Possibly not my best choice of words ..... let me reframe that to "settings that make some people vocal" I can't put "settings that make people vocal" , there's not enough time to develop that menu
I thought it was funny. Like if you disabled the female fireman, that'd be a contentious setting and would brand one as a sexist misogynist lol you know, not so much inclusion but an effort to shove a political agenda in your face. 2023: "Problematic contentious settings have been banned across all platforms" - NYT
Well, there are so many inconsistencies between all the DLC's, from sounds to lighting to simulation depth... I was once told DTG constantly has to work around the limitations of the Unreal Engine because the Unreal engine does not do many interconnected DLC's well.
By your logic, the mark 1 coaches should have sliding doors instead of slam doors. Would you be ok with that?
This would be a start, although I worry if it would really achieve anything. It may change it from 'privately not fixing bugs' to publicly not fixing bugs. In an ideal world these things wouldn't have been released in the first place, and even DLCs like the BR101, which is very nearly perfect, have major issues such as the screens and a lack of a cab car. It's a 'that'll do' situation which just isn't good enough. Ironically I think they put more effort into things back in the Rail Simulator and early RailWorks days. The Class 08 pack had loads of liveries, some of which we never got back until Major Wales made the revamp pack. The Up The Junction DLC included loads of variants including the 'cow and calf' Class 13s (never seen again), a Dutch Class 11 and Dovetail's only Australian route, track and locomotive. The Class 66 pack came with half a dozen liveries including two fancy fictional ones (RSDL red/black and RSC grey).
Well we don't know how many people from Kuju came across to RSDL >>> RSC >>> DTG. Would imagine there's at least a few who aligned their career path with the game.
It is a different company. Paul Jackson's RSDL/RSC/DTG bought the game from Kuju - who originally started development of Rail Simulator for Microsoft. (Kuju are still commissioned by Software companies to develop games.) TS might be dead and gone now if he hadn't. AFAIK Derek "RSDerek" Siddle (author of the brilliant TSC Weardale & Teesdale Rail Network) is the only original member from Kuju that is working for Dovetail Games now (Art Director).
Was he the only Kuju employee to come over at the time of the buyout though? Or did others come along initially and left over the years? Keep in mind anyone from Kuju will have been working on TS for 15 years or so at this point, that's a lot of time to be sticking with one company.
I don't know of others who joined RSC - there might have been though. Remember they only bought "Rail Simulator", not the company Kuju. It was not a buyout. That was done by Kuju itself, buying them out of their former owner Eidos Interactive. Later they were bought by Catalis. Fun fact: Kuju was originally called SIMIS - if you open MSTS files, the header looks like this: SIMISA@@@@@@@@@@JINX0D0t______
Looking like those of you wanting buffet cars may still have a bit of a wait, but there may be some pringles vending machines appearing on a footplate near you very soon!
The transition between RS and RW was quite weird. RW included Cajon Pass (alongside the three fictional routes), which was previously included as an expansion pack for Rail Simulator. However, the three other expansion packs, the Class 08, 66 and Isle Of Wight were re-released as separate purchases for RailWorks. It makes me wonder why they didn't include them as well, truly making RailWorks the definitive version of Rail Simulator.
You could see DTG's business strategy right from the start - tie RailWorks to Steam and offer DLC packs. Isle of Wight was produced while DTG were still an Addon developer (RSDL) for Kuju's Rail Simulator. The original and first ever RailSimulator routes were Cajon Pass, Ruhr-Sieg, Bath-Templecombe (SDJR), Oxford-Paddington (GWML) and the ECML Newcastle-York. As Cajon Pass is the oldest route to have a random GUID (the same since first release, all the inhouse route folders are 00000001-0000-0000...), I suspect it was a commissioned 3rd party development by 3DTrainStuff - a renowned MSTS addon developer who created Cajon and Donner Pass for MSTS (website is still live and the DLC for sale) and later made their own great "Run 8 Train Simulator".
Interesting to note the history of the route. Although that deepens the mystery further - why would DTG include a third party DLC and not their own? The 66 and 08 especially would have been great as base trains because they offered something that wasn't available before - a modern UK locomotive and a UK shunter. I guess we'll never know exactly why, although I presume they wanted Cajon Pass to market the game in the USA but still wanted to get DLC money for the Isle Of Wight, the Class 66 and 08 (although it would have been possible to install the Rail Simulator versions into TS anyway).
Probably it was already part oj Kuju's Rail Simulator and the only US route - and the US is a big market. So the main thing was to feed the biggest markets first - US, UK and Germany. There were actually different RS releases - the US release featured Cajon, and the European Release had Newcastle-York instead of Cajon Pass. And btw, Ruhr-Sieg was co-developed by German Railroads.
