How important is realism?

TractorBasher · Post by **TractorBasher** » Wed Mar 31, 2004 10:05 am

I have been trying my hand at creating activities and seem to have a grasp of the basics. I'm getting a lot of enjoyment out of the Warrington Railways route at the moment and have a couple of ideas for new activities, which I hope to create in the coming week or so.

What I'd like to know though, is how important is it that activities reflect real life? If I were to create some new activities to share with the community, would you want them to be based on actual workings? Is it important that all the stock and consists would genuinely have been found in the area at the time the activity is based on or is it more important to have an interesting traffic pattern?

I've already written a Manchester-Holyhead activity where you drive a class 37 and MkIIs through Newton-le-Willows and Warrington and down through Helsby towards Chester. Plenty of modern AI traffic around which seems to run smoothly. It needs a bit of tweaking though, I think. Champy tested it for me (if anyone else wants a go, drop me a line) and gave some good feedback, which leads me to another question about timetabling of trains.

Should I just allow TrainSim to work out my station stops, or should I manually adjust them to get them to the nearest minute? Is it better that I have an arrival and departure time, or just a departure time and allow the player to work their own arrival out? Also, if I change the number of passengers at a station, is this stored as part of the activity or is it part of the route? I don't want to adjust it on my computer and then find that everyone else gets a different result because they have different passenger numbers.

Anyway, I've rambled on enough, for now.

Your thoughts and advice would be much appreciated.

Regards,
Jonathan.

asalmon · Post by **asalmon** » Wed Mar 31, 2004 10:19 am

personally I think you should round times to the minute. I have posted before how to do this, should be easily found in a search.

the passengers waiting is stored in the ACT file, so don't worry about setting it (that is assuming you're setting it in the activity editor and not the route editor!)

Alan

TractorBasher · Post by **TractorBasher** » Wed Mar 31, 2004 10:26 am

Thanks for that. Yes, it's in the activity editor that I would be editing it. It was your post that prompted me to change the times in the first place, but I just wondered what the opinion was. I find that it works well enough, although at some stops you can be waiting for quite a while. Now that I know I can edit the passenger numbers, I can tweak things so that you're perhaps only stationary for a minute at a small station.

spikeyorks · Post by **spikeyorks** » Wed Mar 31, 2004 11:02 am

Personally I'm not a "rivet counter" but I do need activities to be believable. ie I'll quite happily drive an HST on a semaphore signalled route set in the 60's if all the other traffic is set in the same time as the HST.

What I wouldn't be happy with is driving your Cl37 to Holyhead and passing a Pendolino, the Rocket, the Flying Scotsman and then say another Cl37 !!!

With regards to timetabling I think it is important to set up a manual timetable as you are then controlling matters rather than the system. You can then determine station stops, recovery time, tight timings dependent on your own driving skills (or even lack of them !!!). Since you will be testing the acticity over and over jotting down the actual times and keying them in isn't really an issue.

Watch out for waiting times though. There are several activities that have say an arrival at 12.00, departure at 12.01 but waiting time of 3 minutes. Automatically you lose 2 minutes for no good reason.

Finally if you have a long station stop and the station has a nearby yard then why not put a shunter in it pottering around pushing some wagons backwards and forwards. Stops me from getting bored anyway !

David

davidaward · Post by **davidaward** » Wed Mar 31, 2004 11:26 am

In some instances, realism is not very playable for MSTS, sometimes I stretch the rules to give a more intensive AI traffic and I reduce waits in stations to make activities more playable, there's nothing worse than waiting 10 mins for a path

ianmacmillan · Post by **ianmacmillan** » Wed Mar 31, 2004 11:44 am

One of my pet hates is to see pre nationalisation liverys and private owners wagons running with diesels and DMUs.

Even if the wagons had never been repainted the lettering would have worn off before the diesels were introduced.

If a wagon I want to use is not available in BR livery I repaint it.

Lad491 · Post by **Lad491** » Wed Mar 31, 2004 11:45 am

i think a mixture seems to go down well. When i first started activity writing I just used fictious timetables, let MSTS calculate the timetable, stuck in loads of AI traffic.

As i became a bit more experienced, I started using real timetables ( although sometimes you still have to use a bit of licence with AI traffic to stop things looking boring ), calculating my own timetables with tight sections and slacker sections, introducing ovetaking or passing services, longer station stops at some larger stations, signal checks etc.

Now i use both methods, often i'll do a purely random one to get a "feel" for the route and make later attempts more accurate. Since I know nothing about railways I use whatever stock is available, usually from the route CD.

I think you will find whatever you do will be well received. The important thing is that you have fun doing it, others can choose if they want it or not.

tinsley · Post by **tinsley** » Wed Mar 31, 2004 12:09 pm

As long as it 'feels' realistic I'm happy...
Stock is not a problem...just alter the consist in Conbuilder

I only drive steam so you can imagine how many consists I change before playing activities...

The secret is to try to replace consists with others of similar performance/weight/power...

jbilton · Post by **jbilton** » Wed Mar 31, 2004 4:54 pm

Hi
Well talking about realism.....look at this for a beaut....

http://forums.uktrainsim.com/viewtopic. ... highlight=

ianmacmillan · Post by **ianmacmillan** » Wed Mar 31, 2004 5:48 pm

I'm perfectly happy to run British trains on foreign routes.

The Japanese routes have left hand running and similar signals and British trains do not look out of place.
As long as the trains are consistant and you do not meet a GP38 coming the other way, I'm happy

There is alread a good British activity for the odakyu route.

Odakyu SPT Activity [31020 bytes] - TH_SPT.zip
File ID: 1010 Date: 24 Feb 2002 - 479 Downloads

thenudehamster · Post by **thenudehamster** » Wed Mar 31, 2004 6:51 pm

My basic criterion for activities, routes and rolling stock is the same - does it feel right? It's not critical that everything is prototypically accurate, but as Ian says, if you're driving a Britannia, you don't want to meet a GP-38!
Making life interesting in the sim means making things unlike the real thing anyway. Most train movements (unless you're somewhere like Clapham Junction in the rush hour) are far enough apart that it makes life tedious waiting for something to happen.
See what it feels like; if it feels right, it probably is right, as far as playability goes.

jbilton · Post by **jbilton** » Wed Mar 31, 2004 8:13 pm

ianmacmillan wrote:I'm perfectly happy to run British trains on foreign routes.

We know......and Foreign trains on British tracks.....and NZ trains on USA tracks....etc...never seen what you did with Alpensee...

simont · Post by **simont** » Wed Mar 31, 2004 9:07 pm

I would agree with the general consensus- while it's nice to get everything perfectly accurate, what you should aim for is a realistic feel- no unrealistic mixing of stock types.

P.S. that Japanese SPT activity is one of mine... could probably do to be updated as there's a lot more SPT stock out there now.

kevarc · Post by **kevarc** » Wed Mar 31, 2004 9:44 pm

I like them as real as I can get them. Before I do activities I research and find out what ran and the type of trains on the line. This is fun to me and I learn a lot.

Though I do tend to add way more AI traffic than a route may have. I like to see them and it reduces the boredom factor on some routes.

TractorBasher · Post by **TractorBasher** » Wed Mar 31, 2004 11:13 pm

Happy to report that I seem to be doing things right for most of you.

Would like some volunteers to try out my first activity before I upload it.

Thank you everyone!