Andy,
I am disgusted at the list of your downsides. However, I am certainly not disgusted at you.
You are perhaps one of the finest, if not the finest freeware route contributers this community has ever seen and it disgusts me that people have taken advantage of you.
I am likely one of your biggest fans, in fact, I still operate East Kentucky 2 on a regular basis as I believe it was one of the finest creations ever made for this game. I'm going to elaborate on that too.
EK2 was incredible on a few notes. It was realistic, but it was lo-poly. There's a false sense within this "modern" Trainz community, perhaps Ed, yourself and a few others will understand what I'm getting at here, but there's this false sense that all routes must be 100% accurate, must have the highest quality content, etc, etc. EK2 features almost no trees, except for the very low levels with a ground texture for the higher levels. These days it seems that would be a unforgivable sin...however, it was one of the key features of that work. Less trees, as some of us older users know, means better performance. Look, I use a Dell Inspiron 530, with a 2 stage processor whatever, and the original Windows Vista. If anyone here knows computer stuff, you'll know that setup sucks. Would you believe, that Andy's route, fully textured with all buildings, but low poly content runs almost perfectly?
Andy, you're 100% in the right to be fed up with Speedtrees. I was a little beyond fed up when I found that N3V's creation known as TS2010 replaced almost all of the trees on EK2 with those crappy speedtrees, automatically when EK2 was transferred to TS2010 from TRS2006. All of Chrisracer8903's fine routes were full of these horrible trees when I opened TS2010 for the first time. I hate speedtree's and they were perhaps one of N3V's biggest mistakes.
To hear that you have been hacked and harassed is what really disgusts me.
Your work is an agonizing, I should know, I can't work on a route for more than an hour without getting frustrated. Let alone complete these entire routes like you do and in the time you manage to complete in.
These routes are free, and no one should complain.
There is a false sense that all freeware routes must be of the incredible detail, such as the route being done by scratchy, and believe me I in no way am speaking ill of him. What I am speaking ill of, is this entitlement sense going through this community that all routes have to be 100% accurate, feature the utmost detailed content, and so on. This is freeware. Jointed Rail and scratchy are producing a route that in my opinion is worth at least $40. Andy's Evansville & Western to me, is worth at least $20.
Andy is devoted to this hobby, and is devoted towards the enjoyment of it. He doesn't need paid. Therefore, he should be respected as a contributor and not a business. Don't demand from him, you don't have to download his routes.
I understand Andy's disposition on the partnership's. I'm not referencing Jointed Rail either as people will think I am, I'm JR's biggest fan in some senses.
What I see in Andy's comment, and I may or may not be correct, is a frustration with how this community and simulator is turning into a big business. Its leaving the scene of being a community based hobby, to a big money making business. I personally, am a fan of the community base we used to have. Which was a forum that ran with a protocol that refused to accept some of the things we have accepted recently. When I showed up, you couldn't just throw all these pointless threads. What am I referencing? I am referencing all these threads over in freeware announcements with these silly projects that go nowhere. I got roasted when I did that when I first joined, and it helped me! It turned me into a responsible poster. These people I saw doing this a year ago when we started going downhill, are STILL doing it. They don't learn because we're not allowed to close those threads or say something against them. These threads in screenshots that take up this forum's space and get bumped every now and then by the same user who posted it, while there is nearly identical threads elsewhere. Ridiculous threads in area's like freeware announcements that focus on stupid cartoon character's that have nothing to do with Trainz, go ahead, call me out on what I am referencing. I'm against threads like that because they don't belong there. Forum areas like that are "ANNOUNCEMENTS" not "WIP" threads. Those belong in screenshots. The thread I just referenced doesn't belong here period, but, as an example of the downgrading of this forum, its tolerated. That brings me back to my first point in this paragraph. It seemingly about money making. Welcome these off topic ridiculous threads, so we can keep making money off these people so they'll keep returning. The community manager and MOST of the moderator's won't stand against these off topic, wandering threads because its not "nice" and won't attract business. Therefore, there's your partnership point again. By the way, I'm not speaking for Andy, I'm speaking for myself with that statement. Forgive me, I'm listening to a presidential debate on YouTube and was very riled by this thread...
One of the things I found awful odd was how, all of sudden about a year or two ago, anyone below TS2009 could no longer have access to the DLS without a FCT. Isn't that how it worked? That was a big money pit arrangement to force people to upgrade to TS2009 or above. I honestly believe that, and I believe it will soon happen to those of us under TS2012...
Again, these are my opinions and I just feel like stating them at the moment.
I suppose I'll finish up before I get banned or penalized for stating some opinions.
Andy, your work is incredible and I support you 100%. Glad to read you're simply re-organizing, and know this, you are appreciated here.
Thanks for all you do!
With many opinions un-written,
Woody
