Trainz the end of an era?

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The converse is possible and the new features may attract new creators. There have been creators in the past who have been frustrated the poor appearance of the creations in Trainz vs renders and other simulators. It was one of the reasons Arraial moved on, and I think why one or two others went "elsewhere".

If fbx is becoming a standard format then will we see in the future a pool of models as per Sketchup (damn, I said it!) that will be available to all to convert to the sim of their choice?

At the end of the day N3V can't please everyone. Many posting on this thread will remember threads in the past about how poor the game was with the old Jet engine, how they'd never build a new engine, and how the game was doomed to whither and die. Well it clearly didn't and this is just the next challenge with a different group of users concerned (not unreasonably I hasten to add) for the future.
 
Ah i'm beginning to understand a bit better now, it is the material type that can be used with FBX that is important.
Is there a reference somewhere to the new material types.

I mentioned the point about efficiency on CM as a quick guide as which assets to avoid. The preview screen is okay but I thought a summary might be easier to understand when looking at many items.

Ken

Edit found this
http://online.ts2009.com/mediaWiki/index.php/Material_Types#PBR_Material_Types
 
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I have an opinion as an owner of a large amount of payware, which I began to accrue in 2011. Each new iteration of Trainz breaks a number of assets and definitely imposes a "service life" on them. I am probably going to be less likely to spend my money on commissioning assets if I find that I get only a couple of years of life out of them.

As for UK assets and routes, T:ANE is almost ready to be replaced by N3V and close on three years after T:ANE launched the Potteries Loop Line is still not released in a T:ANE version. This must be due, in part, to the sheer amount of work required of its creators in fixing broken and obsolete assets. T:ANE came with the ECML between Kings Cross and Edinburgh included. Will "Trainz 2018" even come with a UK route bundled with it? The ECML is a large route and I can imagine it being just too large to knock in to shape for "Trainz 2018", never mind extend the Scottish end of the route to include either Dundee, Aberdeen or Glasgow Queen Street.

I have a small route which I am slowly pushing towards releasing on to the DLS and it has taken me almost a year of working in my spare time to get it this far. I hope that it is of sufficient quality to be of use to some of the community, but if "Trainz 2018" breaks it a couple of months on I am likely not going to bother doing another.
 
I hope I will be able to create such bumps and dents in new version of TRAINZ.

39803719792_34fc02ff13_o.jpg
 
Working with FBX and PBR is not that hard after you get your head around it. Your workflow will be the biggest change.
 
sumitsingh said:
I hope I will be able to create such bumps and dents in new version of TRAINZ.
Click to expand...

Yes you should be able to use such things.

I recommend signing up for the N3V newsletter, which comes weekly with bits of news, development information, and opportunities to sign up for beta testing when that is needed.

You may want to look at the current articles, which were in the newsletter originally there's some interesting and good information in here.

https://forums.auran.com/trainz/content.php
 
This may be tangential to this conversation but I feel that it is relevant. In my mind the greatest strength of the Trainz brand is not killer graphics, nor wicked smart AIs, it is the four hundred thousand assets available in the database. So far as I know there is no other train simulator/game that even comes within an order of magnitude of having so many possibilities and so much versatility.

How N3V can turn this strength into marketability seems to me to be far more important than nifty new graphics.

Rather than continuing to obsolete assets N3V should be looking toward programming that works to automatically include older assets, automatically update older assets.

A focus on providing a stable platform that highlights this remarkable versatility and showcases the wide range of possibilities from the earliest days of railroading to trainz on Marz and the truly international scope of both trains and routes would be a far better choice than this relentless drive toward cutting edge graphics.

Just my opinion. :wave:
 
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Automatically updating assets is never likely to happen let alone be possible, just far too many variables to consider. However with the new effects in 2018 it will automatically improve the appearance of some items anyway, leastwise that's the plan as I read it somewhere!
 
normhart said:
This may be tangential to this conversation but I feel that it is relevant. In my mind the greatest strength of the Trainz brand is not killer graphics, nor wicked smart AIs, it is the four hundred thousand assets available in the database. So far as I know there is no other train simulator/game that even comes within an order of magnitude of having so many possibilities and so much versatility.

How N3V can turn this strength into marketability seems to me to be far more important than nifty new graphics.

Rather than continuing to obsolete assets N3V should be looking toward programming that works to automatically include older assets, automatically update older assets.

A focus on providing a stable platform that highlights this remarkable versatility and showcases the wide range of possibilities from the earliest days of railroading to trainz on Marz and the truly international scope of both trains and routes would be a far better choice than this relentless drive toward cutting edge graphics.

Just my opinion. :wave:
Click to expand...

This would be ideal, but due to all the variations in assets I think that would be impossible, but your thoughts are not totally off the wall. In the Trainz Dev forum, there was a discussion regarding automatically generating LOD targets among other things to help smooth out operations. If this is were to happen, then that's one area which the content creators don't need to pay attention to and they can focus their efforts on other things.
 
borderreiver said:
I have an opinion as an owner of a large amount of payware, which I began to accrue in 2011. Each new iteration of Trainz breaks a number of assets and definitely imposes a "service life" on them. I am probably going to be less likely to spend my money on commissioning assets if I find that I get only a couple of years of life out of them.
Click to expand...

One thing I have done is recycled texture files. So as the highly detailed underframes have come available so the textures on the top bit ie wagons and vans have been moved to the more detailed underframes. I ought to do a few more LNER reskins sometime.

Cheerio John
 
borderreiver said:
I have an opinion as an owner of a large amount of payware, which I began to accrue in 2011. Each new iteration of Trainz breaks a number of assets and definitely imposes a "service life" on them. I am probably going to be less likely to spend my money on commissioning assets if I find that I get only a couple of years of life out of them.

As for UK assets and routes, T:ANE is almost ready to be replaced by N3V and close on three years after T:ANE launched the Potteries Loop Line is still not released in a T:ANE version. This must be due, in part, to the sheer amount of work required of its creators in fixing broken and obsolete assets. T:ANE came with the ECML between Kings Cross and Edinburgh included. Will "Trainz 2018" even come with a UK route bundled with it? The ECML is a large route and I can imagine it being just too large to knock in to shape for "Trainz 2018", never mind extend the Scottish end of the route to include either Dundee, Aberdeen or Glasgow Queen Street.

I have a small route which I am slowly pushing towards releasing on to the DLS and it has taken me almost a year of working in my spare time to get it this far. I hope that it is of sufficient quality to be of use to some of the community, but if "Trainz 2018" breaks it a couple of months on I am likely not going to bother doing another.
Click to expand...

I get the impression that the core changes have now happened, so while new features will be added, what works now will likely continue to do so.

Everything I have had since 2004 days which I have needed or wished to bring over to T:ANE with me I have successfully done. If you need any help upgrading older assets there are of plenty of people, myself included, who can help.
 
Whatever new Trainz will come, I need to get older assets functional in it, at least manual way, and looking well, otherways new Trainz not interesting for me. TANE already brought some regulations which avoid using of some assets at all (irreparable even manually). Some of those regulations were not really necessary by my opinon. According to some official statements I have read, new Trainz should bring even more massive regulations for the older assets, as for the look of the assets using genuine materials but mainly those heavily scripted, this would make use of lot of assets impossible having impact on limited number of routes to be playable etc. I am rather skeptic especially when see no satisfactory progress in current TANE...
 
JAGG said:
Whatever new Trainz will come, I need to get older assets functional in it, at least manual way, and looking well, otherways new Trainz not interesting for me. TANE already brought some regulations which avoid using of some assets at all (irreparable even manually). Some of those regulations were not really necessary by my opinon. According to some official statements I have read, new Trainz should bring even more massive regulations for the older assets, as for the look of the assets using genuine materials but mainly those heavily scripted, this would make use of lot of assets impossible having impact on limited number of routes to be playable etc. I am rather skeptic especially when see no satisfactory progress in current TANE...
Click to expand...

For the most part content can be updated without too many problems. Scripts can be replaced and some are more robust than others. One solid script can be repeated on many assets. I think my concerns are more along the lines of the new materials and methods of content creation that are appearing and these seem to be raising the barrier to entry.

Cheerio John
 
Well, so far I didn't find the way how to update splines including initiator and terminator (some informations say that meshes for initiator and terminator must be created from central point to minus y axis, but I cannot make working also such). Another irreparable asset issue are "payware" tagged items which previously were not payware at all. Third irreparable issue are assets with JIRF header missing. I don't count the 32-bit speedtreees...
 
My view is similar to that of an earlier poster, that one of trainz's strongest appeals is the sheer amount of content on the DLS. Sure, some of it is better than others but "the competitor" sim has nothing like that available, either in size or freedom of use. Trainz payware has its place, and I am an afficonado, but my guess is that many users like what they can get on the DLS. If N3V want to keep ditching thousands of assets at each iteration of trainz but keep shrinking the number of creators able to step in to produce new content then what is the ultimate destination for N3V? If asset creation also takes twice as long per asset the output falls even further. I think that UK content is already under significant threat of falling by the wayside.
 
BlackDiamond1964 said:
If you can handle the incredibly slow speed of the DLS. I think most just walk away instead of waiting 2+ hours to download a descent locomotive and all it's dependencies.
Click to expand...

I think a lot of them would buy either a 30 day or 3 month FCT and download what they want.

Ken
 
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I took advantage of a lifetime FCT several years ago, but my internet connection at home is adequate to download quickly. Some contention at busy times such as holiday weekends is unavoidable. I appreciate that some folks have connections more suited to 1998 or 2008 rather than 2018. That means their Trainz experience is possibly going to get even slower come "Trainz 2018".
 
KenGreen said:
I think a lot of them would buy a 30 day FCT and download what they want.

Ken
Click to expand...

That's the problem, and that is why people walk away. In the end it's always about the money. It's not about a hobby, it's not about trains, it's definitely not about a community...it's about money, pure an simple. The DLS is set at such a low speed you are forced into spending yet more money to get a download speed that is the same at any free web sites... it's this kind of money grab that is killing Railworks and it's this that will kill Trainz...Like it or not, it's the truth.
 
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