MSTS2 E-mail

[jamesh]

Hi All,
Long time, no post. Anyway I just wanted to point something out, and that is that this post deals with MSTS 2 as was announced last year at E3, you know the version that was built by Kuju. MSTS 2 does indeed appear to be dead in the water, however there has been no announcement from MS regarding the future of the train-sim franchise. MSTS2 was just a title, like FS2000, FS2002, or FS COF, all of which were part of the FS franchise.
The fact that there has been no "official" announcement from MS can be taken two way. One, MS is worried we'll all get mad and dump them. Two, MS is leaving the door to the future open, and while there is nothing coming soon, it doesn't mean that a future project has been ruled out.
Well we all know the MS isn't concerned with what a small group has to say so we know they're not worried about hurting our feelings.
There have also been several offical announcements from MS recently in which they have quite definitely said there will not be a future developments of certain games, such as their sport games. The lack of an official press release on the future of MSTS would therefore possibly mean that a final decision has yet to be made. We know MS sunk a lot of money into Kuju and has nothing to show for it, but we also know MSTS was a money maker and did very well, so I would suspect MS licking it's Kuju wounds and trying to decide on the future.
Also bear in mind it's not uncommon for MS to go years between the release of certain games before they release a different version, developed by a different company, or in some cases by the same one.
I remember playing the original Starlancer, it was several years before Freelancer arrived on the scene, infact such a long period that Starlancer was dropped from the products page. There was also a fair gap between Age of Empires and it's future releases and the future releases weren't develped by the same companies.
My hunch is that MS knows about $$, and what programs made them $$ and what didn't. If the MSTS franchise wasn't worth it, I think they'd have said something officially. However I suspect that MS is trying to figure out the "who", "what", and "when" and this means, don't hold your breath but all is not lost. Sadly the only way we'll know is in time.

Cheers,
James.

[longbow]

It's hard to believe that there is no commercial basis for MSTS 2 given that Auran are developing Trainz aggressively on a fraction of the sales volume.

Fortunately, there's plenty of juice left in MSTS 1 thanks to the efforts of the trainsim community. Just look at the improvements in all areas over the last year or so. But the constraints in the game engine are becoming more apparent as the modelling improves, as evidenced by declining frame rates. Eventually the competition will offer compelling reasons to move on. I'm quite sure that many of us will end up running Trainz Pro Lite if MSTS goes no further.

[thenudehamster]

I think TS still has plenty of life left in it.
I've yet to actually play Trainz, though I did download their demo a while back, I wasn't very impressed with what it needed in terms of hardware, nor what the demo actually did, so whether Trainz will really take over the mantle from TS is debatable from my point of view. The two formats being incompatible, too, adds difficulties.
On the assumption that M$ are unlikely to release the source code to MSTS so that the various bugs, flaws, omissions, and general screwups can be corrected, is it feasible for a program-code savvy genius, (or consortium of them) to write a new game engine from scratch that would use the present MSTS file and data strucutre? Give us the best of both worlds and cut M$ out of the loop entirely?

[NeutronIC]

Paul Gausden (decapod) is already kinda doing that with shape files on his 'shape file viewer' so no, it's definitely not beyond the realms of possibility

Matt.

[johndibben]

Must say I'm impressed with the standard of debate in this thread (hope that didn't sound patronising!!!) - I mean that it hasn't degenerated into a flame war.

I'm also impressed and amazed, as it's a very immotive topic.

Possibly most members had already formed their own conclusions.

Looking forward to Decapod's train-sim

Plenty of Southern stuff on that, I'll bet

Only kidding

[saddletank]

Looking forward to Decapod's train-sim

Working Title: CSTS (Col Stephens Train Sim)

[johndibben]

Will he stop at the WC & P?

[Shorts]

Having read all these posts I would like to add my thoughts to the arena. I, like countless other devotees to MSTS do not fully understand all the complexities of 'hard codeing, shape file viewers' and the like. I admit I am not technically knowledgable. However I enjoy running trains on routes. I'm not a purist, like many others I am not sure of what model engine and rolling stock ran where and when. I dabble with the Activity Editor and enjoy that but I am frustrated with mainly only two problems with MSTS. They are the lack of a working Turntable and the inability to couple rolling stock to the front of an engine. That aside, I have enjoyed many hours with MSTS and I hope that all the developers who write routes and provide all the downloads of engines and rolling stock continue with thier worthwhile projects. Let us hope that even if the worse comes to the worse and MSTS 2 never arrives MSTS 1 will go from strength to strength.

[47354]

Shorts,

If something is 'hard coded' it means that the item in question cannot be altered except by changing the original codebase.

In practical terms, it means that something like, say, the width of a tile cannot be altered by modifying a text / data file - the width is configured within an executable file.

Hope this helps