Fair, and expected. None of my criticism comes with the thought that y'all are swimming in pools of money like Scrooge McDuck.:hehe:
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TRS19 - Early Access Is Coming!
- Thread starter Tony_Hilliam
- Start date
Fair, and expected. None of my criticism comes with the thought that y'all are swimming in pools of money like Scrooge McDuck.:hehe:
It's certainly good to see constructive discussion taking place among our passionate fans (and for the flames to die down).
For your interest, the Gold memberships are still running ahead of the store purchases (in number of customers) so the new option appears to be popular with more people than not at this early stage (has it really only been a week?).
Also fyi, I have no idea where the $6m figure came from either, but it isn't close.
Do tell...higher or lower Tony or would that be giving away confidential info......:hehe:
Tony_Hilliam
Trainz Plus - enjoy Trainz from just 20 cents a da
Much higher from the beginning of Trainz, lower for this version 
I posted on this issue a few weeks back when the arguments over subscriptions first appeared in this forum. You can do a search on "Video Gaming Industry" to get the sources if you like.
Basically, large developers have multiple games in the pipeline with regular releases which keep the income stream going. Small, single title developers don't have that advantage. So after the initial sales start to drop off and their product starts to go into the "bargain bin" their income stream declines. Many of the smaller developers rely entirely on royalty payments while the distributors and retailers take the lions share. In many cases those royalties do not start flowing for a year or more, particularly if the developer has been given an advance on their future sales.
Direct distribution via your own digital storefront can avoid some of the royalty issues but not all the income stream issues.
My statement about subscription and other offerings probably becoming a necessity was not plucked "out of the air". The data is there if you want to look for it.
Sure it is. N3V survived on it for years, and even received the benefit of a Kickstarter to help add features to the flagship product.
Moreover, there are other business models including the freemium route. Many companies are using that model successfully. Unlike those developers, though, N3V has the benefit of a mostly ready-to-roll product and an established customer base. They didn't have to start from the ground-up with nothing, let alone then turn around give the game away for free in hopes the addins would eventually pay for everything.
As surprising as it sounds, I'm not as solidly against the subscription model as many here, when talking about *content*. To a degree, Trainz has been a subscription product since at least TS2009, right around when I joined. You either had to have a currently-supported product to get minimal access to the content, but you really needed an FCT to get anything bearable. Which is why it's baffling why N3V has this obsession over locking down the product: It's of little value by itself. It seems the typical Trainzer spends maybe a couple dozen hours playing max the built-in stuff. Maybe. The add-in and the content-creation side has always been the draw.
Even more surprising (to those who know me), before I ditched Trainz, I had seriously considered releasing my almost-finished SEPTA route, and even my a-little-further-behind NEC route, as DLC, provided I could also release them on my own without restrictions. The point is moot now, but I have to wonder how much larger the base of content creators would if the core software were more accessible than it is now.
I'm well aware of the trends of the trends in the gaming industry. It doesn't mean the trends are justified, just that there are enough lemmings to go along with the flow. Look no further than how pre-internet developers had to pay for beta testing to insure a stable-enough release instead of these days where users pay developers for the 'honor' of beta testing. I have no problem paying $100 for such a niche product (if solid) as I'm pretty sure I put forth as much during the T:ANE Kickstarter, which was a fiasco upon release.
To this point I haven't posted much, but I've read 99% of the posts on the main forums for many years and if N3V is the 'party' you're definitely part of the 'Party Machine'. Not sure I can fault you in this regard as I'm pretty sure you sprung for the non-subscription option. It is however still pre-release for full-price. Sales drop off after initial release for any product, it's not the users concern to feed them money, but the developers' to keep improving the product to attract more consumers. This seems to be the main disconnect between sides. They do get continuous income from FCTs after all. Also, Trainz is only available via their storefront, which (correct me if I'm wrong) is probably the vast majority of purchases, at least for people who actually use it regularly, and Steam which I'd imagine would be heavily favored to the massive sales.
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But that supports my point. What was Kickstarter other than the "Trainz Plus" of its day, an extra income stream that supported the development of TANE. I, and many others, happily contributed far more than the game sold for when first released.
N3V went the locked DLC route when it was found that some users in some countries were freely distributing content. There was a case in fact where one user named Anna came in the forums here and bragged about how the product was handed out at some train station the that country where she lived, and some users in that country had modified the program by adding all kinds of "extra" stuff. She went on to say that, oh by the way, we've also hacked in and scoffed the complete FTP-accessible DLS and have our own copy. It was then that there were changes made to built-in routes and the idea spread on to DLC packages for sale, and the DLS was no longer available via an FTP client and only through the DLS online.
In this version, we can actually edit the built-in and DLC routes if we want, but we can't upload them so some progress was made on that front because we asked for that when the routes became locked in TS12 SP1 HF4.
In this version, we can actually edit the built-in and DLC routes if we want, but we can't upload them so some progress was made on that front because we asked for that when the routes became locked in TS12 SP1 HF4.
As someone who provided more than the initial game price as well and was supposed to get the boxed version before release, which if memory serves didn't happen as it was delayed, sowhat exactly did we get that wasn't available to anyone else upon release? Trainz Plus will block features from non gold-subscribing members, completely different.
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The T:ANE release should have been delayed much, much, much longer. Us members insisted that N3V not release T:ANE when they did, but due to publisher contractual reasons the program was pushed out too early, and we've suffered with the ills of that and everything that has followed since. What we have today in T:ANE is far better than ever, but never as good as it should have been for this reason, though, T:ANE is far better than TS12 and prior mostly due to its better memory management, performance, and graphics support which is all missing in the older versions due to many reasons, but among them being they are 32-bit and are stuck with a far smaller memory footprint and older game engine.
TRS19 is based on the same game engine that is used in T:ANE*, which we've been told, however, it includes many of the features shown in the original stills that we saw way back when, when T:ANE was first announced plus too many other things that can be mentioned here. The Trainz Plus feature is early releases, post beta, which will eventually become actual product, according to lead developer Chris Bergmann. (aka Windwalkr).
If someone decides not to go this route and go with a regular $70 purchase, then they will get these features eventually when the product is released as they do now with service packs and program versions, however, they will not have the opportunity to try early releases of these new improvements and features. As far as the high initial price goes, this is normal for many products. As the product matures, the price drops. We seem to forget that not everything is free in this world, and N3V just like other game developers pays a lot in royalties back to the various vendors they use for their tools. You think that NVidia, Microsoft, and others donate their tools for free? Check out the developer's licensing and you think that TRS19 is expensive!
* The game engine used in T:ANE was developed from the ground up and not based on the ancient, ca. 1999-2001 Auran Jet Engine, which was great for in its day but like many things began to show its age with limited graphics support, draw distance issues, and overall performance issues as other options were slowly bolted on to the core product. T:ANE is also a 64-bit application, meaning it will use as much memory as it needs rather than being limited to the 32-bit memory space regardless of the amount of memory installed on the motherboard. T:ANE will also use the hyper-threading capabilities of the CPU, unlike the older 32-bit application and makes generous use of the GPU (video card) rather than the CPU, which improves performance tremendously.
TRS19 makes use of the T:ANE game engine, however, improves on the graphics which were never fully developed, improves on the data models, including the one that will be used for the multi-user Surveyor which will come out eventually. As a member of the Trainz Dev group, I have had the opportunity to taste the multi-user Surveyor, and that will surely be worth it when it ever comes to fruition. Our test at the time was very buggy and crashed randomly, but it was proof of concept of the new data model used and other things that allowed a group of us to collaborate on a route.
@JCitron, let me begin by saying you are probably my favorite member on this forum, a wealth of useful information and always of help. I completely agree TANE is a nice upgrade over TS12. The fact that multiple Content Manager windows can be opened is enough to prove that. The only reason I still have a TS12 install is to replace Speedtrees that are obsolete in TANE. From what I've read, the engine's difference from the old Jet is debatable, I imagine to keep the majority of backwards compatibility. That's fine for now, but at some point in the future there will need to be a break from it. It is a shame the publisher forced it out early, however. That's business and understandable. I completely agree it should have been released in a more solid state. Heck, I installed a fresh DRM-free copy from my disks last week and it still took 3 days to update to a newer version successfully. When I see TS19 with appropriate settings applied it's about what we were led to expect TANE would have been, based on what they showed pre-release.
The TRS19 price (non-subscription) isn't an issue to me, just the fact that future features will be locked behind the gold subscription paywall. If those Plus releases would be tested by TRS19 Gold Members and released in the next TRS19 service pack it'd be a different story, but N3V are saying the next main release after 19. I'm sure it will be the 'best' release of Trainz, I am just weary of the future and what they have planned for it in regards of paying for additional features when we already paid for the game. All their ads point to what's included with the Gold package (I already have T:ANE, the routes I want, many of the dlc from JR, etc), not what is actually built-in to the game.
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amigacooke
Well-known member
One distinct advantage of the Gold Subscription is that for $14.99 you can try out the latest version without having to commit to the $70.
You're then sitting pretty as if you think it's no good you cancel the subscription, if you would prefer the retail version, you cancel the subscription and buy, or if you like the subscription, you carry on with that.
This may partially explain the apparent high take up of the subscription service, reflecting 'subscribers' wish to have a look before committing.
You're then sitting pretty as if you think it's no good you cancel the subscription, if you would prefer the retail version, you cancel the subscription and buy, or if you like the subscription, you carry on with that.
This may partially explain the apparent high take up of the subscription service, reflecting 'subscribers' wish to have a look before committing.
Better still, remember Microsoft's 365 subscription scheme, which has pretty well folded because Ms provided few if any of the promised updates? It raked in a fair amount with that racket. Probably dented their plan to make WinX sub only. Note also that nev has not committed to providing updates, that is only a promise.
PC_Ace, below: Not as many as once.
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I have no idea where that gem comes from.
I guess I should consider it a compliment, in the sense that we've done a good job of supporting the older content. There's negligible similarity between Jet and E2 from a code perspective. You can of course argue all day long about the advantages and disadvantages of each from a user perspective, but on that note i'll just point at the TRS19 screenshots that users are posting on these forums, and invite people to try and get anywhere close using Jet.You keep talking about this as if we're going to expend resources toward a future product, merely because Gold Class exists. Let me assure you that we would be doing the same thing if Gold Class did not exist, because if we never released another product then we would eventually go out of business. After TRS2010 was released, we worked on TS12. After TS12 was released, we worked on TANE. After TANE was released, we worked on TRS19. It doesn't require Gold Class to guess that we're going to be working on another product after TRS19.
chris
amigacooke
Well-known member
Phew! I was worried that all those MS Office 365 updates I get might be coming from someone else.
Phimat has gone into his conspiracy theory mode again. I guess we will have to line the insides of all our hats with aluminum foil to protect us from the "MS Rays".
rogerayresaol
New member
Hello friends is shining brightly still shining brightly or is it starting to dim ?,I like trainz I also like trainsimulator which is very good so how many of you play both hands up,my point is trainz is not rubbish nor is trainsimulator but some on here said trainsimulator was rubbish thats not true,thay are both different one a simulator and one more like a model railway what do you think Tony.
I hope trainz 2019 turns out to be very good but iv'e seen quite a few complaints on here also I don't agree with the high ticket payment pay pay pay.
I hope trainz 2019 turns out to be very good but iv'e seen quite a few complaints on here also I don't agree with the high ticket payment pay pay pay.
Hi Chris,
Let's hope many of my suggested features in the suggested box thread are implemented on that one, like weather, Track Ruler, a TransDem among many more, sir!
Take Care
Ish