Boring

Now from a locomotive Content Creator's point of view regarding TANE, yes, I am holding off with creating further content for TANE only up to the first LOD. For the simple reason as new tags are getting introduced and some of these will/might/have been changed or are still getting changed and are not yet fully documented (what is the use of getting any further in creating than having to chop and change later on)? Initially, after TANE's first release and I being a Kick Starter supporter with high hopes and expectations for TANE, especial after all the hype being created by N3V, I was certainly very disappointed with what was initially presented as a Train Simulation.

Now getting towards Christmas I can see a glimmer of hope on the horizon with TANE but having said all the above, TANE should not need 4 Service Packs (referring to others quoting TRS04) to get some functionality as a Train Simulator. My biggest beef about TANE is, by N3V saying, if a CC creates for TS12, this will be good enough for TANE, which is an illogical statement by N3V. Just try any locomotive with certain night mode, some auto numbering, some reflection, normal mapping, certain scripting, overall lighting etc., where one will find some of these features working beautifully and correctly in TS12, are still not working as they should in TANE.

Why should I as a Content Creator spend countless hours "fixing" for free my past created content just to please the coders at N3V when they might/can/will not change their code to accommodate TS12 content correctly and fault free for TANE? I have much better things to do, similar I guess as have some/many other Content Creators, who simply gave up creating, while either not yet knowing what is correct content creating for TANE or can not find information, if available, to get started again.

Interestingly, most of their own created or build in content is faulty, it really is, only this does not show up as faulty in CM as they, N3V use the trick in their code to suppress such assets of being faulty and hence, these "faulty" assets, which suddenly are not "faulty" by a slight of hand in the code, merrily and happily perform in TANE. Never mind, if these mentioned build in assets are the real reason of performance loss and we all as Content Creators now have to deal with much stricter content creating to compensate for the "build in" content.

Well might you ask, how do I know of most build in content performing fault free, well, N3V uses some of my previous creations as build ins, where these are locked in the JA code of TANE but should I import the same by me created asset into TANE (possibly with a different Kuid number) I will get errors with some of these assets.

Hence I am laying low and wait with content creating, I recently got my 3DS Max creating Mojo back and I started creating again and I am still waiting and still waiting and still waiting until it is safe for me to release anything unto the DLS until I fully know it is safe to do so. You might find, other Content Creators might have given content creating away either completely or are similar waiting as I am, to get to work in a final TANE version, whenever this might be.

My opinion

VinnyBarb

johnwhelan said:

Perhaps if we were all to follow Jack's lead and go to university for three or four years it will all be better and more stable when we come back?

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I don't quite recommend the debt that is incurred in the process...

Jack

wholbr said:

Hi everybody.


I would not know, but obviously to any commercial company operating a forum so as to assist the sales of its products those figures are undoubtedly disastrous.

Bill

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You're right....you would not know. That's why you have to make stuff up. The active members number is the number of members who logged into the forum in any 30 day period. I've followed them for years and they fluctuate up and down with the peaks coming whenever something new is happening. For years it has averaged around the mid 2K range....

Hi Everybody.

Sourdough said:

You're right....you would not know. That's why you have to make stuff up. The active members number is the number of members who logged into the forum in any 30 day period. I've followed them for years and they fluctuate up and down with the peaks coming whenever something new is happening. For years it has averaged around the mid 2K range....

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Sourdough, with every respect to your posting, but I do not make things up. The figure of six thousand plus active members was placed on this forum by a member of the N3V staff at the start of the Kickstarter campaign. The one thing that is obvious however with regard to T:ane would be that at this point in time it is producing insufficient sales revenue to sustain its commercial viability into the future, a point many T:ane supporters seem incapable of acknowledging. The forgoing was advised by Tony Hilliman in the articles section of this forum two weeks ago, so I am most definitely not making that fact up.

As already stated in this thread, T:anes survival now depends on sufficient revenue being derived from the sale of content for the mobile ipad version of Trainz that has recently been released with much more success than the T:ane release on May 15. Therefore Sourdough with every respect, perhaps you and other elite and privileged members of this forum should campaign for the mobile ipad section of the forum to be moved in ranking above the T:ane section where it would undoubtedly be easier found and used by that sections members. The forgoing may well then further improve sales and better ensure the future of the T:ane version that you obviously love so much to the exclusion of the precarious circumstances and financial facts surrounding it .

Bill

Well, I can feel a degree of sympathy for the views on what can seem very routine on the Forums and the stance on what is being made for those of us less skilled in such. When the title of this thread appeared I drew a breath and hoped it wasn't something just simply negative and thankfully that has been contradicted! I have been here a few years and like in anything else in life there are high and low moments whilst at the same time having to feel a degree of sympathy on the level of new items.

At the same time I am little passingly at fault in that I more or less completed an exceedingly large tramway system that when it closed in 1962 was the largest outside London. There are faults in the thing and if a Trainzer I knew who knew of it is still around (!) I must try and get to him and see if I can get it to him to suss it out. Just exploring every route would take sheer hours due to the size. My second fault is that my present large railway project should have had scenes up for all to see a long time ago and is based on the modern situation in Ireland both north and south of the Border. It is large and to date the various lines pass the 300 mile mark I reckon.

So although I am not to blame for the boring scenario (of course!) I am now going to do something about both routes. A small step but something from the centre of the universe. If there is still someone who isn't aware of where that is ask quietly.........

Perhaps N3V should have poled the Community

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I think you mean "polled". Poled evokes a totally different image, although some would no doubt say that N3V has indeed poled the community.

If you were painting a WWII B29 Super Fortress bomber, would you paint a gay bird on it's nose, and name it the "Lark" ?

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Why not? There was the Enola Gay, afterall.

I move that from this point on anytime the terms "elitist" "elitism" or "elite" are mentioned in this thread, we should all have to take a drink.

boc61 said:

I move that from this point on anytime the terms "elitist" "elitism" or "elite" are mentioned in this thread, we should all have to take a drink.

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If we did that on the Frontier Developments forum, it wouldn't take long before I started feeling dizzy

Thanks wholbr, this is one of the most boring posts that I've seen recently.

If the TrainzDev section of the forum wasn't limited to those who had some idea of what they were talking about it would be full of recycled rubbish such as this.

To get back to the original point - what is boring? Is it because no one is asking questions? That is still going on. Were you expecting shouting matches between 12-14 years old? That still goes on elsewhere as well but I prefer not to waste my time on those. Thankfully those exchanges don't usually, if ever, appear in this particular forum.

I already held the view that some creators are holding back pending a "stable" release - whatever that might be. There are some aspects of TANE, including treatments of tbumpenv that will cause me to revisit my assets - not that I have many compared to others. There are also significant changes to LOD validation should you want to update your asset version to TANE levels. Currently there is no need to do that as TS12 assets are still acceptable to the DLS.

Not sure about the elitist claims. If it was referring to the TrainzDev forum then there is a process to join that forum. Simply get a couple of folk to nominate you and Andi will let you in. See here.

There is no doubt in my mind that TrainzDev is somewhat different to the Content Creation forum. It deliberately seeks ideas and feedback from creators who have detailed knowledge AND are prepared to try things out. I feel privileged to belong to it but I don't believe I am one of the elite.

If you want to read less boring topics then go read the TrainzDev forum. If you want to pose a question in that forum and don't have access then the members list is open for all to see.

This isn't a boring thread. Creators wanting to vent their frustrations is not an issue for me.

boleyd said:

Now, I believe, we are on the cusp of T:ANE becoming a viable commercial product that can be enjoyed by a wide variety of customers.

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Really? I would love to believe you, but so far Ive seen nothing to suggest it. I'll wait for SP1 to arrive and see what the feedback is on it. When you get a new version of a game you expect it to be better than the last one. Apart from visuals, I see nothing. It crashes, corrupts, deletes, vanishes, freezes, flashes and everything else you can do with a programme that it shouldn't (never had anything like that in TS12). It has a few most basic areas that are in TS12 missing, broken, not there, not working, whatever. I see no improvement with Hf2, all I saw was a stupid menu sticking out on the right hand side when I would have thought fixing the most basic things might have been a little more important than little cosmetic tweaks. The idea of what it does is good, but the execution is a disaster and hardly important at this time I would have thought.

At the moment I compare it with a car company that has just released a new model car - except it has 3 wheels, no mirrors and just a hole in the dash where the speedo should be. Lets give them fluffy dice and call it Hf2 and then lets give everyone an update of a sunroof and call it SP1, don't worry about the wheel it still goes (sort-of) without it, and we're to busy to worry about the speedo and mirrors, they wont notice those with the shiny paint job done on it.

N3V claim they will have delivered what they promised with the release of SP1, although I don't believe that, how can they when they advertised Railyard to start with. But then they are developing a record of not delivering on what they advertise. Somehow, I doubt even the non-working message window will be working with SP1, but I would love to be wrong.

KarenB said:

When are we going to get some more pretty Welsh assets?

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I'm Welsh, and I'm an asset! :hehe:

As for T:ANE, I have no interest or trust in anything Tony says anymore, but if it ever becomes stable, doesn't eat your hardware, and is available without DRM online activation (as promised), then maybe I'll buy it and create assets for Trainz again.
But they are big "If"'s, and a long, long way down the line I fear.

In the meantime I'm creating for my own personal use for TRS12, and rarely visit these forums anymore.

Brian.

Don't hold back iannz, tell us what you really think.

If that "car company" does not have solutions for its major problems they at least release fixes for the Infotainment system so you can watch TV while you sit in traffic. As soon as the car moves it reverts to audio only advertisements. Now, isn't that better than your engine shutting off if setting idle for more than 3 seconds?

If I were in Tony's shoes I would have split updates between eye candy and function. The eye candy stuff can usually arrive much sooner than a complicated multi-level technical fix that kills the program every time they test it. I would also acknowledge that N3V accepts that certain wide spread problems do exist and are under investigation. Simple things to do but good for customer retention. Once you loose them the majority never return.

Even if you do not have all the answers/fixes at least keep the customer informed.

boleyd said:

~snip~ If I were in Tony's shoes I would have split updates between eye candy and function. The eye candy stuff can usually arrive much sooner than a complicated multi-level technical fix that kills the program every time they test it. ~snip~

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That's already been done hasn't it? Target graphics when the Kickstarter project was launched.

I used to play trains every day, but I think the lively , friendly , promising kickstarter campaign spoilt me and the goodies I expected have not arrived yet..perhaps when I visit again one day ( like I do now maybe twice a week ) there will be a surprise that will make me feel again in TANE like I used to feel when I operated all the assets in T12.

With regard to Welsh routes, there's a couple I've had my eye on for some time - either the Cardigan branch or Newcastle Emlyn in West Wales, a re-invigorated Elan Valley line in mid-Wales or the Amlwch/Red Bay line on Anglesey. However waiting to see whether SP1 makes TANE stable and reliable as I would much rather be building with proTrack and superelevation (and no terrain gap under splines) in TANE, than flat track in TS12, at this point.

BTW: When I built the Cambrian Coast in 2003 for 3DTS in MSTS, that took over a year admittedly some of that waiting on 3D models and MSTS generally being slower to build in. However worth making the point that even sitting down and starting a 60 mile route today, assuming no loss of interest or distraction, it could be many months before the final result pops out the other end.

I left Trainz because I got bored with hunting missing KUIDs .

Then you searched Kuid Index, and found them, and you came back to the fold ?

I don't know if there are fewer 'active' members on these forums than there used to be, but I'm pretty sure that the activity has reduced. I generally take a look at the forums on Wed and Sun evenings and I reckon a couple of years ago I would have found 10 - 15 pages of new posts. Now it's more like 6 or 7.

And I do think it's more boring - back in the day these forums were all about new creations, innovations, ideas. Today, it's all fixing, fixing, fixing. This doesn't work. That's broken. The other has errors. I'm beginning to think that TANE has drained our collective enthusiasm.

Paul