Atomic Systems

Problem resolved, business as usual .

Keep it kind and civil and we won't be here again.

Ash

Looking further at the communication issue, it is in fact not unprecedented in the software world for developers to establish a close relationship with users of their software.

An example within our own genre is of course Auran with Trainz who have an officially supported forum including the "Suggestion Boxcar" where users can post requests for fixes and enhancements, which after mod approval are publicly displayed and someone from the devs normally puts up a response. For example, I posted recently about increasing the maximum terrain altitude. I didn't get the answer I wanted, but felt it had been dealt with fairly with an honest answer.

Another example is Egosoft with their forums for their "X" space games. Quite often you will see the developers pop comments on there. In addition, Egosoft have a very good newsletter service which gives details of upcoming patches and what is being worked on. (Except the last patch nerfed my Boreas, bah...!).

What both the above developers also have in common is a Devnet where users and developers alike can sit down and discuss things in a sensible manner.

Not saying any or all of the above is the way RSC should go but a Devnet (using decent software this time) would be far more effective than random forum posts or blogging - if users want to talk to the Devs or Techs then they know where to go.

That seems reasonable Vern and indeed have you put it to RS? Be interesting to see if there is a response to that one? But doesn't Derek still pop in on these forums and have a quick shufty? Maybe set up a thread exactly for that purpose and nothing else, and the mods deleting irrelevant and or flames/tosh from it! And maybe we could p.m Derek and Adam to occasionaly have a look at it with a brief comment?

Mart

smarty2 wrote:...and the mods deleting irrelevant and or flames/tosh from it!

Now THAT sounds like a recipe for roasting moderators over an open fire...

jp4712 wrote:

smarty2 wrote:...and the mods deleting irrelevant and or flames/tosh from it!

Now THAT sounds like a recipe for roasting moderators over an open fire...

Yep JP you could be right, but they get all shivery if we don't include em!

Mart

Vern, out of interest, and not aimed at posters here, how do these people keep the noise level down? I see this "freedom of speech versus communication efficiency" issue cropping up everywhere.

For the Trains boxcar, you say the suggestions are first approved by a moderator, before they are shown in public.

For Egosoft, the forums seem to be similar to UKTS or maybe Auran forums? (by your description, I never saw them).

Any newsletter doesn't have such issues, of course. What you cannot avoid is that the content of the newsletter is published and discussed in forums. But you can easily ignore these discussions if you like and only look at the newsletter. But that is not much dialogue then. If there are letters to the editor, we approach the model of the Trainz boxcar, I guess.

These Devnets, are they by invitation?

AndiS wrote:Vern, out of interest, and not aimed at posters here, how do these people keep the noise level down? I see this "freedom of speech versus communication efficiency" issue cropping up everywhere.

For the Trains boxcar, you say the suggestions are first approved by a moderator, before they are shown in public.

For Egosoft, the forums seem to be similar to UKTS or maybe Auran forums? (by your description, I never saw them).

Any newsletter doesn't have such issues, of course. What you cannot avoid is that the content of the newsletter is published and discussed in forums. But you can easily ignore these discussions if you like and only look at the newsletter. But that is not much dialogue then. If there are letters to the editor, we approach the model of the Trainz boxcar, I guess.

These Devnets, are they by invitation?

It should be noted that the Auran approach is a recent development that was created in part due to their need to test TRS2009 and get content updated to work with it and new content built to the higher content standards they were imposing.

John

Agreed the Trainz DevNet was a fairly recent development however the Suggestion Boxcar has, I believe, been there since Auran rebuilt their forums about 18 months ago. Back in the early days of TRS of course there was a fair amount of community "engagement" (sorry for buzz word!) with Greg Lane and John Banks frequently taking part in discussions and that does to some extent continue today with the new faces.

Re the Egosoft forums, they seem to be reasonably tolerant of constructive criticism though as with all boards there is a smattering of threads that get out of hand.

Difficult to grasp why there is not quite the level of intense feeling over issues on the Auran and Egosoft boards - though that said you still see the odd rant and the Auran boards occasionally get an outbreak of 9 year olds posting "gimme gimme" style threads in junior text speak. I think it all comes down to a sense of community and involvement. If there's a reasonable two way dialogue between the developers and their potential customers/content producers then that's half the battle won. Back to "engagement" I guess.

As regards the Devnets, for TRS you register and await approval, not sure how it works at Egosoft.

I have been trying to encourage the guys to look into the possibilities of setting up a forum whereby only the dev team can post..

The idea being that they read the threads in the various forums and can post statements in there.. sort of "Yard Formans Notice Board"

The advantage would be that they don't get dragged into a conversation / argument and are only ever addressing the entire community... never an individual.
If you post your query with a whole heap of attitude then don't expect a reply, it will get treated with the respect it deserves ... none.
Subjects like a request for assistance in a certain area would more than likely be met with enthusiasm.

Sly

Sly401 wrote:Quite honestley guys... you deserve nothing, your attitude is disgracefull, rude ,insulting and immature

YOU have driven away your direct line of communication for good.
Your constructive input has been poor to non existant, there is no benefit to listening to your inncessant whining and sarcasm or trying to appease you.

The guys are bound by professional conduct that you are not, you are anonymous.. they cannot respond to your sarcasm or insults in a like manner.. if they could you might watch what you were saying.
Don't remember Mike from MSTS2 having to put up with your insults, mainly I suspect because he kept his involvement marginal... these guys tried to become involved.. not anymore

Your opinions count for zero now, purely because a few have devalued them to such a point as to make them worthless.

You don't NEED to know anything of their plans, until it is announced it is nothing to do with you.. You might like to know but that is a different thing.

As for wild speculation and conspiracy theories.. what makes you think you know the first thing about it ? ....
You know nothing period.... and that goes for all the "names" on here with the very loud voices too.

You are now getting what you deserve.... to be blanked

Well Done

Sly

Right....

To be honest Sly, your right about the moaning issue. maybe us guys do moan a little too much.


BUT.....


I look at this in 2 lights, a train sim, and a product that is to be sold. this is how RSDL are probobly looking at it too. (Well they have to make money dont they!) which is fair enough.

But the reason people are moaning, especially myself, is that they can provide something, TAKE YOUR MONEY FOR IT, and Vanish.

Im not doubting anything about the simulator now, I have been convinced to buy it from the screenshots ive seen etc.

but in terms of the comercial aspect, it really does scare me how Im going to be paying these guys money, and there is no support around. yes they have said they will post somthing in the near future, but thats a typical Del boy style response.

that is something that is really bothering me. in my eyes, they have commited comercial suicide. this is a very poor thing for a product, especially something thats designed to be a relativly long term investment such as this,

as for knowing of their plans, YES WE DO! they have advertised several things (V2, 4f etc) which still dont exist to us. this is as people call eye candy, and is mainly what attracts people to the game. where is it?

I expect a lot of the moaning will stop once the new forums, and website is sorted out, and I really hope its done soon, but until then, I will be postponing my purchase of railworks.

rhysicus

rhysicus1989 wrote:

Sly401 wrote:Quite honestley guys... you deserve nothing, your attitude is disgracefull, rude ,insulting and immature

YOU have driven away your direct line of communication for good.
Your constructive input has been poor to non existant, there is no benefit to listening to your inncessant whining and sarcasm or trying to appease you.

The guys are bound by professional conduct that you are not, you are anonymous.. they cannot respond to your sarcasm or insults in a like manner.. if they could you might watch what you were saying.
Don't remember Mike from MSTS2 having to put up with your insults, mainly I suspect because he kept his involvement marginal... these guys tried to become involved.. not anymore

Your opinions count for zero now, purely because a few have devalued them to such a point as to make them worthless.

You don't NEED to know anything of their plans, until it is announced it is nothing to do with you.. You might like to know but that is a different thing.

As for wild speculation and conspiracy theories.. what makes you think you know the first thing about it ? ....
You know nothing period.... and that goes for all the "names" on here with the very loud voices too.

You are now getting what you deserve.... to be blanked

Well Done

Sly

Right....

To be honest Sly, your right about the moaning issue. maybe us guys do moan a little too much.


BUT.....


I look at this in 2 lights, a train sim, and a product that is to be sold. this is how RSDL are probobly looking at it too. (Well they have to make money dont they!) which is fair enough.

But the reason people are moaning, especially myself, is that they can provide something, TAKE YOUR MONEY FOR IT, and Vanish.

Im not doubting anything about the simulator now, I have been convinced to buy it from the screenshots ive seen etc.

but in terms of the comercial aspect, it really does scare me how Im going to be paying these guys money, and there is no support around. yes they have said they will post somthing in the near future, but thats a typical Del boy style response.

that is something that is really bothering me. in my eyes, they have commited comercial suicide. this is a very poor thing for a product, especially something thats designed to be a relativly long term investment such as this,

as for knowing of their plans, YES WE DO! they have advertised several things (V2, 4f etc) which still dont exist to us. this is as people call eye candy, and is mainly what attracts people to the game. where is it?

I expect a lot of the moaning will stop once the new forums, and website is sorted out, and I really hope its done soon, but until then, I will be postponing my purchase of railworks.

rhysicus

You know those MSTS guys? Well they did a huge amount without any support from Microsoft and ought not only to be commended, but copied and yet we have support. Sure its not within 24 hours, but it is being worked on. How do I know? Firstly, I have been around simulations, well counting the 80's I remember Silent Service, but on the PC since Flightsim 5.1 (who remembers Flightsim for Windows 95 lol). So I've seen it for awhile (not as much as some on here), secondly and most importantly, I've signed up for the RSS feed on their wiki page and I have seen a lot of activity on it. I have even seen the developer or two on other forums, but I'm not going to mention where.

What do you want them to do? Spend hours on here answering the same questions over and over again and never looking at a line of code? Whilst I'm replying to you and those that bemoan things like new forums and new website I'm not working on my scenario.

As for the moaning to stop, no it won't. To borrow a term from Australia there is a bunch of "Whinging Pom's" here and elsewhere and I have little doubt they will find something new to whinge on; its the nature of the beast .

I'm actually having fun, despite getting errors in my scenario to do with incorrect starting locations etc, but you work around them, just adapt for now.

Over and out,

Matt

As a new comer to train sims I am still struggling to understand why every thread is turned the same way.

You answered your own question, "As a new comer" you can't even begin to understand it since you haven't experienced every single irritating aggravating infuriating surprise party since the original railsim was released.

If there's a reasonable two way dialogue between the developers and their potential customers/content producers then that's half the battle won

More like three quarters, answer questions honestly without being coy, you get a lot more respect even from those who don't like the answer, and the ones hollering for realistic fleas on animated dogs will eventually go away if you just come out and tell them you don't intend to do that.

I have been trying to encourage the guys to look into the possibilities of setting up a forum whereby only the dev team can post..

The idea being that they read the threads in the various forums and can post statements in there.. sort of "Yard Formans Notice Board"

What would that accomplish? Yet another place where they can ignore questions that are hard or uncomfortable and only address the simple ones, you can get that from the FAQ. Derek's little demo of the terrain texturing on his blog is a good example, no potential for rebuttal. IN THAT CASE I agree with Derek and disagree with Vern (sorry Vern, gotta call 'em as I see 'em!) since I personally find the default out-of-the-box terrain texturing tools versatile and easy to use - but Derek's demo don't PROVE that, in fact it seems to prove exactly the opposite since he uses a custom terrain paint set and adds a custom shadow mask on top of it.

One thing I must say on a balance: As of this writing, there is no trace of superlatives left on their site, nor on Steam. Only Amazon has the "most authentic rail simulation experience available on the PC"

There you go, they sold me a moped without an engine on the promise that they would install an engine later. They did install the engine later but it won't run, so rather than fixing the engine they're changing the label from "moped" to "Very Heavy Bicycle".

In my estimation RailWorks is now a game which is only intended to satisfy the games player.
This means that my purposes in playing RS, route creation and scenario creation, will not be directly catered for in RW

Fine with me, if they would just SAY that I would go away and quit griping about it!

Now THAT sounds like a recipe for roasting moderators over an open fire..

Any kind of public relations job involves getting roasted even if the customers are happy, what they really need is a PR rep with asbestos underwear.

I expect a lot of the moaning will stop once the new forums, and website is sorted out, and I really hope its done soon, but until then, I will be postponing my purchase of railworks.

Most of it does boil down to garbled and incomplete communications. I have read here and there that the reasons for some of their apparently psychotic decisions back in the beginning of 2008 were due to circumstances beyond their control (prior contract agreements regarding who did what to who and who got paid and who got arrested when the cops broke in), and that by itself was the reason for most of the heat they got. We don't really need the soap opera details of all that, just tell us what will be fixed and more importantly what will not be fixed, 90% of the flames stop then and there. Only ones remaining will be like the kid over on the US forum who insists that animated crewman responding directly to commands should be the number one priority, he's got one of them center of the universe complexes that won't make it easy to convince him to go away. Tell me the AI traffic is what it is and they have no intention of "further enhancing" it, I'll be gone so fast you'll see nothing but a blur.

Hello,

I guess I don't push the game as hard as some, so I can understand the frustration in larger more complex layouts.

As someone else said, I don't want to chat to either Adam or Derek, just want them to address some of the errors.
Sooner rather than later, but I am having fun right now.
I'm not so old and daft to see the undercurrents but honestly it is a young mans game.
An old friend of mine once said, if you speak quietly people listen harder, I just hope RS.com can pick their way through the posts and fix what is important.

I've looked at the wiki most nights and notice it is being added too everyday so they have not vanished.

However if I had worked as hard as they say they have I'd be putting my feet up and having a snooze, afternoon naps really are a joy.

Thanks

Bill

A reasonable two way dialogue?.. sorry but you had the chance and blew it.

What good would a developers board do... it would give those that have genuine questions the chance to be answered plus it would leave those that choose to spar with sarcasm, vitriol, and in some cases darn right lies out in the cold.

Nah I guess it wouldn't be welcome everywhere

Sly

I am going to be quite blunt here, not talking as a mod, but my personal opinion.

If Derek and Adam have been told to lay off posting, then that's fine.

The wiki looks quite good, that is a good way for us to see what they are doing.

Derek does look in, so he does know what is being said, rightly and wrongly.

The longer they spend looking at posts here, and elsewhere, the less time they have to fix it.
That is the important bit.

Don't forget one very important bit, this is a game, its not a simulator, you could for instance get into an HST if it was running, and the driver had left his key in it,(which he would not have done so) and drive off, but the chances of you actually stopping where you should do are nil.

And saying that, the brakes for the most of the diesel locos in RS/RW are quite good.