The good old days? long gone

[chrisy11]

chrisy11 said -
For example when i wrote the Day in a life scenarios for Matts 7F pack i spent over a week on those. A good 30 - 40 hours maybe writing and testing , pouring over books , timetables and loco's numbers and shed codes ect.

And the same can be said for all content not just scenarios. But thats a lot of time just to give the end user a hour or so of something to do.

One end user given an hour or so of something to do does not sound very exciting, but in practice there will probably be hundreds or thousands of end users given an hour or so of something to do which is a completely different matter

When you put it like that yes it is different . The 7F scenario's i mention where something i wanted to have a go at , try to recreate a real working on the S&D. And its something i did more or less for free other than a free copy of the 7F pack.

Thing is when your trying to make a living from it. All those man hours to include a few scenarios with say a new loco. Is it really cost effective?

I cant really blame people like DT ect not wanting to write scenarios anymore.

This is the main reason i don't want to ever go payware. This is my hobby at the end of the day you should enjoy it and do it because you want to. Not because you feel you have too. Then its not fun anymore.

Chris

[ka959]

I can well remember back to the time I went into hospital, for a cochlear implant operation, spending a few days there, before coming back home, and logging on to Train-sim.com, as I was still into MSTS fairly big-time, back then. There were quite a lot of freeware items on these pages, in fact, far more than I recall seeing over the past few years, at any one time.

Now, the total amount of freeware stuff has dropped considerably for MSTS, although it's still a trickle. The once interesting stuff for Railworks/TS2014 has, by comparation, has appeared to dry up, almost to nothing. The same appears to be the case in the UK, while it's costing more and more for anything good for TS2014. Routes are almost $40.00 for most of them, and that, for me is even more, with the exchange rate as it is. It's more in the range of NZ$50.00, and that to me, is extremely unreasonable, compared to how much routes were when they started to appear - quite reasonable, and affordable, considering my partner & I were on a benefit, due to her having cerebral palsy. I was her full-time caregiver for a few years. Now it's changed, and I'm on a pension. Things are a bit better this way, but I can afford a little more, but routes are almost a "no-no" unless I save over a couple of pension payouts, for a route I particularly want. Most things these days are based around those who work for a living, but there's only a few times a year we can "splash out" for something we really want, rather than what we NEED !

Regards...

Jim McDermott

[stewart]

Personally, I don't have the talent/patience to create content for TS2014 so I think its great that there are people who do. In any other walk of life I would expect to pay for any goods or services I wanted or needed. The odd exception to this would be the receiving of gifts. I see Freeware content as a gift for which I am always grateful but I will never have a problem for paying for content I happen to want that the creator has decided to charge for. After all how much of an investment in time and resources would I have to put in if I had to make the desired content by myself? That is assuming I had the talent (which I don't). So for me its a no brainer. If the creator asks a fair price then I for one wont grudge him the payment for the time and effort he has put in on potentially my behalf.
As an aside and bearing all that in mind, I would very much like to have an alternative version of the Glasgow to Edinburgh route featuring a track plan from around 1967 to 1972. If any experienced route builder would be interested in producing this as a private venture on my behalf then please send me a PM.