Atomic Systems

DaveDewhurst wrote:I don't want to cause the downfall of this thread as well but if Crumplezone has his first impressions saved somewhere could they be reposted in this thread?
They were well written and a good starting point for a sensible discussion on the current iteration of the sim.

Dave

I don't sorry, unless it can be pulled from a google cache, I won't be able to word for word it, especially since the previous thread got deleted instead of pruned.

I'll give a overview:

There is a number of issues related to the current UI system which is both clunky, cumbersome and outright akward to deal with. With the removal of era and motive power from any selectable menu the current system forces you to scroll through numerous pages of rolling stock to find the correct one. The search functionality also is hit and miss and 90% of the time just remains blank and if your looking for stock you then have to click the left pane to get the multiple pages back up and back to square one.

3D clouds while nice are not retroactive to the old system, what this means in a nutshell is no new 3d cloud effects on TS2014 scenarios or before, quick drive will allow 3d cloud operation on all routes but scenarios will need complete reworks which will both be time consuming and tedius. I have no real idea why this wasn't just foled into the old weather system as all scenarios pull from the same weather system and skydomes.

Graphically nothing has changed in settings or anti-alias, this means jaggies are still there and disortions on grid patterns. Performance is the same on my i7 rig but memory usage is around 3-4gig more depending on route which I have no real idea why is happening because its a 32bit program.

Going back to the 3D cloud point, height of cloud and effects don't seem to be that randomised or natural, you either have clouds which seem like overcast on clear or overcast which seems like clear. Clouds which end up being to low or just peasoup fog. The new 3D cloud system also makes colours more vivid or different as the colours and lighting is effected by cloud and not environment, which is making thing seem overly bright or colourful now.

Noticable pauses in switching through menus, sometimes 3-4secs and it gets rather irritating after trying to find a few locomotives.

The UI as a whole is a cluttered over populated window pane system, its bad, its slow and its damn right irritating to deal with, its not fast or useful which is what a UI is suppose to be and with a complete defunctional search box its damnable useless at times. Added to this there is new buttons which give descriptions to locomotives/routes and they annoyingly open the steam UI web system, this in turn means your in the shift+TAB steam UI menu. It just adds more time and clutter to hte whole process of going through routes and rolling stock and could have just been done better.

TS2015 just doesn't have much to show for a year or more worth of development time beyond 3D clouds, a new even worse UI than the previous UI which was already annoying to deal with and also some changes to the editor. There is no wow factor, there is real no "oh thats nice". Its abit like Windows 8 before its .1 upgrade, trying to be something new for a new market but failed at the doorstep and is going to require another year of development time to fix all the issues.

I can't say I'm impressed and from a tester's point of view for SSS the new UI system is going to add to the workload since its so clunky and slow to deal with, its not developer friendly whatsoever and it doesn't transition between options quick enough to make testing easy or check something has worked or not.

At this stage I may be considering to throw in the hat, been using since RW2 but I can see personally when a dead horse is being beaten enough at this point. Might opt to just sit back and wait for the UE version, should that ever be release in near future, but can't say I'm infused about working with TS2015 right now.

Sadly no scenery has been added to the Hertford loop. I suppose I was hoping for too much with that one anyway!

The new menu system make scene in the fact it keeps all the drive options in one place instead of having three different options on the main menu for career, quick driver and standard. I image it will be come easier to use when the route icons reappear, that said the icons that depict the difficult level of a scenario and also the medal icons when you have completed a career scenario are kinda ugly, much preferred how they looked in the last version of the game.

On a side note I do like the fact they got Sean Bean back for the intro video.

holzroller wrote:According to a post by versystem disabling the cloud effects will remove the blue tint from the game. Haven't tried it myself.

There is another way,
Open the Silverlining.override file (should open in notepad), you'll find it in ..\Railworks\Data\Silverlining
change to and the blue tint will disappear.
I haven't investigated what else it affects (it was set as "yes" by default so it has intentionally been changed) but its a step in the right direction

There are a lot of other things in there that can be investigated to improve the look of the new weather
Dave

Just to confirm I can return my route to its original colour scheme by disabling the dynamic clouds only so the clouds are clearly doing more than just clouds but having a serious impact on the colour balance of the whole picture at least for my route and for the West Scotland Routes ( my UK lighting check route).

Interested in that mod.

Clearly some new learning here.

I fully agree with the review given by Crumplezone. I am not disappointed with 2015 as I didn't expect much in the first place. Some old problems that I hoped would be rectified are still there.

37114 wrote:It's that time of year again and after a 3.2gb (I own all the routes already) download I've fired it up.
A few first impressions:
I quite like the new menu and love the option to switch off the video intro. Seems to be images missing from routes though.

Not only am I missing the images, I'm missing the routes unless I search for them. So clicking through the pages only shows the "official" routes (all minus thumbnails). But if I search for "midden" for example, THEN the Middle Holland (Midden Nederland) route shows up.

Same for selecting trains - none of my add-ons show up in the default list unless I search for them.

So they've changed something in the preload, and of course, given the 3rd party developers zero info on what that is.

Also : what's the little funnel / no-entry icon under the route and train selection? Anyone figured that out?

seems to relate to what can be selected. The whole selection process for stock and routes seems a little flakey. I have just managed to get stations from one route showing on the selector for another quite different route.

I won't be suprised if there is a correcting update along quite soon as some bits of this feel a little as if they weren't quite fully checked out. Not a big issue as this often happens in all sorts of software not just this one.

Yay! They added borderless window mode

chrisell wrote:Also : what's the little funnel / no-entry icon under the route and train selection? Anyone figured that out?

Its some kind of filter I think.

Dave

Funnel is rolling stock/route description which takes you into the steam UI web browser, the no entry thing effects scenarios.

Cajon Pass with new weather & 3D clouds system.
I love it.

I have had a quick look at some of the new world editor tools. Menus now have option to show asset thumbnails, but this is so laggy as to be almost useless. Asset placement tools give much improved control, yet there's an option to retain the TS2014 gizmo. Ability to resize assets in one or all dimensions will be handy. Irregular asset block also useful and seems to work fine.

Four Payware routes complete deleted...Gone! Not there anymore!

I'm still trying to workout how much rolling stock is also missing....

All my purchased assets and routes are listed in my DLC downloadable as...... installed, but they are not present in the 2015 menus or RW Tools, the route assets are present in my RSC folder when viewed with windows explorer but not ib the content folder.

I have tried to initiate a re-install from the steam website and now I have lost everything... NO seriously! LOL

Very disappointed but not really surprised, I backed up my assets but thought my content would be safe..... oh dear..... what a fool I have been!

As for the 2015 update.... Oh dear!

I dare say this will get sorted one way or another, it really isn't up to the standard we would like from Steam/DTG, but I hear a lot of you say that it's "Par for the course"

PB1328

I'm sorry to hear that but if your experience was par for the course this thread would be 50 pages long by now. Usually these download issues get sorted quite quickly by either a verify or a reinstall. And you have a back-up just in case.