A few questions before I purchase.

[Pinchy]

Hi,

It's my first post here, and I'm considering purchasing Trainz 12.
I was hoping to have a few questions answered, to help me decide.

I've taken some time to compare the various other options for a train sim and Trainz 12 seems like a pretty solid choice.
The content for both Train Sims I considered seems to be very vast, so I undoubtedly missed a lot of cool and informative things.


I do have a few questions though.

For future Updates and DLC compatibility, should I purchase directly from here?, or will the Steam version be maintained equally?

Are the Australian (particularly the NSW RailCorp) urban trains available and compatible? And has anyone made Sydney based tracks?

Are the Thomas the Tank engine characters I've seen for prior versions of Trainz available and compatible with Trainz 12?

Thanks for reading.

Cheers,
Pinchy

 

[BLACKWATCH]

For future Updates and DLC compatibility, should I purchase directly from here?, or will the Steam version be maintained equally?

Purchase from here (Auran/N3V) to make sure of updates and compatibility, as there have been issues with the version from 'Steam'.

 

[H222]

For future Updates and DLC compatibility, should I purchase directly from here?, or will the Steam version be maintained equally?

Definently Through the Auran shop. (Here)

Are the Australian (particularly the NSW RailCorp) urban trains available and compatible? And has anyone made Sydney based tracks?

Some, M Sets and S-Sets (Cityrail, Sydney)
Many regional and locos have been made for NSW
Tracks can be downloaded here
http://home.exetel.com.au/cws/worrybrook/ (My sig) and on the Download Station, search author 'Natvander' or '#61119
Other locos can be downloaded there

Are the Thomas the Tank engine characters I've seen for prior versions of Trainz available and compatible with Trainz 12?

http://si3d2009.jimdo.com/

Enjoy

Jamie

 

[johnwhelan]

There is a wider range of content available for TS2010 as it supports compatibility mode which TS12 apparently does not.

Cheerio John

 

[Pinchy]

Thankyou very much for the reponse.
Those links are great Jamie, cheers.

So, after reading John's comment, would I be better off buying Trainz 2010 Engineers Edition?

 

[winjmoore]

Thankyou very much for the reponse.
Those links are great Jamie, cheers.

So, after reading John's comment, would I be better off buying Trainz 2010 Engineers Edition?

If you have a newer powerful PC go with 12. But some things will not show up in 12 until they are repaired. 10 however is a bit older dose less things and.... But it has a huge back catalogue all be it not to the pollish of some of the newer content.

12 is all of that but some things are in need of repair, which is being done by community members that have that skill.. 12 is muti player

 

[Deano5]

If you have a newer powerful PC go with 12. But some things will not show up in 12 until they are repaired. 10 however is a bit older dose less things and.... "....
.
So what, apart from the Doppler effect, is this list of things that 10 cannot do?

 

[johnwhelan]

Thankyou very much for the reponse.
Those links are great Jamie, cheers.

So, after reading John's comment, would I be better off buying Trainz 2010 Engineers Edition?

It's 20% off until the end of today, TS2010 is $30 TS12 is $50 so you'd save more if you brought TS12.

If the doppler effect is important to you then go TS12, otherwise I personally haven't seen any compelling reason to go TS12. I think it has a couple of routes but they aren't especially ones that are of time periods or regions to interest me.

Cheerio John

 

[Euphod]

I agree that 2010 is probably the better of the two programs, for it's versatility. I have both and 12 really offers little in the way of improvement over 2010. 12 is also a bit restrictive, out of the box due to the multiplayer requirements.

 

[Pinchy]

Thanks for the information everyone.

I went to purchase the 2010 edition, complete with the 20% discount. However the store didn't seem to be responding last night.
I went to try this morning and it seems ok, but now I have lost the 20% discount voucher!
Is there a way I can obtain another discount voucher?

A rival game is available on Steam today for $17.49USD. With current exchange rates, that's a steal. I really wanted Trainz, however this seems like it's too good to pass on!
Does anyone know if Trainz might be up for offer in this sale?

Cheers,
Pinchy

 

[RRSignal]

I would stay away from Steam big time. There's a reason why it's cheap, and that applies to both Trainz and anything else sold on Steam.

If you go to www.auran.com, right at the top should be a banner that says "20% off store-wide Click here for details." Click that and on the next page click Claim Your Voucher. You have the option of sending the sale notice to up to five people. Once you get that, you're good to go. Today is the last day of that sale though, so act quickly. Don't worry if the servers seem a bit slow, it'll be okay.

 

[johnwhelan]

Thanks for the information everyone.

I went to purchase the 2010 edition, complete with the 20% discount. However the store didn't seem to be responding last night.
I went to try this morning and it seems ok, but now I have lost the 20% discount voucher!
Is there a way I can obtain another discount voucher?

A rival game is available on Steam today for $17.49USD. With current exchange rates, that's a steal. I really wanted Trainz, however this seems like it's too good to pass on!
Does anyone know if Trainz might be up for offer in this sale?

Cheers,
Pinchy

You pays your money and takes your chance. TS2010 is cheaper than 20% off TS12 so I'd go that way. N3V's financial year ends June 30th so in a effort to make the figures look good they often do a discount in June. Wait a year and they may do another one.

Steam has its own set of issues for any game. Trainz basically has a much wider range of content than anything else for example my TS2010 currently lists 190,000 different assets nothing else comes near than number.

Cheerio John

 

[sniper297]

"A rival game is available on Steam today for $17.49USD", which is still about 17 bucks more than it's worth - the AI traffic is hopelessly retarded.

As for the difference between TS2010 and TS12, TS12 has New and Improved Useless Error Messages in Content Mangler 3.5, plus the aforementioned doppler and a built in volume control. How they managed to leave that out of all the previous versions is a mystery, most DOS games had internal volume controls in the menus 25 years ago.

It could easily be considered patch #5 for TS2010 if it didn't screw up more things than it fixed. Oh yeah, new routes and trainsets, so it's like buying a huge expansion pack and getting a slightly different version of TS2010 to go with it.

 

[Pinchy]

Thanks for the comments.

Well it seems the 20% discount has been given an extension. Cheers!!
The downside is, that it doesn't seem to apply to Trainz 2010.
I guess it's considered cheap enough already?

I will have lunch and then decide what game I guess.

 

[ct_krogen]

i would not buy it off of steam......