Stepping away from Trainz...

I had the exact same feeling John. That's why I'm kind of leaving too.

John and Peter - this is a shock, but I do understand as I too have suffered disillusionment recently and noticed my engagement with Trainz dropping off. I usually end up returning (the desire to do 'just a little bit more' to one of my ongoing routes tends to tempt me back) but your wisdom, common sense and all round comradeship with our community will be much missed. I wish you well for the future.

Paul

Your knowledge and experience with this game will be sadly missed John and I don't think there are many left with your level of kindness and willingness to help others here any more so I hope the higher up's are reading this and take note, I truly hope you find time to pop in now and then to at least say hello. All the best for the future mate I wish you all the best.
Cheers Mick.:wave:

Thanks for all your help, I too need to get back to the piano

Like everyone else who joined after you. I too need to thank you for all you did to help me along. You must feel that you have beaten the addiction of trainz? Be careful, it's too easy to fall back into it.

Cheers Bud, enjoy your freedom .... Rick

Shocking - yes, surprising - no.
Trainz is and should be a hobby. When it slides into work territory, it's time to reconsider why you're here.
Amazing that there are so many people still here that joined almost 20 years ago.

@ John, take all the time it takes to rebuild your enthusiasm, you'll always be welcome.
PS, if you ever visit Expo Rail send me a PM.

I haven't been in the forum in ages, but today I happened to stop for a peak, and I saw this post! i guess I throw my 2 cents in here because John has been a great forum / trainz friend, and great help through the years!

i know how he feels in many ways ... trainz gets boring, burnt-out, lazy, and out of focus. --- Etc.

Good Luck John, in your endeavors!
Ish

Like so many this is a surprise given your great support and help to others and honest polite replies. That said, I can understand the need to step away and the complexity of the game is perhaps not a help. I too wish you well and hope someday you may return. Either way, stay well and happy. A hobby should never become a job.

John,

Your excellent advice and help has been appreciated too many times to count. I'm sorry to hear that you've thrown in the towel (hopefully one of these days you'll decide to retrieve it).

I was certainly in the same of frame until a couple years ago, when I decided that the constant rat-race of trying to keep up with "upgrades" and broken assets was just not worth it. I reverted to TANE SP3 and there I plan to stay, with a stable database of working assets and routes that actually can be tinkered with until they run properly. I'm pleased to see that many of the contributors to the DLS seem to feel the same way, as the number of TANE-compatible assets keeps growing in a very satisfying way.

My Trainz PC is running an older version of Windows 10 and is not connected to the internet, so there's no worry that a new version of Win is going to require a new version of Trainz to keep working. TANE SP3 may have a few bugs but they can be worked around.

A word to N3V: when you can drive out as dedicated a Trainzer as John, you're treading on thin ice. Perhaps you need to review your current policy, which seems to be "Trainz isn't done until older assets won't run."

--Lamont

di'm sorry to see John go. i am afraid that trainz is slowly going away. they have made it so it is no longer a game. i don't have a degree in computer and i can tell you for certain it hasn't been fun since trainz 09. the more you have to file tend and runs trainz less is really getting old.
thank you for your outstanding help
ejb

robd said:

Oh dear me, yet another has announced they're 'leaving Trainz'... why announce it all? What's the point in such announcements? Quite honestly it's neither here nor' there to anyone!

Good luck to all!

Rob.

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well since john has helped me out on more than few occasions, it does matter to me and all the other people hes helped over the years, but I guess it doesn't to you . The funny thing is, you are doing the very thing you are criticizing John for doing ......why bother telling anyone you think John shouldn't tell us hes leaving ?


to use your own words
Quite honestly it's neither here nor' there to anyone!

I too am having a rest, I am fed up of fixing things, not making stuff, I bought a new FCT and haven't bothered activating it, i will be back, eventually, but I'm enjoying not having to wrestle with finding items on the DLS to replace items I innocently used in routes that are hosted elsewhere when I knew less about the game and was making stuff for just my own use. New developments make years of work redundant , I'm not looking forward to replacing 60 miles of items if i am to get my route up to present standards. its just so much work . I can fully understand why people are dropping out , an awful lot of the time the game isn't much fun .

JCitron said:

As my thread title says, I'm stepping away from everything Trainz for an unknown period of time. This feeling has been a longtime coming and not something that has happened overnight.

I'll put it bluntly. I'm tired, annoyed, really, really annoyed, and getting ready to ditch the bloody mess. I haven't done much with it for months, other than a bit of testing off and on for the new beta, and even that's going to stop. I've been Trainzing nearly non-stop since December 2003 and it's time to let it go for awhile. I tried multiple times to go through the routine of downloading new stuff, and then running my routes, but then I'll run a route, or fiddle with mine, but not for very long. I'll instead go off and practice the piano for two hours then use Cities Skylines for the rest of the day, or NIMBY Trains, or something else.

In case you're wondering, there's nothing wrong with the routes other than the usual crap we've been dealing with for decades. It's the same crap day in and day out and this is becoming too much like a job and less of a hobby. It's time to walk away and retire or go into semi-retirement.

With that said, don't PM me because I won't be responding to any PMs and I won't be frequenting the forums for anytime soon.

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I know I'm kinda late on this news, but good luck in your non-Trainz life. I understand why you indefinitely quit - it gets tiring after a while. For me, it's Trainz for about a month, and then the next couple of months I don't care about it. You've been a tremendous help to all of us on the Trainz Forums, and we all wish you the best in your future. I do hope that you come back eventually (probably in a couple years), but take some time to yourself. Enjoy life - you only live once, and only God knows how much time you have left. So savor it.

Good luck, and I hope you enjoy everything that you do in your life.

Andrew

It is odd that we have not seen a public Thank You from N3V management. To some degree John helped to put food on their tables. I do not believe that N3V could long survive if the core "experts" suddenly ceased keeping us "on track". Perhaps, at the end of each newsletter, a thank you to the volunteers who give of their time and talent to guide the community through the complexities of Trainz.

Sad to hear you're leaving John, however understandable it is. I will still wave from the Haverhill bridge when I go by, whatever the letters on the cab say (still MEC and BM for now).

Vern said:

The one caveat I would add for John and anyone else (including myself) getting pee'ed off. Give going back to TANE a chance - it avoids most of the bloated baggage, numerous versions and old content looking like carp that TRS19 has brought. SP4 is pretty stable unlike where TRS19 is right now. Yes it might not look as pretty, but given you can't even save the extended post processing settings in TRS19 hardly a huge bother.

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Everything I have on my route that's really important at present is old like me. It looks better in TANE and I've yet to get the steam loco exhaust that I worked a long time on, in several versions of Trainz, to look right in TRS19 and I've tried. So thanks Vern for the good advice but I'm already there.

Frustration doesn't make for good gaming experiences not that I view Trainz as a game, it's definitely a simulation and a hobby. But now and then when I get too involved and frustrated stepping back is what happens.

Good luck John. We're only a couple of keystrokes away.

Regards,
Bob

Hi guys and gals.

Yes, I have stepped away, but things have settled down a bit on the music front and I've given Trainz a poke off and on over the past few days. I happened to come by to read up on the beta, after I noticed a patch available, and had to say hi to everyone.

Anyway, here's the works I've been working on with lots more in the queue. These are still a work in progress and need little fixing here and there to bring them to the next level I need for recording and performance.

Alexandre Goria (1823-1860) Caprice-Nocturne Op. 6 in A-flat
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ddtm7lqs8f8hh1k/Goria - Caprice-Nocturne Op. 6 in A-flat.wav?dl=0

Louis Gottschalk (1829 - 1869) Morte!! She's dead!
https://www.dropbox.com/s/yw4hi5vi9n01p9u/Gottschalk - Morte!! She's Dead!.wav?dl=0

Chopin Nocturne No. 20 Op. Posth.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/8c4z5dy0hiwwa6w/Chopin Nocturne No. 20 Op. Posth.wav?dl=0

There are other pieces in the works that I hope to get good enough to perform in a small recital, or release on a “CD” in memory of my mom who passed away in December 2018, and also in memory of my first piano teacher who passed away in January of this year at 100 years.

These pieces are all recorded digitally on my Roland LX-17 digital piano. The Bechstein DG Concert grand piano you hear in the recordings exists only my PC, which is connected to the Roland via a USB-MIDI interface, and driven via the free ASIO4ALL driver. This piano and many others are part of a product called Pianoteq by Modartt. www.modartt.com.

Hi, John, is good to see you again.

John, I have just listened to Alexandre Goria (1823-1860) Caprice-Nocturne Op. 6 in A-flat and it was beautiful. Thank you very much for sharing your music with us.
I will listen to your other two recordings today and i've taken the liberty of saving them to my own Dropbox account.

Nice work on those pieces John.