Article: What is the “next” big thing for Trainz?

[davies_mike57]

The Trainz product is constantly being improved ever since the first edition (Pre SP3 Trainz) was officially released to the public.
There is always room for improvement as the saying goes.
Would be great if next Trainz versions have rolling stock looking like the real thing (like a photograph of a train).
Graphics in games are improving, and so can freeware kuid assets.
Teamwork is important on any developing software product and members that provided all those kuid assets available on the Trainz download center deserve at lot of praise for their time and effort they put into the assisting in the development of this product.
Reagards
davies_mike57

 

[BlakeAnderson]

What is the “next” big thing for Trainz?

When one is oriented to drive trains than appearance of landscape maybe seems less important. But when you are oriented on beauty of landscape you don’t need miles of routes, you need a little square of your own world of lakes, hills, villages, roads, fields, gardens and TILED GROUNDS.

 

[Approach_Medium]

In the article I see nothing about new features in surveyor that will improve things like how terrain textures will be painted on. As for pay as you go - well in one word simply NO.

Exactly what I was thinking. What happened to integration with Google Earth? But I suppose that features requires that N3V purchase a license to re-distribute Google's maps, so won't be a free upgrade anyway.
I will definitely not be subscribing to NEXT. I am trying to move away from subs and back to one-time purchases. Hard to find these days...
I don't like the concept of the entire game/sim being online. What happens if I'm on the road, or just don't want to get online? At least with TANE, I can still do that - well, sort of.
I have never been very interested in multi-player sims.

CP

 

[CaptEngland]

Not going to work with just martinvk and possibly three other people buying into this.

Tony. Please, please, please. YOU ARE NOT @PPLE INC. T:ANE was the last roll of the dice and your team failed with so much promised and over two years too late for a working version (Only after importing old assets and repairing stupid TGA errors mostly!).

Yes, performance is good (after repairing 3rd party assets), but the people on here are no longer fooled into your promises. You will have soon™ a rival program built from the ground up with a fully tested graphics engine that does show true Next Gen assets. If that program does include a easy to use surveyor module like yours, and large routes can be run without CTD's, then your dead in the water with the still cartoon graphics of T:ANE.

As the saying goes, You can't polish a poo!

Regards.
CaptEngland (The last Captain of HMS T:ANE)

 

[itareus]

... You will have soon™ a rival program built from the ground up with a fully tested graphics engine that does show true Next Gen assets...

And this perfect 'rival' program is ?

 

[amigacooke]

And this perfect 'rival' program is ?

Being developed in the spare time of a small team who are creating a demo which will then be used to raise funds for full time development on the full version of the simulator. I don't believe Crosstie Studios have claimed either the demo or the full simulator will be available soon.

 

[itareus]

If anybody is interested their (partly done) website is at http://crosstiestudios.com/.

So a group of railroad enthusiasts are going to develop (in their spare time) the best simulator ever ?

Have any of these guys any experience of significant software development projects ?

Step back and take a reality check, it's one hell of a task.

That said, good luck to them if they can pull it off.

One final point which I picked up from the website "We will not be providing support or tools to facilitate the importation of old content." so it's start from scratch chaps as it's likely the only content available for a while will be payware from Jointed Rail.

Chris M

 

[PerRock]

One final point which I picked up from the website "We will not be providing support or tools to facilitate the importation of old content." so it's start from scratch chaps as it's likely the only content available for a while will be payware from Jointed Rail.

Specifically the quote says:

Q? Can we import MSTS, ORS, TRAINZ, or other content?
A. No. We will not be providing support or tools to facilitate the importation of old content. This is a brand new sim that should take advantage of new and current modeling techniques. If you own the source files for older content or have prior permission from the owner to import or use the content that's fine, we will not prodive support and assistance for old and dated content.

Which is totally expected. Trainz doesn't support the importation of Railworks, or MSTS content; and vice versa. They're going to be different modeling techniques, different scripting, different files.

peter

 

[itareus]

...Which is totally expected. Trainz doesn't support the importation of Railworks, or MSTS content; and vice versa. They're going to be different modeling techniques, different scripting, different files...

Accepted Peter, I emphasised the wrong thing there, the point I was trying to make was that initially there would be a lack of content, especially scenic items (people, building, detail items etc.). US Payware to get the ball rolling but how long until there is a significant amount of freeware ?

I'm not against competition but the market for train sims is relatively small and another player on the field may just be spreading things too thinly. As I said in my last post "good luck to them" and I meant it.

But my past experience - (I had 20 years developing major software projects for the UK railway industry) - leads me to think this is one very big project and the devil will, in addition, be in the detail, for example in 'signalling rules logic' which will surely require serious additions to the Unreal engine software.

Time will tell !

Out of curiosity, are you a member of, or otherwise associated with, the group developing this project ? PM if you wish confidentiality.

Cheers

Chris M

 

[PerRock]

No I'm not part of the team... although if they needed the services of a graphic designer I probably wouldn't say no.

peter

 

[al225]

A year back I read a post (I think it was called Multiplayer Surveyor) that basically explained the same thing trainz next is supposed to be. Did one of the Trainz devs read that?

 

[Leverettrailfan]

It would be really cool to see something which allowed you to visit an actual location, take a photo or sound recording, and directly import it into some Trainz thing which could allow you a quick, simple, and welcoming way to edit textures and ad sound to your surveyor creations, but without having to use another application

I also would be interested in a function so that when you click on a train to change things like the road/running number, load, etc, you could also adjust the height of pantographs. I understand that new content would need to be created to be able to make use of this feature, but it would be fabulous for those who have decided on a catenary height, but cannot use any un-prototypical matching of trains and catenary wire without designing a whole new pantograph set to the desired height, and fitting it to the model. I am sure that many content creators would be fine with doing the long process, but for those lazy or un-educated-in-cad-design and such could have a quick and easy alternative.

 

[davies_mike57]

Trainz Forum Members:

I would like to see in future issues of Trainz more interaction of passengers on the platforms of stations that are actually moving around when jumping or getting off a train. Would be a good feature if a person (the player) could walk around the layout, jump in and out of a train at the station and sit in a seat in a carriage. Or even fly a plane or jump in the train cab, cars, trucks, taxis and drive around just like in the popular game series GTA.
Or even a police car chasing after a stolen vehicle or train locomotive would make the game more interesting for the younger generations.

davies_mike57

 

[whiterabbit01]

I think the idea is great; whether it will work is another matter. Sadly there are always more nay-sayers willing to post on this type of forum than there are community members who would actually agree with this new vision. I moderate a particular site that has upwards of 40 000 subscribers, of those only a tiny percent ever actually comment and those are usually of a negative quality to the proposals made. Usually on 0.002% of the community show agreement, but the largest majority of the community are from the way the site continues all for whatever is being proposed.

 

[slayer3901]

i think im done with this . i feel like im getting ripped off. i stopped playing this for a year so they would get the bugs fixed and now the buxs are still thier and i tried downloading multiplayer and 1 says i dont have payware and another says i am not up to date. i feel like this game is not worth my money at all. no wonder everyone is buying shooter games now. good bye for now

 

[martinvk]

i think im done with this . i feel like im getting ripped off....

Not to pick on a new Trainzer but this is just a small example of what appears to me to be a more general phenomenon, namely that Trainz is not your normal shooter game. In those, you have specific actions you must accomplish to reach predefined goals while the parts of the world you can access are all defined.

Trainz is almost the complete opposite. Generally, you as the user need to be much more involved in setting up the world to be ready to use. Except for some fully made sessions, usually there is some or a lot to do. And if you start from a bare baseboard, you do everything. Plus if you want to use custom objects, even those need to be made.

For many, that is the attraction of Trainz. Unfortunately, it appears that some are joining under the impression that you just start the program and everything is all done. To bring it to traditional model railroading terms, it the difference between fully scratch building everything from rails, ties to cars, buildings etc., and opening a fully-build layout in a box, plugging in power and then running a train around in circles.

 

[shaneturner12]

i think im done with this . i feel like im getting ripped off. i stopped playing this for a year so they would get the bugs fixed and now the buxs are still thier and i tried downloading multiplayer and 1 says i dont have payware and another says i am not up to date. i feel like this game is not worth my money at all. no wonder everyone is buying shooter games now. good bye for now

Welcome to the forums.

Can I ask what build you are using? (5-digit number on the Launcher screen)

Shane

 

[simulatortrain]

One final point which I picked up from the website "We will not be providing support or tools to facilitate the importation of old content." so it's start from scratch chaps as it's likely the only content available for a while will be payware from Jointed Rail.

I agree. Jointed Rail has yet to release even so much as a freeware hornsound. Those greedy selfish [redacted]!

I was planning to keep my freeware free, but you've brought up an excellent point: why give it away when I could sell it instead? Thanks!

(Just to add, I have nothing to do with Crosstie other than being associated with those who are.)

 

[Dcatrambone]

Trainz should add like a 3254 pack

 

[stuartluff]

Personally I would prefer to see much better Surveyor tools to help create more realistic routes and accurate real world routes as well. I don't use Multiplayer as everyone has their own way of doing things and I don't really want some immature idiot ruining my experiences online. 'Multiplayer' Surveyor sounds like a bad idea to me as it will lead to many people reverting routes back to how they had created them originally when they find the person they have just given access to has placed a 2016 Ford Mustang in a 1950's route.

If TransDem like software was added into Trainz to make it easy to acquire real routes or at least some sort of realistic terrain generation module was added it would make things a whole lot better and enjoyable across the board.

I bought TANE for my maxed out i7 iMac and it would not run without major screen flickering and so had to get a refund. Through the flickering I could see no improvement in graphics so Im not quite sure what TANE was all about. Im still happily running TSMac2 but pine for much better terrain generating tools.