In the few weeks I have been here I have experienced many problems not only with the DLS but with other aspects of the game itself, some yes is due to my own lack of knowledge of the game and it's inter workings.
But with the volume of seemingly quite intelligent individuals from all over the globe, I have yet to see anyone address this issue as such, Trainz has been out for what approximately 8 years, and there have been how many newer versions since, then it would only seem that the problems did not start yesterday but years before, with that in mind I question where was Auran regardless of how large a company it is. If they are selling and in charge of Trainz then why did they not start to correct some of this stuff long ago before putting out any more new versions, and before someone lights off on me for being cheap and wanting everything for nothing let me say right now the money I paid for the game and the FCT are nothing to me I can easily spend more in the saloon in one afternoon when I do occasionally go there, however I can understand the college guys complaints and younger ones complaints. To them half a hundred bucks plus is a lot, but regardless Auran should have fixed these things long ago, there would probably be much less traffic on the DLS if one did not have to go from page to page to page just to get to the download only to find it is either obsolete, can not be found etc, I realize a business has to show a profit but I think they are going about it the wrong way.
Auran by allowing this stuff for years has lets face it put out a product that while it is amazing is not up to snuff, look at 09' there is more update than program, add to this that content is supplied/ created for free by users charging extra just doe;s not seem right in this instance they are charging for their lack of good business practice, not good like I said I could careless as far as I am concerned money wise, and before I felt too sorry for poor Auran one may want to look at the fact they are still laughing all the way to the bank on the money we all supplied them, and will continue to supply them, they have users over the clothes line and they know it.
It would help if you use paragraph spacing and not use run-on sentences!
Outside of that, a lot of what you are complaining about, is finally being addressed, albeit slowly. It took a change in management within the company to do this, and a lot of pressure from the community.
TS2009 is a far cry from what we had before, and really even with its wharts and growing pains, TS2010 onward prove to be even better. I'm saying this as a somewhat "old-timer" here, and not as a sunblower for Auran. I used the early Trainz 1.0 Demo, and then purchased TRS2004 way back in early 2004 when it was first released. The ride was quite rough with a lot more problems than TS2009 or TS2010 have shown.
Long after TRS2004 had matured, TRS2006 and the Classics series came along. TRS2006 had lots of issues, which put everyone at odds, but we stuck through it and things got better. TS2009 was an expansion and improvement on TRS2006, and included a lot of what improvements were made in the Classics Series. It too brought on more compatibility issues as the error checking was implemented, and other code changes were made. This is a common issue with software as some things are fixed, others get broken. This is why there are releases and service packs.
TS2010 is the latest in the line, and includes more improvements over what was in TS2009, and with the latest service packs, is not such a bad program to use. I can say that on weekends, I have spent well over 10 hours jumping between Surveyor and Driver as I test newly improved sections of my now 7 year-old route.
The FCT issue is another matter, which unfortunately has come up recently. There was always the FCT owner versus the free-downloader. Those with the ticket paid for the maintenance of the server, and helped with the bandwidth. Today things are a bit tighter for Auran as well as everyone else, besides they are finally discontinuing support for the old products! How many companies still support products that are over 7 years old, or older? It's time to let them go, and move on. Like many old products, there are those that still use them, and in the community here, we were warned this would happen soon enough, and it finally did.
As a new user, I would recommend this as part of your purchase to enjoy the program to its fullest. It's only $20 per year, which is really not much when you think about the hours of enjoyment you can have with the program.
If you are having trouble with your FCT, I can't remember if you purchased one or not, let us know. There are things you can try, including your firewall settings, antivirus settings, etc.
So having said this, if you could in a separate thread, list out your issues, and perhaps we can help you. There are many aspects of this program that may be hard to grasp, or perhaps are giving you trouble in other ways. This is what the community is for.
John
