Alright..
I'd say "good" depends on what you didn't like about T:ANE. I put off buying TANE for a long time, eventually did so despite my better judgement, and really shouldn't have. I agree TANE was horrible for the price. It was actually capable of some pretty awesome graphics, but Auran never bothered making any actual modern content for it and in typical fashion relied on community assets dating back to 2004 (some of which were broken -in payware routes). Yea, I was not impressed.
So.. with the caveat that TRS2019 is still technically beta. I've spent about a week with it now screwing around with some routes and the editor.
Overall, yes, it is quite an improvement on TANE. A few overall points:
- For me the single, biggest thing: They removed locking of payware routes. This was, 100% my biggest complaint about TANE and I have no idea what the **** Auran was thinking when they did it, especially since some payware routes actually had old versions of DLS content that didn't work in TANE (I'm looking at you, Hinton Division...), as well as routes that still had industries named "Industry Multitrack 5" or whatever. If this wasn't changed, TRS2019 would have been a solid no-buy for me. Luckily, someone at Auran pulled their head out of their ass.
- The entire interface is substantially better, including the menus, in-game interface, and surveyor interface.
- The entire interface is significantly more responsive than TANE and several magnitudes better than TS12.
- The entire program actually runs better and is much more responsive than TANE.
- The program is graphically better than TANE, and runs better despite it.
- The AI seems marginally improved. You're still going to need to breadcrumb trackmarks to make the AI do anything complex, but the 'Navigate to Industry' and 'Couple to' pathfinding seems to be a lot better. Likewise, the 'run around' command actually seems to work 95% of the time, so long as certain conditions are met. I've had much fewer instances of the AI going for a random tour of the layout. Similarly, the AI will actually wait at a red signal now for a decent amount of time before it decides it wants to go in the opposite direction.
- Unlike TANE, TRS2019 actually contains some good, high quality locos and rolling stock.
- While there's only one so far, I fully expect routes built for TRS2019 are going to look significantly better than TANE. The only route currently in the beta is the new Kickstater County. It's an updated and overhauled version of the one in TANE using all new assets, and it looks really good, IMO (yes, there's switch frogs
). It also runs a lot better than the one in TANE.
Ok, now the bad things:
- Some TANE 3rd party content doesn't seem to work well. I've got a bunch of locos from JR, and for some reason the AI really ****s up with some of them. Like.. it will just refuse to work with those locos. Probably a bug. Some TANE content from JR I've tried doesn't work at all in TRS2019. Be aware that Auran has a bunch of DLC on the store from TANE advertised as compatible with TRS2019... and it isn't, at least not yet. I know of one route they changed the advertising on after someone bought it and then complained that it didn't work (it's on the Trainz forum). Likewise with some of the JR routes for TANE.. they don't work in TRS2019. Though I do expect JR will be updating their newer routes once TRS2019 is released.
- Some TANE and earlier content looks like ****. TANE and earlier versions support billboards for things like trees -TRS2019 does not. So they look pretty bad.
- While probably a beta thing, I've encountered some AI bugs where AI locos will get "stuck" and just stop moving. Nothing will make them move. Discovered that connecting them to another loco and moving them from the offending area seems to work.
- A First Class Ticket is still pretty much required for any content not built into the game. There's still a ton of **** that requires stuff from the DLS (though, so far I've noticed FAR less issues with dependencies and the like than I ever had in any earlier version).
I wasn't hot on their subscription thing at first, but I thought what the ****, I'll do the silver since I've got more money than good sense anyway, and I actually don't think it's a bad deal. The content vault is pretty good and has some really good quality stuff in it (from JR), so if you're willing to pony up the cash up front it might be a good way to get some good DLC as well as FCT access, which you require anyway.
If you're looking for something that looks like Train Simulator World, you're probably going to be disappointed. If you're looking for something that drives like Run8, you're probably going to be disappointed (I'm still amazed at the number of developers that seem to have zero idea how brakes on North American freight trains work). But, IMO, TRS2019 is a solid upgrade, and really feels like what TANE
should have been.
Like I said, this is after just a week of screwing around mainly with one route, and I play Trainz strictly from the railroad management standpoint. I've hardly ever driven a train in anything but DCC mode in it. It's very content light at the moment as it's still in EA.
But, unlike TANE, the screenshots Auran is showing off for TRS2019, yea, the game actually
does look like that. And it does it at more than 10fps.
One thing I hope they REALLY fix is payware content not working, for whatever reason. In TANE I had instances of payware content crashing the game, completely missing dependencies that were supposed to be included, etc.
I won't comment on how good/bad the program is for a driving sim, because I play mostly Run8 and nearly every train sim fails compared to that one in the driving category.
EDIT
Because I have no life,
here's a vid comparing the sound in Trainz 2019 to Run8. TBF, the loco is a Jointed Rail addon, but the sound isn't really improved for the stock stuff over TANE anyway.
Something else to notice: How bloody fast the train accelerates in TRS2019 compared to Run8. This isn't a problem unique to Trainz, Train Simulator has the same problem with North American trains.. they all behave like European passenger trains.
A few other things I noticed driving a train:
- in Trainz the locomotive brakes seem to auto-bail when using the train brake. Running light you CAN'T stop using the automatic, you HAVE to use the independent.
- An initial reduction doesn't seem to do ****. The BC correctly goes to 6#, but it seems completely ineffective.
- The automatic still has graduated release on freight trains. This pisses me off so much. How ****ing hard is it to get this detail correct? Train Simulator does the same thing.
- The dynamics are weird. I've been spoiled with Run8 though, and Train Simulator has about the most ****ed up dynamics out of any train sim I've played.. so yea. Better than TS but worse than Run8.
So as a driving sim I can't say TRS2019 is any improvement over TANE or TRS12. But honestly, it was never a strong point of Trainz anyway. As a small layout management game I'd say it works a lot better than TANE. You still need to do some editing of the routes (which you now CAN, thankfully) to trackmark them properly, but I've been able to automate a lot more than I ever could in TANE because the AI doesn't seem to **** up near as much.
