Yet more DLC for us to purchase ..... but where are the T:ANE fixes?

sologuitarist61

New member
Yet another email listing even more routes for us to purchase, but may I ask what is the point when T:ANE is still riddled with stupid little errors that should have been fixed before release date?

Better I would have thought for NV3 to get T:ANE working in a proper and decent manner for those who have already shelled out for it; or are they trying to grab even more money just so they are able to afford to fix all the problems within T:ANE which, in my view, is at best a shoddy half finished game?

I just cannot tell you how disappointed I am with the final product after all the hype that went on for months before hand. Trainz12 with shadows - big deal!

I would be pleased to hear what others feel about all this.
 
Richard - perhaps you may want to have a look in the Trainz Dev forum. They are currently doing weekly test builds for members of that forum.

Technically though, most of the DLC that's being advertised was also in TS12.

Shane
 
Hi Richard,

N3V is working on various things including the crashes to the desktop, performance, and other stuff. They have been providing the testers weekly test builds, not for public consumption, to test various things and to break it. It's like beer tasting... There are some you wouldn't want to put past your lips while others are superb. These versions may never see past the testing, but the stuff that comes out of them goes into future patches and updates. More recent download, not the one that's available today, actually had the best performance for me overall with no crashes to the desktop so things are getting better, albeit slower than we'd want.

Once they get all their eggs, I mean changes, into a stable patch or update, it will need to be tested thoroughly before being release. This then can take time before it comes to light as we want to ensure the patch is stable and doesn't cause more issues in the process. What we don't want, and I've said this before, is getting patches to fix the patches that broke something else. I call this the "Old lady that swallowed a fly" problem. This is what occurred with TRS2004. The initial release, called SP0 came out without interactive industries and other stuff as promised. SP1 followed immediately to bring these features in, however, this caused awful performance problems in the process. SP2 was released ASAP to fix that problem, however, that caused more problems and crashes. A few weeks later, maybe less, SP3 came out to fix the crashes caused by Sp1 and SP2, however, that introduced more problems, only to be followed by the final SP4 which turned out to be the most stable for that version. Shortly after this, however, TRS2006 came along so TRS2004 was then obsolete. :)

John
 
Then Trainz Railwayz, full version, TRS2006 TC1&2, build 2.6, #3337 (a 2 disc set) came out, and it required no SP's whatsoever ... and I have been playing it ever since :p
 
Still, I see no point in considering paying for, or even getting for free, stuff for T:ANE until I can get T:ANE to run well over one minute before crashing to the desktop.
:(
 
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Richard - perhaps you may want to have a look in the Trainz Dev forum. They are currently doing weekly test builds for members of that forum.

Technically though, most of the DLC that's being advertised was also in TS12.

Shane

Thanks Shane, I think my point in this post was not whether they are working on fixes, but why it is taking so long to get a 'working' version of T:ANE out to those who paid good money for it. For example, little things like a 'Pick List' that doesn't remain static from one opening of T:ANE to the next opening, without losing the contents should have been sorted long ago and that is just the first one off the top of my head, I have a list of problems like that.
 
Hi Richard,

N3V is working on various things including the crashes to the desktop, performance, and other stuff. They have been providing the testers weekly test builds, not for public consumption, to test various things and to break it. It's like beer tasting... There are some you wouldn't want to put past your lips while others are superb. These versions may never see past the testing, but the stuff that comes out of them goes into future patches and updates. More recent download, not the one that's available today, actually had the best performance for me overall with no crashes to the desktop so things are getting better, albeit slower than we'd want.

Once they get all their eggs, I mean changes, into a stable patch or update, it will need to be tested thoroughly before being release. This then can take time before it comes to light as we want to ensure the patch is stable and doesn't cause more issues in the process. What we don't want, and I've said this before, is getting patches to fix the patches that broke something else. I call this the "Old lady that swallowed a fly" problem. This is what occurred with TRS2004. The initial release, called SP0 came out without interactive industries and other stuff as promised. SP1 followed immediately to bring these features in, however, this caused awful performance problems in the process. SP2 was released ASAP to fix that problem, however, that caused more problems and crashes. A few weeks later, maybe less, SP3 came out to fix the crashes caused by Sp1 and SP2, however, that introduced more problems, only to be followed by the final SP4 which turned out to be the most stable for that version. Shortly after this, however, TRS2006 came along so TRS2004 was then obsolete. :)

John

I understand all that John, my point is why was it released in such a shambles in the first place (see my reply to Shane)?

I have a colleague (who was the culprit for getting me into this Trainz business in the first place) who is so disappointed with all the negative comments he is seeing on the forum and getting from all his other Trainz colleagues (world-wide), that he isn't even bothering to download his T:ANE version yet; and he has been into Trainz for many years.

People wouldn't buy a car with the proviso that it will only do 30mph until they get a fix some time in the future, so why do we take it as normal with a computer game?
 
It may not be 'silly small problems'. The first day patch along with the first hotfix sorted some of the issues, but I know that they are doing testing builds so they obviously want things to be working properly before they release another patch.

Shane
 
A customers sent me this and what trainz needs.....
fancy clicking on model railway control and going into the cab and not being able to control the loco from the controls in the cab ...
how 2004
but
it is 2015 not 2004
NEXT
So I put myself on the station and press the left and right arrow (to train spot) as the train goes by and my avatar goes off the station.... Must be able to rotate on a dime
it is 2015 afterall
infact the mouse control even at minimum is twice as fast and a walking man (at least) on a platform
The mouse or arrow control needs to be slower and more sensitive / accurate

Trainz is a more fun experience that RW but RW is for driving trains . no scratch that for driving 1 train with little interaction
Trainz is great that you can hope from 1 cab to another
If I could stop fixing computer and make a layout that looks good I would happily do so.
Moving forward the Trainz model layout is great and fun...
I appreciate the London Edinburgh route but really a supper detailed 3 x 3 board would be soo much better.
I want to drive a train to a siding or a station. interact with other stuff then drive it a bit more .
Driving it for 100 miles before interaction. Really dose anyone really want to do that.
Then with the imported layouts
the blue whole that goes right through the layout
why
and the dotted lines that represent railway lines or fences or roads,
why
And the great big red and green arrows.... make them smaller and get rid of the writing above them
that would make trainz look better

as to reliability it is mostly on a good computer with a high end video card
as to importing content that seams to be a very hit and miss affair....
But I look forward to trying a bit more at time allows
 
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I understand that but why was it put out with so many silly small problems? See my reply to John Citron

It's called meeting pre-existing publishing contracts and obligations, plus setting a too optimistic release date. It happens all the time with software and not just games. Sadly, the end result for us was a poor product that needs more than a few bandages and wire to work better. To be honest I would have delayed the release a bit more, but then who knows what terms N3V had to meet, and also the additional cost of the extra workers N3V had to incur in the process as well. In other words, there's a lot more going on here than we see from a far. :)

That said, I have discovered a lot of things while bringing in my own content, and tons of older content I have in TS12 into T:ANE. Badly created content really can cause awful performance and crashes. A good example is some of the scripts. These can come in without obvious errors reported in Content Manager, however, they have internal errors which cause odd behaviours and random crashes to the desktop. This happens because T:ANE is following the written standard, based on what the content creators are supposed to follow. TS12 was a bit more forgiving with these errors, and probably introduced some of these holes, as they are called, which the content-creator used. The problem is once a new version of software comes along, these holes are closed as they are considered bugs in the code so now the content doesn't work as intended. This happens all the time in software and was explained to me many years ago by my retired MIT graduate uncle.

These kinds of errors are called semantical errors, which means the words are spelled correctly and make sense, however, their actual intention is not working properly. This type of error is quite common while making older things work in a new version of software, whether this is Trainz or not.

By badly created content, I don't mean stuff that's simple and has older textures. I mean stuff that was created with the intention of cheating the error reporting in TS12. Yes, there are some assets, I came across 2000-plus of them, where the author cheated the LOD or Level of Detail requirements by using the same base mesh for each level. T:ANE didn't ignore this and rejected all 2.000-plus of the assets in one lot. TS12 was a bit kinder and ignored the error, however, this meant a big performance hit in that version.

Let me explain LOD or Level Of Detail a bit so you'll understand what I mean here. LOD means that each object has a smaller less detailed mesh associated with it that is displayed out at a certain distance from the main (parent) object. Take a locomotive for example. If a locomotive has 150,000 polygons with high detailed textures, it will be chopped down to 80% of that level of detail and fewer textures 500 meters away, then at 1Km it's now 50%, and so on until at the furthest distance, the locomotive is nothing more than a few textures on a flat surface.

Without this decimation of the locomotive, the game would stutter along, and possibly crash while attempting to load in the full locomotive all the time. In TS12 and even in T:ANE where the LOD is there, but not optimized, models will suddenly pop up. This sudden popping up causes awful performance as the simulator has to stop and load the fully detailed object at every turn, move, and camera change.

While I'm not blaming the content creators for this, it is their content that causes many of the problems we are seeing. Unfortunately, it's going to take time to bring assets up to better performing standards. The LOD issue I mentioned is only one of the many things that can occur. In addition to this, there are problems with assets being just too complex and overly built. Those Sketch-up buildings are good example. They sure look pretty, but with all their gazillion parts and high mesh polygons (wire frame bits), they can drag the system down. With too many of these, and the program really performs poorly.

Outside of the content, we also do have some internal bugs. They are not always the cause of the crashing, but don't help matters much either. From what I was told, these are very difficult to find because it's not always what you are doing that causes the error. As I mentioned to others, it's like coming in the door from work or the pub only to be blamed by the spouse or mother-in-law for something you didn't know you did! The good news on this front is the N3V guys have an idea what's going on at least with the crashes to the desktop. Sure we may have these crashes in many areas, but being how everything is intertwined together, they can fix the problem in one place, and let's keep our fingers crossed, this will also fix the same problem elsewhere.

That said, finding out what's going on and improving the performance takes time, and sadly lots of it. What we don't want is a rushed patch as I mentioned before. We've lived through this not only with TRS2004, but later on with TS12, going from SP1 to HF4 as the hot fixes "fixed" things that the service pack broke, but it took 4 additional patches to do just that.

John
 
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