Atomic Systems

mickoo737 wrote:And all the others who urged caution ?.

Sadly they were shouted out of house ( quite vociforously in many cases ), problem is now that said same persons are urging other points ( some positive in the global train sim land scenario )and yet again there being ignored ?.

Truth is, as John D pointed out, this pile of mess will now impact peoples feelings towards up coming sims.

Time and time again were told not to mix apples and pears yet in the same breath those said same people are saying well if KRS did this and that then TSx will do this and that, now thats hypocrasy at its best.

Best

Michael

It's not just people's peoples feelings and atitudes towards up coming sims we need to be concerned with , if things do not go well here ( and they are not ) , the chances of ANY Dev funding or seeking funding for another Rail Sim are Zero . It's also possible that TS2 will also be Microsofts last venture into Rail sims if sales do not reach a level that satisfies the bean counters - Trains ain't Planes .

~A~

True, but any serious concern should not look at this product as a good measure of the markets potential, agreed its no where near as big as flight sim, commercially ( speaking personally ) at best it returned 1/10th of the revenue of flight sim, but then MSTS1 was a green field site, what you ship now should have a broader appeal.

However l fear your right, this mess will have ramifications far beyond what ( KRS, Kuju, EA or who ever is hiding behind smoke and mirror company names and renames ) have screwed up.

There haste to please all has pleased no one, and has shown how fickle the user market is, get it right and its follow the yellow brick road to the pot of gold, get it wrong and your stuck in a ditch by the road side....which is where KRS is right now....waiting for a bloody big tow truck to pull it out, and the longer that tow truck takes to arrive the deeper the KRS vehicle slips into the smelly muddy ditch.

If and when the commercial plans are realised and released you'll see many pushing said vehicle back into the ditch....not assisting to pull it out I'll wager.

Regarding TSx, l think your right too, ACEs are on a limb and l'm sure they only got the go ahead becuase they opted to use the FSx game engine, there by reducing considerably the ground work required to make the game, they also reused said same staff from TSx, again another smart move as there pretty clued up on the game engine already....rather than bringing in new staff and a new game engine, if they had done that then it'd be game over by now. I also think that FSxi will be the last flight sim, it cant progress much further, already the modeling is reaching very high levels and addons dripping away, mind you what you do get is very very good.

If MS had a game plan then the five year wait between train sims is probably too long, but the every two years flight sim production is killing developers and you just dont have time to catch up and learn whats new and explore it before its down tools and relearn it all again, three years would be better, after three years most people are ready to move on but two ?, just a little too soon IMHO.

Theres talk now already of FSxi and some l know who are struggling with FSx are thinking of leap frogging FSx, carrying on with FS9 modeling and then jumping full scale into FSxi, the same will apply here, many will look at KRs and figure to bypass it, go back to MSTS1 ( which many have already advocated pre release....and many are doing post release ) or seeking other avenues, for the first time in five years l'm considering Trainz, how many others are thinking alike ?.

Best

Michael

MaxFreak wrote:

mickoo737 wrote:And all the others who urged caution ?.

Sadly they were shouted out of house ( quite vociferously in many cases ), problem is now that said same persons are urging other points ( some positive in the global train sim land scenario )and yet again there being ignored ?.

Truth is, as John D pointed out, this pile of mess will now impact peoples feelings toward up coming sims.

Time and time again were told not to mix apples and pears yet in the same breath those said same people are saying well if KRS did this and that then TSx will do this and that, now thats hypocrisy at its best.

Best

Michael

It's not just people's peoples feelings and atitudes towards up coming sims we need to be concerned with , if things do not go well here ( and they are not ) , the chances of ANY Dev funding or seeking funding for another Rail Sim are Zero . It's also possible that TS2 will also be Microsofts last venture into Rail sims if sales do not reach a level that satisfies the bean counters - Trains ain't Planes .

~A~

PrinceGaz wrote:

Ryosuke wrote: of course we can expect KRS to be a lot better than MSTS and if you compare both out of the box then KRS is miles ahead.

I have to completely disagree. I bought both on release day before addons or patches were avalable, and i have to say that MSTS was playable out of the box. Ok it needed some fixes, lots of things do, but RS needs a whole and complete overhaul to make it playable and enjoyable.... I still remember being amazed when i loaded up the scotsman on settle to carlisle (despite the pop up LOD bridges!) it was easy to use and great fun to learn. In RS it took me half a day to sellect the loco i wanted and leave newcastle station! Only then to get countless off path errors (whatever way the points were set). Ive still not driven a route 2 days later. Its hard to setup, complex to use and there are no tutorials for beginners (thank god i already know how to operate a loco...). For 2001, out the box MSTS was Good, it was acceptable if not better, but RS is just bug filled and unuseable! I have no idea where you get that opinion from, but in my opinion its far from the case.

I know I was the one that started this thread and I still stand by my point that the actual released version of RS has a bit too many problems for its own good but before writing off RS completely, can we at least wait and see what these developers' tools are capable of. Also, I was trying to think of the bugs that really affect the sim and there aren't even that many, if someone could be bothered to list them into one single post, that would be good. It's important to distinguish between bugs and wants too.

It may not seem easy at the moment but seems to be because we are used to the MSTS way. Maybe we'll be grateful for the complex nature of it later on when we want to be doing advanced things.

My Take on this,Version 1 wont be the one that makes it in to the american release,like it or not right or wrong we are beta testing this,The program has got plus points if they sort the dross out and get it working like it should I think it will be a good game,also these people are not idiots,they know a lot of these bugs are in there.Since they released the 12th October date,they have had a few weeks to work on it so I wont be supprised if a 1.1 patch turns up quick

After two days I too have removed this from my C:/ drive. I got so frustrated with it that I must have been muttering at the screen because my other half came in to ask what was the matter. Her parting shot was that I should have bought the Hornby one and it was much cheaper!. I never had this kind of problem with MSTS1, despite it`s faults I could at least drive it. Having experienced that and struggling with KRS, I feel there are going to be an awful lot of disappointed youngsters at Christmas where parents have bought this for a stocking filler. They have no one to turn to, unlike the people on these forums.

I wrote in a post before release about buying blind and if the developers won`t answer questions before the sale what chance have you afterwards?. The silence has been deafening. Some sort of a communication with the mugs, sorry buyers might have gone a long way to taking some of the heat out of the situation. Wake up, you are at the Last Chance Saloon. I would love the sim to be put right, some of the touches in it are very nice. For gods sake, talk to us and at least try to salvage something from it.

I will put the £34 frisbee on the shelf and only reload it when a satisfactory set of patches make it playable.

Sorry if this rant spoils your sunday but I had to work out that frustration. Anyone for tennis?.

Regards,

Michael

i have not even got mine yet so i dont really know if its great or not ??


cheers

Matt

From what we've seen Adam and Derek, as to the tone of the replies on thr RS forums, any links I've not yet seen any post from"devs" on the forum, so I'm guessing few and far between. Running for cover? Burying heads in sand or right we got the pre order cash lets go (or smash n grab games develpoment as I like to call it).

This is begining to smell of neverwinternights 2, where we had a year of"we're working on it we'll fix it" talk from the devs and got nothing.

As a recent addition to the train simulator community and therefore somewhat of an amateur, I have to say that for someone like me I think this game is a complete disaster. After three days of trying out the game it shortcomings seems to be almost too long to list.

Despite having an almost new PC with a top of the range graphics card I get nothing else but continuous temporary freeze ups and glitches and no matter what I try I cannot get any decent graphics on my wide screen monitor without width and height distortion

The audio is so poor it is almost indescribable and therefore when driving a train there is no sense of realism whatsoever. In a nutshell the whole presentation seems rather amateurish and rushed out for the Christmas period.

If Electronic Arts are to have any success with this game then surely they have to attract more new enthusiasts like myself to the community. That would be to say someone who has average skills on his computer and does not want to spend hours tweaking graphics and audio cards before he can enjoy their purchase.

The final insult is to find out that you cannot register the game on the EA Gamereg website. despite being told it is important to do so in the paperwork. On entry you find it is not in the list of games that can be registered. However I think I will e-mail them to inform them of just what I think of their product.

Then like many I think I will stick to the old Microsoft train sim which despite being several years old is without doubt far better. I will then do some more learning while I wait for their new sim to come along.

In a nutshell this new simulator is total and utter rubbish
Bill Holbrook

People People!

Lets not forget that all these comparissons between MSTS and KRS are worth less. MSTS has 6 years of excellent 3rd party mods, excellent tweaks such as MSTS bin et al. Nobody, not even MS, could hope to bring out a sim that has everything the previous sim has. Is it really fair to ask Kuju to develop ALL of the routes, tools and stock that is currently available for MSTS? No. Will MSTS provide more than a handful of default routes and stock? No.

While there are issues with the KRS I can't think of any game that doesn't have problems when released. It's impossible for developers to test every conceivable spec of PC or graphics cards. At least KRS are listening and even admitting there are problems and working with the community to sort the niggles out. When MSTS was launched there were no tutorials, MS weren't communicating with the community and it was up to all of us to fill the gaps. The perfect example is the MSTS route builders guide that to first time developers was the bible on route building. These things will be created as time progresses. I have started route building and providin feedback to Kuju and will be posting tutorials on UKTS along with many others I'm sure.

Whilst many would like the advanced route building tools I'm glad Kuju has held off and is thoroughly testing via betas to get the tools right. So far (touch wood) I've never had anywhere near as many editor bugs than there were with MSTS and thats after 6 years of MSTS route tools where there were no patches or service packs. If what Matt has said about the beta tools and the ease of importing the DEM data is as good as it sounds then thats a major step in the right direction. How many of us had to go through the black art of importing DEM into MSTS? I posted a tutorial about adding extra tiles to MSTS routes as this was in no documentation anywhere and was purely trial and error.

So lets give Kuju a fighting chance with the new tools and all be patient whilst the 3rd party content is developed and released. I would put money that at this precise time people are developing away to bring extra content to the community. All I can say is that for those that are complaining about no extra content how many are doing something about it and developing the stock and routes that we are all waiting to see?

Dave

We are not running for cover and we are still here.

making a big list...

regards

Derek

RSderek wrote:We are ..
making a big list...

Working on a Sunday? You'll go far!

While Rail Sim may not yet be perfect I have to say that I have very much enjoyed using it, especially pleased with how well it runs on my 4 year old PC. I find some of the disparaging comments from certain contributors here way over the top, for a start the graphics and physics of Rail Sim are in a different league to MSTS. When the bugs and ommssions are sorted out and the tools to develop more activities are available, this is going to be a really excellent simulator.

Dave,

Not being a million miles away from Ashbourne myself (Tutbury, Staffs), I'd be very interested to see the LNWR route to Buxton. I've only ever known it as the Tissington Trail! lol

atpyatt wrote:While Rail Sim may not yet be perfect I have to say that I have very much enjoyed using it, especially pleased with how well it runs on my 4 year old PC. I find some of the disparaging comments from certain contributors here way over the top, for a start the graphics and physics of Rail Sim are in a different league to MSTS. When the bugs and ommssions are sorted out and the tools to develop more activities are available, this is going to be a really excellent simulator.

Dave,

Not being a million miles away from Ashbourne myself (Tutbury, Staffs), I'd be very interested to see the LNWR route to Buxton. I've only ever known it as the Tissington Trail! lol

Hear hear.

Are we clubbing together to buy them pencial sharpeners and paper, they're goiong to need a lot.