Just bought my first payware addon

[Acorncomputer]

Hi

I think this was the reference to Adam's excellent explanation of the situation -

http://forums.uktrainsim.com/viewtopic. ... m#p1317438

Whilst the inadequacy of signalling and AI may not be good enough for some, I think the majority (almost certainly the silent majority) will be perfectly happy with the simulation as it is and will enjoy what we already have.

I believe that there is much more to come from RS.com in respect of some aspects of the simulation and there will be little or no improvement in other aspects but there will be improvements that we will all benefit from. Ultimately there will be a new version of RailWorks, possibly not compatible with the current version, but RS.com are the most likely source of a future Railway Simulator that will tick all the boxes.

Keep buying the DLC (and third party products) to help RS.com to keep on developing.

[paulz6]

That's good to know, however... and I know you might not be able to say because you're an employee / contractual reasons, are the "Code" teams in the same office / building as the "arty" types? If not, is this a possible reason why things are percieved as not seeing "Core" items being fixed?

It's an interesting question. Is code work contracted out back to Kuju? Do RS.com have a full time coder? If so, was he/she part of the original Kuju team? Do they know the internals of the software or are they still learning how the complex software works?

I'm not sure we need a completely new version of RW to rectify a lot of the issues discussed in these forums, but then again I do not know the software internals. Perhaps it's just a case of scheduling business priorities which do not always match the sentiments on this forum. Then again, maybe a lot of outstanding issues are quite simple to fix but there is no one with immediate in-depth knowledge of the software to know how simple they are.

I personally don't mind buying an updated version of RW every two years or so. But there does need to be some continuity and compatibility due to the length of time taken to produce add-ons, freeware or commercial. People are also spending a lot of money on commercial add-ons, so I don't think a lot of people would wish their expensive collection to have a short lifespan either.

[RSderek]

hi, sorry have been away playing footy.

I can confirm we have full time coders and they sit less than 4 feet from my desk.
They are not the arty types for sure. they dabble in 'coder art'.
There is a bigger plan for sure, PJ has often spoken about where he wants RWs to go.
All I can say is that there is a dev team, and it is dedicated to RWs for many years to come.

regards

Derek

[Oldpufferspotter]

A Question:
If the despatcher were to be completely rewritten from scratch, and the signalling completely rewritten likewise, and lost all backwards compatability, would you all be prepared to completely resignal the routes you have created or downloaded, and rewrite all the scenarios you have created or downloaded?
If RS.com created a new RS3, and this new package lost all backwards compatability with RS and RW, would you be happy with that idea?
With all the remarks in so many threads about the need for something to be done about AI and signalling, I think that this possibility has to be considered.
regards Ted.

[msey0002]

A Question:
If the despatcher were to be completely rewritten from scratch, and the signalling completely rewritten likewise, and lost all backwards compatability, would you all be prepared to completely resignal the routes you have created or downloaded, and rewrite all the scenarios you have created or downloaded?
If RS.com created a new RS3, and this new package lost all backwards compatability with RS and RW, would you be happy with that idea?
With all the remarks in so many threads about the need for something to be done about AI and signalling, I think that this possibility has to be considered.
regards Ted.

No. Or rather, not at all. I am not prepared to let the hundreds I have thrown at this sim go to waste

[rabid]

I would be quite happy if the AI and singalling were redone from scratch for the next version of RWs, as long as the rolling stock I've bought could be reused. That's where most of my cash has gone into! In fact I'd rather have a new version of RWs than trying to drag out the current flawed version for years and pretending the signalling and AI aren't that bad (and sound issues).

[Acorncomputer]

When talking about backwards compatibility, I think we are looking well into the future for any completely new version of RailWorks and I doubt if there would be any problem with locos or rolling stock anyway. Even with my meagre knowledge I think that Rolling Stock and Scenery would be OK or could be converted very easily and as most of the DLC that has been produced so far falls into this category, then there should be no question of buying products that have a very limited life.

There has to be a limit, though, to the extent that the signalling and dispatcher can be developed without breaking scenarios and routes already written and created. I hope those coders are really good and can mix the old with the new and so far, with a few minor glitches, this has been achieved. Even though the Career System has had a mixed reception, its development must have given everyone involved a much better insight into the way that the program works and that is good for all of us.

As Michael Jackson once said 'I am not like other Railway Simulators' (or words to that effect) and then went on to thrill us for years. RailWorks is not like other Railway Simulators but I am sure that it will thrill most of us for years to come.

[msey0002]

what about routes? 25euro for GARL, 25euro for WCML, 25euro for IoW, 25euro for Bristol/Exeter. that's no small sum

[Acorncomputer]

what about routes? 25euro for GARL, 25euro for WCML, 25euro for IoW, 25euro for Bristol/Exeter. that's no small sum

All of these routes are unlikely to suddenly stop working overnight, especially those that are covered by the RailWorks ready guarantee. Indeed RS.com are just not going to break any commercial routes and as long as freeware designers stick to the building standards, then freeware routes will be fine as well.

As long as you have RailWorks installed on your computer, then all commercial purchases, routes or otherwise, should keep working as designed for many years to come.

(PS With 17 people so far confirmed in the Route Building Challenge 2 and the prospect of up to 20 new routes available by the end of October, RS.com would be in deep trouble if the efforts of these Challengers was to become suddenly unusable. It is very unlikely to happen).

[rabid]

I guess those who want the improved AI and signalling could always go back to/over to Trainz, but I like the way RW looks and rather like RSC as an outfit. I'm also a sucker for those nice models which keep appearing and draining my bank account. I suppose one could buy TS2010 as well as RW to play with the dispatcher.

[Oldpufferspotter]

When I posed my question, I did assume that all rolling stock and scenery items would be compatible and be used as before.
If the signalling was to change very much, for example AI trains were controlled by the signalling instead of ignoring it, and the scripts were not compatible with existing scripts, then some resignalling would be necessary? Or perhaps, hopefully, it would be the case that we would use the existing signals as they are now, and it would only be the scripts that are different and they would be working away in the background without us noticing.
If the despatcher changes very much, would that also necessitate a reworking of any existing scenarios? Hopefully the original start times would remain the same for each AI train, and the new despatcher do its new calculations from that point onwards, and we would only notice the improved results.
On the other hand, how many 'work-arounds' have our developers used to make a scenario work as realistically as possible, and would these have to be amended to make a new system work properly?
regards Ted.

[msmith4000]

I have had scenarios that did not work properly due to crawling AI. Repeated play throughs of the scenario's would fail at the same place. Trying the scenario's at a later date after a month or two, they worked fine. It is clear others also experience problems with scenario's that work then dont work then work again.

Clearly the way dispatcher is designed to work, although serves its purpose most of the time, is flawed and not ideal and could do with improving. As the despatcher is a critical part of the game surely RS.com must have plans to improve or rewrite the despatcher, whether this will be a core update to Railworks at a later date or be relased in the form of Railworks 2 with other major game/simulator engine updates (ie multithreaded) we shall see.

As for compatability of old scenarios after a major upadate to the way the dispatcher works, RS.com should be able to keep the functionality of the old dispatcher so that old scenrio's still work and any new scenarios would use the new dispatcher, ie the dispatcher would be able to run in 2 different modes. The old method and the new method.

[sanyix]

If a game already made for single core, it's nearly impossible to make it to support multi core correctly.
And tell me, when did you see a REAL major update for RW, what contains big improvements? I can't remember one.
So i'm afraid the better dispatcher will be remain just a promise, as the physics fixes

BTW it would be easy to make better despatcher the OpenTTD is open, so rs.com programmes should watch that source code. It's AI controls hundreds of trains intelligently, without problems (if you put the signals to correct place), with the path signals.

[exshunter]

True, they still hav'nt sorted the sounds for rear power cars yet, and how long has this existed?? From Rail Simulator days i think

[sanyix]

True, they still hav'nt sorted the sounds for rear power cars yet, and how long has this existed?? From Rail Simulator days i think

and the crossover render bug... and the diesel hidraulics torque converter, and the diesel electric field divert, and the electric field divert, multiple unit controlling, etc...

BTW the sound thing is "hackable" but still not a 100% solution.