Donner Pass Enhancement Package coming soon!

[NDORFN]

see this is what i dont understand they come out with HSC which is awesome and well planned, then you get a huge route like donner pass and its thrown together, i can understand some issues in such a long route, is why i dont release mine till i am absolutely sure its working

Exactly

[Chacal]

Yes but you are not a company that has to meet deadlines and deliver products to generate sufficient income to pay your employees.
No software product is perfect, indeed no release meets the quality level that the dev team would like to achieve, but sometimes they have to go with the minimum quality level that users will tolerate, and hope to fix it later. Sometimes you have the budget for better quality, sometimes you don't. I suspect this explains the difference in quality for HSC vs DP.

Microsoft, for instance, does extensive research with focus groups to determine that minimum quality level (there was even a metric for number of daily fatal crashes a user could live with). Years ago they sometimes had to release at that minimum level, nowadays they exceed it by far because they can afford it.


Back on OT, I'm glad they published this note because last night I finally caved in and bought DP at 50%. So far I'm enjoying it. I tried the winter freeroam scenario and found it challenging because at first I couldn't even get the train rolling, I had to add two helpers and even then barely made it up the pass. This is the first time I find a freeroam scenario enjoyable.

I was expecting much worse. I don't really mind floating houses and didn't launch any car into orbit yet.

[glenn68]

Usually RSC will reply pretty quickly. About a Month ago I sent RSC a E-MAIL stating that I cannot find the RSC SD9 anywhere. Of course there is no such thing as a RSC SD9 however I did point out from 2 emails that I was very disapointed that the Donner Pass and the Horse Shoe Curve did not come with a SD9. Both railroads in the past used SD9 extensivly in grade areas, and further more most North American class 1 railroads had SD7's or SD9's. They did not elaberate if there will ever be a SD9 or not but RSC would take my suggestion into consideration. I have to say RSC did respond to my email twice, however I am still disapointed there is no SD9.
Hopefully Donner Pass will be enhanced and run like the Horse Shoe Curve and dreaming maybe, just maybe they could throw in a SD9.

[PapaXpress]

see this is what i dont understand they come out with HSC which is awesome and well planned, then you get a huge route like donner pass and its thrown together, i can understand some issues in such a long route, is why i dont release mine till i am absolutely sure its working

True of my route as well. I could post an 'alpha release' but it would only generate piles of bugs and requests I wouldn't be able to handle and that I already know about.

[NDORFN]

True of my route as well. I could post an 'alpha release' but it would only generate piles of bugs and requests I wouldn't be able to handle and that I already know about.

When I've sorted out the signalling for my route I'm going to release it as an 'alpha release' ie. with no scenery. One for testing and feedback on the track, and two as a testing ground for the forum to come up with a common physics set.

[PapaXpress]

... as a testing ground for the forum to come up with a common physics set.

eh? Not to take this topic completely off to left field, but what do you mean?

[NDORFN]

A few of us were talking about coming up with a set of realistic physics as a standard for anyone wanting to create scenarios using them. For example, the loco's are way over-powered and most of the wagons are stuck on empty weight. If one decides to edit his own loco physics, the timing in scenarios created using locos with default physics will be all out.

[CSX2057]

Can you please add lots and lots of trees in the mountains? and Milepost?

Thanks

[SCLALINE]

Yes but you are not a company that has to meet deadlines and deliver products to generate sufficient income to pay your employees.
No software product is perfect, indeed no release meets the quality level that the dev team would like to achieve, but sometimes they have to go with the minimum quality level that users will tolerate, and hope to fix it later. Sometimes you have the budget for better quality, sometimes you don't. I suspect this explains the difference in quality for HSC vs DP.

Microsoft, for instance, does extensive research with focus groups to determine that minimum quality level (there was even a metric for number of daily fatal crashes a user could live with). Years ago they sometimes had to release at that minimum level, nowadays they exceed it by far because they can afford it.


Back on OT, I'm glad they published this note because last night I finally caved in and bought DP at 50%. So far I'm enjoying it. I tried the winter freeroam scenario and found it challenging because at first I couldn't even get the train rolling, I had to add two helpers and even then barely made it up the pass. This is the first time I find a freeroam scenario enjoyable.

I was expecting much worse. I don't really mind floating houses and didn't launch any car into orbit yet.

chacal i understand deadlines, however many companies have deadlines, there was no excuse for releasing DP in the condition it was

[Riko1605]

This is good news ... I hope all the new trees DP (very ugly) will be replaced by trees, firs and pines found in Castle Rock Route.
It would be nice if the DP textures could look like that of Castle Rock
Thank you for this work ..

[Old Prof]

chacal i understand deadlines, however many companies have deadlines, there was no excuse for releasing DP in the condition it was

And had they delayed the release there would have been even more baloney flying around, as they know from past experience. So ... damned if you do, damned if you don't. In this case, RSC chose to release, and I think they chose correctly. Why? Because by doing so, they received both positive and negative feedback, some of the latter even offering useful suggestions, whereas had they decided to delay release they would have received two blasts of negativity: the first for not meeting their predicted release deadline, the second for errors -- both perceived and real.

Just one more quick comment: I've read both this and other RW-related forums since the first release of Rail Simulator and have observed that any release of any DLC or general update brings out the naysayers in force, especially those with absurd, angry, personal demands. I'm sick of them, so I can imagine how RSC feels. I'm not saying that all negative comments are bad, but one person wanting a left-handed-thread thingamajiggy on the whatchamacallit because he thinks he remembers having seen that feature when he was a lad doesn't invalidate the worth of the watchamacallit.

[SCLALINE]

i am definitely not a naysayer, if anyone has read my posts in response to the whiners would see, but i do agree with you prof

[Rich_S]

I feel far to many people forget RSC is a company of 20 or so employees, not 5,000 employees. I would bet the majority of the employees wear multiple hats. They really do listen to what we say, just look at all of the improvements this far, like the fan issue with the Aces and the grill issue with the SW1500, corrected. It may take them awhile to fix items that are not correct and / or missing, but remember folks, they are a small company, not only trying to create new content to keep the lights on, but fix and or update what we currently have on hand. Sure I was disappointed with the problems in the Donner Pass route, but I understand RSC's reason to release the product. They have a monthly payroll to meet, the employees are not doing this as a hobby, they have homes to pay for and families to feed. Was the route rushed? maybe. Are they fixing it now for free, most definitely. But lets not forget, the Donner Pass route also contains a lot of firsts. Some off the top of my head are, the blowing snow when the trains run in the winter and snow on the equipment. Snow banks along the ROW in the winter months, the talking Hot Box detectors and the SD40T-2 locomotives. The route is completely usable as is and will only be better once we receive the update, thank you RSC

Regards,
Rich S.

[Old Prof]

I feel far to many people forget RSC is a company of 20 or so employees, not 5,000 employees. I would bet the majority of the employees wear multiple hats. They really do listen to what we say, just look at all of the improvements this far, like the fan issue with the Aces and the grill issue with the SW1500, corrected. It may take them awhile to fix items that are not correct and / or missing, but remember folks, they are a small company, not only trying to create new content to keep the lights on, but fix and or update what we currently have on hand. Sure I was disappointed with the problems in the Donner Pass route, but I understand RSC's reason to release the product. They have a monthly payroll to meet, the employees are not doing this as a hobby, they have homes to pay for and families to feed. Was the route rushed? maybe. Are they fixing it now for free, most definitely. But lets not forget, the Donner Pass route also contains a lot of firsts. Some off the top of my head are, the blowing snow when the trains run in the winter and snow on the equipment. Snow banks along the ROW in the winter months, the talking Hot Box detectors and the SD40T-2 locomotives. The route is completely usable as is and will only be better once we receive the update, thank you RSC

Regards,
Rich S.

AMEN!!!!!!!

[railbard]

One would hope in getting a reply that said "you need to respond within 28 days" that the response also included suggestions on how to deal with your problem, or some comment that would lead to continued correspondence. Then asking for a response makes sense.

But to get an AUTOMATED reply that includes NO suggestions for problem fixes or acknowledgement of (in this case) the request for reflective vegetation at the RW3 standard in a purported RW3 product (aka Donner Pass) but DOES ask for a response in 28 days is just plain weird.

To what should machinist respond? RSC has provided no information to which he can respond other than to reiterate his original request. And if that's what they want, they need to say so.

At the very least it should be phrased more clearly: "While we have opened a help ticket on your request, we need to know that you continue to have an interest in this issue. Please contact us again within 28 days if we have not resolved your request by that time. Otherwise we will consider the matter resolved to your satisfaction and close the help ticket."

BTW that's pretty much verbatim what the auto-responder at a previous employer said, and we never had anyone express confusion over what we were saying (we served both English and Spanish speaking customers). But RSCs auto-response was confusing to me (an English speaker) as well as to a non-ENglish speaker.

Statistically, for every "complaint" there are 10 others with the same problem who have not complained (yet!). Of course on the other side, for every compliment there are 14 people who feel the same way--people are more likely to complain than compliment. So always value the compliments you get. :)