DTG do drop gen 8, then start producing quality that's good enough to lure those users onto gen 9 platforms. At the moment it seems that gen 8 players are luring DTG instead to play by their rules and strict limitations.
You would not be able to look up close other vehicles as exploring is removed. You don't have to remove exploring from the game. But for exploring you would get a loading screen and the map returns with no dummy trains and worse graphics because of the memory. This would mean that if you leave or enter a train you get a loading screen. But I would remove exploring all together as I think it's not very appropriate to have exploring train tracks as a feature in a train simulator
What? How does any of that relate to having lower quality versions of assets that you cannot interact with or get close to, to save on memory? What is a "map return" when it's at home? Why would anything add loading screens? I'm genuinely not following any of what you said, although I figure it could be a grammar thing from English not being your first language. Can you explain what you mean in another way?
Quite the opposite. Without the on foot walking through and around the trains it wouldn't be a genuine simulation of the experience, it'd diminish it to an arcadey style driving game where you are the vehicle, if you couldn't, say, walk around a Gronk turning on the battery switches before climbing into the cab. .
You can walk on the train that you as a player are occupying. You could still move the camera around the train. Just not walking around the map when you are doing a service. What this have to with assets? We stripped most of the trains interiors to have more memory for assets so when you would be able to walk around the map you would be boarding trains that don't look finished as they don't have an interior. Arcady? Most of the footwork I do in this game is very arcady, like placing medic supplies, picking up garbage, filling newspapers, ... None of this has anything to do with the job of driving trains
If the camera can move around the train, then it can see everything you could see walking on foot and the same assets are required. It saves nothing. Coupling and uncoupling. Manual switching. Loading ethanol tanks.
How many times have you looked into another train using camera mode? Most of the time there are not enough trains in a station to get your camera onto another train I use the camera for coupling and switching . If I could do the tasks on the platforms also with the camera I would never use footwork.
It makes no difference, though. If you choose not to look at stuff with the camera, you can equally choose not to look at it when on foot. Walking around on foot IS an external camera. It's just one which happens to have certain restrictions placed on its movement which keep it anchored to the ground, etc.
I don't understand what you mean. Removing exploring for me is not about not wanting to see something. It's about walking on tracks is dangerous and you should never do that. It's a totally different discussion than having not enough memory. But if you would remove exploring my thinking is you could also improve memory issues with it.
However it's been pointed out already why that thinking is incorrect, since the ability to use a specific different POV doesn't change anything substantial in terms of memory usage. If you add an additional copy of an EMU which doesn't have a modelled interior to a route, then that's an additional asset, because you still need to load the copy you are driving on top of it, so having it present uses more, not less. and you won't be cutting down on the calculations the sim is doing for its movement, etc. You're basically talking about designing a completely different, much pared back and simplified game from scratch, to see any benefit.
Ahines And even more ironically, a series S now, costs way less than a Xbox one did when it came out, you can get it for £250, if £450 is too much
My XBox One cost £300 and that was in 2016, three years after it came out. I picked my second Series S up for under £200 new in a black friday sale.
