Been out of the loop for years, have some questions about Trainz

[Baron_Jutter]

Hi everyone, I've been out of the loop for years. When trainz first came out I was a very happy customer and kept buying the new versions for a few years but eventually grew out of it. I started to expect more from the graphics but each version of trainz still had more and more dated legacy content bloating it, and simply finding content became harder and harder with custom content producers not properly categorizing or naming their items. Little details like the perfectly transparent water that bridge piers don't render through, or the track always floating a little off the ground unless you do some tricks, or trees always looking like they were blowing in a windstorm. The cars never updated since the first trainz, and the terrible 2d roads that float a meter off the ground were still the norm even in 2009. Of course you coudl download some custom roads, but good luck finding a consistant pack of roads and intersections and level crossings and sidewalks. Finding, sorting, and specially downloading custom content was such a massive pain, I couldn't imagine a worse interface. All together it eventually turned me off the game.

A year ago I bought the other train game and didn't like it at all. The editor wasn't close to as flexible and intuitive as trainz, although I respect the consistant quality content. I never had to scroll through 50,000 sprite based trees made in 2003 to find the 10 modern trees in the game. I'm not so interested in driving trains or realism, I'm all about creating landscapes. I want to have a model train set on my computer basically.

I've been having a strong hankering to build some towns, some trams, some trains. My question to the community is: should I get back into trainz? Have any of my issues with the trainz franchise been fixed or improved?

 

[cascaderailroad]

TS09 is a good start, I can think of very few reasons to upgrade to TS10 (except for Aerotrain and other TS10 DLC packs), as you already have TS09.

TS12 sounds great, and if your present PC runs with good framerates in TS09, I would go for TS12.

Everyone here can help you with errors (if some arise), via PM.

My TRS2006 is OK for me, but it is lacking ... but 09, 10, 12 have far superior graphics.

From my understanding, Trainz is the best and easiest to build routes with, over other simulators.

Scrolling through 50,000 trees, is still a chore in Trainz (as there are thousands), but some of us could help point out some names or kuids of all the great assets, if you PM someone with a detailed descrption of what you want.

 

[Baron_Jutter]

So has a lot actually changed then since 2009? That's 4 years of development time, has nothing been substantially upgraded or has it all been minor tweaks and addons to the same old engine?

 

[nathanmallard]

It's the same old game engine, still chugging along after all these years! If you were to buy a new Trainz, I would go for TS2010, as it has compatiblity mode for older content from TS2004 and UTC, which is something TS2012 sadly lacks at the moment. If you want an honest opinion, Trainz has never radically changed since TS2009, but it's a very, very good sim and while it has it's issues, every sim/game has.

 

[Baron_Jutter]

That's almost what I'm looking for, a fresh start, no backwards compatibility. I was sort of hoping by now there was a brand new trainz with a new engine, new content, and none of the dated legacy content. I think they've taken the trainz2009 version as far as it goes and they need to start over. Better engine/graphics, better interface, way better content system.

 

[Barry]

That's almost what I'm looking for, a fresh start, no backwards compatibility. I was sort of hoping by now there was a brand new trainz with a new engine, new content, and none of the dated legacy content. I think they've taken the trainz2009 version as far as it goes and they need to start over. Better engine/graphics, better interface, way better content system.

Who is going to make all the new content?

B

 

[nathanmallard]

Who is going to make all the new content?

Yup. Everything I have ever downloaded will be useless, and think about payware sites such as Camscott, PaulzTrainz, GP Locomotives. I don't think there going to like having to convert all their locos to support a new engine. Not to mention all the problems with users quitting en-masse when N3V end support for Auran Jet-powered versions of Trainz, blocking their access do the DLS unless they have a FCT. We already have people who are sticking with TRS2006, 2004 etc. I'm sure that if N3V did make a new game engine and chose to stick with that one, the community would become self sufficient in a while, like MSTS, but short-term the impacts of such a change would devaste the Trainz community. Plus, we don't want to go the route of Railworks where everything is payware and monopolized by official developers, which will be the death of RW one day. Basically, the only future for Trainz is Auran Jet, and I can't see that changing for a long, long time. If you want a new start, maybe you could try another sim like OpenBVE or Run8.

 

[Baron_Jutter]

I just want to make a model trainset on my computer with a solid interface, navigatable content, and roads/cars that don't float and look like they're from 2002 (because they are). I think if they just did a huge overhaul on the content-management side of trainz it would make things way better. What can also be the death of games like this is constantly catering to the old-guard existing user who doesn't fuss about bad interfaces because they are used to them and chasing away new users due to poor interface and accesibility.

Is it possible to upgrade the car models driving on roads in the game?
is it possible to outright delete all the extremely ugly and dated assets or some how permanently hide them in a simple easy way?
Is it possible to outright delete all loco's and rolling stock that don't have up to date levels of detail, animations, visible cargo and such?

I think the game should come pre-configured with only the latest high quality content, with the option of enabling/adding older stuff. New users can get very overwealmed and disapointed when 90% of the content they see looks a decade dated. That's what I liked when I first got trainz, everything was consistant. Yeah it was consistantly 2002 quality assets, but everything matched. I gave up on 2009 because it was this jarring mix of 2009 content and all the way back to 2002 content. Often the only way to tell if something is garbage is testing it out, but there's thousands and thousands of items, it would take weeks of full time work to sort through the stuff in the game.

Now I know some of you guys are pro's at the content management stuff, or at least have gotten used to it. Is there a fairly easy way to delete or filter at least a majority of the super dated stuff? I just want a consistant graphical experience.

 

[Barry]

I just want to make a model trainset on my computer with a solid interface, navigatable content, and roads/cars that don't float and look like they're from 2002 (because they are). I think if they just did a huge overhaul on the content-management side of trainz it would make things way better. What can also be the death of games like this is constantly catering to the old-guard existing user who doesn't fuss about bad interfaces because they are used to them and chasing away new users due to poor interface and accesibility.

Is it possible to upgrade the car models driving on roads in the game?
is it possible to outright delete all the extremely ugly and dated assets or some how permanently hide them in a simple easy way?
Is it possible to outright delete all loco's and rolling stock that don't have up to date levels of detail, animations, visible cargo and such?

I think the game should come pre-configured with only the latest high quality content, with the option of enabling/adding older stuff. New users can get very overwealmed and disapointed when 90% of the content they see looks a decade dated. That's what I liked when I first got trainz, everything was consistant. Yeah it was consistantly 2002 quality assets, but everything matched. I gave up on 2009 because it was this jarring mix of 2009 content and all the way back to 2002 content. Often the only way to tell if something is garbage is testing it out, but there's thousands and thousands of items, it would take weeks of full time work to sort through the stuff in the game.

Now I know some of you guys are pro's at the content management stuff, or at least have gotten used to it. Is there a fairly easy way to delete or filter at least a majority of the super dated stuff? I just want a consistant graphical experience.

I understand your point of view.

 

[haddock56]

If you don't want to see the built-in stuff, go into surveyor like you were going to make a session and make a list of all the names of the content you don't want to see. Once you've done that, then disable them using CMP. I would also suggest Trainz 2010 as the best version. with it's backward compatibility for older assets, but supporting the newer engines and cars being created (like Adamovic's Sultran rotary gondolas) it's the most versatile one out of all of them. As for the rest of the content that has been created, it's mind-boggling how much new stuff is out. This is the main reason why getting Trainz 2010 is a good choice--to be able to experience the wide, wide range of content available. And N8phu has been doing some fantastic work with Sporbust's content, getting them to work error-free in Trainz 12.

 

[Baron_Jutter]

"make a list of all the names of content you don't want to see"
This would take weeks, months. Is there no way to sort by date? like "delete everything made before 2009" ?
Is there no easy way to sort the wheat from the chaff? I want to have a modern gaming experience that looks like a game from the current era, not a crazy mix of content spanning a decade.

 

[cascaderailroad]

I'm sure that there is a way to filter out all old content ... But I cease to care, as my "Local" file is the most hugest in the world ... 786 Gb in size ... the "last man standing, with the most toys wins" !

Fortunately I have a photographic memory, and I can remember just about every asset on the DLS.

Some day you might want to modify that good ol' TC 1&2 Paintshed hopper, and retrofit it with TS12 high poly friction bearing trucks.

 

[Baron_Jutter]

Not sure why I did it but I went and bought 2012....

 

[mjolnir]

Yes, there is a way to filter out older content. In the version of Content Manager which is supplied with TS12, one of the search parameters is the Trainz Build number. TS2009 is 2.9, so to get only more recent content, search for build greater than that. Some of the issues with things like cars exist, in part, because there are not enough content creators. I guess too many members of the community are too busy playing Driver / Engineer.

ns

 

[jjanmarine3]

I am sure you will enjoy TS12.
Don't make the same mistake that I made - and many others , I guess- and dl stuff that you are not ready for or sure of. There is so much to dl and enjoy everywhere from stacks of competent sources.
Errors and missing and unknown dependencies frustrate the hell out of trainzers if they don't learn how to handle ,find and fix them first.

 

[itareus]

Not sure why I did it but I went and bought 2012....

I hope you enjoy it.

One thing I don't think anybody has mentioned about TS12 is that it has a new content set (albeit a few items from earlier builds were used) so it does not have all the content going back to early Trainz versions. What I did to reduce the amount of clutter in Surveyor further was to go through the built in content in Content Manager (CM) and "Disable" anything that I would not personally use in route building. For example I only model the UK scene so I disabled all locos and stock for the US,China etc. I find it is quite quick to do this using CMs search facilities. "Disabled" content is still available to routes that use it but won't appear in Surveyor lists. You could do something similar for scenery items or anything else.

As regards downloading further content, I go through the last day/weeks worth of stuff on the DLS using CM. Anything that looks useful I download and the try it out in a test route, if it's not up to scratch I simply delete it from my local install.

A new patch for TS12 is under development and, hopefully, this will fix some of the outstanding issues with TS12 - overall I find TS12 to be "the best yet" but that, of course, is just my personal opinion.

You mentioned floating roads a couple of times, I did do a series of road assets (on the DLS under my name or search for assets named "C+ RN plus" ) which might do what you are after. If they are the wrong color for you then you are welcome to re-skin them, this should be an easy job.

 

[steamboateng]

TS 12 will do ok on a mid-range computer with decent specs. TS12 gragpics are nice and getting more realistic as content creators catch up with the latest versions. Still a lot of low quality stuff on the DLS; just ignore it. Watch out for stuff made with 'Sketchup'........high poly counts can drag your rig down quickly. A lot of decent older stuff is being upgraded regularly for TS12 by a variety of Trainzers.
I find that TS12 allows more assets into a scene than previous versions, without bogging down your CPU. A decent graphics card can go a long way towards 'happy Trainzin'.