I started reading the post about who thought about buying TS2010 and started to write a post there but found that I'd better make it a thread of it's own.
Since TS2010 seems to be 2009 with Speed treez I'd say it should have been a patch or add-on for 2009 rather than a completely new product.
It's rather obvious, and has been for at least a year and a half, that Auran just is trying to squeeze more and more money from us while doing less and less work. The list of examples is getting rather long. The new routes for 2009 are user made and would most likely been a lot less expensive as payware from the creators than they are from Auran. One of the have even been released before and now they charge for it again rather than supply an uppgrade!?
Auran will have to spend some time on the REAL l issues like how points work and look, AI, sound etc. etc. to get my support again. Nice looking trees are of course very nice but hardly essential, and if you look at it critically Speed Tree is just another attempt of adding content they don't have to spend much time on. Adding more and more glazing on a bad bottom will eventually have the cake tople over.
It's quite interesting to see how tha quality of this product have gone down hill since Nevefail took over the ownership. Their priorities doesn't seem to include Trianz in any other way than keeping it alive to raise money for other projects. I don't blame them, I would probably have done the same in their situation but can we please stop trying to convince ourself that they really care about the future of the product? With the new competiotion from RailWorks there are really only two ways to to for Auran with Trainz, either go for it and challange the new comer or give up and pull out.
That said, I really think some of the programers still care for the procduct and that's probably the only thing that keeps the leeky boat afloat.
I think the best thing for the future of Trainz would be that Auran/Neverfail dropped it and made it open source. That way the dedicated programers and content creators would be able to make some payware that we could have wihtout paying fot the development of Shipsimulator 20xx.. etc.
The development of the game could continue as user created plugins for AI, animation etc. Auran could even keep creating content and sell it or re-sell user content! If they'd liked they could keep the DLS and charge a small sum for it... Some servers and bandwith can't be thet expensive?
This is just my humble opinion. I know some of you really worhship Auran and have a hard time to see what might be going on in the background but please try to think about the big picture. I'm probably, and hopefully, not right on all accounts, but something is certainly not right and I'm aboslutely sure that things have to change for the product to live on and propsper.
/Mordachai
Since TS2010 seems to be 2009 with Speed treez I'd say it should have been a patch or add-on for 2009 rather than a completely new product.
It's rather obvious, and has been for at least a year and a half, that Auran just is trying to squeeze more and more money from us while doing less and less work. The list of examples is getting rather long. The new routes for 2009 are user made and would most likely been a lot less expensive as payware from the creators than they are from Auran. One of the have even been released before and now they charge for it again rather than supply an uppgrade!?
Auran will have to spend some time on the REAL l issues like how points work and look, AI, sound etc. etc. to get my support again. Nice looking trees are of course very nice but hardly essential, and if you look at it critically Speed Tree is just another attempt of adding content they don't have to spend much time on. Adding more and more glazing on a bad bottom will eventually have the cake tople over.
It's quite interesting to see how tha quality of this product have gone down hill since Nevefail took over the ownership. Their priorities doesn't seem to include Trianz in any other way than keeping it alive to raise money for other projects. I don't blame them, I would probably have done the same in their situation but can we please stop trying to convince ourself that they really care about the future of the product? With the new competiotion from RailWorks there are really only two ways to to for Auran with Trainz, either go for it and challange the new comer or give up and pull out.
That said, I really think some of the programers still care for the procduct and that's probably the only thing that keeps the leeky boat afloat.
I think the best thing for the future of Trainz would be that Auran/Neverfail dropped it and made it open source. That way the dedicated programers and content creators would be able to make some payware that we could have wihtout paying fot the development of Shipsimulator 20xx.. etc.
The development of the game could continue as user created plugins for AI, animation etc. Auran could even keep creating content and sell it or re-sell user content! If they'd liked they could keep the DLS and charge a small sum for it... Some servers and bandwith can't be thet expensive?
This is just my humble opinion. I know some of you really worhship Auran and have a hard time to see what might be going on in the background but please try to think about the big picture. I'm probably, and hopefully, not right on all accounts, but something is certainly not right and I'm aboslutely sure that things have to change for the product to live on and propsper.
/Mordachai
