Atomic Systems

Virtual Trainsimming.

To be honest, i never knew what the appeal was. I myself love all kinds of simulation games, mostly flight, but also naval, ground warfare. Ive spent Years in MSFS and others. I am a beta tester for a current PC flight sim and contribute content. So one might say that I have above average knowledge when it comes to knowledge of the PC sim industry and computers. I know that games come with bugs, and they updated. This is a fact for PC games.

Anyway, one day I noticed that RW3 was on steam, and decided to see what it was all about. Doing a bit of research I noted that not only was the base game expandable with a large amount of DLC (also availible through steam) but also there was a thriving user made addon community, with literally hundreds of freeware content to be had. Not only that but the info on RW3 said it was backwards compatible.

This in mind I took the plunge and purchased the base game, and was impressed. It ran well on my system maxed out, and i enjoyed chuffing about in various steam trains.

I then decided to get some DLC to add to my experiance.

It seemed a new engine was coming out, the GWR king class. Looked good so i eagerly purhased it on day of release. After initially being very pleased with its looks I noticed that the fireglow effect killed my FPS by 10 and also the sounds didnt work properly. Looking at these forums it seems RSC were aware of the sounds issue and it was being worked on. (No mention of the glow though). Oh well i thought, its a new product surely a one off. (Although I did wonder who beta tested it).

The Next was the Flying Scotsman... Problem was the Career scenarios (all the scens that come with it but one are career scenarios) didnt work. After spending hours reverifying RW3, looking around forums, and emailing RSC support I posted on these boards and eventually after some kind offers of help, was advised that the scenarios were "broken" and RSC was aware of this. This is despite having no reply to my support email over a week later. Hmm okay, well this is old content, and obviously not been patched to RW3 standards (despite it saying on steam it required RW3 to run it) nevermind.

So then I got WCML, this ran fine, and I played a scenario running from Carlise to Glasgow. I was blown away again by the graphics and detail of the route. Then about 10 miles outside of Glasgow, it crashed. It turns out that i cannot run this route and be anywhere near glasgow without it crashing. Which kind of limits its point as a route. My gut feeling is that RW3 is using too much memory on my 32 bit system and again searching this forum it seems that other have similar problems. Ok no problem, ill upgrade to a 64 bit OS at somepoint.

Then I got the Hall addon from steam, this time the cabin view was corrupted. Luckily I managed to fix this myself copying the view from the falmouth hall. Looking at the forums I noticed that RSC had said this issue had been fixed. Not for all it seems.

Finally today i purchased the DT 2p. Again lovely model but amazingly the cab view was also off. Again this required me to manually edit bin files to fix (a couple of verifiying of local files didnt fix the issue) something that i dont feel capable of or intrested in doing
So thats my experiance of DLC. Not brilliant one might say. Furthermore RSC support seems to be unable to reply to support emails and the main help is to be had by other users on these boards. But given these are paid for expansions (and not cheap) and that there is no mention of them having any of the various problems mentioned I do find it rather off putting.

As a newbie to this hobby its enough to make me question the entire thing.

I would love to hear your views on the matter as a community. Is this par for the course? Is everyone happy and accepting of these problems or is it just me having a hard time understanding them?

Cheers for reading I hope this isnt taken as rant, but rather an honest report of a newcommers experiances in the world of RW3

I've never understood why when we buy computer software that we have to accept that it will be released with bugs and then we have to wait for updates to fix them, if we buy anything else we expect it to be perfect otherwise we would return it and wouldn't expect to be told, "oh if you wait a couple of weeks we will fix it for you". I guess what I'm trying to say is just because somthing can be updated it shouldn't mean it has to be. Just an observation.

Absolutely. We have to accept that bugs are always going to be there to a greater or lesser degree. Its the nature of software. Plus it has to work with over a huge variety of systems. But thats where testing comes in, and the ideal situation being that testing will reveal obvious things that the dev can then go back and fix. Of course deadlines, resources and just how easy the issue is to fix all play their part, and things can be missed .

What surprises me is that given the limited amount of DLC I've had direct experiance of above, there are some pretty obvious errors that had to be noticed. And yet there is no warning of compatiblity issues, notices of upcomming fixes mention at the point of sale. Now that could be just bad luck on my part, but it doesnt inspire me to continue purchasing.

I have dozens of FSX addons, some are better than others, many have issues, but rarely do they drop the ball so obviously. When they do much mention is made of it in reviews and also reports on forums. People decide to vote credit cards or not, at least from a position of prior warning. This means that the devs have to weigh the risks of getting poor reviews against releasing the product as is, which is often required due to resources or other commercial pressures.

My experiance so far of addons that ive seen is that they are released, and if you are lucky someone will report on the forums as to their experiances. There isnt site where we can check a review score of the product or anywhere to get information as to how it will run. Therefore we buy blind and on faith that the product in question is fit for purpose. So far it would seem that my personal faith has been misguided.

I honestly belive that no dev would want to willingly release a product with known bugs, and sometimes when it happens its unavoidable. But a lot can be done to help the consumer, with good aftersales support and communication.I know from personal experiance that this can happen due to dealings with another dev (which ironically I cannot mention on these forums) so why not others?

The PC games market is a dwindling one, the sim market a niche within it and I would dare to venture Train sims are a even smaller market within that. I would of thought that continued customer loyalty and support would be of interest to devs.

IMHO it should be about quality not quantity.

All good points, but its a story with many sides. I'm not disagreeing with much of what is said above, but to give some balance:

To be viable as a business, you have to keep generating sales and getting into new markets - hence seeing new DLC. This pays for the huge amount of time and money to develop new features (the TS2012 upgrade being a big set of new features) - no DLC income, no new features... indeed if the game doesn't develop then we would be back in MSTS territory with no support or upgrades, and a sim that has lasted as long as it has thanks to the hardcode of the game being developed by 1 individual.

Things should be tested before release, but 100s of hours of testing in house will be very quickly superceded by 1000s of hours of user time - so some bugs will be picked up that way. To be fair on RSC, they have been patching but expectations are inevitably higher than the time taken to fix. I'm sure we can think of bugs that havent but its a matter of priority. Most new DLC has been met with pages of "is it out yet is it out yet" - I'd prefer it to be out when its ready but I suspect I'm not in the majority there.

Personally I've had good and bad experiences with RSC customer support, but to be fair we get a good amount of presence on these forums from Derek and Paul which I can imagine most developers wouldn't want to do.

The 2P cab "bug" is due to the RW3 upgrade and affected other locos, its not a fault with the DLC itself.

B

Hi,
TS2012 did cause a number of issues for DLC, it is one we knew would happen and are working hard on 1st and 3rd party content to address any bugs caused.
Also,
There is a new core update due in a week or so, and maybe 1 or 2 more before Christmas.

Any issues you come across do report it to RS.com (support@railsimulator.com)

best regards

Derek

Hi,
TS2012 did cause a number of issues for DLC, it is one we knew would happen and are working hard on 1st and 3rd party content to address any bugs caused.
Also,
There is a new core update due in a week or so, and maybe 1 or 2 more before Christmas.

Any issues you come across do report it to RS.com (support@railsimulator.com)

best regards

Thanks for responding Derek. It does make a big difference to at least know that the Devs are aware, working on and care about such issues.

Ill re email support and highlight the issues Im having.

All I would suggest though is perhaps a notification that mentions that some DLC may have issues in the new RW3 engine, but that they are being worked on?

At least that way we can make an informed choice as to accept the DLC knowing that their may well be issues currently.

Hi SquidvT.
Welcome to the wonderful world of RailWorks.

I can't speak for some of the content and bugs you mention, and I don't know if you already tried doing two steps that in some cases can clear up some problems (but not always, especially if it's a "bug" inherent with RailWorks or the addon in question), but it could be worth a try if you've not done so yet already;

From your Steam-Client, games Library, right-click Train-Simulator 2012, Properties, Local Files, Verify integrity of game cache. This may take a while, but it will do a check to see if you have any missing or corrupted files with your installation and reacquire them if so. Sometimes it can take more than one pass to catch everything. Anyways, if you get a message like, "No missing files found", then your TS2012 installation should be good.

After that, Launch your RW3/TS2012, but don't start it yet. From the launcher window click on the Tools & Docs tab, then there click on the "Clear Cache" button. I find this is good practice to do after having a new addon or DLC installed.

After that, Start RW3/TS2012 as normal and see if that clears up some of those issues for you.

I do agree that RW3/TS2012 does have some issues that should, hopefully, be fixed with future updates.
Anyways, I hope that you're not too put off but the bugs you've experience so far and will still be able to have much enjoyment from RW3/TS2012 as many of us do.
Best wishes,
--Don.

Thanks Don,

Yes it seems ive spent most of my weekend re-verifying via steam and clearing blueprint caches But its good to know, that can fix many issues.

I am genuinely impressed by the community, and they have always offered a helping hand previously.

Happy to hear about the Core Updates Derek. Thanks for letting us know. Much appreciated.
Kind regards James.

When is the timetable out for the dlc upgrades?

michaeldono wrote:When is the timetable out for the dlc upgrades?

Depends on the TOC. If it's Cross Country you can ignore the timetable as it will be running approximately 23 minutes late

However did people manage with games that were released before the Internet became what it is today, no updates and no bug fixes!

davejc64 wrote:However did people manage with games that were released before the Internet became what it is today, no updates and no bug fixes!

We didn't. Worst game ever - Frontier First Encounters. Effectively shipped as alpha code, the publisher did send out a patch on floppy disc on request but this failed to cure any of the issues and after that they effectively abandoned it. I think the odd game patch also appeared on PC magazine cover discs but the process was entirely erratic.

The problem is that PC games are getting more and more complex and costly to produce. Back in the day a very small team or individual could produce a title. I am sure we remember "The Golden Age" of PC gaming, where you would walk into a store and be confronted by shelves full of every possible title. You may remember the huge boxes with hefty printed manuals etc.

These days the cost to develop a quality title have skyrocketed due to the advanced technologies involved. This complexity requires large teams and often 3rd party contributers to get the title together.

They all need paying too.

Actually digital distribution methods like steam are a god send to many devs. It allows them to reach a massive audiance and also have a common vehicle to update their titles. This again has opened the door for many indie developers. Of course Steam takes a hefty slice of the pie for doing so. They can also benefit the consumer by keeping games upto date and a host of other networking features like freinds lists, game invites and of course sales.

These days many titles rely on continued income from DLC to pay for continued development. Development which they simply cannot afford to pay for without continuing revenue streams.

Also the overall PC market is in decline. Although the death of PC gaming has be forcast many times there is a real issue with consoles being the dominant platforms with only relatively few still using expensive and difficult to use PCs as their gaming platform. One only has to look at the number of console ports appearing as PC titles to see the influence of the console industry.

As I mentioned PC simming is a niche within a niche. Its also a competative market. More and more devs are releasing their titles as free to play to entice people in and then fund themselves with payware upgrades.

So whilst we should all be aware of the hurdles a dev faces these days its within their intrest to provide good service to maintain their customer base.

Anyhoo, emails have been resent and I look forward to future updates and continued fun in RW3

At the risk of treading into "Open Forum" territory, I wouldn't agree that PC is necessarily dead. We have two consoles (XB360 and PS3) and they rarely get used compared to the PC. I do concur that simulation gaming as we knew it back in the mid to late nineties has taken a tumble, though I have seen something to indicate the Janes Air series may be getting a revival. It had just better be an improvement on HAWX2!

Personally I would much rather have a boxed copy of an add-on or game than DLC, but that has proved to be a bit of an issue with RW where some of the older add-ons (IOW, Voyager, Bristol to Exeter etc.) have subsequently gone on Steam which creates a more complex upgrade for the publisher and risks owners of the original disc version being left behind - as has happened with IOW. And I do take a dim view of releasing a model, doing a few upgrades, then charging for new without any sort of consideration for previous purchase history (though the same thing happened with Trainz Classics 3 which morphed into S&C2009 in the Trainz scene).