Railworks Technical Update

[mearle73]

Into beta testing in April is that all parts of the upgrade or just part of it, and will it be a staggered release over next year ?

[Darpor]

How do we know that?

[Neptune50006]

Some interesting looking features there, especially the block assets.

[gnash]

How do we know that?

by reading the text quoted in the first post .

[lemberg]

Having tail lamps appear on the last coach or wagon when a loco is coupled to the set, and A1 being able to couple up should be the priorities at the top of the to do list.

thanks Keith

[SaMa1]

Sounds very nice, thanks RS.com! DLC announcements are usually relevant to only small portion of people, but these technical ones are relevant for everyone. Only problem I see here is that 6 players in multiplayer sounds bit small for possible bigger multiplayer events in scope but its good start nevertheless.

Only one to go in my signature after this

[Darpor]

How do we know that?

by reading the text quoted in the first post .

No.

The question was asked about beta testing, what would come when etc etc. We don't know the answer to it hence my reply.

[RailX]

fantastic news!

very good news for the beginning.
with this announcements the railworks "world" will be much more realistic.

One of the main visual goals is to implement a dynamic lighting system. This will allow us to have many more lights in the world, e.g. train lights, platform lighting and internal lighting.

can't wait to test this feature! realistic lighting........aaaahhhh

thanks to the railworks team! i wish you all a peaceful christmas time! stay well and fit guys!

greetz

Rail-X

[Tankski]

My main concern with the Multiplayer, and hopefully one that might be answered is; Will there be dedicated servers for it, or will it be a P2P connection?

[AndyM77]

How do we know that?

by reading the text quoted in the first post .

No.

The question was asked about beta testing, what would come when etc etc. We don't know the answer to it hence my reply.

The BETA testing starts when it's released to the public!

I'll wait to see it in action before any congratulations are sent to RS.com. The promised DLC fixes and "font" update would be far more preferable at the moment though....

[bigvern]

Route building enhancements sound good.

Draw distance I give a cautious welcome, no doubt it will improve the appearance of hilly/mountainous routes but as I've commented before this comes at the price of more work for the creator. Perhaps the exact "detail" distance will be defined in the route blueprint, allowing the creator to keep control of how far he is comfortable working out to. If it backdates to existing routes then these are going to look odd where terrain beyond 2km from the track is just standard "moonscape" green and rock.

The forest.dat type objects are very welcome, what we've been asking for nearly three years. Implementation needs to be clarified - will we be able to take an existing object (tree, house etc.) and set the area/density or will all new items be needed. If the latter, will we get a few in the box to start off with and detailed tech documents for the 3D modellers to start making their own?

[ihavenonamenoreallyidont]

For those asking about a fix to the "rubber banding" effect. Not much to go on but when you watch the section about the multiplayer towards the end, I was not able to see any evindence of "rubber banding". Fingers crossed this will be removed or improved upon.

Looked quite obvious to me from 1m31s for a couple of seconds. But hey, perhaps once all the changes they're planning are implemented, who knows?

[Kariban]

The multiplayer load should be pretty low; trains run in one vector along an already known ( to the client ) path ( unless they derail ), and signals are a bunch of binary states too. Player control means way less CPU work devoted to AI, so actually I can't really see why they're limiting this to 6 unless it's some sort of activity bubble.

[nobkins]

For those asking about a fix to the "rubber banding" effect. Not much to go on but when you watch the section about the multiplayer towards the end, I was not able to see any evindence of "rubber banding". Fingers crossed this will be removed or improved upon.

Looked quite obvious to me from 1m31s for a couple of seconds. But hey, perhaps once all the changes they're planning are implemented, who knows?

Indeed whenI watched again more closely the rubber banding can be seen as the 166 crosses the screen right to left. Anyway, still some fanstatic things announced and as you say who knows what will be in the final update. I know my fingers are crossed

[LocoPower]

Excellent news. In my mind, I always view RS.com as providers of the core product, while other people can produce content. It's great to see these developments underway, as I think this is what RS.com should be focussing on with complete zealotry.

Obviously there's no news yet on physics/realism improvements, superelevation, signalling and AI, but I'm sure not everything can be done at once. I'm just relieved that there is some proper development of the core product going on, as it had been awfully quiet from RSC Towers on the core product side for a while, it was just all "content, content, content". (Speaking which, aren't there still a few updates required for some of the DLC products?)

I'll be fascinated to see how the multiplayer (MP) is designed. I just hope it has a proper server-client relationship, rather than peer-to-peer. Then regardless of whether it's a professionally run server from a datacentre, or someone with a decent connection running RW in their living room, the server admin would be able to exert proper control of the server, it's settings, any customisations, etc. Will each MP session have a fixed amount of stock available that you can choose from, or do you just bring any old train to the party? How will it handle DLC content, including that purchased outside of Steam? 6 players is pretty limiting for the larger routes, but as long as the MP code is well written and well designed, I would assume this would scale up pretty quickly once established and tested.

I'd encourage the developers to take a look at some other titles with MP and see how (or how not) to do it:

Example of great multiplayer design & netcode
Live For Speed (http://www.lfs.net) - an indie racing sim, basically just programmed by one guy, with one artist, and one web dev. Admittedly this was built from the ground up as an online, multiplayer product (there barely is any single player mode, the entire driving experience revolves around getting on the track with other people, and some superb, realistic physics). But it runs with a proper server-client relationship, you choose from a list of hosts that people have started, either from their own instance of LFS or from the dedicated server version. It's a multiplayer PC title that has been designed as such.

Example of terrible multiplayer design & netcode
Grand Theft Auto IV - ported over from the consoles, and despite Rockstar Games having development budgets that RSC can only dream about, boy do it's console origins show when using multiplayer. Instead of having it's own technique written for handling players and game sessions, it uses the dreadful "Games for windows live" scheme, which is to gaming what syphilis is to Valentine's Day. Simplistic in the extreme, based on a peer-to-peer system that is fine for casual console gaming, but not at all suited (or to the expected standard) of PC gaming. When you start a multiplayer session you can't even give it a NAME, or a description, or say anything about what type of play the server is for. You have no control over who joins, or even who leaves/needs kicking. If the person that started the session then quits, "hosting" duties are then passed to the next person in the "ring", regardless of how good or bad their connection is. The system does work, in the sense that you can get online and play, but it leaves you feeling that it could (and should) have been so much more, and properly designed.


Obviously in RW, the kids will use multiplayer to stage some spectacular crashes, but doing it properly in a controlled environment with a signaller who knows what they're doing... well that would be pretty damn excellent, actually.