Trainz the end of an era?

gawpo50 said:

Don't let the door slap you on the way out

And to the mods....this thread can be locked...as nothing constructive has come out of it.

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I'm no admin but, I think that goes without saying

johnwhelan said:

I'm aware that content creators come and go but at the moment there seems to not that many left. Certainly in the UK scene.

There is a good basic set of assets but the new methods of creating using the FBX exporter and the new materials or even baking etc using the older methods seem to be daunting to the existing creators. I recognise that N3V makes money from payware sold through DLC but I wonder if the days of people being able to create content that looked reasonable are coming to an end apart from one or two skilled creators.

I'm not sure if it matters or if anything can be done to encourage content creation. The list of newly discovered "errors" on each new update is essentially disheartening.

Thoughts?

John

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Content creators could just becoming older now, wanting to move on or do something else. I would suggest that it's just a waiting game until new content creators push through. Maybe go check out TS2018 if you want to have more/newer UK content. As for now, not all content creators are "dying", there's plenty coming through in Australian content, and eventually will in the UK scene as well. Don't also think that people have stopped creating content either. Creators could take as long as 1-2 years to build an asset, due to the lack of time they have on their hands, and the extent they have to go through to make a locomotive, after all everyone has lives outside of Trainz. I would recommend trying to create content yourself and seeing how difficult it gets at times, and the errors, and limitations you run into regularly.
Just a shame that what all N3V seems to focus on is graphics and new components to the game, instead of fixing limitations that have been put there from the start and adding more content themselves, all they depend on is 3rd party creators, and seems like they always will.

Cheers, Stefan

I think we can safely say that everything that needs to be said here has been said.

People have presented different opinions and we've avoided (for the most part) anything too serious in the way the opinions have been presented.

I'll lock the thread, but will also provide a [hopefully] short N3V response.

1. DLS access is provided free. For that, we are admonished. We don't have to provide a free service, but we choose to do so.
2. We offer a paid alternative that is, admittedly, a much better option than the free version, but you do have to pay for the better service. This practice has been with Trainz for 15 years and it hasn't hurt us too badly. How things wouldhave panned out under a different model is purely conjecture.
3. We are raising the bar with content creation - we have to do this in order to provide the game that our customers are demanding of us. If we kept 2004 rules for content, the content would look and operate just like it did in 2004. That means no LOD, no bump maps and certainly no PBR. So who is going to buy that game in 2018?
4. So, we have a quality bar that MUST be raised, and it is our responsibility to create an environment whereby both freeware and payware can be created for Trainz to satisfy the enormous demand for new content.
5. Last week we offered content creators the opportunity to access the latest internal build to check out the new content creation process. A dozen volunteers were selected to participate in the first round. We'll be working with these dozen people over the coming weeks ensuring they get a full understanding of the process. We'll also be working on creating additional documentation to make it easier for the "masses" of content creators when we move to the next phase of testing.
6. All this is done by working out our development budget, our revenue stream and ensuring that we can afford to pay for our team. Selling one copy to one person isn't going to do that. Having no new content isn't going to do that, so we're going to make sure that we do everything we can to assist new content being developed. The better the standard of content, the happier the users.
7. Last point - 2004 content works fine in TANE and will work fine in the next version of Trainz. SOME content that was made incorrectly at the time or to a much lower standard, might not work,but this amounts to a very small % of the total list of content.