The good old days? long gone

[deltic009]

It's indicative of the world today.

I remember when I got my first car, not that long ago in the mid 90's, it was a heap of junk but was designed so that you could do most routine maintenance easily yourself. I used to change my own oil and filter, spark plugs, starter motor, alternator, brake pads, leads, distributor etc easily in minutes and without specialist equipment.

Nowadays, car manufacturers have sussed out that there is money to be made in making DIY maintenance and repairs all but impossible. Rather than being designed for easy maintenance and modification, cars are now designed to make maintenance impossible for the DIY mechanic. About the only thing you can do now yourself is fill up the windscreen wash! Now if you want to tinker about under the bonnet, mend or improve your vehicle then you need to pay handsomely for a professional to do it as the car is now so much more complex, time consuming and awkward to work on than it ever was before.

Exactly the same applies to Railworks.

You can't have car that is less complex that uses less of the same fuel to make more power, the complexity comes as a by product of the engine being more advanced and more efficient etc. It is still easy to change brake pads and discs (I've done so myself on my own '08 Focus) and I've carried out a couple of simple replacement jobs that would have been expensive to have done by professionals (such as a split O-ring which cost 18 pence delivered!). Fuel injectors on modern diesel engines now pump at around 500bar pressure! - I'm sorry, but for that to be a reliable system then it will need more than a Haynes manual and a set of Halfords spanners to sort the job

[Stone75]

Do you have a webby of FB page Karma ? Struggling to find anything with Google.
steve

Not yet mate. There is a pic in the Screen shots WIP thread here (and an old style one in the photoshop thread) - in fact I'll chuck a couple more up in a mo - but that's all so far. I've just been so busy building until yesterday so I can take time off with the family over the next 2 weeks, I'll look at getting some kind of site or fb page up in the new year I expect.

Cheers bud, will keep an eye out for it in the future. All the best !

steve

[3DTrains]

http://railworksamerica.com/index.php/d ... =22:models

I suppose not the norm for a payware vendor, but myself and the rest of the group plan to keep to working on improving the package, even with some of the other members considering going commercial. I'm a firm believer that it's freeware that keeps a community alive and healthy.

[AndiS]

Two good pieces of analysis in one thread. You can happen to be in a situation where you have spare time without financial pressure. And you can happen to be in a situation where it either pays the bills or you don't find the time to do it. Simply as that.

If you think it through, you could postulate that unemployment must go down if there is an increase in payware and decrease in freeware. Not sure I would sign that, though.

Another dimension (and a reason why not everyone with spare time appears as productive today) is the advance in computer hardware. I remember these moans from day 1 of Rail Simulator, and it was unfair to attribute the change to the software back then already. Today's computers can process larger textures and more polygons than those in 2001. Creating a building to be placed near the track is as taunting today as was building a freight wagon 10 years ago.

This keeps out a few people and it decreases the numbers of engines any creator can produce in a certain number of hours, but it is just the consequence of technical progress, not more, not less.

[smarty2]

Hi Mark, nice! Happy christmas to you fella.

[equiglobal]

Just to add my two pennies worth. Have been involved with Trainsimming from the day MSTS reared its head & am now totally immersed in Railworks [& its predessors]; there is no doubt that freeware has diminished dramatically & as an OAP, the cost of this hobby, buying payware, is now becoming excessive. My choice, of course, don't have to buy the stuff. But the one area that really is a bit OTT & annoys me intensly is this marketing & sales position that RS have adopted where you have to purchase reskins of a base model, viz Cl66. However, its a wonderful sim, with some extremely talented people able to produce such accurate stock, scenarios, routes etc, and I suppose in this money driven world we now live in, having to pay is to be expected. Lets face it, if you want to 'phone a government dept, eg DVLA, DEFRA, etc., you have to pay there too !!
I hope we still continue to get some high quality freeware & the payware suppliers don't price themselves out of the market.
Can I thank all the providers for keeping this old boy happy - keep up the good work & a Happy Christmas & prosperous New Year to everyone involved in this wonderful hobby.
Steve

[briyeo1950]

I'm thankful that there are talented people who will make and sell steam locos and rolling stock to suit, and at reasonable cost and regular discounts too. The thing that worries me is that I keep hearing steam era developers saying that they don't sell very well unlike modern image stuff.

I have taken advantage of the latest form of the stock game on a few occasions when it's heavily discounted, to grab the new routes and loco content. But this time around they all seem to be modern image

Someone earlier suggested that anyone could help the community with freeware scenarios, routes and reskins, although that is true, and to be encouraged, I would just like to point out that it takes a lot of learning and a lot of the individual's free time to make good quality content. Almost as much (sometimes more) effort as payware developers put into their products.

Another recent thread lamented the lack of repaints of newly released stock. I think repaints have received a lack of respect sometimes on these forums. Dismissive comments such as "all we seem to get these days are repaints " Now you hardly get any repaints, maybe there is a connection? I don't know.

[Rockdoc2174]

There's also the possibility that some of the most prolific providers have felt themselves becoming stale and have taken a break in the hope of refreshing themselves. Sometimes getting too deeply involved with anything, no matter how much you love it, can be counter-productive.

I have a friend who was deeply into tropical fish, spending a lot of money on rare species and doing her very best to breed them, which was also costly. As a result of her hobby, she started a business selling aquatic supplies and broadened that into general pet items. The result has been twofold. One is a shortage of time because her business has exploded. The second is a diminution of interest in fishkeeping. She's closed down all her tanks and sold or given away all her fish because being around the stuff all the time means that side of things stopped being a hobby and turned into a chore.

The other side of the coin is that we get updates to the core software for nothing, whether or not we buy anything from DTG/RSC between updates. That support has to be paid for somehow and the company has to have a minimum level of income to do that. I'd guess the vast majority comes from sales of DLC. What would people prefer? Cheaper DLC but having to pay, for the sake of argument, 50% of the purchase price for upgrades? To some extent, it's swings and roundabouts.

Keith

[Acorncomputer]

I would suggest that the reason for a slowdown in Freeware is simply due to the changing nature of this program.

The contrast with MSTS could not be more extreme with the core program for MSTS still as it was when Microsoft abandoned it all those years ago and TS2014 where there are regular changes to the program.

Create content for MSTS and there is every chance that it will continue working for years to come with perhaps only changes to the Windows Operating System that might cause problems.

Create content for TS2014 and there is a probability that at some stage in the future, that content will not work or perform as it once did.

This is by no means a criticism of Dovetail Games, on the contrary, their priority has been to try and ensure that products they have created and sold continue to work at least as well as they did when they were sold and whilst this is a significant constraint on the development of the program, Dovetail have largely achieved this. (Note that Dovetail Games is a trading name of RailSimulator.com so we are still effectively talking about RailSimulator.com).

Dovetail Games are not obliged to share detailed technical information with us about how to create content for TS2014, and clearly there are vast amounts of information that are still 'secret' or have only been revealed to us in part, so content creators are largely in the dark about how the finer points work. This is entirely understandable with such an important commercial product that TS2014 has become but it does leave 'casual' or even more serious content creators vulnerable to future program changes that they cannot anticipate or deal with.

Dovetail Games are happy for us to create 'Freeware' through the Steam Workshop and that is clearly their preferred route for amateur creators or perhaps through Marketplace for those that want a few pounds value for their work. There is the advantage that 'Freeware' published this way (through Steam) will benefit from the likelihood that the content will continue to work into the future as expected as all associated dependencies will be updated by Dovetail Games when changes are made.

So we have MSTS which will be almost immortal for the reason that the core program is not updated and TS2014 (and successors) that will be almost immortal due to the fact that the core program (and dependencies) are updated.

Ultimately, TS2014 is a commercial program and Dovetail Games will keep improving and developing it as they wish, although much credit to them for maintaining backwards compatibility. Create as much as you like for your own use but beware of creating for sharing as there is no guarantee that all will work in the future as you expect.

Another 'hazard' is that you work on some Freeware content for a long time only to find that Dovetail Games bring out a commercial version

Happy Christmas to everyone

[trainfan11111]

It's indicative of the world today.

I remember when I got my first car, not that long ago in the mid 90's, it was a heap of junk but was designed so that you could do most routine maintenance easily yourself. I used to change my own oil and filter, spark plugs, starter motor, alternator, brake pads, leads, distributor etc easily in minutes and without specialist equipment.

Nowadays, car manufacturers have sussed out that there is money to be made in making DIY maintenance and repairs all but impossible. Rather than being designed for easy maintenance and modification, cars are now designed to make maintenance impossible for the DIY mechanic. About the only thing you can do now yourself is fill up the windscreen wash! Now if you want to tinker about under the bonnet, mend or improve your vehicle then you need to pay handsomely for a professional to do it as the car is now so much more complex, time consuming and awkward to work on than it ever was before.

Exactly the same applies to Railworks.

You can't have car that is less complex that uses less of the same fuel to make more power, the complexity comes as a by product of the engine being more advanced and more efficient etc. It is still easy to change brake pads and discs (I've done so myself on my own '08 Focus) and I've carried out a couple of simple replacement jobs that would have been expensive to have done by professionals (such as a split O-ring which cost 18 pence delivered!). Fuel injectors on modern diesel engines now pump at around 500bar pressure! - I'm sorry, but for that to be a reliable system then it will need more than a Haynes manual and a set of Halfords spanners to sort the job

Mate I mess round with engines in my spare time. and you would be surprised how reliable DIY repaired fuel injectors can be.
I will admit to having ruined more than a few engines by tinkering with the wrong thing but its not as hard as some people make it out to be

[theorganist]

It's indicative of the world today.

I remember when I got my first car, not that long ago in the mid 90's, it was a heap of junk but was designed so that you could do most routine maintenance easily yourself. I used to change my own oil and filter, spark plugs, starter motor, alternator, brake pads, leads, distributor etc easily in minutes and without specialist equipment.

Nowadays, car manufacturers have sussed out that there is money to be made in making DIY maintenance and repairs all but impossible. Rather than being designed for easy maintenance and modification, cars are now designed to make maintenance impossible for the DIY mechanic. About the only thing you can do now yourself is fill up the windscreen wash! Now if you want to tinker about under the bonnet, mend or improve your vehicle then you need to pay handsomely for a professional to do it as the car is now so much more complex, time consuming and awkward to work on than it ever was before.

Exactly the same applies to Railworks.

You can't have car that is less complex that uses less of the same fuel to make more power, the complexity comes as a by product of the engine being more advanced and more efficient etc. It is still easy to change brake pads and discs (I've done so myself on my own '08 Focus) and I've carried out a couple of simple replacement jobs that would have been expensive to have done by professionals (such as a split O-ring which cost 18 pence delivered!). Fuel injectors on modern diesel engines now pump at around 500bar pressure! - I'm sorry, but for that to be a reliable system then it will need more than a Haynes manual and a set of Halfords spanners to sort the job

Mate I mess round with engines in my spare time. and you would be surprised how reliable DIY repaired fuel injectors can be.
I will admit to having ruined more than a few engines by tinkering with the wrong thing but its not as hard as some people make it out to be

I drive around in a 1980 Austin Maxi - easy to repair with no electronic trickery!

Peter

[31160]

Austin Maxi,now thats a classic

[theorganist]

Austin Maxi,now thats a classic

Yes its my third. This and my last were barn finds.

They are great, roomy, comfortable and keeps up with modern traffic.

Peter

[Griphos]

Sure, it's great for us no-skill folks to have others work hard, use their time, energy, and specialized knowledge to make high quality content for our sim and then give it to us for free.

The Workshop is full of great scenarios, and a few very nice routes.

But it's rather odd to complain when more don't. And observations about the state of the world grow a bit stale. They would be more cogent if they weren't trotted out for pretty much anything one isn't happy about.

Personally, I have no problem with someone trying to make a buck through their efforts and knowledge. It can't be much they are making. And if you've been in this sim community for a long time, since MSTS, then you've gotten a lot of pleasure out of whatever you pay for it. That fiver here and tenner there gets amortized out to almost nothing over the long run.

No one makes anyone buy anything. And it's not as if most of us don't have more content than we've yet to use.

I'm old enough to recall some pretty old days. They seemed much the same to me.

[ashgray]

Sure, it's great for us no-skill folks to have others work hard, use their time, energy, and specialized knowledge to make high quality content for our sim and then give it to us for free.

The Workshop is full of great scenarios, and a few very nice routes.

But it's rather odd to complain when more don't. And observations about the state of the world grow a bit stale. They would be more cogent if they weren't trotted out for pretty much anything one isn't happy about.

Personally, I have no problem with someone trying to make a buck through their efforts and knowledge. It can't be much they are making. And if you've been in this sim community for a long time, since MSTS, then you've gotten a lot of pleasure out of whatever you pay for it. That fiver here and tenner there gets amortized out to almost nothing over the long run.

No one makes anyone buy anything. And it's not as if most of us don't have more content than we've yet to use.

I'm old enough to recall some pretty old days. They seemed much the same to me.

Those who are still here from the "old" days might recall the huge furore that occurred over the MSTS payware vs freeware debate - the arguments arising at that time caused some to withdraw their uploads which almost paralysed MSTS at the time for newcomers, as many routes and activities would not function without those items that were withdrawn and therefore no longer available. The release of some WiP freeware routes like Highworth were delayed by many years while new content makers strived to create items that would replace the missing, withdrawn content. The moderation team (before my time) were busy in those days and really needed to be on their toes as some of the stuff posted was pretty vitriolic by today's standards. Some of you will recall what happened to some of those payware companies with some sense of irony perhaps, and some of the protagonists at that time are no longer with us, having very sadly passed away.

What I'm saying is, these debates are nothing new. What's new is that the train-simming world has moved on, has become more commercially minded, and enterprising individuals realised that money was to be made. Many simmers who had cut their programming teeth on MSTS purchased Rail Simulator (as it was originally branded) and found that they were were far less comfortable with the idea of making their own routes and assets - the knowledge gained in MSTS helped them no one iota. They therefore either needed to learn a fairly complex, new system from scratch or, as many did, willingly pay for the afore-mentioned enterprising individuals to make their items for them. It's a bit like being able to do pretty much anything in DOS (like me) only to find that Windows had rendered all their knowledge and skills redundant almost overnight.

To that extent, the issue at question here IS to do with the state of the world today - private enterprise and the ability to corner a niche market are far more important these days than they seemed 15-20 years ago, simply because there was much less chance back then that anyone would bother. In those days, it needed a company, a skilled workforce and a significant amount of finances and resources to accomplish what a single person now, with sufficient time, inclination, drive and programming skills can do in their own bedrooms, with relatively little overheads other than a computer that's up to the job. There's no issue with any of this with me - even if I could do what they do, I wouldn't have the time, or SWMBO would demand that I come out of hiding in my computer lair and mow the lawn/fix dinner/vacuum the house instead!

However, these skills come at a price that's some way above MSTS prices. It's no longer the case of "a fiver here, a tenner there" - for example, I calculated that one third party content maker alone (whom I cannot name here) has received over £1,000 worth of business from me, because he's skilled in making examples of the BR era diesel fleet. I'm pretty certain I'm not the only one who's spent this sort of money on such add-ons. There are many other such individuals and companies that I've spent a lot of money with since this sim was first released back in 2006, and I've been happy to pay it as I've received a huge amount of pleasure from this hobby. Let's not kid ourselves that the hobby is cheap anymore though...

Ash