Knowing my passion for all things trains, Sinterklaas was nice and put Transport fever 2 in my clompje this year. All of the following is from my Trainz perspective.
First, the visuals are fantastic and the animations of both people and scenery objects are very well done. The game allows for an extensive set of mods that can modify the actual game play as well as add new objects that can be placed and used, like the DLS. I used the plain vanilla version of the game, out of the box so to speak with only a few recommended mods. If any mods could address my comments, I’m not aware of them.Had a quick look at modding and it appears that a lot is possible, it is not a casual endeavour.
While new tracks are well integrated into the landscape and are relatively simple to place, making position adjustments can only be done by destroying and rebuilding. And that is for every object. Without any real measurement tools, everything is just eyeballed and approximate. Nice that catenary can be automatically placed but a fatal flaw is that they don’t follow a zig-zag path over the rails. Guaranteed to cause premature damage to the pickup shoes of all the pantographs.
While tracks appear procedural, there are no turnout blades at the junctions. There are no rail clips or chairs to hold the rails to the ties, they just lay on top of the them. The ability to place parallel tracks by just laying they near to the existing line is very handy. The signals are also very primitive. No advanced, diverging, absolute or permissive distinction.
The world is very small. The result is that they look like some of the best Philskene creations – beautiful table top layouts, albeit a large table but nowhere near the vast real-live distances we can build in Trainz. Cities and supply industries are so close together that it would be hard to justify a train service. Just as they get up to speed they have to slow down. Speaking of which, their acceleration and braking performance is phenomenal. With the short distances I suppose this is needed but very disconcerting to come barrelling into a station and stopping in the last several meters. Those passengers better have a really good grip on a solid support or they’ll all end up piled up near the front of the car. The same thing with cargo, lash it down really well or there will be a big mess at every stop. The instant reversals without the use of a Y are also weird.
You have to micro mange everything. A good thing the world is so small or there would be no time to revisit every town and industry to keep making adjustments.
One of the fun activities I enjoy after building my world is to hop in an engine and go for a ride. While you can sit on the front coupler of a train or front bumper of a road vehicle, that’s it. No going for a joy ride.
So is it worth it? As an interesting diversion and to see how some things could be done, it’s fun. To build a tabletop layout of your dreams it has great potential. Once built and programmed, you just get to sit back and watch except for all the micro managing. But to build and run an actual simulation of the real world, it leaves too much to be desired for my taste. Perhaps in future versions or in mods I have not found yet.
First, the visuals are fantastic and the animations of both people and scenery objects are very well done. The game allows for an extensive set of mods that can modify the actual game play as well as add new objects that can be placed and used, like the DLS. I used the plain vanilla version of the game, out of the box so to speak with only a few recommended mods. If any mods could address my comments, I’m not aware of them.Had a quick look at modding and it appears that a lot is possible, it is not a casual endeavour.
While new tracks are well integrated into the landscape and are relatively simple to place, making position adjustments can only be done by destroying and rebuilding. And that is for every object. Without any real measurement tools, everything is just eyeballed and approximate. Nice that catenary can be automatically placed but a fatal flaw is that they don’t follow a zig-zag path over the rails. Guaranteed to cause premature damage to the pickup shoes of all the pantographs.
While tracks appear procedural, there are no turnout blades at the junctions. There are no rail clips or chairs to hold the rails to the ties, they just lay on top of the them. The ability to place parallel tracks by just laying they near to the existing line is very handy. The signals are also very primitive. No advanced, diverging, absolute or permissive distinction.
The world is very small. The result is that they look like some of the best Philskene creations – beautiful table top layouts, albeit a large table but nowhere near the vast real-live distances we can build in Trainz. Cities and supply industries are so close together that it would be hard to justify a train service. Just as they get up to speed they have to slow down. Speaking of which, their acceleration and braking performance is phenomenal. With the short distances I suppose this is needed but very disconcerting to come barrelling into a station and stopping in the last several meters. Those passengers better have a really good grip on a solid support or they’ll all end up piled up near the front of the car. The same thing with cargo, lash it down really well or there will be a big mess at every stop. The instant reversals without the use of a Y are also weird.
You have to micro mange everything. A good thing the world is so small or there would be no time to revisit every town and industry to keep making adjustments.
One of the fun activities I enjoy after building my world is to hop in an engine and go for a ride. While you can sit on the front coupler of a train or front bumper of a road vehicle, that’s it. No going for a joy ride.
So is it worth it? As an interesting diversion and to see how some things could be done, it’s fun. To build a tabletop layout of your dreams it has great potential. Once built and programmed, you just get to sit back and watch except for all the micro managing. But to build and run an actual simulation of the real world, it leaves too much to be desired for my taste. Perhaps in future versions or in mods I have not found yet.