You can't roam anywhere in the world on foot, just around the stations, train yards, and along the tracks between stations. Exploring on foot in TSW lets you hear and see things you might completely miss while driving the train. Some of my favorites are the sound of a plane flying overhead, or dogs barking. If you're into collectables, there are a few that are off the beaten path. There also are "easter eggs" to find as you explore (without spoiling what they are). I don't have TSW 2020 installed -- someone else could tell you the appropriate menu options -- but for TSW2, the easiest way is to select a route you want to explore, then select "Explore," then select "Explore on foot." You'll be able to choose which station you spawn at along the route, along with the season, weather, and time of day. You can also select a service or journey, then stop wherever you want and get off the train (if you don't mind keeping the schedule or arriving late).
The route has to come with a free roam scenario, as Sand Patch has. There you have freedom to use the rolling stock, but even that way you are limited to the scenario area (the yard in that case). The former NEC also had one of those scenarios. I think all routes should include one as this is very flexible for players, specially if you like to play around with things in the yards. Cheers
That’s an interesting distinction. Does “free roam” merely mean you can freely walk around the route (to explore, collect, discover), or does it also imply you can drive any train you can walk to.
They are two things. In free roam mode you can spawn and walk freely in all stations and all routes, and also travel as passenger in any service arriving to the stations and, if you come to a yard were some rolling stock is parked, you can enter it but normally you are not allowed to drive any vehicle unless this is one of the waiting services that has not yet started. But you can enter the cabs and travel with drivers as well if you want. This is exactly the same as selecting the service from the menu, but doing it on foot. You can also manipulate manual switches in this mode or pick collectables. On the other hand a free roam scenario is a regular scenario as any other, but configured with some available locomotives and wagons you can freely use, couple or move inside any of the limits of the scenario boundaries. In the case of Sand Patch Cumberland ZigZag scenario (I thing that´s the correct name of that scenario) you have the entire yard for you and you can drive up to Cumberland Station more or less. Rest of the line is blocked and scenario ends if you try to go outside the limits. This scenario has no objectives. It´s just you and your imagination. There you can use the turntable, refuel and practice using all engines. But you can also use it as a shunting playground and some hump yard operations are possible too if you know how to do them. Cheers
It would be good to have a freeroam scenario available, or to create your own. For me they work especially well with the quieter routes or routes with yards like the TVL where you could shunt to your hearts content!
The new scenario planner could be a good starting point for this, provided that they add little bit more options to the planning such as the creation of your own consists, a little preview pic of the rolling stock you are selecting and not limit the schedule to stop orders only and fixed paths. But it looks fair good as the interface is not complex to use indeed. I would prefer to have the ability to click on map to select the markers and the services for instance, as it´s faster than navigating in lists, specially if you don´t have any station names in the map to know which stop comes after each other in the list (they are now shorted by names). I guess we all have our own preferences. I always liked the editors based on a map where you drag things into and edit by clicking on items there but I understand they need to make this handy for console players as well. Lets see how this evolves in the future. Cheers
