Long Time, No Visit

[sforget]

Well, it's been a while since I've been active on these forums - About 2 years.

If there is anyone around who remembers me, I'm curious how trainz has proceeded in the past two years.

I left after TRS2006 SP1, at which time I felt that TRAINZ had lost its way. There had been many modification to TRS2006 that IMO greatly reduced the enjoyment of this Sim.

My general question is: Compared to TRS2006, how has TRS advanced into TS2009? Have they finally fixed the AI? Does CMP actually work yet (or have they scrapped that idea)?

 

[Dermmy]

welcome back Steve - long time!

No comment on 09 - still happily building routes in 04 and running them in 06

Andy...

 

[angelah]

Welcome return

The return of the warrior.... he he he..

Yes, I remember you well. Hope you are well and will visit us regularly now you're back.

As with Dermmy, I still use 04 for building routes - but run them in it as well, although to say 'run' isn't quite right. Tesing them is better, running for any length of time bores me.

I have a few more on the DS now and more to come, one fairly soon, I have one more small town to put together.

So what are your plans? Come on, spill the beans....

Blessings,

Angela

 

[amigacooke]

Ah Steve, now about that custom camera rule .....

TS09 is a work in progress and can not be described as a stable platform as yet. As to whether progress has been made, that's always going to be a personal opinion.

Hope you stick around.

 

[wreeder]

Hi sforget,

To answer your question, TS2009 has made many advances over earlier version. Of particular interest to you would be the additions to the scripting interface. Much more is possible now although in some cases it means learning a different way of doing things. Many old timers are happily busy creating new content. Larry and Charlie over at Razorback Railway are working to support the new features in their stuff and TPR has announced some exciting new stuff for TS2009. Trainzdev.com is the place to find out the details and visit with old friends. The wiki there serves as a CCG for TS2009 but it is still a WIP so don't expect to find everything. There is a serious group of trainzscripters in the forum many of whom would love to speak to you again. Drop by for a visit and stay a while.

CMP was re-written from the ground up and now is called CM2. It is light years ahead of CMP.

William

 

[ajho]

Hi Steve

As someone who, like you, left after TRS2006 SP1 and has only recently returned, I hope that that, like me, you decide to stick around. On balance things are good.

On the plus side:

• Trainz is back on track and is being extensively redeveloped to take advantage of the capabilities of modern (and indeed future) PCs.
• TS2009 in 'Native Mode', in my experience, is more stable and offers faster frame rates than TRS2006. The same cannot be said for 'Compatibility Mode' which, if anything, is slightly slower than TRS2006 (particularly around trees and water).
• Content Manager has been tamed, and for the vast majority of people, myself include, is stable and works very well.
• In the game, the new Replace Asset tool is good, and restores one of the TrainzObjectz functions I most missed most.
• New Filter Tool, which incorporates the Content Manager filters into the game in a consistent way, work well, even though it is hidden away where nobody can find it and the interface design is sloppy.

On the minus side:

• In redeveloping Trainz, Auran have, inevitably, had to break some of the existing functionality, and at present there are very few assets that will work completely without problems in Native Mode TS2009. The principle problem being trees, of which there is only one (not very convincing one) at present.
• Auran have returned to there old ways, selling the software far to early and hoping to fix it up afterwards.
• For a small number of people Content Manager does not work at all. As yet no-one has found a fix.

To sum up, I always regretted moving to TRS2006 but, by the time I had decided that I would have prefered to stick with TRS2004, I had already done too much work on the TRS2006 version of Antshire to go back.

Thus far, I have no such quams about TS2009 and I am sure it is the way of the future. But perhaps perhaps the future is not quite here yet.

 

[wreeder]

Amigacooke,

As far as TS2009 not being stable that too is only your opinion and not one that is widely shared as far as I can see. Of course that is just my opinion but it seems that a lot of serious content creators share my opinion and not yours. Given the fact that TS2009 is the first serious attempt at adding many new features to Trainz for the first time in five years rather than just repackaging the same old code with some tweaks here and there it is amazing what the team at Auran has accomplished. While an open beta program exposed many of the programs issues to discussion in public forums it also assured that those problems were bugged and fixed.

A quick look around these forums seem to indicate that every version of Trainz is not stable if one is to base one's opinion on negative posts.

William

 

[Euphod]

I find that 2009 is not a stable platform, and I wouldn't use it for spit... yet.
There are those tirelessly toiling away over at TrainzDev whom I hold in high regard, and they are making progress, but I wouldn't endorse a mass exodus to 2009 just yet. I'm regretting buying the program, and will stay with 2006.

 

[markbin]

Given the fact that TS2009 is the first serious attempt at adding many new features to Trainz

Which new features? bumpmapping? That is perfectly possible in 2004 and 2006. However, it was not much used because the hardware (video cards) was not fast enough for the combination: old game-engine and bumpmapping. With the present video cards it can be used intensively. With a modern game-engine it was already possible in 2004; Far Cry (the first) used it intensively.

 

[Mike10]

Given the fact that TS2009 is the first serious attempt at adding many new features to Trainz for the first time in five years rather than just repackaging the same old code with some tweaks here and there it is amazing what the team at Auran has accomplished.

TC3 added quite a bit.

Mike.

 

[deeelare]

sforget,

Welcome back , I have not as yet installed TS2009 , still with 06 , I am awaiting the final fixes and the feedback then make a decision . As of now it appears there are still problems ?
Let's hope it is brought up to Auran's claims soon(tm) !

--- ,dave

 

[AHSAN]

Hello Steve

Welcome back Steve, been a long time:

Useful info on TS2009: http://forums.auran.com/trainz/showthread.php?t=33679

SP2 is in the works: http://www.ts2009.com/newsletter/jan/Jan.html

Service Pack 2 Coming Soon

After the successful release of Service Pack 1 for TS2009:WBE work has been ongoing to improve it even further with development of Service Pack 2. We would like to thank all of those in the community who continue to assist us in beta testing our patching process, combined with the development team based at Auran this will ensure many fixes and compatibility improvements in future releases. Existing players should expect to see the SP2 patch available in the next couple of months for download through the game client free of charge.

Trainz Engineers Edition for TS2009 is in the works.

Auran TrainzDev site for Content Creation Support, TS2009 Beta builds forum (Need to be registered to view), Trainz Wiki and you will catch all the Auran folk their: http://www.trainzdev.com/

Regards

Ahsan

 

[sforget]

Hi All;

Nice to see so many familiar faces are still around and thanks for the Welcomes Backs.

I'm not certain what my plans are from this point. I've been thinking about getting back into scripting for TRAINZ, as my work in PHP has become rather boring of late. If I choose to re-invest myself in TRAINZ, I will probably start by updating my rules which I see are still in high demand.

I did some browsing, and TS2009 looks promising, although I'd want to see more before I dive in - TRS2006 was disappointing enough.

I will probably hang around for a while and see what things are like.

 

[R707]

Hi All;

Nice to see so many familiar faces are still around and thanks for the Welcomes Backs.

I'm not certain what my plans are from this point. I've been thinking about getting back into scripting for TRAINZ, as my work in PHP has become rather boring of late. If I choose to re-invest myself in TRAINZ, I will probably start by updating my rules which I see are still in high demand.

I did some browsing, and TS2009 looks promising, although I'd want to see more before I dive in - TRS2006 was disappointing enough.

I will probably hang around for a while and see what things are like.

Hi Steve,

Please, hang around! The community sure needs people with your skills in scripting. Your past works have proven that. I, for one, am looking forward to your renewed interest.

TS2009 has some problems, hopefully it will be fixed with the next service pack. CMP2 sure has been a big headache for a lot of community members, me for one.

Trainz has a brighter future if guys like you stay. One day, maybe soon, Trainz will have to migrate to the 64-bit world. Then a new world will open up.

Pete :wave:

 

[amigacooke]

Amigacooke,

As far as TS2009 not being stable that too is only your opinion and not one that is widely shared as far as I can see.

It is not stable in the sense that it is still developing, TS09 is not yet finalised and is subject to change. At least that's my understanding of the situation.

There is no implication that the latest version of trainz is unusable, just changeable.

 

[camebeloc]

Hey Steve

youve caught trainz at its final moments,,great timing!
:'(
09 is so BROOOOOKEN that its a mess, Auran left the community to build it back from now a kiddies game, but think this may take some time...in the meantime enjoy the lush gfx that look JUST like 1998!

nothing has really changed....

...great fun..welcome back...

:hehe:

 

[john259]

Steve,

Good to see you back.

Just checking, have you discovered http://www.trainzdev.com ? It's a good source of information regarding what's happening with TS2009.

John

 

[ex-railwayman]

Hello young man, nice to see your name "up on the board" again.....As you can see the forum is still full of differing opinions, but, your scripting rules are still well liked and if you can stick around to give us some more, or anything else you feel like having a dabble at, then, that would be magic. I didn't personally buy TS2009 after the beta versions were made available late last year, but, it certainly has potential, it just came out too quickly for a lot of us, however, I'm sure that the financial stability of Auran was the major cause of this in the current economic climate, so, even though some of us are disappointed, maybe the future of Auran is a little rosier than some other train sim companies, and with the huge amount of really talented creators we have around the world, who keep adding their content to the DLS, at least the future seems to be fairly healthy......I think many of the veterans have stuck with 04 due to the game engine stability, and not having the dreaded CMP problems and sound issues we had with 06, amongst other reasons, I personally purchased TRS2007 (German version) and have absolutely no problems with anything like that at all, although with you being Canadian may not be interested in the European stuff, but, some of the newer members who have bought 09 seem to be OK with playing it in compatability mode rather than normal mode, but, don't ask me what that is 'cos I haven't a clue, I'll leave that for a TS2009 expert to answer, if you need to know.....:hehe:

Cheerz. ex-railwayman.

 

[JCitron]

Hi Steve. It's nice to see you're back for a visit.

I have TS2009, and it's not as bad as some people make it out to be. It's far better than TRS2006 and for me the most stable version of Trainz I've ever used. The compatibility mode lets the user load older content with a hit in performance. On most modern-day machines, this hit isn't that bad. I am currently working on my tried true old faithful route that I started way back in TRS2004, and I've little issues with it. In fact the performance is far better in TS2009 than it ever was in TRS2004 or TRS2006, and I have plenty of trees and water, which tend to slow down the performance radically under the older versions.

The Native mode uses the latest graphics technology including compressed textures, and alpha channel masks instead of imaging. This has caused the graphics bug with the trees and some spline objects that people have been discussing. The program also makes use of LOD for track and other objectsso they things load smoother without the instant pop-up appearance that used to happen before.

The AI react a little better than before. There have been substantial improvement on how they react with signals. On my current route where there are a ton of junctions, they no longer surge through the junctions instead of stopping at the red signals. In TRS2006, they would end up SPAD'ding or end up causing derailments of other trains as they controlled the junctions.

Anyhow, the new version offers a lot of potential going forward; it's only going to take some time to get things right.

Again, welcome back and I hope you enjoy your stay for awhile.

John

 

[sforget]

So, I bit the bullet and bought the Digital Download Version of TS2009 - will be finished in about 2 hours.

It may take me a while to get back into writing scripts, as I have forgotten most of what I knew 2 years ago.

Good news is, I still have all my old tools so I'm good to go as soon as I remember what I'm doing.