Railworks America

I was wondering if anyone knew if the Run8 engine is based on the old MSTS engine or did they build their own from the ground up? I remember reading that their team is composed of people who worked on MSTS as well as modders of that game. I'd like to know more about the technology they're running on and info seems to be hard to come by. Can anyone elaborate?

Don't you think this is a question more appropriate for some R8 forum instead of here?

Actually from what I heard the Run8 engine was written from scratch.
In a way, Train Simulator is an offspring of MSTS, in the sense that MSTS was developped by Kuju, which then developed Kuju Rail Simulator, which was taken over by RSDL which became RailSimulator.com Ltd (RSC), and it became Railworks, and then Train Simulator, while RSC decame Dovetail Games (DTG).

Chacal wrote:Actually from what I heard the Run8 engine was written from scratch.
In a way, Train Simulator is an offspring of MSTS, in the sense that MSTS was developped by Kuju, which then developed Kuju Rail Simulator, which was taken over by RSDL which became RailSimulator.com Ltd (RSC), and it became Railworks, and then Train Simulator, while RSC decame Dovetail Games (DTG).

Thank you. That answers my question. :)

Chacal wrote:Actually from what I heard the Run8 engine was written from scratch.
In a way, Train Simulator is an offspring of MSTS, in the sense that MSTS was developped by Kuju, which then developed Kuju Rail Simulator, which was taken over by RSDL which became RailSimulator.com Ltd (RSC), and it became Railworks, and then Train Simulator, while RSC decame Dovetail Games (DTG).

To go down this tangent, the engine TS runs on is also custom, although only in the sense that Kuju themselves developed it. If you look in the files, there’s actually some leftover textures from the project the engine was originally developed for, which is a canceled zombie shooter based on George A. Romero’s movies. As an aside to an aside, it means that theoretically a console port of TS is at least on some level fundamentally possible because the original game was developed for PS2, Xbox, and of course PC. As far as I can tell, Kuju didn’t salvage anything from their attempt at MSTS2 during the original Rail Simulator development process.

Maybe you're thinking of Open Rails which is MSTS based, although I believe that has been converted over to a more modern gaming engine. I believe with Run8 v3, the graphics engine changed. Colors on the v2 content became more saturated along with more contrast. The physics itself was completely written from scratch, and continues to be refined with each version. TSW2 uses the Unreal game engine, and I believe Railroads Online uses the Unity game engine.

cnwfan wrote:Maybe you're thinking of Open Rails which is MSTS based, although I believe that has been converted over to a more modern gaming engine. I believe with Run8 v3, the graphics engine changed. Colors on the v2 content became more saturated along with more contrast. The physics itself was completely written from scratch, and continues to be refined with each version. TSW2 uses the Unreal game engine, and I believe Railroads Online uses the Unity game engine.

Hi Folks,

Open Rails was also written from scratch - started by Wayne Campbell who you might be familiar with from his excellent work here - they just wrote the new program to be able to utilize the old MSTS content.

Regards,
Scott

scottb613 wrote:

cnwfan wrote:Maybe you're thinking of Open Rails which is MSTS based, although I believe that has been converted over to a more modern gaming engine. I believe with Run8 v3, the graphics engine changed. Colors on the v2 content became more saturated along with more contrast. The physics itself was completely written from scratch, and continues to be refined with each version. TSW2 uses the Unreal game engine, and I believe Railroads Online uses the Unity game engine.

Hi Folks,

Open Rails was also written from scratch - started by Wayne Campbell who you might be familiar with from his excellent work here - they just wrote the new program to be able to utilize the old MSTS content.

Regards,
Scott

Indeed Wayne was one of the original, if not the original, drivers behind ORTS. I wish that group would do another open source engine for RW!! Anyone who has run MSTS will immediately recognize the heritage of the RW engine as both were done by the same studio: Kuju. Both engines are now long in the tooth and I miss so many of OR's innovations when running RW.

Best,
David

Run8 was developed by former MSTS AddOn developers 3DTrainStuff. The engine is their own - built to exactly fit their needs.