Please help me get into this game

beradm

New member
I purchased another version of Trainz again because they offer discounts which I can't refuse. However, coming from Train Simulator background, I cannot really get into Trainz. Even though this game looks and feels good there is one problem.

There is not much to do in there.

Routes come with 2-4 sessions each. Download station is a mess and isn't useful when looking for content. What irritates me a lot is that this game has a decent fan base and yet I cannot even google for anything useful. No sessions, no guides, nothing. I just have no idea in which way people play this game.

I know that the typical answer is that creating sessions is easy and I should try. However, I'm not sure if it's fun driving a scenario which I myself designed because obeying signals is a big part of train simulation and there's no unpredictability if I'm the one setting schedules for each train in line.

Am I missing something or are everyone creating their own sessions?
 
Everyone certainly aren't creating their own sessions. Some find that too difficult, or aren't interested. Those that do created them, probably like me, spend more time creating them than actually playing. So generally there are a lot of sessions on the DLS you could play - if, you can find them. One problem in that regard is not everyone thinks to include the name of the route, in the name of the session. That is now my habit. You can try searching on the DLS using the route name to find sessions, otherwise search the forums here and see what pops up.

"There is not much to do there." --- Er, there are heaps of sessions with the built-in routes, so I'm puzzled by that comment unless maybe you are using a regional TRS19?
 
If you are using the Web based DLS to search for assets then it is a mess (always has been but that is the nature of the beast). If you are using Content Manager to do the searching then you can do a lot more with the search filters to narrow down the search results.

I agree with Alikiwi that a large part of the problem in finding suitable sessions for a route is that session creators do not always indicate which route their session was created for. You could look for sessions made by the same creator as the route but sessions for that particular route may have been added by others.

One place to look is in the Freeware Announcement forum where route/session and asset creators advertise their work.

My habit is to post my new route and session details in the above forum and to always include the route name in the names of each session that I create and add it into the session description.
 
Hi --

I'm not quite sure what you are looking for. A route that has sessions that will give you an introduction about how things work, perhaps? Fictitious, but could be real? Interesting scenery an advantage? And will also work straight out of the box -- no missing dependencies? A few tasks to do? Maybe some interactions with AI trainz?

Maybe see my thread here:

https://forums.auran.com/trainz/sho...w-TRS19-route-The-Rivercide-Electric-Railroad

Be advised though, a First Class Ticket for the Download Station will be a distinct advantage to download the 100 or so dependencies it requires. And be warned that some other routes require many hundred dependencies.

Please tell us if this is goes some way to get you up and running.

Phil
 
Another site that provides great Trainz content is Jointed Rail

Also if want some routes that come with alot of sessions , the Settle and Carlisle has heaps as does Murchison 2

Also the Maria's Pass route ( third party I forget their name) is very professionally made and the train handling a lot more realistic too i think.

One thing I like in Trainz as someone who doesn't have any experience making routes or complex sessions is that I can select quick drive and add Trainz and drivers in on the fly - doing this in trainz12 on the very large Norfolk and Appalachian coal route, I put in a bunch of trains some passing through and some going to industries and then hop in a drive one and because of the size of the route and many switches I don't really have any idea where all the AI Trainz are at exactly so I will just have to watch the signals - it's more sandboxy than TS of course.

In the DLS, and searching with the content manager for sessions makes things easier because all the necessary assets will get downloaded automatically (provided they are all there)
If though none of this appeals either . There are some other more hardcore sims : Run8, Open Rails, and Zusi3 - Zusi3 bi am trying to learn and it is very hard and really depends on watching signals and knowing how the German trains operate, of course you might know all this and I am certainly no expert in the slightest
 
However, coming from Train Simulator background, I cannot really get into Trainz. Even though this game looks and feels good there is one problem.

Download station is a mess and isn't useful when looking for content. What irritates me a lot is that this game has a decent fan base and yet I cannot even google for anything useful. No sessions, no guides, nothing. I just have no idea in which way people play thiis game


Some links to help you get started.

Guides:

http://online.ts2009.com/mediaWiki/index.php/Help:TRS19
http://online.ts2009.com/mediaWiki/Main_Page
http://online.ts2009.com/mediaWiki/index.php/Content_Creation

You tube https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=trainz+tutorial

"Content Manager" utility for downloading content from the downloadstation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTzyx9Kx7Ug
 
On the different question of how easy is it to create a session - how long is a piece of string?

One route that I created (it took me over a year to create) I spent even more time creating the sessions. One session basically took an afternoon to create but all it had was the consists in place, the industries configured, primed and ready and an introductory HTML page explaining what the user could do - what and where are the loads and the consists to carry them, where are the possible destinations - and the rest was up to the user.

Other sessions took months of work because they had very directed activities with specific tasks, lots of navigation points and check points to reach. These took almost as long to debug as they took to program. These sessions took anything from 1/2 hour to 4 hours to complete all the set tasks.
 
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As for wanting unpredictability when operating and running trains I am the same way. I like rolling up to a red signal and after waiting a few minutes being pleasantly surprised by what rolls by. The best way to achieve this is to use portals. Portals spawn trains to run across your route according to settings that you control. Unfortunately I am still trying to learn how to get them to work the way I want them to, so I am not the one to explain it to you. There are some good threads here on portals and some good tutorial videos on youtube that should be helpful.
 
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Unpredictability can also be built into sessions by adding session variables. Take a look at the first example on the following Trainz Wiki page - http://online.ts2009.com/mediaWiki/index.php/How_to_Use_Variables_in_Sessions_(Examples).

The example shown is for a session available on the DLS - <KUID2:45176:100763:1> Looe to Liskeard Passenger Run V2 (121 Class) by pware. The session was created for the route <KUID2:179051:100088:5> Liskeard to Looe V2 by marky7890. If you download and install the session it will automatically download and install the route and all dependencies as well.
 
Hi

If you want unpredictability in a session then variables are the way to go. I almost always use driver commands to set variables on the fly as they can be used to make decisions on which part of a schedule to run next. On the Powder River Basin route for example i have a number of different consists saved in each portal which are produced randomly. Once they are generated a randomly generated variable between 1 and 10 is produced and the result used to decide which mine the train will travel to for loading. With 5 portals there is only a minute chance of a session ever repeating itself.

I've been creating AI only sessions for the past 12 years as I'm only interested in automated sessions. They never get onto the DLS because I always have to modify the routes to make them easier to automate and I also make a lot of use of payware locos and rolling stock.

Driver commands to use, all on the DLS by author trev999 :-

Insert Label
Jump to Label
Set S-Variable
Skip if session-variable
Wait Until S-variable V3

Double click on the driver commands in content manager to see instructions on how to use them.

More of Trevors rules and driver commands can be found on http://www.simtrainz.co.uk/

Regards

Brian
 
Not much to do? The biggest strength of Trainz is Surveyor. Spend some time learning how to use it. Create your own railroad, or model railroad. Set up your own sessions. Upload them to the Trainz DLS to share with others.

I have been doing 'not much' with Trainz for almost twenty years.
 
Sadly Trainz strongpoint has never really been realistic operation, or structured timetable or activity "play" as you might find in MSTS/OR or the DTG Train Sim(s).

It just doesn't seem high on N3V's priority list, they seem to be quite happy that the primary way users enjoy the game is free roaming around, setting the route as you go. You can sort of set up a schedule for AI trains to follow, but as soon as you click on the train to take it over those details disappear.

We, or at least I, keep chipping away at N3V in the hope they eventually address this shortfall... we can only hope.
 
I purchased another version of Trainz again because they offer discounts which I can't refuse. However, coming from Train Simulator background, I cannot really get into Trainz. Even though this game looks and feels good there is one problem.

There is not much to do in there.

Routes come with 2-4 sessions each. Download station is a mess and isn't useful when looking for content. What irritates me a lot is that this game has a decent fan base and yet I cannot even google for anything useful. No sessions, no guides, nothing. I just have no idea in which way people play this game.

I know that the typical answer is that creating sessions is easy and I should try. However, I'm not sure if it's fun driving a scenario which I myself designed because obeying signals is a big part of train simulation and there's no unpredictability if I'm the one setting schedules for each train in line.

Am I missing something or are everyone creating their own sessions?


You are very right. I am a great fan of Trainz but sadly Trainz has it downsides. For operation and realism it is not the best sim and what doesn't help is that N3V in my opinion are far to fast with bringing a new version out each year with all bells and whistles while the old version still isn't mature.

And on top of that they let the user base solve most of the problems by saying that you can find most of the information on the wiki. While this is technically correct making some sense of some of the information on the wiki without any prior experience can be a daunting task.

This alone can kill a positive user experience for Trainz and most users leave it at that point. It is how I see it. As you will see soon Trainz is a spending a lot of your time in Content Manager to fix errors while you actually want to be driving.

Despite all those thing Trainz is a fantastic rail-sandbox. That is really what Trainz is. A sandbox. And a deep one at that. You can really make the sim your own with the right experience. But it takes years :hehe:. In that regard Trainz may look like a 'game' but really isn't. See it as a Transport Fever 2 without money restrictions and more sim elements and more customising. Then you are not disappointed.


Problem is in the marketing of Trainz. It is marketed as a railroad simulator which it really isn't. There is a lot of potential in the engine. But IMO N3V makes it very difficult for both creators and users to enjoy it all.
 
Trainz is different things to different people. Personally I have little to no interest in sessions or even routes created by others. I probably only spend 1% of my Trainz time actually operating Trainz, even on my own routes, and most of that 1% is just for testing. I've spent the last 16 years in Trainz creating my own fictitious worlds of backwoods, short line railroading from a time long past.
In my mind, I can only understand the thought of "not much to do in there" if there's not a deep seeded core interest in railroading in general. For me, it's an escape back to the early 60's, chasing the last of steam with my father.
 
See it as a Transport Fever 2 without money restrictions and more sim elements and more customising. Then you are not disappointed.

Exactly. Being able to create your own route, of any size, whether prototypical or from your imagination, and then run the trains you want in sessions you design, is where Trainz is better than the competition. I recently bought Transport Fever 2 and am trying to learn it, but in the final analysis I did accounting my entire life and not having to think about taxes etc is a plus for me with Trainz.
 
Trainz, any version, is more like a hobby than it is a video game. There are so many aspects of it ranging from full route and session creation all the way down the gamut to asset creation, script writing, and everything in between. With that said, it's one of these things that is only as good as one puts the time and effort into learning and doing.

As a Trainzer, I started my journey with TRS2004 Sp0 in December 2003. From the get go, I opened up other people's routes and even sessions, which were called scenarios back then, to see how things were done. It took a bit of time before I started to build my first route and then that route was supposed to be a small test route. That 4-board route ended up being the core to a much bigger empire which still exists today. Like many model railroads of this size, this route has gone through many updates, changes, and renovations, but the core theme is still there. To illustrate the longevity of the program, I took my ca. March 2005 version of my original route, trimmed parts and imported that route in and merged that portion into the current TRS19 version. The basic theme was there of what I wanted, but the track work was pure garbage. After a lick and a promise, it doesn't look so bad, but there's still a lot of work to be done.

Creating sessions for your own work is not without surprises. After the session is done, you'll spend days, weeks, or even longer troubleshooting the session. There are tweaks needed, signals to be adjusted, consist timing worked out, additional track marks needed, and so on and so forth. When it comes time to running the route, unless you have the memory of an elephant, you won't remember where each and every signal is, but you should. You see real engineers are supposed to qualify for a rail line. They go through an extensively supervised learning process of any route they drive, and are not let loose until they know where every signal, crossing, whistle post, speed limit, and all other line side details inside and out.
 
I recently bought Transport Fever 2 and am trying to learn it, but in the final analysis I did accounting my entire life and not having to think about taxes etc is a plus for me with Trainz.
You can turn off the money aspect of Transport Fever and build to your heart's content.
 
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