Tunes have Changed!

[5872]

I Don't hate the new Sim , but there was so much anticipation it can be nothing but a disappointment , & lets face its basically things that should have been sorted out in the 11 months the product was delayed

11 Months It was delayed hock: , Well Im not dissapointed I enjoy playing it , I just need to sort out my frame rates in some places....

 

[Metroland]

Well we'll see what 12th November brings.

Without question, after having spent 1 week plus with KRS, the Activities and signalling system suck.

So much more could have been built in: Train prioritisation, random events, TSRs, Level Crossing misuse, Points failures, Train Failures, Kids and animals on the line. See any control log if there is any shortage of ideas.

Played 'Free play' last night. Left York at 1800 hours with a 47 and 11 on. Kinda reminded me when I lived up that way driving around with friends one autumn stopping off by that line at various places. t's a heck of a lot busier than is KRS, especially with freight!

Obviously there is no AI in freeplay, but hit one of those 'click me' signs to Newcastle.

Thundering towards Darlo, doing a steady 90 and taking in the atmos and got a signal with a feather 'off' onto one of the loops, then back over again. Annoying is not the word for it...Other than that, I still think Newcastle is outstanding, as are most of the routes. Not completely convinced by the Darlo-Chester-le-street stretch of the ECML. It's a bit more 'open' than that in real life, except for around Sunderland Bridge.

corrected for typos (was in a rush!)

 

[petethetim]

This film shows the potential the new Sim will have once its wrinkles are ironed out

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6sWJa52KZU

 

[Tom]

Is it me or does that chap sound very camp?

 

[petethetim]

I think its a well delivered Natural commentary

 

[Dave A]

This film shows the potential the new Sim will have once its wrinkles are ironed out

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6sWJa52KZU

Are you sure that's the same Rail Simulator we have!? hock: :confused:

 

[thefab444]

Are you sure that's the same Rail Simulator we have!?

No, thats Wayal Simulator...

Anyway Fred, I think you're just imagining the rear PC (well I say imagining, I mean as it goes past you're doing the screaming ). They did miss two characters off at Taplow, trampling all over the station gardens whilst waving madly at my HST.

 

[Dave A]

No, thats Wayal Simulator...

Ooo, where can I get this? :-P :roll:

 

[petethetim]

I see Game here in Belfast have reduced it till £24:99 that near enough matches any on line Price

 

[thefab444]

Ooo, where can I get this? :-P :roll:

He's, you know, not too good with like nVidias, but like you know you need to have a Radi-on X serwies to play it... Wayal Simulata that is. It's got a very good Haitch Hess Tee as well, the screens out there are like not the same as the game.

 

[Darandio]

I was laughing at the Wayal Simulator thing but now Haitch Hess Tee! I think i have just wet myself.

 

[thefab444]

It's not any old Haitch Hess Tee, its hun Valentah Haitch Hess Tee. Get it right, you know... erm... outstanding. PHWOARH!!!!

 

[Craig]

Why would you trust a review by VEG (Valenta E-Group)?

The ones who keep arsing around on platforms?

Their review is based on the fact that the HST is not MTU. Hardly a great review, just listened to the start, the technical reviews "It needs a lot of computah, if you got more than 1.7ghz it'll work great and dual cores are better with it etc etc". I'm sure there is advantages on running it dual core but only minimal, from what I've read on other forums it doesn't utilise dual cores properly!

They do sound like ****s though.

 

[petethetim]

Well they have to be commended for at least getting of their Harris & doing something to try & prove the new Sim has the potential to be the feature of Railway simulation & i for one has had my view altered slightly.

 

[Respite]

Well just to add my tuppence worth.

KRS knocks MSTS out of the water for how they compare when first launched.I bought MSTS in the US before it was available over here & was gutted by how lame it was after all the hype.

-Firstly the routes in KRS are far more realistic than the MSTS ones.

-I have finished all the KRS activites (although I know not that many) In MSTS a lot of routes had bad bugs & were unfinishable. Marias pass especially & that was the #1 route that shipped with MSTS as far as I recall.

-The physics isnt perfect with either product as new, although KRS feels much more like it than MSTS ever was. The ability to actually shunt stuff from either end of the loco (ok the 7F was bugged but fixed 3rd party allready) is so cool. No more bouncing off stuff & wheels rotating the wrong way on rolling stock. Also doesnt require 100% regulator to actually move a couple of wagons when coupled up the "wrong" way.

-Brakes are simulated so much better in KRS.

-The route editor is such a godsend with KRS, the MSTS one was a slow labour intensive affair riddled with the dread of the fatel tile screwing up lock up at save to ruin all the work you had just done. Then there's the build section ,exit editor. Enter activity editor, set path over new area & consist, exit activity editor. Enter MSTS, load new route point & check to see if it all looks well. Find it isnt correct,exit & repeat above. GRRRRRRRRRrrrrrr.... Thanks to KRS all that is one button click away.

-Proper(ish) weather that changes in KRS as well as day & night.

-Proper illumination. Made me laugh how some idiots have already started to moan saying there parrifin lamp on their 7F doesnt illuminate the track yards ahead like it should....Utter cr*p, train lights are for marking the position of a train to other people & reflect back form retro reflective signs. Hell I do 100mph in 175's where I cant see sh*t more than 5 foot in front of me! Thats what it actually is like.

Anyway theres my thoughts.
Oh & by the way for all the haters & general people who like to pull products apart. Well lets give KRS a chance, its not like we are in a popular part of the market here. The average dumb ass mindset of people these days is these type of games are for anoraks & saddo's who need to get a life & start watching reality TV shows or something.

I really dont want to be limited to games like "Need for speed Saxo chav racer milton keynes edition" . So give kuju some time to sort out the minor bugs.

 

[AlexS]

I don't have the game - my laptop is a 1.77ghz dual core so i suspect it'd run like treacle if it all - but got to admit like GhostCav said one of the main things that made me happy looking at screenshots was that there wasn't some huge solar spotlight running in front of the train at night.

I might buy it next year when I'm home from uni with a reasonable desktop PC.

 

[petethetim]

Well I was given it 2002 & found it very lame as you put it & never played it again until I came out off work ill & was glad to have it to mess about with , but even for the 5 or 6 weeks I played it in 2002/03 I don't recall as many bugs ,but again there was not as many places to report same.
Hopefully the events of next Monday & this patch will improve it greatly & then this guy may give it a go

 

[Respite]

Well I was given it 2002 & found it very lame as you put it & never played it again until I came out off work ill & was glad to have it to mess about with , but even for the 5 or 6 weeks I played it in 2002/03 I don't recall as many bugs ,but again there was not as many places to report same.
Hopefully the events of next Monday & this patch will improve it greatly & then this guy may give it a go

Hey Pete, I dont mean the whole game was lame. I played the hell out of it from day one. Bearing in mind the last train game I had played/used(apart from Transport Tycoon & A-train) had been southern belle on the commodore C64 back in 1986!!!:-?
Oh those were the days etc etc, driving a wireframe rendition of a king arthur class southern kettle from london to brighton. It had about 2 frames per minute & was almost impossible to complete which was a bugger as it took about 20 minutes to load!!

Anyway I digress.. MSTS had some major flaws in it from day one. It was the community that turned it into the great sim it has become. I still remember driving Tim courts first class 47 in msts(as far as I'm aware the first new uk loco to be made), aliased to the gp38 cab. Wow was that really 2001! As an aside you know how people say they remember what they were doing when kennedy was shot, well I remember as that idiot slammed that first 737 into the WTC I was building a route in MSTS, disrupted a good day of route building as well.
To be honest though I have made more headway in 10 days with KRS than I ever did with 6 years of MSTS. Some things may suck & be unworkable at the moment but the things you can do far outweigh the things you can't in my mind. Hell I just spent 2 hours shunting on my layout, proper shunting mind, not what we could do in msts & call shunting. It really is a great product, bugged yes, but that is what buying a pc game means these days. Try looking at Test drive unlimited to see how bad they released that game in & that was for a mainstream game about cars.

Oh & If you want some suggestions for games that fill large periods of time may I recomend Settlers IV & Locomotion. I too have had some time outs in life (not major like yours) but both of these games have kept me busy & fullfilled.

All the best,
Shane

 

[petethetim]

I remember Southern Belle I had it on 5.25 Disk & even that took 5 min plus to load , I recall a similar Train/ Rail Sim on Amiga or the Atari 520St it was a wire frame 47 or 37

 

[Demps]

Yeah It will be a good Sim in maybe 3 years time but at the minute if you want something different you already had Trainz

How can it be a good sim, when the graphics arnt up to scratch with todays graphics?

Slightly off topic, but i have to say, the hst sounds pretty naff; it sounds pathetic when your lineside watching a hst speeeed through, and the engine sound very computer gen. I Noticed a 47 ona video, dont know if it was modded or what, but it sounded brilliant, well, exept for the horn.

Night time, is incredibly poor.

...some thing which i think would have made it a whole load better

toning of balast, its way too bright.

Wind, especially on certain cameras.

Better sound, they made the kettles sound good, so why not put more effort into the HST and deltic?

and do something about the night cycle, horrid.

 

[petethetim]

Read The Customer revues on AMAZON They are 13 -1 in the favourer of dissatisfaction

 

[class 313]

Better sound, they made the kettles sound good, so why not put more effort into the HST and deltic?

Saying that, IMO the Deltic is one of the best loco on there for sound. 47 being the worse, its like a old bus!

 

[Respite]

Well everything is still working fine here, graphics well up to scratch,sound excellent with EAX enabled. Its a good job that people were not this negative when MSTS first came out. If they had been I guess that would of died a death early. MSTS is still a great sim & as I have said before it was the community that made it great. It arrived bugged to hell & looked no where near as good as the latest routes looked. (I remember rails that were about 2 foot wide) .

I am so amazed that some people are so negative towards this product, do you even realise how hard it must of been to get funding for a game about trains???? This is not a mainstream game,its not cars,FP shooter etc etc. Its a game about trains & that isnt very popular at the moment I dont know if you had noticed! I couldnt give a rats arse if people think its lame because of this or because of that........its an excellent product already. I have managed more real railway activities in a few weeks with KRS than I ever managed with MSTS. Oh & as for trainz.............well you are joking....right??? (& yes I do know)

May I suggest that instead of just moaning & whining about stuff, maybe you could actually delve a little deeper into the route editor,play around with a few things & make constructive comments rather than just whinging all the while..... Personally I feel happy that someone has actually managed to improve the very limited genre of rail simulators that is available.

Oh & for the people slagging this product off without even trying it..........well come on now.

 

[petethetim]

Well Ghost Cav
Just for the record I have tried it on friends PC which even though has adequate Spec ( Pent 3.2Ghz dual core 2GB of DDR2 RAM) but won't run it first time every time .

Perhaps you could confirm is it true that the following Flaws are present
1/Little or No Water textures & ones that exist are poor quality
2/ No real distant views E.G.The graphics only extend to outside the view of the train and then a little beyond, if you go further its just green..... Endless green!
3/ DELTIC Sounds like a Knackered Transit Van
4/ Idiotic signalling which does not seem to work properly at all, it also renders some of the few Scenarios to be un-completable.? ( I found this very frustrating)
5/ Timetabling is totally un realistic!

Well I think there's potential for this but not in the way it stands at the moment I would feel let down by the developers if I purchased this It , my mate can only get it to run when it feels like it to me it resembles a beta trial rather than a finished product.

OK the graphics are better than the original Microsoft train simulator , but after 7 years you would expect nothing less.saying that the are hardly state of the art.
plus the support given by EA is non Existent unless you are willing to call a premium line phone , my friend was lucky enough to get Game to take it back & refund his £34:99 after pointing out all these flaws.

 

[Demps]

Chav, your talking out of your arse, just because you like the game, does it mean there is no need for CONSTRUCTIVE negative comments?

OK the graphics are better than the original Microsoft train simulator , but after 7 years you would expect nothing less.saying that the are hardly state of the art.

agree 100%

 

[Respite]

Chav, your talking out of your arse, just because you like the game, does it mean there is no need for CONSTRUCTIVE negative comments?

Demps,
By the way I dont know if you had noticed but my name is Cav.:roll:

As for negative comments well constructive ones are of course important but quite simply for you to understand there doesnt seem much constructive ones around. Just mostly people bashing it & that is what I was talking about. A constructive one would look like Pete's.

As for what You said Pete.

1:
Must say I havent noticed a problem with the water texture. Currently there is only really a choice to use "lofts" of river sections to make water plus one small tile to build custom setups. But as its one non auotmatically joined tile it is hard to use. I find the effect looks pleasing with the use of river lofts. (I will try & get a pic for it )

2:
I have turned down My view distance to halfway to gain framerate's (As I would expect to do with any game these days on my fairly average spec PC). I can still see full scenery as far as possible from the train I am driving & also from some of the screenshots I have taken of just scenery You can see for miles with detail.

3:
Not really noticed any sound issues with the deltic, but then again I'm not a fan of ECML boat powered loco's. Then again it sounds way better than using GP38 sounds with a class 47 in MSTS in the early days. I just dont find it a problem that cant be ironed out.

4:
Signalling is not the best I've seen but I have made most of it work correctly in my own route. It's earlydays as yet though & nothing that we didnt have the similar problem with in MSTS.

5:
As far as I'm aware there really isnt any timetabling in KRS yet....I thought that was what was happening with the Dev tools on the 12th.

For info My system is just Windows XP, 3.2 GHZ AMD Athlon, 1 GB of DDR, Nvidia 6600GTS graphics card. All drivers current & new version of Netframework (or whatever the buggers called) . Windows auto virtual memory turned off & instead specified amount of hard drive space allocated to the virtual memory to match teh size of ram in the machine. Also game always run from DVD rom & not the DVD with the writer as that messes with the startup. (But then again that messes with quite a few new games I have bought recently.)

 

[LucaZone]

Hopefully you dont mind me answering these as well.

1 - How is having few water textures a flaw in Rail Simulator? How many were we expected to supply? Also what is poor quality about them? It is actaully extremely expensive to have fully reflective water textures because to the render engine, everything has to be drawn twice, with one set being inverted.

2 - No distant views - can you explain this further as it sounds like you have the draw distance in the options menu set to "near". You can actually see 2000m in any direction which is more than can be seen in Trainz, and the same as seen in MSTS, so how far are you expecting to be able to see? Clearly if you wish to see further than 2000m then yes Rail Simulator cannot provide for you, but thats hardly a flaw of Rail Simulator!

3 - Poor Deltic sounds - These are recorded directly from a Deltic Napier engine, and sound EXACTLY the same as the real thing when you play Rail Simulator next to the engine. Im really not sure how we can make a Deltic sound like a Deltic if recording the real thing isnt good enough.

4 - Incompletable scenarios due to poor signalling - Im affraid this is a lie. All scenarios can be completed, or EA would have had our throats. We have not recieved a single support query telling us that Scenarios are incompletable.

5 - Timetabling is unrealistic. Times are calculated by taking the acceleration and deceleration of a vehicle, as well as taking into account its weight, and then factoring in the line speed between locations. How else should we create the timetables?

Feedback good or bad about Rail Simulator is very beneficial to us for future improvements, but verging on inventing errors is no use to anyone. It would therefore be great if you could help us by explaining each of the above.

Perhaps you could confirm is it true that the following Flaws are present
1/Little or No Water textures & ones that exist are poor quality
2/ No real distant views E.G.The graphics only extend to outside the view of the train and then a little beyond, if you go further its just green..... Endless green!
3/ DELTIC Sounds like a Knackered Transit Van
4/ Idiotic signalling which does not seem to work properly at all, it also renders some of the few Scenarios to be un-completable.? ( I found this very frustrating)
5/ Timetabling is totally un realistic!

Cheers
Adam

 

[kettlefan]

I have only a couple of minor gripes of this fine program. It involves the steam locos. When you blow off, no steam from safety's, the same applies when you whistle. When you open the drain cocks, no steam from there (but you do hear it). The one that really knarks me however, is that when you slip, the loco doesn't appear to, well, slip! All this annoys me because MSTS had all of these as features, so why Rail Sim skimped is beyond me. The steamers do react a bit more like real steamers though, and the cabs are impeccably detailed, so I suppose I can't feel to bad about it

 

[LucaZone]

Steam effects no affected by driving states and player input - Yep thats a big one we know about. Its high on the to-do list

 

[Respite]

That is a fair point actually. Currently I am slipping like mad at work, we need some more slippage in KRS. I get the wheelslip notice on the hud but nothing really happens.

Oh I must say the AI traffic is fun with the release of the dev tools. Takes a while to figure it out but its made the difference.