1950's Riviera disappointment

[jp4712]

Yes, I do believe the title of this thread is seriously misleading - it is in fact rather splendid and worth getting for the working water troughs alone!

Paul

[stuart666]

Re Width between the tracks, I can think of one place where the legacy of the broad gauge survives. Kemble station.
http://www.urban75.org/railway/cirences ... ation.html

The station was constructed during the Broad Gauge era (albeit originally as a just a transfer platform for the branch) but was rebuilt somewhat extensively in the 1870-1880s period. But if you look, there is a wide gap in the inner lines. There never was a passing loop through the centre, there was never any room for that. What I think happened is that when the station was rebuilt (either before or after they lifted the Broad Gauge lines) they retained the platforms and just slewed the lines to the platforms when they went to 'narrow' gauge.

So there are probably plenty examples of this kind of thinking on the network today. Perhaps even more pronounced now as Network rail slew track to try and remove any gap between the carriages and the platform edge (and hence make 2 cylinder GWR railtours impractical in many places, despite having bags more room than other parts of the network). I digress.

Im sorry if anyone has problems or issues with the route. We all put a lot of effort in. At the very least I think the stock is first rate and undoubtedly worth getting for that at least. Pete and Ben put a lot of effort into getting the stock right I know.

[Carinthia]

Im sorry if anyone has problems or issues with the route. We all put a lot of effort in. At the very least I think the stock is first rate and undoubtedly worth getting for that at least. Pete and Ben put a lot of effort into getting the stock right I know.

As far as I am concerned the route is excellent, including the look of the signals which are the best in an official route yet. The only let down as far as I am concerned is the scripting used for the signals, it prevents you designing scenarios with deliberate conflicts with other traffic. This problem is not unique to this route.

John

[AndiS]

What I think happened is that when the station was rebuilt (either before or after they lifted the Broad Gauge lines) they retained the platforms and just slewed the lines to the platforms when they went to 'narrow' gauge.

That is what I assumed. But I have no idea how that would make 4.3 m track spacing. I am truly interested in the matter so I appreciate any and all details on it.

John already set me right in part regarding the open route. I would not have assumed that they kept wide spacing and even cement it by placing signals in it. So I am even more interested in the track spacing details. Unfortunately, I could vary between sections, depending on how they proceeded during track renewal or maintenance work.

Im sorry if anyone has problems or issues with the route. We all put a lot of effort in. At the very least I think the stock is first rate and undoubtedly worth getting for that at least. Pete and Ben put a lot of effort into getting the stock right I know.

Let me say (again) that the stock is top. I just spend all my time with infrastructure. And I did not mention it as this is the disappointment thread. I guess the title is not too bad as disappointment assumes high expectations.

This is certainly one of the best routes, yet there are facets that trigger disappointment. The only big one for me was missing the chance of showing CLS together semaphores (for the first time?) after paying such a high price in the very unfortunate changes to the scripting.

The rest of my disappointment is caused by sympathy with the creators (even if people sometimes read other things into any posts).

Now we got this Quick Drive feature, which is great as you can start enjoying stuff freely without firing up the Scenario Editor. I enjoyed it, but where are all the much appraised engines? Now I am not dumb and I don't shout "they are missing", but hey, couldn't DTG show them off properly. When I want to eyeball an engine, I don't want a challenge and a schedule. I know that every scenario must look bad if I don't act as expected. So give me Quick Drive.

Likewise, I remember how much Hagen-Siegen gained when they took out the broken references to assets when KRS became RW 1. These are a performance hog. So I was really sad to see that happen in 2015 for RW 7 or whatever it would be numbered now. The initial impression was really very bad as loading took forever and the jerks are really bad. I wonder how it would be without the broken links and the useless writes to LogMate. Even if LogMate is closed, there will be some effort in composing and sending message to nowhere.

Paying just € 10.49, I don't write this as a paying customer. I write it as a (more or less slightly) disappointed fan.


P.S.: Back on the topic of track spacing, I measured the second picture of Kemble and that looks a lot like 4.4 m between track centres. Yet the gap between vehicles and platforms does not look like above average. Extremely interesting.

[michaelhendle]

Hi

I don't know what's happened to the loco's you say are missing,I have The Hall,The Castle,( there is also a free Double Chimney Castle as well now,the Hawkesworth Version)The Grange,The King.and the 5700 Tank loco,and the all appear in my loco list when running Quick Drive.

You also also should have a Set of Collett Sunshine Coaches,and Riveria Coaches,and some GW Freight stock


Mike

[bristolian]

Good evening folks,
I have a nice set of WR locos (complete with WR ATC sound effects), however TS always crashes when I try to run the route. I have the settings down low. Every other route I have is fine. I've verified the cache too... The locos run fine on other routes.

Has anyone else had problems when trying tp load the route?.

Very Best Wishes,
Bob.

[longbow]

Can your PC run other demanding routes such as Glorious Devon or Wear Valley?

[gptech]

Yes, I do believe the title of this thread is seriously misleading

Agreed; on paper this route should hold no great appeal for me; it's not in the North, it's not BR Blue era but....but..I love it!

Quick drive - only Castle on offer. ..........make all engines available in Quick Drive?

The Castle, Grange, Hall and Pannier all come with QD consists pre-defined...(as Mike has already stated)

My HD is full and fragmented

Perhaps there's a connection there?
Perhaps you have a truncated/corrupt/somehow screwed up .ap archive... have you tried extracting the contents, moving the .ap out of the game (off that drive altogether if you can) and seeing if that helps?
Regardless of whether it does or not, surely DTG aren't responsible for the state of your PC?...a full and fragmented HDD is bad news for any game or application so I'd suggest that sorting that out be a priority.

[bristolian]

Can your PC run other demanding routes such as Glorious Devon or Wear Valley?

Glorious Devon, yes .

[AndiS]

I don't know what's happened to the loco's you say are missing,I have The Hall,The Castle,( there is also a free Double Chimney Castle as well now,the Hawkesworth Version)The Grange,The King.and the 5700 Tank loco,and the all appear in my loco list when running Quick Drive.

Thanks a lot for making me look again. Now I feel like a complete idiot. They are there, but spread across many pages mixed with all sorts of other engines.

On the route page, there are exactly 9 routes on offer, missing the quartet of Seebergbahn, Castle Rock Railroad, Hedborough North, and TestTraK. On the engine page, things looked as patchy to me, so I totally missed the "page 1/S" in 5 pt font. The three other tabs for the three other types of scenarios have a scrollbar on the right. Not having a scrollbar means you see all. Also the white bar with 0 and 1 in circles at the end could be a scrollbar that shows all is shown but not providing a slider. But it is there at all tabs, so it could be scenario progress if you save one.

Only when you said you have then I re-examined the whole mess. But not before I did a third "verify game". Of course, I sound like a bad looser if I say the GUI is too chaotic for my age, but I do feel that. I did not include this in my earlier rant because so much had been said about it, it would just be redundant.

Thus sorry for assuming that quick drives for engines were missing. This is not true for the Riviera ones, only for the old repaints like the blue BR 294 and for the mentioned routes. Obviously these things are not considered TS2016 content or not worth maintaining. This is ok for me.

But I do recommend that the next person that gets to design a GUI for DTG sticks to old school knowledge and puts the controls all in one place and makes similar things look similar. And chooses a reasonable minimum for the font size, and uses very few different sizes.

[gptech]

Thus sorry for assuming that quick drives for engines were missing. This is not true for the Riviera ones, only for the old repaints like the blue BR 294 and for the mentioned routes. Obviously these things are not considered TS2016 content or not worth maintaining.

If your installation has the QD consists for those stock items defined they will show in the menu...though not always so evident. The menus are 'filter-able' in that you can choose to only have Steam, or Diesel, or Electric trains visible; you can set filters by region, by date so it's possible that you have one of those set without realising it. Without knowing this little 'trick' (foible/quirk) you can't say things are obvious; in fact the only thing that is obvious is that you're guessing.

[michaelhendle]

Hi Andis,
Don't worry we all have our senior moments,I know I do,and quite often I can't find something,and it's staring me in the face,my big problem is when using RW Tools,if I'm trying to switch a item of stock,they can be all over the place,some items are DTG,other's in Kuji,and others in RSC,the same goes for routes,the can be spread between DTG,Kuji RSC,Or the route authors name.
Mike

[Carinthia]

Thanks a lot for making me look again. Now I feel like a complete idiot. They are there, but spread across many pages mixed with all sorts of other engines.
[etc]

You need apologise for nothing. The amount of help you have given me and others over the years justifies the odd "senior moment" (of which I might add you are not alone in experiencing).

Best regards,

John

[AndiS]

Thanks for you kind words.

Gary, the point was that I assumed that they forgot to create QD consists. I read so many complaints about missing QD definitions when the feature was new (and those were temporarily justified), that I assumed that they still do that - release stuff and bring along the QD file some time later.

I also realised the filter feature and found it normal to be useless for me (or so I assumed) because I don't own a lot of payware like a good customer would.

I also realised the monster Customise icon (showing couplers) telling me "if you are not satisfied, just define the stuff you need". I just don't realise the advantage of spreading stuff all over the available area and give it three different looks on one page.

A good user interface makes a stupid user look clever. A bad user interface does exactly the opposite.

[gptech]

Gary, the point was that I assumed that they forgot to create QD consists. I read so many complaints about missing QD definitions when the feature was new

The important bits there Andy are the words "when", "was" and "assumed"...you've moved from TS2013 to TS2016 but have brought your TS2013 thinking (and pre-conceptions and bias?) with you. To illustrate this let's address a point you made in another thread regarding the Steam Community Hub key combination of Shift and Tab preventing you asking for permission to pass a signal at danger that's behind you---the key combination to request this SPAD is now Control + Tab, thus negating the *issue*. Rather than blithely assuming that things are *wrong* you'd be better off investigating what's what, even asking for clarification in here.

When you purchased TS2016 did you allow Steam to overwrite your existing TS installation or create a new one? Your description of the menus doesn't fit with what I see so I'm wondering if you have (possibly due to the full and fragmented HDD?) ended up with a mish-mash of the old and new menu systems--what screen size and at what resolution are you using?; the < and > arrows to navigate the available routes and stock aren't as tiny (for me) as you're describing, smaller text certainly, but not hidden away. The menus should have a great deal of commonality, they're all based on the same 'menu master' files so you should be seeing something that looks more 'integrated' and 'thought out' than the differences you describe.

To get us back (sort of) on the route we're discussing in this thread, there should be no need to run any DTG route through RW Tools--all the assets should be included. The claim that DTG don't like RW Tools has been made quite a few times before, but nobody when pressed has been able to provide a verifiable official quote from DTG to corroborate that---could you be the first?
I wouldn't be surprised to (eventually) find out that the statement that started it off was along the lines of " We can't endorse or support the use of 3rd party utilities such as RW Tools...." A far cry from what has oft been claimed.
I assume you used RW Tools to find that there are assets used that aren't in the download, would you care to repeat it as according to RW Tools on my installation all the assets needed live in the ..\Assets\DTG\ExeterKingswear\ExeterKingswearAssets.ap archive. Were you perhaps inadvertently checking a scenario?

EDIT: Forgot to add....

Many find using their web browser to navigate the store and workshop much better than doing it in-game--- http://store.steampowered.com/app/24010 and http://steamcommunity.com/app/24010/workshop/ respectively. When buying or subscribing you'd be invited to log in with your Steam credentials and then when loading Steam/TS what you've elected to buy/download is seamlessly transferred over just as if you'd used the in-game applet.