Roll Out of TRAINZ 19

...<SNIP>...(I have not signed a NDA so no penalty apart from not getting an invite from Zac to the Christmas Party).
LOL!! After the long busy day at work I just had, This is the best cure I needed for my grumblies. This is why I love you guys and girls. Y'all somehow have the right cure for what ails ya.

Since I'm chattin I may as well say "Let's wait till this product is tweaked to a GOOD release point." I have the patience of a Sailor and can wait as long as it takes for '19.

"Good things come to those who wait." -Old proverb
 
Anyway, why would they call it Train Railroad Simulator 2019 if they were going to release it in 2018?
 
Anyway, why would they call it Train Railroad Simulator 2019 if they were going to release it in 2018?

I think you'll find all the versions with a year in the name were released just prior to that year. It's a marketing thing.
 
I think you'll find all the versions with a year in the name were released just prior to that year. It's a marketing thing.

Yes, thank you. This has always been the case with the Trainz year_numbered releases. It was a somewhat sarcastic comment I made:D
 
Yes, thank you. This has always been the case with the Trainz year_numbered releases. It was a somewhat sarcastic comment I made:D

Obviously completely lost on me, I didn't notice the letters had that slight sarcastic lean to them.
 
Just have some patience and let them do their magic, my god won't you people understand that games take time and effort to make? Especially Trainz which needs to restore its reputation as a good Train Sim. Just look at GTA V for example. Rockstar Games took their sweet time perfecting it and it really had an effect, the game came out really polished on day 1. Just wait a while, play some TANE, play something else, go on a date, before you know it the new game will be out and you'll be happy you waited for it.

Agree... and more taking into account that T:ANE has released many hotfixes to make playable the game.
 
"Lor' love a duck" as we say in the backwoods of Bedfordshire.

I just want to look at it with my fingers on the keyboard not with my eyes on the pretty pictures.

A simple survey shows that most .Trainz enthusiasts have the patience of a Saint and just a few (mostly me by the look of things) just can't hold back our juvenile excitement to get on and play.

I just happen to have my 70th birthday on the 5th September.

Hint, Hint, Grovel, Grovel. (I usually find that a good Grovel does the trick!!)
 
Probably because it won't be totally perfected until 2019 or 2020 through many SP patch's

This is software we are talking about here. Software is never totally perfected, it just evolves, goes through version upgrades, has "newish" features glued and stitched on, has more patches than my mother's hand made quilt, is given endless marketing "make-overs" ... but I don't think I would have it any other way. Otherwise we would all still be running Railroad Tycoon on Windows 3.
 
This is software we are talking about here. Software is never totally perfected, it just evolves, goes through version upgrades, has "newish" features glued and stitched on...

There's a difference between software that requires updates and software that's unfinished. Honestly, CR's right, in a way: if TRS2019 is anything like T:ANE, it'll take a Service Pack and four Hotfixes to make the game stable. That's not because T:ANE needed an upgrade after it was released, it's because it was unfinished when it was released.
 
All grist to the mill, boys.

I am (very) reassured by Tony's latest wording which I can't find now I want to quote it but it looks like a definite promise of a maybe of something imminent or nearer than a long way off but not today or tomorrow but might just break my birthday deadline on a good year unless they discover something nut-crunchingly awful (Ah! yes, happy days with TANE).

"All things come to pass....".

The good Lord himself only needed 6 days to create the Heavens and Earth. Come on Tony, give the Deity a run for his money.

Graham
 
There's a difference between software that requires updates and software that's unfinished.

I fully understand where you are coming from and in an ideal world all software would be "finished" (barring undiscovered "glitches" and the like) before it is released and in some software areas this is certainly the case. But in the world of gaming software, where you publish by the deadline or you perish, the commercial pressures to get the product out "ready or not" are enormous. Train simulator "games" are a very small niche market with several competing products. While companies like EA (for example), which seems to have the NBA gaming franchise sown up, can afford to delay their releases to get the "surface polish" perfect, this is not true of smaller single product operations.

Personally, it generally does not worry me if TANE (or TRS2019) has "teething" problems on its release, as long as they get the serious issues fixed. The SPs and HFs do not cost us anything except some time.
 
I fully understand where you are coming from and in an ideal world all software would be "finished" (barring undiscovered "glitches" and the like) before it is released and in some software areas this is certainly the case. But in the world of gaming software, where you publish by the deadline or you perish, the commercial pressures to get the product out "ready or not" are enormous. Train simulator "games" are a very small niche market with several competing products. While companies like EA (for example), which seems to have the NBA gaming franchise sown up, can afford to delay their releases to get the "surface polish" perfect, this is not true of smaller single product operations.

You're right: larger companies with more control of their respective markets can afford to delay their games for the sake of added polish. Despite some companies not doing that to begin with, i don't think this excludes N3V from this equation. T:ANE was a buggy mess on Day 1, similar to something like, say, No Man's Sky. T:ANE needed extensive bug-fixing, optimization, and overall improvements to get the game to function on a large chunk computers, and i think that could've been avoided.

When it comes to Trainz, i don't think most of the community would have minded if N3V had pushed the release for T:ANE back a few months of even a year if it meant getting a "finished" game. The only people i think that would've cried out would have been young children, but i can't say for sure. Trainz has a really dedicated fanbase, for better or worse, and i think that this dedication would've allowed N3V to delay T:ANE for the sake of bringing it up to snuff.

I know waiting for free updates isn't nearly as bad as having to pay for them (ahem, ahem, Railworks, ahem, ahem), but T:ANE, even in it's name, was told to be the "New Era" of train simulation; the fact that the product we received needed over a year of extra development after its release just for the game to be considered stable leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

Personally, it generally does not worry me if TANE (or TRS2019) has "teething" problems on its release, as long as they get the serious issues fixed. The SPs and HFs do not cost us anything except some time.

TRS2019 looks really promising. I do hope N3V learns their lesson from T:ANE and gives the community a functional game on Day 1 though, instead of making us wait a few years for the "true" experience. I'd rather wait a few extra months for a technically-finished product then get a game that's unfinished, buggy, and poorly-optimized, like so many games are nowadays. Extra development time can do wonders for a new product.
 
(ahem, ahem, Railworks, ahem, ahem)

In fairness to DTG, over the last few years the core update has been free but if you wanted the routes bundled with that year's version then those had to be purchased, usually at a discounted price. I'm a bit out of touch with the TS20xx/RW scene but it appears with the focus on Train Sim World there may not even be an update to their legacy product.

As regards TRS2019, it needs to be ready for prime time and not rushed out in the highly bugged, pretty much unplayable state that TANE was. The problem being of course that, depending on your POV, N3V patches and fixes don't always hit the spot. If '19 comes out at roughly the condition TANE SP1 HF4 presented, all will be 99% good. If it slides downhill to the nadir of SP2 then struggled back up slightly to where SP3 is, not so good.

Ultimately though it will be financial pressures and stakeholder expectations which determine when TRS2019 comes out. I have no insight into N3V finances but residual sales of older versions including TANE have got to be down in penny numbers by now. That leaves DLC and FCT sales or any unpublicised or non train sim related activity or consultancy as a revenue stream. So I will not be altogether surprised if history repeats itself, especially as most of the FCT income goes directly towards covering the DLS hosting costs.
 
...

...

Ultimately though it will be financial pressures and stakeholder expectations which determine when TRS2019 comes out. I have no insight into N3V finances but residual sales of older versions including TANE have got to be down in penny numbers by now. That leaves DLC and FCT sales or any unpublicised or non train sim related activity or consultancy as a revenue stream. So I will not be altogether surprised if history repeats itself, especially as most of the FCT income goes directly towards covering the DLS hosting costs.

Apparently the Android sales are quite good.
However, there needs to be some more content for that, given the "requests" we read here on the forums.

So where do you deploy your developers?
 
Apparently the Android sales are quite good.
However, there needs to be some more content for that, given the "requests" we read here on the forums.

So where do you deploy your developers?

This is certainly a concern to us PC/Mac Trainzers and this issue was discussed in these forums some time ago. While I hope that the Android version does do well and provides N3V with the financial security it needs, I would expect (hope?) that they continue developing the game for us PC/Mac "big boys".
 
My Final say on the matter as I raised it.

I have always, always, envisioned that there are 3 distinct markets for new software. There might even be more.

The first market is the mad keen, obsessive enthusiast who wants to get there hands on something, however buggy, and just play with it knowing it is going to break and lose all there hard work whenever things are beginning to get interesting. These are obviously the nucleus of the beta testers that kept TANE marching forward over a very long period. These guys and ladies are all full blown heroes in my eyes with the patience and stoicism to press on knowing that there little or large contribution will eventually lead to a superb finished product. I think TANE SP3 is probably now at that state.

The second group is those like the majority who have responded to this post who seem to want a finished and polished product.

Now this has surprised me. If you bother to write on these forums and put in your 5 pennyworth than you are clearly not just a retail customer per se. You fall into the category of either an enthusiast, or a customer who wants to kick N3V's ass that has, in the past, put out dodgy products.

The third group which I suspect is just me wants to get their hands on the product a.s.a.p. and check out all the toys and bells and whistles and maybe report the occasional bug and just to be part of the development.

At least I think I'm on the next batch for the imminent release and can't wait for the day.

Approaching 70 with the maturity of 1 17 yeart old, my wife tells me.

Keep up the good work brothers and sisters
 
One thing that's apparent is that TS19 has a group of beta testers who are (mostly) alreadt Trainz users. It's also a small group in comparison with the complexities of Trainz…
There are some route creators, some drivers, some who enjoy creating sessions and using all the different commands (and add-in scripts). This means that some of the features will be tested exhaustively, some will be used lightly, and others maybe not at all.

The testers are also used to the Trainz systems, so it takes a bit of thinking to step back and consider how a newcomer would see the system (as a whole).

Without breaking the NDA (I hope), I'm sure that Tony will be posting as many pictures and videos as possible once that part of the beta is finalised. There's still a lot of activity going on, just invisible to the main userbase.

Just a bit longer (I hear)

Colin
 
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