Beyond RW 2012?????

[Dan]

This thread ought to be retitled 'things that annoy me and I want fixed'.

I never quite understand when people claim somethings are 'fundamentally broken' and never actually explain what those things are or how they can be fixed.

To my mind, AI, Physics, graphics etc are all one and the same. Things like stability however is a different issue. They can all be improved, developed etc etc but as others have said, dlc pays for those updates, no dlc and you'd be looking at an msts situation where everyone is left high and dry. I wonder if the vanity of some people means that they actually want this to happen - afterall there have been people who have been predicting the demise of RW for the last 3 years.

[Kali]

Well, graphics and physics are somewhat intertwined in that they both deal with immediate immersion for the player; to some extent graphics even effect physics in that way, in that they can adjust the perception of what's happening somewhat. However if you want to take a flying paradigm here, frankly you drive a train on instruments unless you're pulling up to a stop ( admittedly signals are instruments that just happen to be outside ), so if moving the controls doesn't make the instruments work right, then you've broken the immersion - that part is physics. If you talk to a driver over here then quite often you'll find they can drive perfectly fine without being able to see a thing, just with their speedo and the audible signal messages. And as we've seen with trains almost exploding off the rails recently, bad physics also breaks the graphics side.

The AI is someone else pretending to be you, so really it just sits on top of all the other stuff and has an entirely different bunch of requirements - pretending to be a driver is a vastly different business from pretending to be a train! while I'd have a good chance of writing a physics engine, I'd be a lot less happy trying to write an AI ( although writing train control software is many orders of magnitude easier than actually trying to emulate a human ). Underlying it there is what you might want to call asset management which is "where is all this stuff in the world", which everything has to use; graphics to know what to draw, physics to work out where everything has to go and if it's going to hit anything, and AI to work out what it's meant to be doing.

I'm not sure the physics is actually fundamentally broken; certainly it does a lot of things it shouldn't, for no good reason either, but it does seem to use basic known laws of physics at heart. I just think it needs a good cleanout.

[g_nash]

This thread ought to be retitled 'things that annoy me and I want fixed'.

I never quite understand when people claim somethings are 'fundamentally broken' and never actually explain what those things are or how they can be fixed.
To my mind, AI, Physics, graphics etc are all one and the same. They can all be improved, developed etc etc but as others have said, dlc pays for those updates, no dlc and you'd be looking at an msts situation where everyone is left high and dry (I wonder if the vanity of some people means that they actually want this to happen).

This is broken and not just 'fundamentally broken' , no sir , it's busted big time ,, it's both a source of amusement and editor crashes ,,,,,,,,,,, send me the source and I'll have it fixed .



Why is it broken ... thats the real question .

[Dan]

Well, graphics and physics are somewhat intertwined in that they both deal with immediate immersion for the player; to some extent graphics even effect physics in that way, in that they can adjust the perception of what's happening somewhat. However if you want to take a flying paradigm here, frankly you drive a train on instruments unless you're pulling up to a stop ( admittedly signals are instruments that just happen to be outside ), so if moving the controls doesn't make the instruments work right, then you've broken the immersion - that part is physics. If you talk to a driver over here then quite often you'll find they can drive perfectly fine without being able to see a thing, just with their speedo and the audible signal messages. And as we've seen with trains almost exploding off the rails recently, bad physics also breaks the graphics side.

The AI is someone else pretending to be you, so really it just sits on top of all the other stuff and has an entirely different bunch of requirements - pretending to be a driver is a vastly different business from pretending to be a train! while I'd have a good chance of writing a physics engine, I'd be a lot less happy trying to write an AI ( although writing train control software is many orders of magnitude easier than actually trying to emulate a human ). Underlying it there is what you might want to call asset management which is "where is all this stuff in the world", which everything has to use; graphics to know what to draw, physics to work out where everything has to go and if it's going to hit anything, and AI to work out what it's meant to be doing.

I'm not sure the physics is actually fundamentally broken; certainly it does a lot of things it shouldn't, for no good reason either, but it does seem to use basic known laws of physics at heart. I just think it needs a good cleanout.

Completely agree. I think on the one hand you have the core stability of the game - editors, random crashes, hardware use etc, then you have which imo are 'eye candy' physics, AI etc.

The reality is that improvements are going to be incremental. There is not going to be sudden leap forward. If RW were to plough all their resources into develop uber-AI then it would mean no improvements in other areas (and no doubt there would be complaints from those neglected areas) and of course if it were the other way round.

I just feel that some people are very unrealistic in their attitude about what can be done and in the timeframe in which in can be done. I'd love to click my fingers and have every bug fixed, perfect physics, absolute core stabilty, a complete wiki, a graphics engine and set up that work perfectly on every system, every single engine and vehicle modelled (all freeware of course - why should I have to pay for this), an AI that is super intelligent, every single route in the world modelled and a free cake for every user, but I know that this is very unlikely to happen so my demanding it is whistling into the wind.

[arizonachris]

I just feel that some people are very unrealistic in their attitude about what can be done and in the timeframe in which in can be done.

+1 to that, Dan. As someone who is "just a driver" with only the basics of using RW Tools, someone who professes to know it all and can fix it all is a demi God to me. Heck, I can't even get a reskin right.

But I do know nothing happens over night, and I don't expect it to. Yes, RSC messed up the "Big Update" most of us knew they would, myself included. How they figured that if they created a whole new game engine and not have any issues is beyond me. Multi million dollar dev companies spend years and years on new game engines. These guys are 12 men and a goat? Give them some time. There is a lot of stuff that does work right, and more is being updated every day.

Check out the new Ohio Steel/ Massillion route. It is just awesome and shows what RW can do.

[g_nash]

How they figured that if they created a whole new game engine and not have any issues is beyond me.

They did'nt create a "new" game engine .. it's additions and modifications to an existing item . This gives "new" issues on top of unresolved "old" issues.

[Kali]

Yes, a new lighting engine isn't even a new graphics engine ( be glad, we'd have to have new models if it was... ). I was actually expecting more problems than we've had - other than legacy mode not actually being the same as RW2 as promised it's been quite painless. That's not to say I almost didn't put it down for a few months at times, but the fact I felt I could start creating again after a couple of weeks was unexpected.

Physics and graphics are not "eye candy". If you don't have those in a simulator - and this is a simulator rather than a virtual model railway - you don't have a game at all; and that means all your editors and so on are useless. You might call AI eye-candy to an extent in that you can still simulate you driving a train without it, but you're not simulating a railway. Hmm, a cunning change of name with this release!

[arizonachris]

They did'nt create a "new" game engine .. it's additions and modifications to an existing item .

OK, my bad. I thought from the way they talked about it, it was a whole new "engine".

[g_nash]

OK, my bad. I thought from the way they talked about it, it was a whole new "engine".

No harm done ... and to clarify .. I don't "whine or "moan" for no reason .. I want these problems solved because I see the potential in what we have .

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And on the subject of wishes ..

Thank You
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[Dan]

I tend to think things become whining when people move from 'I have this problem' to attacking RW as a company for not fixing the problem or start demanding the moon and then complaining when they don't get it. I'm amazed after the attacks on RW that they even bother to deal with the forums or to offer help in a personal capacity.

To go back to Arizonachris's point - RW made some major revisions which didn't work fully or as well or as expected. This was then followed by the usual suspects laying into RW for only being interested in eye candy. Just out of interest can anyone think of a piece of say MS, or Apple software that has worked perfectly out of the box and never required a patch or an update? I remember someone saying 'Well Rockstar were able to go from GTA III which was rubbish and buggy to GTA SA so why can't RW' while missing the fact that GTA SA was also very buggy when it first came out and had to be revised up to version 3 or 4. And even now when I play it I see bugs that were never fixed in the game.

[Kali]

There's a difference between "You suck!" and "what you've done here sucks, because xyz".

[PapaXpress]

Not sure what you mean. RSC does not poll this forum for bugs or customer service. Sure they say hi every now and then and make an announcement or clarify a piece of functionality, but if you want to register a complaint you need to email their support site.