Route Thames Valley: Windsor, Henley & Marlow Branch Lines - Feedback Thread

Maybe it's just my feeling, but it seems to me as if the entire station, including the platforms, has shifted slightly, maybe it's a scenery object, in any case, for me it's probably the biggest problem in terms of feeling .......

 

I believe the fact that it’s also visible on Xbox makes it quite clear that something isn’t right. And if you say you wouldn’t have changed anything, then an .ini adjustment shouldn’t be an issue either, right? But it looks like the clouds are more overcasting at night... You can check both pictures:

Thames Valley Branches:


AABS Milton Keynes Crewe:


You have to open it in full screen!!!!!

You did change the colours, right? At least that’s what you mentioned in the TSS preview… Could that possibly be a cause as well? I don't have any ini changes active here...

 

Thanks! This is quite helpful. I will keep investigating and will have a look what I can do!

 

Hi, So on PS5, The HSTs are only doing about 60mph through Slough on the fast lines. Should be a lot quicker.

Also, I loved seeing 43002 pass through. That was a nice touch.

 

I originally thought that HST was part of the map because it wasn't indicated as a DLC layer in the layer overview, but then I found out that the GWE map is required.

 

the fake 165 (the one with FGB livery from GWE remastered) is being used in all scenarios
I think that's wrong, isn't it?

 

Well obviously it wasn't included. Why would it be included when it's only ai?

 

Pulling up to a blank wall feels very odd.

 

Is it supposed to be like that tho.

 

The pictures disproving that are right there.

 

Just a little pet peeve but I don't think there should be a guard at the front of the 165, especially during conductor mode where there's two guards.

 

I don't know, I'm just stating that in the layer overview it is indicated as an in-built layer and not as a DLC......

For consoles, it might make sense to improve performance......

 

Also would it be possible to get a list of all the TPWS approach speeds?

 

Surely you can change the timetable so that it doesn't run at silly o'clock?

 

What time does it run

 

yeah it currently is subbing in sometimes which it really shouldnt. I will have a look at getting this fixed!

Historically the Thames Valley Flyer Railtour was running at night, thats why I included it at night to be accurate: https://www.sixbellsjunction.co.uk/10s/190215pt.htm
But I also included a fictional day service on the marlow branch for people who rather drive it during the day

 

Its always 8mph for all terminal stations. I doublechecked with a guard who knows the lines well to make sure its accurate

 

Thanks

 

Really enjoying this DLC! For someone who doesn't have a huge amount of time to play, the ability to complete short routes is very welcome, and the scenery is fantastic. Thank you!

One thing I've noticed is a that after driving one of the branches and then continuing to free-roam to complete the return journey, the door interlock lights do not illuminate in the cab of the 165, even when all doors are closed and the train can drive.

Similarly, when returning from Bourne End to Maidenhead in free-roam, the stopping position of the train at Maidenhead incorrectly changes - far earlier than the actual stopping marker for 2/3 cars.

Hopefully these issues can be looked into.

 

It ran at "silly o'clock" IRL because with single lines, it's easier to run when there's no other trains.

 

The issue with the door interlock lights appears to be an issue in each b-cab, not necessarily just when in free-roam.

 

Fair enough. I wouldn't like to be on a rail tour at that time but each to their own

 

The route looks amazing - thank you and well done .

I just tried 2B27 Marlow to Maidenhead twice and came across a glitch. The train stopped short of the platform (felt like a safety intervention as I only had brake level 1 applied) and appears to have stuck on the points so they couldn't change for the onward journey to Maidenhead. Couldn't get the brakes off to move the train after the doors closed and restarted the service. Then exactly the same thing happened again .

 

If you are driving with the safety systems enabeled, TPWS will stop you if you approach a terminal station with more then 8mph

 

Changing ends when completing a service and going back to free roam to start the next:

You have to cycle through opening and closing doors for the service to start - each service should start/end with doors open

 

I love this DLC however I have (at the moment) two issues with it:
1) When completing scenarios, I can't seem to get above a silver medal. I'm doing every correctly and normally, I would get either a gold or platinum medal but not on this DLC. I don't know if this is a bug or not

2) this isn't really a bug/issue per se but does this route have a Mastery? I can't seem to find it

Also I would have liked to see the section of the GWML between Slough & Twyford as it would have been fun to drive a train from (for example) Windsor & Henley on Free Roam without having to route hop several times

 

Someone stole his phone


This type of person seems always to be lacking a phone, spotted in different places. Might be core issue

platform steam

 

My first impressions so far..
- Very nice scenery
- Birds flying up is a nice touch.
- love to drive under a canopy of trees
- it feels a bit like Cardiff, multiple small stretches.
- the class 165 seems to brake way harder than the 166 (on GWE). No sure if this is right or wrong.
- A few little bugs in the scenery, all mentioned before. Doesn't really annoy me when i am in the cab though.
- game needs a better 'hopping' so you can drive from Windsor to London, even with a loading screen or so (out of the scope of the route though)

 

the brakes are improved to better match the 165. I had help from a GWR guard to improve them

 

yea this gets me every time

 

Ah I'm going to check this out right now. I started with the 166 and its brakes seemed to barely work. Lowering windows and better working brakes could make a fairly big difference for me.

edit: Yep 165 brakes work a lot better, love it.

 

After more than a 7 year absence from Train Sim World (sometimes life smacks you around) I got TSW6 as a birthday gift earlier this year and wow what an experience (more on that later). For now I would just like to say how impressed I was with this little DLC, and what could be a better add-on to the Remastered Great Western Express which already was one of my favorite routes.

So while exploring on foot I found a few scenery glitches, which possibly can be altered/fixed ...


Twyford: This guy has the ends of his fingers fixed in place, so when his arms move the fingers stretch back and forth.

Twyford: There seems to be an unnecessary fence there (distant arrow) ...and the electrical box is stuck in the steel fence (near arrow).


Twyford: Train glitches into platform from start of curve to end of platform (between arrows)


Windsor Branch: The large pipe has no collision attached to it which alone seems odd, but if you walk off the track towards the bridge girders you fall through to the river below !!

Regards.

 

some more exploring on foot came up with these...


Bourne End: Fence starts off correctly on the platform (green arrow) ...but ends up slightly offset, so appears to float (yellow arrow).


Bourne End: Two light poles not quite grounded properly.


Marlow: While walking to the Pub I spotted this bay window not joined to the house correctly. Needs to be rotated somewhat.


Cookham: From the level crossing you cannot walk up the platform ramp (yellow arrow) as the player passes through it instead. The particular asset indicated with the red arrow (timber fence above a brick wall) probably should have collision detection as the player can also walk through that as well (unless that was intentional). Where the red arrow actually is the asset is slightly above the street level.


Furze Platt: This is a little harder to explain. If you walk from the station up the footpath towards the green arrow (where a collectible is) and go a little further you are basically outside the player area and can end up falling into the terrain holes near those houses (red arrow). Worse still if you try and make your way back along the street you end up stuck behind two invisible walls. ie: you can't cross the level crossing and you can't get back to the station through that gateway below the yellow arrow. With respect to the location indicated by the yellow arrow the npc's path along there has them sinking into the pavement somewhat as they walk through the gate.
So I think this zone needs a little better control of what areas you actually want the player to be able to access.

Regards.

 

That'll be it - thanks for the quick reply!

 

I was exploring the route looking for donkey collectables, when I fell through the ground at a bridge. Thankfully, underneath was a layer of water I could walk on. Got a cool screenshot (none of these are photo mode, I'm just walking around).

Then, I saw another bridge:

As I was trying to figure out how inaccurate the "4.4 m" sign was, I got pushed into the right-side wall by a car. As you can see, I'm not actually on the car path. Turns out, the cars' hitboxes on this path are 1) vastly bigger than the cars, and 2) sticky. That is, you get stuck in the car's massive hitbox, and then pulled along. Here's how that looks:

And then the path comes to an end, and you get tumbled along to wherever that car's meant to appear next.

All in all, hilarious stuff.

 

You actually can, but it's a bit tricky. You can get out of the red arrow holes at the house where a not-Audi is parked, then make your way back up the road, go a bit further up to the perpendicular road, then go around the invisible wall back to the intended path the way you ended up in the holes.

I could make a similar post about holes in the ground, texture issues, floating objects, unsightly clipping, wacky invisible walls, missing collision etc. about Bourne End station. The thing is, I counted 41 such issues just on the path to the Marlow Donkey scenario. So here's 5 particularly noticeable ones.


P.S. In both the Divide and Conquer and The Marlow Donkey scenarios, there are objectives relating to the manual setting of the path to the Marlow branch via the token system. However, in both cases the points move by themselves before you can complete said objectives, that is, the path sets itself. You go into the booth, see the "MARLOW NORMAL" light on, press "CANCEL ROUTE" and set it again to "MARLOW". That doesn't seem like normal operation.

 

oldwpfan and SeventeenF Thanks for raising these. I have fixed all of these now and hopefully can get a patch out soon

 

Hi is gonna be a mastery for this route thanks

 

Excellent, looking forward to it exiting DTG's pipeline in a year or two.

Continuing with the scenario feedback. The staff also reappears by itself in the Marlow Donkey scenario. I'm supposed to be currently holding it, yet there's another one in the machine. Finally, at the end of the scenario the points set themselves to Maindenhead, but the lights in the machine still show "MARLOW" until the buttons are pressed. It really looks like the points' logic and the box with the pretty lights are detached from each other, and the "functional token system" doesn't exist.

Another thing about the scenarios. Several ones make references to crowds and tight timetables, such as Regatta Day.

However, none of the scenarios are timed, and the "crowds" just seem like ordinary passengers dressed weirdly.
The "timings":

The "heavy passenger numbers":


A bit of positive feedback with regard to scenarios. Their scoring so far is great. To get a Platinum, you have to avoid major mistakes, as the maximum amount of points possible is only ~50-100 above the platinum threshold. I don't think I've ever seen proper attention given to this particular gameplay aspect in any TSW route. It really does seem like an actual human sat down, played the scenarios perfectly and set the scoring accordingly. Too bad an actual human didn't sit down to do the voiceovers, but that's just current year, I guess.

 

Neat few branches, love the concept and good execution. Just could have done with an extra week of someone doing a flyover and giving it a last lookover.

I will admit a few of these are a bit nit-picky but may aswell put them here anywhere
Furze Platt Crossing:

Crossing doesnt work + there are no cars. Additonally, the road just seems to have been sunk under the level crossing

Furze Plat Stop Board:

Not an issue, just pointing out that the default UE font is used which can be rather immersion breaking.

Furze Platt Station:

Way more on the nit pick side here but station seems very kit bashy (again ive not seen anyone else point this out but still thought Id mention it) + in real life that platform does not extended pass the black fence on the platform.

Route wide:

irl number
Approaching Cookham:

Snapped cable trunking


End of scenery at Twyford is also visible, as well as HSTs not getting up to speed. If that is fixed too, make sure there are enough signals for the exit portal as in some routes trains will approach portal exists on a single yellow which may affect speed.

Also at Twyford station on the up relief there is a floating brick which is supposed to be used a step to climb on to the platform.

Hope they are of use

 

Here's an even worse one. See also: all of the speed limits and some of the station signs.

A handy guide. Good vs. not good:


Excellent:

Fine:

Unacceptable:

 

Yea, to the average player Im sure that font is fine...but going forward it would be great if we could banish it from TSW

 

Platform: PC Steam

On Windsor Branch I only hear less train announcements.
On the journeys towards Windsor & Eton Central, no announcements can be heard on the train. Neither the announcement after departing Slough nor the arrival announcement before Windsor is audible. On the journey from Windsor to Slough, only the announcement before Slough can be heard.

Do you have the same experience?

 

That is quite appalling. If Network Rail get wind of that, say goodbye to licencing for any further UK routes. And again, appalling this wasn't picked up during testing or the route developer aware the use of real world contact numbers should not be used. Yes, unlike the one dropped a few years back with the FGW Maintenance Controllers real world number, this one is on the real bridges in the public domain. But it shouldn't be appearing in the game. Sloppy and unprofessional by all concerned.

Almost tempted to grass them up myself.

 

Disregard the following, Vern is correct.
Eh. It's a publicly available phone number of a taxpayer-funded institution, not the personal mobile of its Director. If someone wanted to prank call the Railway Authority (as I'm sure, hundreds of kids do every day anyway), it's one Google search away. I think having it there adds to the authenticity and immersion of the route.
Disregard the above, Vern is correct.

Signage in UE4's default font, on the other hand...

 

Yea that needs addressing.

 

Yeah the number thing isnt the end of the world. I believe its just standard procedure not to include it...I highly doubt people would call that anyway.
But there are other fictional numbers in this route so looks like this one slipped through.

 

It's a number that exists in specific locations for a very specific purpose. Having worked at the location where the number rings out for several years, I can assure you the number of crank calls was actually very small. Putting it in a train game played by thousands around the world... And remember, it just takes one prank or misguided call to block a real emergency call from getting through where seconds could be the difference between stopping a train from passing over a damaged bridge or not.

So I and I hope every other professional railway person on here takes the issue very seriously. It's also symptomatic of the bungling ineptitude that now seems to pervade DTG's management of this title.

 

Almost. I did just get 0 announcements towards Windsor, but towards Slough I got both "The next station is Slough. This is a GWR service towards Slough" upon departing Windsor, as well as "We are now approaching Slough, where this train terminates bah-blah-blah" just before arrival.

Disregard the following, Vern is correct. You don't take risks with railway safety.
Putting it in the game played by thousands will result in maybe 100 people noticing it ever, maybe 1 idiot actually calling, and upon hearing the "next operator will be with you in... 45... minutes" line or more likely, some AI voice bot, deciding it's not worth it. More people see that number every day IRL than will see it in this game ever.
Disregard the above, Vern is correct.
Still, if it's against actual protocols or agreements to put it in the game, it should of course be removed.

 

Without going into details, it's an emergency line into a live location which has to be answered by a live person in the minimum number of rings. Without being over dramatic, I'm sure whoever signed off on (or missed) this in the route at DTG, probably would prefer not to be sat in a glass fronted dock explaining to the man in a wig how little Jimmy got hold of this number and was ringing it because he thought they could help get his TSW train moving. In the meantime a train comes to serious grief with injuries or loss of life because a truck driver who just clouted a fragile bridge couldn't get through in time for Network Rail to stop the job. Safety should be the absolute prime concern here no matter how trivial it might seem to people not directly involved with the industry.