Trainz 2009 World Builder - Don't Buy It

[TNM]

But my TRS2004 works, so Auran cannot be accused of always supplying software that does not do the job.

All software is designed by humans, therefore, all software will have faults.
"To err is human - [FONT=Georgia, serif][FONT=Arial, Verdana, Geneva, Helvetica, sans-serif]To Forgive Divine[/FONT][/FONT]". by Alexander Pope from "An Essay on Criticism".

nice rhetoric, but i think the point is made. I really expect them to acknowledge their error regarding vegetation eventually and revert back. If not, then there is nothing to forgive, as its pure arrogance to hold firm on a new method that doesnt give results.

 

[tbryson2]

"To err is human - [FONT=Georgia, serif][FONT=Arial, Verdana, Geneva, Helvetica, sans-serif]To Forgive Divine[/FONT][/FONT]"

NEITHER of which is Marine Corps policy!

 

[johnwhelan]

nah, thats not a good argument. A product you pay for has to come in working condition, how much you pay doesnt matter. If they cant deliver that for price X, then they should ask more. Simple as that.

No software product released is completely free of errors and bugs. The more complex the program the more it has.

It's interesting that Microsoft and Linux foundation are united on this.

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/0,1000000121,39653841,00.htm

If your expectations are that software is be bug free then I suggest you give up Trainz and go and buy an old fashioned model railway with computerised control and wait for the software to mature. It maybe a few decades. There are graphs available which allow you to estimate how many new bugs will be uncovered over time on any software product.

IBM mainframe operating systems reached a steady state, they found on average they introduced a new bug when correcting an old one. The number of lines of code for the old operating system and Trainz is comparable, well Trainz probably has a few more lines of code.

Cheerio John

 

[Vern]

So far as the one (poor) German language scenario on my Glasgow to Falkirk route - which seems to keep on ticking - in TS2009 is concerned... Had Auran asked, I would have been more than happy to put together a few fresh scenarios and/or maybe extend/improve the route free of charge to contribute to the new version. Not only did they not ask, but when I offered on DevNet to build a new route to the best standards of TRS2006 it was shot down as not being what they wanted. Rather ironic then the same people then bundle old content in TS2009 but fail to ensure there are at least updated and useable scenarios!

Not very professional.

 

[illinoiscentral]

Here We Go...yet again...whining about TS2009WBE

I personally feel that they need to start a "TS2009 Complaints Forum" somewhere on this forum or another one.
Seriously,
Do any of you actually research the product you are buying?
You didn't just buy Colon Cleanser because that guy on TV told you too did you? Can you see my point? Don't buy it until you have researched it some.

I am sick and tired of these stupid threads about TS2009 & how bad it is.
We all have our opinoins, but this is getting to be a little much, can I get an "amen" somewhere?!

Cheers,
Woody

 

[aardvark1]

A:
I personally feel that they need to start a "TS2009 Complaints Forum" somewhere on this forum or another one.

B:
Seriously, Do any of you actually research the product you are buying?

C:
You didn't just buy Colon Cleanser because that guy on TV told you too did you?

D:
Can you see my point? Don't buy it until you have researched it some.

E:
I am sick and tired of these stupid threads about TS2009 & how bad it is.
We all have our opinoins,

F: but this is getting to be a little much, can I get an "amen" somewhere?!

Cheers,
Woody

Hello Woody....

Lets take a look at this....


A. Probably will not happen. There have been countless comments on every product release by Auran. Why should TS2009 WBE be allowed to have one just for itself?

B. Who, in this day and age, is going to research a piece of inexpensive game software that they can often pick up in a "Bargain Bin" at a super-box store. ie... Mom and little Billy are shopping...Billy sees it and starts to whine... Mom buys it to shut him up.

C. You can also use your "sham-wow" to clean up after the cleansing.

D. Research.... not going to happen. It is just too easy to come, stand on the soap box and get your "15 Minutes of Fame".

E. Woody... you know that TS2009 was a public beta.... how can there be any problems?

F. Here you go....... Amen.

My opinion... TS2009WBE works fine for what I want it to do.

With warmest regards,

 

[TNM]

No software product released is completely free of errors and bugs. The more complex the program the more it has.

It's interesting that Microsoft and Linux foundation are united on this.

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/0,1000000121,39653841,00.htm

If your expectations are that software is be bug free then I suggest you give up Trainz and go and buy an old fashioned model railway with computerised control and wait for the software to mature. It maybe a few decades. There are graphs available which allow you to estimate how many new bugs will be uncovered over time on any software product.

IBM mainframe operating systems reached a steady state, they found on average they introduced a new bug when correcting an old one. The number of lines of code for the old operating system and Trainz is comparable, well Trainz probably has a few more lines of code.

Cheerio John

i was about to write quite a bit but....lets face it, you as a customer are just on the wrong side of the fence and dont even realize it.

I'm happy i dont have to live in a world (at least not yet) where your policy or explanation would have to translate to every thing i buy (cars, TVs, phone, dishwasher, alarm system, whatever).
And i well remember the times when i had no internet but all my software worked just fine, without patching every 2nd week to keep me going. Minor bugs may happned from time to time, but never to the extend of today.

P.S. you think bugfree software doesnt exist? Look outside of the entertainment-sector...you will be surprised.

 

[JCitron]

i was about to write quite a bit but....lets face it, you as a customer are just on the wrong side of the fence and dont even realize it.

I'm happy i dont have to live in a world (at least not yet) where your policy or explanation would have to translate to every thing i buy (cars, TVs, phone, dishwasher, alarm system, whatever).
And i well remember the times when i had no internet but all my software worked just fine, without patching every 2nd week to keep me going. Minor bugs may happned from time to time, but never to the extend of today.

P.S. you think bugfree software doesnt exist? Look outside of the entertainment-sector...you will be surprised.

This was true way back in the "old' days when a company could charge $1,000 and more for a piece of software. Eveyone assumed the software would cost that much as well as the hardware, which was also quite expensive. I remember paying close to $4,000 for a CP/M Plus computer with 2 floppy disk drives and some business software. This was before software and other computer stuff became commodities that are sold to the public as least expensively as possible. This has happened really only in the past 5 or 6 years, and during this time the overall quality of components has gone down along with the price of the hardware as well.

Today things are a lot different. The development lifecyle of products is no longer years, but now in months and weeks. This is due to software publishers looking for a quick profit on the products rather that letting the developer take the time to get the product quality to where it should be in the first place. Since th publisher holds the venture capital money for the developers, and demands a quick turn around, the developers have to work harder and faster to meet this request. Sadly the end result is lower quality, and the end user becomes the BETA tester even after the program has already been sold.

Unfortnately this isn't just true of the entertainment industry. There are many expensive business packages that are wrought full of bugs that sould have been fixed before the product was released. The graphics industry is just as guilty as the entertainment industry. Companies such as Adobe charge quite a sum for their products, then charge for upgrades that are nothing more than bug fixes with an extra useless feature thrown in on top.

In the business world unfortunately, outside of the graphics industry, there are rarely any free patches and the companies end up paying $10,000 per year and more for support. These support costs supposedly give the company access to free software upgrades.

So in the end, the consumer has to pay one way or the other. Purchase the software as inexpensively as possible and deal with either free updates later, after some bugs are fixed, or play larger sum for fewer bugs with a lot longer development period.

Granted TS2009 WBE has its faults, but you have to learn to work around them. I use the program in compatability mode and 98% of the old content loads and runs fine. My performance levels are a heck of a lot better than they ever were under TRS2004 and TRS2006. The developers are working on SP2, which is supposed to fix quite a few more major bugs. The graphics issues are something to do with the new way of handling Alpha channels and is not a bug in the program. If you want more information about this, check out the forums at Trainz Dev.

John

 

[illinoiscentral]

To Mr. aardvark.

I know that some of us here just whine to buy the game, as you pointed out.
However, there are many adult folks here that buy it after they here about it from a friend or something, perhaps they saw it while searching the internet or looking through their newest Walther's Flyer (TM).
I myself saw TRS2004 in the latter.
Then, I did some researching to find out what other people thought about it.
Then I went to Best Buy and found TRS2006 on clearance.
I bought it.
However, these days if I had knew that this forum existed, I would have went on here and read up on it to see what people think, before you make the obvious point, remember that we really don't need 1,000 of these threads, in fact 10 would do.
I read up on Sid Meyers Railroads, and played it at a friends house, I did not buy it. It sucked.

Can you now see my point?

Cheers,
Woody

 

[Sourdough]

P.S. you think bugfree software doesnt exist? Look outside of the entertainment-sector...you will be surprised.

Wouldn't be surprised at all....look at the price tag on so called bug free software.....it cost a lot of money to get a program virtually bug free. We are talking about a train simulator unintended for professional use....there is only so much refining that can be cost effective. It's always so easy to spend other people's money when it come to what we think they should do. So the whiners are inevitable.....and so is the labeling of not being professional, or being arrogant because they don't do things the way we think they should.....been that way with every version released and will always be that way....

 

[Vern]

labeling of not being professional

If referring to my comment above, maybe the choice of words was a little harsh. However at the end of the day they are the publisher/developer of the sim and it can only reflect poorly on the final QA when it ships with a route that has one scenario (which ISTR seems to consist of a steam loco sitting on its own at Glasgow Queen Street) not even in the core language or language of the route country of origin.

Was it really beyond the wit of someone at Auran to think, "Vern's still about as he just posted on DevNet, let's see if he wants to do something with his old route." Like I said, would have done it for nowt - even extended it a bit (for which the going rate elsewhere on these boards seems to be US$150 up front then $62 per ten miles) for maybe a mug and teeshirt. I would have liked to see my work get a makeover but I didn't know (and wasn't told by Auran) it was being carried forward into the latest version. It makes me feel unprofessional that my original work has received an inferior presentation to that in '04.

But no, as I said at the time, the Auran techs were almost arrogant in their determination that only TS2009 standard stuff was being considered and look how much of that actually ended up in the final product!

 

[Euphod]

Some problems are inevidable, and bugs and the like are to be expected. What I find to be an indication of a "lack of professionalism" are the little items like, well: not making the least bit of effort to contact creators that made the routes that were to be recycled yet again. The lack of effort to even replace some of that 2006 manual with 2009 relevent information. The one new locomotive with a screwed cab view.

Just a few items that surely would not have ruined a deadline, yet they could not accomplish that.

I don't care what anyone else thinks about my opinion, it's an opinion, and it's just as valid as any other.

 

[Sourdough]

@ Vern...
Perhaps so....maybe there are few that remember the old Big Vern of the early MSTS days and early Trainz.....it seems that some believe newer and fresh is the way to go....their loss, I guess...

 

[Vern]

@ Vern...
Perhaps so....maybe there are few that remember the old Big Vern of the early MSTS days and early Trainz.....it seems that some believe newer and fresh is the way to go....their loss, I guess...

There's still a few of us about and who remember those heady days, not to forget Barney aka the SFC lamenting when his Krokodil avatar was promoted to the red/yellow slug.

Lest I come across as all bitter and twisted about the Falkirk route - I'm not - my interest was piqued by resurgence of the scenario-in-German situation, C'est la vie, an opportunity missed is all. However if they want to use it in TS-x then please Auran, let's talk!

 

[bbrey]

I am hard pressed to find much new in ts2009

Seems to me that the only difference between ts2006 and ts2009 is one piece of single track labled TRS2009 I cannot find any other new content and it doesnt seem to run any faster than the 2006 version although i have a very high end PC so I would notice.

Question is what is the difference between 2006 and 2009, 3 years and one piece of track?

 

[hminky]

Seems to me that the only difference between ts2006 and ts2009 is one piece of single track labled TRS2009 I cannot find any other new content and it doesnt seem to run any faster than the 2006 version although i have a very high end PC so I would notice.

Question is what is the difference between 2006 and 2009, 3 years and one piece of track?

The biggest thing is the 5000m draw distance. Pan back on a scene and it shows the whole world.

I am new to "computer" trains and tried all the simulators. I think 2009 is a superior product, still rough around the edges. But then it is an open ended product that has 100,000 legacy items that need to be accommodated. Maybe that is why there is no MicroSoft Train Simulator 2. They just didn' want to hear the static about things not working.

If you want a game that looks great buy RailSimulator. Then try to find something to run in the game. I have only got one piece added to RailSimulator and I don't know why that worked.

MSTS has great looking rolling stock but it is a bleak and barren world. Hung onto by a cult waiting vainly for MSTS2. If it takes a 200 page book to explain how to build a route, there is a flaw. I tried building a route in MSTS and quit after many crashes.

Listening to the 2006 group I bought a copy. No, 2006 doesn't run better, at least for me. The pieces that can be applied to 2009 will be superior, they will look really great. At least there is a good present and a bright future, go to the RS and MSTS forums, they are whining about the future that won't come.

Harold

 

[johnwhelan]

Seems to me that the only difference between ts2006 and ts2009 is one piece of single track labled TRS2009 I cannot find any other new content and it doesnt seem to run any faster than the 2006 version although i have a very high end PC so I would notice.

Question is what is the difference between 2006 and 2009, 3 years and one piece of track?

No, normal mapping is handled differently, it uses 4:1 texture compression so you don't need quite as much memory on the video card or rather the content creators can be more generous with the texture size, scripts are a bit more stable. It will multi thread so it runs better on dual and quad processor cpus. On most machines you get better frame rates. Nothing earth shattering but worth while never the less.

Downside they still haven't sorted out the trees.

It will take time for content creators to sort out the new features, for the moment vinnybarb has some normal mapped scenery items, take a look they're very good. Jontee has very recently put up a UK van or two on the DLS look under TC3. I have one van in beta that my beta tesetrs like but feel the lettering needs to be toned down. It's only just very recently that we are exploring nVidia's normal mapping plugin for Photoshop, I'm using it with Paintshop pro so give us time and we'll start to produce a few things that take advantage of the new game engine. Mean while bug Auran to sort out something about the trees. Speedtree perhaps?

Cheerio John

 

[Euphod]

Question is what is the difference between 2006 and 2009, 3 years and one piece of track?

I can't begin to tell you how wrong you are! First of all, as far as new content goes; there is a full FOUR times the amount of new content than you point out! How dare you?

Secondly, 2009 boasts the longer draw system, a new smaller surveyor grid matrix, and an improved CM that is much faster than the previous versions (when it works). In addition, you can now do things you never really wanted to do, (or, at least I never really wanted to do) within the browser enabled game!

Now, I'm no fan boy, but I advise you to take a look at the Engine, Track, Tree and Station before you slam 2009 WBE again!

 

[john259]

Secondly, 2009 boasts the longer draw system

Is this any different to what TrainzTuner does in TRS2004?

John

 

[Euphod]

Is this any different to what TrainzTuner does in TRS2004?

John

No, no it's not. Thanks for making my point! I try to use that 'Embarrassment" smiley to indicate my sarcasm, but it's not as clear as the old "Roll Eyes" smiley.

2009 is not going to be much of a Magnum Opus for Auran.