Enough Is Enough!!!

So sad that this being a British game. DT G needs to pull their socks up.
I don’t normally buy German content because much of it looks the same to me, but I would deffo buy a German diesel freight loco.

 

If you're on PC, the All-Star Modding Team has released an absolute kickass enhancement pack for WCML with a huge new timetable, rebuilt assets, new liveries, even whole new trains (an Avanti 805 and a Southern 377/7)

 

Now with the latest update, several trains can't be operated anymore (380, 801, more to discover). Why can't you test your stuff before release? You can be so glad your community is so forgiving, you really don't deserve that imo.

DTG, you really are a bunch of amateurs.



That's the effing way to do it!

 

Yep just noticed this as well what a disaster of an update this has been

 

Let's see what the next build number will be. Today we had 339 and 341.

It seems they push the updates directly after compilation, without testing anything. Chaotic processes. No wonder this game is so bugged.

 

This EMU still works though.


image hosting

 

Think I’ll go back on Forza later, or TSC…

 

Forza Horizon 5 map is a barren wasteland, and Motorsport is a broken mess... So you're kinda screwed either way.

 

I'm taking a break from TSW the game isn't fun anymore for me and it seems every update it breaks something else, still no guard mode on BCC after being told 3 separate times it was working and i'm still getting derailments with the 390 at Euston. It's not good enough DTG

I'll be back for Over Shap

 

Forza 4…

 

We're playing FH4, not 5. Much better.

 

Good choice.

 

When/if TSG releases the 232, it will be a good day for TSW.

 

I just had a blast with the vR 232 on Berlin-Leipzig. TSW doesn't deserve Maik's excellent work. The core is rotten :P

OldVern Off we go!

 

Funny, I did put FH4 aside for a couple of days to play TSW, now the situation reverses, though I'll probably do something in TSC.

Also got WRC 24 downloading to try out tomorrow, after hearing good things about it.

 

Dear oh dear, I'm glad I allocated space for GTA online on my C drive instead.

 

Today comes red Dead redemption on PC !
Then you have enough time to wait the next constructive release of tsw

 

BR 114 is STILL broken, it's beyond a joke at this point.

 

There's been stuff broken for years, 187, 150/2 don't hold your breath....

 

Geez 14 years later ! At least they haven’t made the same mistake for RDR2.

 

And RailDriver still doesn't work I'm guessing

 

Another update, how many now? Must test before sending updates, DTG

 

I am with you dude, TSW has slipped back to the shadows after booting up the new maps in Isonzo

 

...and apart from one post from Harry, "Crisis, what crisis?" despite the numerous posts on the forum, not an official squeak out of DTG to acknowledge and state what the action plan is. Certainly if they can't fix quickly there should be a rapid rollback to the previous version.

Without getting into personalities there are times I despair of what is going on at DTG with TSW. It seems like a leaderless ship to the casual eye, needs someone to stamp a bit of authority on the team.

 

Dino Crisis?

"...who was it? Barney? Hahaha"

 

Getting real tired of TSW 5 now. How can you enjoy the game with the frequent blurry texture issues, video memory errors and game closing to Xbox dashboard, weather changing when resuming saved game and using photo mode and so on.

DTG need to sort out TSW 5, it's unacceptable. There's never been this many problems with previous iterations of TSW on Series X for me... How it's gone from TSW 4, which I thought worked pretty well overall, to this is super frustrating.

 

"Crisis, what crisis" was the infamous statement from UK Prime Minister James Callaghan when questioned about strikes and various other events which were tearing the country apart.

 

But but but but but but it's the fault of the leakers!!! They are the reason why we have buggy updates now!!! Oh wait... it has been an issue even before the leaks happened?
Well they are still at fault!

 

Yes, I've had the feeling for several years that DTG is a ship afloat, a " Mary Celeste " as far as TSW is concerned. A once very capable game which has lost its way and appears to have no-one in the wheelhouse and no firm hand on the tiller.

I feel that with the right leadership, we would still have steam traction and the US freight railroad would still be an integral part of the game. It just takes imagination, effort and a willingness to take a chance or two.

TSW is fast becoming a shadow of its former self, a cut down version of what it used to be. And there's a sort of complacency that shows in the streams and articles.

How many times can the game be rescued by the likes of JT and the " super modders " ?

 

I'm not sure I'd say it ever had its way!

 

I wouldn't say anything has changed really. I mean we have been moaning about the same issues ever since the beginning, lol. Everything, be it a new route, a train or feature, is released in an unfinished state, then never properly finished.

 

They set the bar too high

 

Rockstar have traditionally been awful with PC releases. GTA 5 and Red Dead Redemption 2 are decent ports, and based on the reviews for Red Dead Redemption, Double Eleven have done a good job with the PC port as they did with the Switch and PS4 ports. Even though I have it on PS5 I still hope they release an Xbox One port as the emulated Xbox 360 version is by far the worst way to play it on a modern system, still locked to 30fps and 720p.

However Rockstar's past ports aren't great. Manhunt's Steam version is among the worst PC ports of all time, requiring mods to disable the anti-piracy measures they didn't remove despite choosing to use a cracked version of the original PC version (they really did that). The Definitive Editions aren't great but the previous Steam versions of the 3D universe trilogy are also mediocre, particularly San Andreas. Liberty City Stories and Vice City Stories also have yet to be ported to PC, and seemingly there are no deinterlace patches for the PS2 versions.

GTA 4 can only be played at a consistent 60fps on the Xbox Series S/X, emulated. The PC version does have extra content but is a horrible port with poor controls, and even a powerful computer can't run it at a solid framerate. My PC can run GTA 5 and Red Dead Redemption 2 at high settings at 60fps, but it falls apart when I run GTA 4. At least the traffic and pedestrian density is better than any other GTA game which does make it very immersive.

Of course I have to mention Saints Row 2 (not a Rockstar game) which is perhaps the worst PC port of them all. It was made by CD Projekt, who went on to make Cyberpunk 2077.

It's worth noting that TSW launched seven years ago, and if we look at the seven years after Rail Simulator launches I think it's safe to say that TS improved a lot more in that time than TSW did in the same amount of time. It's worth noting that seven years after Rail Simulator launched Dovetail announced Train Sim World, but we have yet to hear from DTG on the much-needed replacement for TSW.

 

Problem is DTG shot themselves in the foot, waiting too long before releasing the public editor. Third parties have only had one year so far to get into it, in RS/RW/TS it was there from the get go, few weeks after RS release (and it was the same tools DTG used.)

And DTG made it very clear that no community creator is allowed to sell their addons for TSW - you either do it as freeware or publish it through DTG. That was different in TSC and I've heard some DTG officials did not like that (even though DTG massively benefitted from all the 3d party content and freeware, requiring you to purchase DLC from DTG for required assets.)

I feel when the time has come and people release their first good routes (First try will most likely end up abandoned), TSW will already be obsolete.

 

I was not aware DTG won't allow third party routes to be sold separately in TSW... I guess it goes with the control freak ideology DTG seem to have, which killed Flight Sim World as well. Thank the lord that DTG can't stop third party Train Simulator DLC from being sold.

 

DTG is here taking the standard game industry position - that paid mods are allowed in the simulator community is an anomaly, and I can quite understand why DTG don't want to allow it this time around.

 

And that is a big loss for us consumers. Flight sims, MSTS and Train Simulator were flourishing because of independent developers. Still the only permanently active route builders are DTG and their closest partner Rivet Games. Year eight and the mileage offered in TSW is hardly five percent of what's available in TSC.

Doomotron, from the PC Editor FAQ which is very clear on the matter:

There's already been some uproar on Discord because of a repainter trying to Ko-Fi paywall their mods. It's not fair towards other modders that offer their work for free, so backlash is to be expected naturally. Legally one could argue if the mod is made without using the TSW Editor, if that would still be illegal. Texture mods can be made with the UE4.26 editor too, in many cases all you need is a graphics programme, UE4 for cooking and UnrealPak for packing, no DTG tools used.

Of course, these mods are nothing DTG are worrying about. They're not actively supporting them, but are also not trying to have them removed. The FAQ is specifically aimed at IP like rolling stock, gameplay (timetables) and routes, where DTG do not tolerate any market competition unless you make a deal with them, so they get their revenue share of your product (in turn giving you full tech support).

 

You might think that. Your average PC game player who uses mods would strongly disagree, as would a lot of PC game modders.
Personally, I like that third parties have meet certain standards to sell their work...

What are you defining as a "permanently active route builder"?

 

I'm not talking about mods only, but original content. Independent payware like the countless excellent devs for TSC that don't have a deal with DTG. And DTG's quality standards are obviously not especially high, so I'm not sure what you are about here.

Permanently active means these two, DTG and Rivet, are the main route building parties. Both have teams that are always working on building routes. The large majority of TSW routes is done by DTG and Rivet, they are the "TSW core" so to speak (and are historically connected as Jackson (DTG) and Gatland (Rivet) founded the "DTG empire" together by buying the RailSimulator rights). Others like TSG and JT are adding to it, but in much lesser quantity, and with their own deadlines. Skyhook stepped away after having done three routes.

Now check for yourself how many third parties (worldwide) have contributed to TSC and compare that to the number TSW has attracted after seven years, and you'll get my point. Until two years ago, DTG were not even interested in attracting new 3rd parties.

Quote from Adam in Nov '21:

Unreal and TSW require extensive skillsets to develop all requirements, even for just a locomotive DLC. Art, simulation, audio, gameplay, user interface, localisation, and many more.

The level of detail required for each of these generally means we work with teams who have individuals dedicated to each aspect. Yes, we have signed up a few individuals to the programme, but they have been involved in DTG projects and even their own projects have required others to be involved to cover all requirements (TSG currently has more than one developer on the programme, for context). The Partner Programme gives developers unlimited access to TSW operations, and because of this, we are not in a position to onboard individuals at this time, even if they have a proven record of development. This may change in the future, but for the time being we're focusing on onboarding and supporting those who have recently joined and getting them up to speed.
https://forums.dovetailgames.com/threads/tsw-partner-program-question.61773/#post-568877

So if you're disagreeing doesn't matter, I'm saying this restrictive policy is bad for the customer, as there's definitely less content to choose from. And even this small pool of content is often of subpar quality, and also in TSC many independent devs have outdone DTG in terms of quality. Some chose to publish via Steam (through DTG), others like ChrisTrains or RailStudio chose not to and run their own webshops. Some went both ways (Searchlight, virtualRailroads, RSSLO). Not possible in TSW.

 

One of the issues DTG has with TSW is that it's for PC and console. They probably don't want a situation where the product ends up diverging because a certain set of routes are only available on a subset of supported platforms.

 

They pretty much ruled that out from the beginning. And without consoles, there'd be no TSW. Mods and cooking was made possible by Muff from trainsim.cz, not DTG as of yet. But they couldn't stop the clever community from making and releasing their own timetables and scenery enhancements for PC. (Remember trainsim.cz released an unofficial editor long before TSW4.)

 

As we’ve remarked previously, the route editor for TSW was put out for two main reasons - as a sop for having to pay again for TSW4 (though they didn’t worry so much about that this year) and as a recruitment/assessment tool for potential developers they could bring in house and put to work doing outsourced projects or part thereof. It’s over a year since I looked at it but baulked at the difficulty level and the lack of documentation. It was never intended to be like Trainz Surveyor or even the TSC editor where everyone was encouraged to have a go. AFAIK there is still no official documentation or glossary of the processes and workflow. I check the Editor sub forum from time to time and while kudos to those having a go, despite the several projects listed it’s telling that we haven’t as yet seen one freeware route for TSW emerge, not even a scaled up model or miniature railway.

And the situation certainly not helped by core code changes frequently breaking the thing, it seems!

 

So mods, then. There is no distinction between "mods" and "original content" in the broader gaming community.

If I buy a TSC/TSW DLC from Steam, I can be assured that it will work out of the box and not require additional purchases beyond a single route in some cases.

There are other factors affecting that than just having to sell through DTG!

 

What's this got to do with the fact that TSW does not have enough third parties to serve the market and demands? Which was my point.

 

No, you were making a point about the causes.

 

Yes and I have explained my view on things and the cause is they only wanted a small number of third parties for TSW, only to turn around with the release of the Public Editor, which helped them to recruit new talents. You may disagree, that's fair. Whether I am right or you doesn't change anything though, DTG will do what they will.

 

This might mean why TSC could out last TSW in the long run. I only have the free upgrade to TSW 5 and I will pick up the DE version in a sale in 2025. I recently bought Trainz22 in a sale to try it out. They seems to be more variety available to me that TSC offers and I am glad because personally I am bored of the same old, same old Class 66 on UK freights. No Class 60's, Class 319's or Class 92's etc to add something new to the freight. If DTG allowed open access for third party devs like in TSC. That could save TSW in the long run unless they offer more new trains like a Class 90, Class 60, Class 92 etc for freights and a Class 319 for the London to Brighton route like TSC has.

 

Just been reading the last few pages and very good explanations and discussion here.
I want to ask, the Mods who have to mod these DLC's because of the unsatisfactory state of them being released, do they ever get fed up because they are having to fix a route that paid developers have produced but is below average to then get it to a high standard. I am honestly curious as they do it for free.

In my honest opinion this has been one of the worst releases and also the patch updates have been horrendous... I wouldn't even call them updates.
I wish I could have mods on PS5 for TSW but is not possible but as I say we would not need mods at all! If it was released in a really good state and with minimal mistakes their wouldn't be so much criticism!

I am kinda worried that if we don't get anything by End of November then this game is doomed till February when DTG go on their long Monthly Break in December time... Then it will be the horrible build up and quietness for TSW6.