That's because it's the same people running the shop.
A Sad End to an Epic Run for Me with Trainz.
- Thread starter skittlekicks
- Start date
This is the world we live in now. In the olden days, there was a real development cycle and then a lengthy in-house alpha and beta testing cycle. Today, just like all the other developers out there, N3V is caught in a speed warp where they push programs and content out quickly without testing it fully with the hopes that the user-based beta testers will find the bugs before the product reaches the market.
For us, this push started with T:ANE and we saw what that did. The initial release was so poor that no one could use it without the program pushing up daisies or doing weird things that permanently corrupted routes.
TRS19 followed and with the community fully involved, we pushed for N3V to keep the release on the workbench until it was mature and stable enough for release. This test cycle was the public release in the final test phase and not the full testing that's done now.
This made TRS19 a nice stable program which it still is today. TRS22, the original release, was much like this. As "features" were added, the program got heavier and more unstable. Plus is the same with more DLC as you know.
Today, we have community-testing only by Plus users instead of everyone testing like before. This gives people a glance at new features and what-not but not everyone tests. The number of people testing versus just playing with new features makes a difference. Many people like to download new programs just to say they have the latest version and do nothing to test them while others rely on the rest to test because they don't want to test. This makes for a small pool of testers and N3V is now back to square one.
Why would they go about it this way? Money, money, money. The test cycle part in the software development cycle is probably the most expensive due to the amount of time and resources required to ensure a product is usable. The current way to do things is to release a product and let the customers flesh out the bugs. The program is released so that it's stable enough not to crash and any bugs that are found are then reported to the QA-team and developers who come up with a new patch or patches on patches.
We not only see this with Trainz versions but also with other big-names in software. Microsoft with its crappy Windows 11, various Adobe releases, various security flaws in programs and hardware, and so on.
If companies put their effort into testing and checking prior to releasing with hopes that the majority of the bugs are caught, then we would have a stable product. Letting the programs loose on the public with hopes to fix bugs that are reported back is the cheap way out as we see now.
One of my last projects when I retired was a system that involved all employees. The list of employees had to be updated weekly, so, the program tried to pull the list of employees from Active Directory. So far, so good, except the vender wrote the program and installed it in Linux. It failed to work correctly, and THey wanted five figures to make it work right. I told OUR project manager that we could program it in Powershell in an afternoon, it would work with Active Directory, and it wouldn't cost the company anything other than an afternoon of one programmer's salary. OUR project manager did not want to get on the bad side of the vendor, so we tried to plow ahead. End of story, I guess they eventually got it working, but after I handed it over to a co-worker as I retired. We had a cynical saying at work, "the only expert is someone from outside the company". The company wasted more time and money on stuff we had to fix than they would have spent just having us do it. Another saying was "There's never time to do it right, but there is always time to do it over."
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I agree. I started computer training (building and programming) in 1963. I can't begin to imagine how many IBM punched cards the TRS2022 program would take.
Following my 20-year IT career in the US Navy, I joined the private sector. Up until then, it was possible that people died as a result of any bugs, so software was tested thoroughly. Then, my whole programming effort went topsy-turvy. I was ordered to turn out code as fast as I could and "testing" would be done later. Of course, that meant it was never tested or so superficially that hundreds of bugs went out. I worked for four companies and every one of them used their customers as a test bed, fixing what they complained about. I fear this sort of corporate thinking has infected N3V and now we have buggier software, and no real new stuff. I do agree that the new Surveyor 2.0 is great work, but the learning curve is steep and slippery. Still, I've been at it now for 20 years and don't plan on quitting soon.Bill
KotangaGirl
Pre-Grouping Railways Nut
You have it in a nutshell John. The original release of TRS22 was really nice and then N3V started to mess with it and it all went downhill from there. Fortunately I kept a copy of the original installation software so I can avoid the disasters should I ever want to do a new install.
The new Surveyor 2.0 is a disaster for anyone such as myself who has eyesight issues. Not that N3V would give a tuppenny damn about that.
Yes, the interface still stinks. I have eyesight problems too and the small text is frustrating. We're forgotten as usual in favor of a younger generation.
For a while it looked like everyone was moving to gray text and skinny, light gray scrollbars. My vision has issues as well, and it was driving me crazy. I fondly remembered Windows 95 where you could customize all that yourself, but of course Micro$oft took that away.
Going to use your quote "For other folk who lacked such skills it was a horror show and brought them to the edge of binning Trainz and walking away from it forever".
I have supported this company for many years started with msts then here. I've been a trainz plus user just to support the work that nv3 does. If i use it more then 10 hrs a month thats alot. My renewal is up Feb 1st and for the whole month of jan i have been debating weather to walk away or not. I'am not a big content builder but like to do a little. I was trying to find out exactly how long been with them i do go back as far as train simulator 2009 also brought 2010 and 2012 hard copy of game.
Well i have a week to decide already have it in my budget. Lol the other big thing this week my wife retires Friday.
In the long run it doesn't really save them money does it, because the more times you have to go back and fix things then the more it costs. Or ignore and hope people forget and just live with the shortcomings. What is does do though is bring money in early. It's a sad world John. Us oldies used to take pride in our work didn't we.
Marketing driving the the life cycle.
IsambardKingdomBrunel
Joined June 2001
S2 is a disaster for anyone like myself who is getting on in years and mentally challenged. I just do not understand it, Annie.
Mike.
KotangaGirl PERFECTLY described it. The Web is a fertile ground for business. Products with some quality issues (bugs) can be profitable because of the glamor (functional & visual) of the product. Turnover does not seem to be an issue at N3V - so the strategy is working. Despite an occasional complaint about the low quality updates, Renewals and addon sales coupled with new sales is working. It is worth the grief to have Trainz and enjoy using it for entertainment.
Do the TANE, and other early version customers, continue to use that product just to avoid the problems of "NEW""?
Do the TANE, and other early version customers, continue to use that product just to avoid the problems of "NEW""?
Most likely. A trainzer friend of mine does. He still uses TRS2004 through TS12 even though he purchased TRS19 ages ago and will never update to the latest version he said. I think he will when TRS35 comes out.
zatovisualworks
Veteran but blossoming
More or less when the old-timers' FIRST CLASS TICKET STATUS expires: 2035-01-30 03:43:45Had a quick look and mine expires 2036-05-06 so only 11 years and 5 months to go. Of course that will also put me firmly in old geezer territory.
KotangaGirl
Pre-Grouping Railways Nut
The later versions of Trainz don't always play nicely with some legacy assets or routes, but they are perfectly fine in TANE. And yes a big draw card for continuing to use TANE is that there won't be any more 'update' patches to break anything.
LOL! Yeah I'm hoping they leave TRS19 alone!!
TRS19 reached the end of its support life cycle in September 2024 so there will be no further updates to TRS19.
@KotangaGirl > Yes, agree. That also applies to TRS2019. It's lifecycle ended Last Sept. '24.
That's what I hate, when newer versions break things that weren't broken before. It's the strict error checking and stuff that makes assets faulty. One of the biggest problems was the move from TS12 to TANE and the unfixable Pofig trees. If you have a route with Pofig trees, you have to replace them before importing the route to TANE or beyond. At least the Reading and Northern route which used Pofig trees has updated versions on the DLS with the trees replaced for TANE and 19. I always wondered why IBM, Microsoft Windows computers were always supported more than Apple Macintosh computers especially with games, but Apple iPhones are more popular than non-apple phones.