Please Keep Trainz Real

Hello all
i have not posted ina while here, but still love Trainz, TANE, and earlier. The new stuff, and the new hype high pressure Join and Subscribe idiocy is really starting to appear more and more foolish. I will not now or ever pay a monthly or yearly FEE for the right to enjoy the original Trainz that we all purchase and that thousands have done so and continue to enjoy. I have made thousands of add ons and supported projects for Trainz route and collected and continue to collect superior routes and rolling stock. But this madness of more and more photoralism and complex imaging systems and requirements is going to make Trainz yet another un moddable nightmare that is just a cash cow. Only the highly skilled and professional modellers will be able to handle the complex and incresingly un necessary detail and requirements of the new emerging forms of Trainz. Please do NOT make obselete the library of miraculous and wondeful assets. I fear that may come next as the library can and does arbitraily decide and dictate that older assets are either "too primitive" for the new mile high realism club, or somehow have magically become payware because they have been included in a payware route from Trainz stable or others. I do not critizze the makers here for wanting to make a living but we are very fine and happy with what has been achieved and truly Trainz is the best of all of the Rail sims for many things and the Surveyor is a dream to work with.

I hope and pray that this message will get thru to Tony and others that we are FINE with Trainz as it was and we do NOT want to be forced into the subscription model and please stop pushing it on us with every weekly update. Let us enjoy and celebrate the fine work that is and has been done by so many and shared freely and with joy. I will never ever allow any of my created assets or work to become cash slaves. I hope others who agree with me will reliaze they are not alone and have a voice to speak for Sanity.

Have a great day and enjoy the winter and the Holidays. I hope to perhaps be able to release a new update for the Rollins that may include improved Sessions and maybe even a special Christmas session.

all the best to all, and I miss those of our community like Norm who will always be with us as we enjoy this fine fine Rail sim.

CrisGer Chris Gerlach

the first pics are from an update of a marvelous route orignally made for 2004 Trainz by Mark and Linda, updated by our team, me and Paul and now Jango to TANE latest update, and enhanced with the all of the skills we can bring, and we hope still to release it but COVID and life events have slowed things down.... our original team from Rollnis is still around and Bob has been kind enough to bring first aid to my early and prmitive sessoins we released and I hope we can share them soon .... and maybe as i said, A Christmas one i have been working on for some time. all the best to all, and i am sorry if my words offend some here, but i feel strongly about this and the latest newletter was just so inundated with "sign up for this that and the other" none of which is needed to make wondeful work on the route in TANE and before. Just let some of us keep enjoying the Trainz we love..and stop pushing us to jump on a bus I feel strongly and with respect is going on the wrong direction. Enough detial is just fine. Have a great December.

thank you for your post

I am a very new user, maybe 8 days of play, but fell in love with the simulator. I do look for forward to the release of the Christmas, steam powered in a snow environment!

I do not feel pressured, YET. However, I do agree that the emphasis on graphics rather than RR operations is overemphasized It is a natural evolution as video gets better, but one has to decide where to place more of ones bets.

Chris, I understand your feelings. Trainz is Trainz and no matter what version you run will continue to run. N3V has recently changed how assets are included in pay-ware routes so the fear you have about assets being locked has been mitigated. We're coming across those from the past and we report them to the helpdesk to take care of them. If you wished to install TRS2004, it would still operate within the limits of that program, just as it did when you first bought it. You can still find assets to download for it and still build routes as you did. This is the same with all the versions before and after, and this is what makes this a unique product. Trainz is unique too that it's not just a game that gets tossed off to the side either. Content created in previous versions still works in the newer versions, and even looks quite nice too in most cases. It may still have the limits of its development period in place, but they still look pretty good. There are many a route out there that still use buildings by Dave Drake (dmdrake), for example. Dave made hundreds of buildings of various shapes and sizes that are nothing more than simple textured cubes with some 3d details. These buildings are quick and dirty, and fit right in among the newer ones. Being simple cubes, they are low-poly and don't eat up resources. Dave also made gazillions of trees. These require a bit of work to bring forward, but it's a matter of fixing the alpha channel reference in the texture.txt file. Today, on my system at least, his trees still live on and work well in TRS2019. In addition to the objects we place, many of us have routes we started when we first got Trainz and these routes live on with some now going on close to twenty years. Yes, routes developed in the early days are still operational in TRS2019 and even TRS22. I know because I imported my route, I started in TRS2004 in December 2003, and opened it up in TRS22. The route looked pretty bad by my building standards, but it opened up. I needed to convert the files first to the new format, but it opened up just the same.

To enjoy Trainz do you need to go subscription? The answer is no you do not. The things offered in the subscriptions will show up later in the full product either through a separate Trainz version, a la TRS2019-Platinum, which has the Universal Driver Surveyor and other features found in Trainz-Plus, or in the product itself via a new version or updated service pack. Platinum, for instance, is not a subscription whereas Plus is with some added benefits for those that are interested in that, but both contain the UDS, and other features not found in the base version.

But why the subscription?

The subscription model is something that both professional software developers and publishers have been pushing for a long time and has recently headed into this market. For the developers, it means a continuous revenue stream instead of relying on a quick influx of cash followed by thin periods in between development that focus on the most expensive aspects of the software development lifecycle or SDLC being product support. The continuous cash flow gives the companies a bit more cash on hand to cover their overhead, during the quiet times in between the bigger pushes, and also allow the companies to budget and work on new products at the same time. This development and company mode came out of the original SaaS model developed to support large companies and has since filtered down to the consumer products originally with antivirus/malware products, then office-suites, and now games.

The unfortunate part is, as you noted, in order to survive N3V has to make the "pretty stuff". This is where our digital world is today. People today seem to live in a literal world where people can no longer use their imagination. Many of us here grew up with the simple circle of track, or maybe we were lucky and had a bigger model railroad, nailed to a plywood frame and table. We spent hours upon hours driving our trains, switching cars in and out, and using our mind to build the pictures of our railroad. When a birthday or holiday came along, we were ecstatic when received a piece of rolling stock or a new building, or perhaps a box of trees. With the advent of digital worlds, people want it all, and everything has to be perfect.

Not satisfied with our imaginations any longer, the new generation wants not only fully detailed buildings on the outside, but complete details on the inside. Their outside worlds must have fully realistic weather, running water, snow that piles up, trees that actually drop leaves in the fall, and other things that go beyond what ever could be imagined. The problem is in order to create a world like this, the software developers such as N3V need to look for alternative financing in order to compete at the highest levels. What I'm talking about here isn't just Trainz, but so many other computer programs and today many have the hardware to support that kind of detail.

Anyway, Chris remember Trainz is Trainz and you can do what you want with it with as much detail using whatever assets you want. There's no one here or at N3V to stop you from doing that at least for now.

crisger said:

Hello all
i have not posted ina while here, but still love Trainz, TANE, and earlier. The new stuff, and the new hype high pressure Join and Subscribe idiocy is really starting to appear more and more foolish. I will not now or ever pay a monthly or yearly FEE for the right to enjoy the original Trainz that we all purchase and that thousands have done so and continue to enjoy.
...

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IMO the Annual Subscription with the 'Keep It Forever' after one year is cheaper than the outright purchase, it really is a good value as I usally never buy into subscriptions. It's the same, you should look again.

Hey Chris,
Great looking screenshots ! I won't do subscription Trainz either. Realistically, I can't afford it so I'll continue working on my route and making simple content that fits with it. I greatly appreciate all the content made by others to make it possible, and hopefully soon I'll be able to modernize my config files , get the LOD 's figured out and contribute back.

crisger said:

Hello all
...The new stuff, and the new hype high pressure Join and Subscribe idiocy is really starting to appear more and more foolish. ...

CrisGer Chris Gerlach

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This and others like it appear to be a case of "lost in translation" from board room to play room.
I don't see any compulsion to buy or subscribe. As John mentioned above, every previous version still works like it did the day it was first installed. I still have many of them installed, going back to the original Trainz from almost 20 years ago. Don't use them all the time but occasionally the nostalgia bug will bite and I give them a whirl. Looking back, we really needed a lot of imagination to fill-in the realism gaps. Then again, my hardware back then was also limited.

As for the latest stuff, if it doesn't meet your needs, don't buy it. How can that be said any simpler? Of course, your needs can only be determined by you.

Can we please clarify a point. I purchased TRS 19 Platinum. Are you actually saying I can still continue to play Trainz “ad infinitum” - even if N3V goes out of business tomorrow?

No, not unless N3V releases a version before heading off into the sunset that doesn't have to phone home to work beyond thirty days. So we are co-dependent on them surviving into the future.

My point exactly!

wreeder said:

No, not unless N3V releases a version before heading off into the sunset that doesn't have to phone home to work beyond thirty days. So we are co-dependent on them surviving into the future.

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Wouldn't need a new version just a patch which as been said before would be done if it came to it. This was addressed ages ago in the forum by Windwalkr way back when DRM first appeared and for those who remember there was a Patch for Tane to convert to DRM free for those who had gone for that option during the Kickstarter and ended up a DRM'd version, so it's doable.
I think the fact that Trainz has survived for 20 years is a pretty good sign that it's not going anywhere anytime soon.
Pretty much all decent software now needs to phone home to keep working anyway these days, even lifetime licences are getting as rare as Pigeons Milk but some still need to phone home to keep working, annoying but we are stuck with it thanks to those who pirated everything in the past.
Anyway nobody has to subscribe if they don't want to, conventional version is still available, be thankful N3V hasn't gone the way of Autodesk, Adobe and others with Subscription only software, it's even looking like Microsoft Office 2021 Home and Student / Business / Pro etc will be the last non subscription version of Office.

There you go, ruining another great conspiracy theory about how Trainz is bad and by implication the others are good. ROFL

I find it amusing that many people focus on "owning" their own copy of software when in actuality it is likely "licensed" and the software company still owns the rights to the software. That is why they can set rules for it's use, such as how many computers it may be installed upon.

I can understand why companies run subscription models as it creates a more consistent income stream for them, but I just don't like the concept, I've had a copy of Adobe cs suite for years now and it suits me fine , to the extent that I won't upgrade my computer is as it won't work well on 64 bit only macs , if I had subscribed for this last decad3 , I'd be at least a 1000 dollars worse off .None of the apps is out of date for my purposes at least ,I don't miss any new features and I regularly use dreamweaver, photoshop and audition with no issues. possibly one day my old macs will cark it but even then, I'll not go down the subscription road on principle. If Trainz did become sub only I'd have to do some serious considerations as to my actions , given they are a small company I'd probably concede, but it would be straining my principles to do so.

“Ruining a great conspiracy theory - Trainz is bad - the others are good.”


For the record, I asked a simple straightforward question, which was prompted by the last sentence of John Citron’s post #4. - “Trainz is Trainz and you can do with it what you want - There’s no one here or at N3V to stop you from doing that -“.


Frankly, this statement surprised me, although John did go on and add - “ at least for now”.



Hence my original question - will my purchased copy of TRS 19 Platinum continue to operate if N3V should cease trading?



So far, the answers received appear to be saying, Not unless N3V, prior to it ceasing to trade, issues an independence “patch” to all those that qualify.


I am open to correction, but these answers would suggest the validity of Wreeder’s #9 statement - “--we are co-dependent on (N3V) surviving into the future”. This basically was my previously held view hence my surprise at John’s statement and another reason for putting the question.


Allow me to put on record that I want N3V to succeed. I have too much time invested in WIP’s to wish otherwise. Furthermore, I have no aversion to paying an annual subscription if that’s what is required to maintain N3V equity and, that it represents value for money to my eye. I’ve been paying annual subscriptions to model railway clubs and societies most of my working life – why stop now.

John