Why Does My Sand Patch Game Not Carry On From My Save Point When I Try To Continue Another Day?

Hi all,

New player to the TSW series, and loving it so far...but i am having a recurring issue with TSW 2020. I played half of the LONG Sand Patch level yesterday and saved multiple times throughout the journey. I was looking forward to continuing the level tonight, but no matter which options i try to click on, it keeps starting me at the beginning. Same with the Fully fuelled (name?) level, i know i have completed at least 2/3 of it and saved the game before quitting, but it keeps insisting i start from scratch.

Am i doing something wrong?

Thanks in advance for your help everyone.

 

The "continue your service" button is on the main menu screen. Illogical, but there it is.

 

Thanks for your reply, but am i missing something? Or being an idiot (very likely)? See screenshot attached

 

I could be wrong, but AFAIK the CSX Heavy Haul name was dropped for the original release of TSW, and thus was long gone for TSW 2020. You say you're a new player, but you have a version of the game that hasn't been on sale for years. If you paid for it, you may have been misrepresented on what you were getting; if you didn't pay for it, well....

 

Wow, that is old!

But I would try clicking on "last played."

 

I definitely paid for it, and as far as I remember, it was advertised as TSW 2020. It was activated on Steam with no issues.
On the Steam store page (not where i bought it from), the game says it was released in 2018, surely not THAT old?
I did press "last played" and the same thing happened, it made me start from the beginning.

I also have TSW 2, as you can see from the screenshot attached...is that the same game? Should i just play that? I play the german transit routes on that, never tried Bakerloo line or the other option. I assumed they were two different games.

Im a bit confused now tbh

Thanks for your help so far. I will be gutted if TSW 2020 turns out to be buggy and unplayable as i was really enjoying it, but there is no way im starting from scratch every time

 

Oh, a Steam key seller? That would explain it. Caveat emptor.

The game's progression is CSX Heavy Haul --> TSW --> TSW 2020 --> TSW 2 --> TSW 3 (current). If you've got TSW 2, you're best off sticking with that one. Everything pre-TSW 3 has been taken off sale, but TSW 2 still has a decent player base and some support, as it was only supplanted last September.

 

Fair enough. Thanks for the advice. Ill stick to TSW 2 from now on.
I think i only paid £4 for TSW 2020 anyway, no big deal.

Cheers

 

You can only save one service in total at any one time so if you have saved a service from another route in the meantime then it will wipe any previous saves and you will have to start again for those.

 

Really? That seems odd and unfair to me. Maybe i haven't got my head fully around how Train Sim World games work.
So, if i understand what you are saying, i have to pick one journey/route/game option and stick to that until i complete it before i move on? So, in TSW 2, i can't play the German high-speed train option at the same time as the Bakerloo line option, with my game saving and continuing where i left off for BOTH?

Sorry if these are basic questions, im just a bit surprised. Im also surprised that i was sold a game that seems to have been a dud (TSW 2020)...fortunately i only paid a few quid for it.

Thanks again for everyones replies and help

 

Yes, there are no separate saves for each route. Only 1 save for everything. So if you overwrite a save from one route with another, you will have to restart whatever you achieved in the first save.

 

So, if you go and play another route, as long as you do not save during that run, you can come back and reload that save at a later point. The save is for the specific run you are doing at the time. So if I say, start a 2 hour US freight run on something like Sand Patch Grade, and get tired halfway through, I can go to bed, and finish it the next day. But maybe the next day I want a break, and go and do a 20 minute Long Island commuter service, I don't need to save during that, so when I finish I can reload my SPG save and finish that last hour of the run.
Your profile saves things like which services you have completed overall on each route, the save is basically your quicksave slot for if something goes wrong within an individual service.

 

For those long enough in the tooth, MSTS had the ability to save at least one scenario from each route simultaneously, plus you could choose from several save points in the same scenario, if my little gray cells serve me correctly.

Shows how far we've come in the last 20 years.

 

Thank you all for your replies. This seems like a very weird system that has been implemented. Am i missing something or is there a reason Dovetail Games decided to do this?

I honestly cannot see a single possible reason/benefit in this save game system.

Cheers

 

Well you have a point. But it is what it is and a few months ago it was disabled completely.
Only due to a concerted campaign by some forum members was it reinstated in its imperfect condition, a condition which is perfectly explained by the posts above.

 

Before getting TSW on Playstation a few years ago I had Trainz on my Macbook Pro (completely fried one playing it so often) and that had as many saves as you wanted. I ended up with hundreds of different saves, all of which I could give names to, and used them for adding to and building up lots of fun scenarios as I could add and delete trains at will to any of the saved svenarios that weren’t locked down. I used previous saved scenarios as starting points to make new ones rather than starting from scratch in the game’s editor.

I was completely bemused by TSW having only one save slot when I first got it and thought it might be just a console thing but soon found out on the forum that all versions had it. It was also evident that TSW was more locked down in the way content is made, especially before Scenario Planner came along and improved the situation minimally (about as minimally as is humanly possible as it turns out). That gameplay making aspect of Trainz I missed but uninstalled it when I found TSW to save frying any more hardware and the timetable mode of TSW was more than enough compensation for anything I lost.

I’ve never required the save in TSW for normal gameplay reasons as I always finish services in one go and if I run out of time and have to close the game I just start again rather than even utilise the single save slot. Still baffles me as to why there is only one slot though.

 

It's a "save your current run so that you can shut down and continue tomorrow" feature rather than a "chop and change between multiple runs on the go at the same time". For long freight routes like SPG or Cajon Pass it can be invaluable for those who are time-poor and can't dedicate 3 hours to a run in a single sitting.

 

As I said, it's the short-term backup in case something goes wrong during an individual run, or you need to take a break before you can finish. It's equivalent to any other game's Quicksave slot, where you press F5 just before attempting something that might be difficult and would force you back to a checkpoint at the start of the level if you fail. All your overall progress is stored in your profile, so the only time a manual save is needed is if something goes wrong on a run, or you are unable to finish it in time before real life issues need attending to.

The system is still basically in beta, as it's always had issues with properly re-simulating the AI trains' part of the run when restoring a save, which can sometimes make a loaded save state buggy and mess up the signalling, which is why when TSW3 launched, that game had it disabled, and it was only reimplemented after a lot of outcry, since TSW3 also launched with a lot of crashing issues that made the save feature more necessary than ever, especially on long routes like Cajon Pass. They've put a bunch of work into it in TSW3 since then to get it working better than it did in TSW2.

 

One notable absentee from the current game is the " return to last checkpoint " (at least I can't find it ), which was a kind of auto save, allowing you to at least go back to the last station stop or a red signal. Can't remember if it migrated to TSW3 or not.

 

No, it didn't- bummer. Probably a casualty of saves generally being disabled in TSW3 at launch.

(Note- it was a PC-specific feature; consoles never had it)

 

Just a quick reply to thank everyone for the latest replies. I understand it is what it is, and although it seems an odd choice for the dev team to make, it's only slightly annoying and doesn't diminish my enjoyment of the game, it just makes me rethink how i play it.

Have a great rest of the week everyone. Cheers