Railworks America

HI! Maybe this is too soon to start thinking ahead, but assuming that current bugs will be fixed, what would we want next in the sim? Here's my thoughts.

1 AI trains that can couple and uncouple automatically, so the player trains can interact.

2 Animated animals

3 In career scenarios, when showing intermediate scores, the player's score should be shown as well as the correct possible score, i.e. 340/400

I'm sure others will have more and better ideas, so lets keep this going constructively. I'm having a ball with the new improvements. Cheers; Chuck F.

I would like a working ballast spreader!!
Painting it is a pain!

It's hard to think of things to add, but I guess I'll try to throw a couple of off-the-wall ones out there.

Sticky Snow - I'd love to see snow sticking to the windshield in snowing conditions, similar to what they've done with rain. Let it build up on the windshield and let us use wipers to clear it off.

Display Resolution - I'd love to see the launcher use a list of available resolutions based on what the display driver reports, as opposed to just a pre-defined list.

That's all I can think of. :)

-George

Chuck F wrote:HI! Maybe this is too soon to start thinking ahead, but assuming that current bugs will be fixed, what would we want next in the sim? Here's my thoughts.

1 AI trains that can couple and uncouple automatically, so the player trains can interact.

2 Animated animals

3 In career scenarios, when showing intermediate scores, the player's score should be shown as well as the correct possible score, i.e. 340/400

I'm sure others will have more and better ideas, so lets keep this going constructively. I'm having a ball with the new improvements. Cheers; Chuck F.

chuck AI can already pick up and drop off stock, locos, passengers; so interactions with player locos will most certainly be coming sooner than later.

animated animals can be done by any skilled asset maker or route builder. thats something anybody who knows how to animate can do. I know how but id rather stick with machinery functions since animal movements reaquires more time and skill.

Id like to see the block asset tool expanded on by adding 2 or more slots for more objects to mix with the orignal. giving variety without having to copy the A/B and pasting it over the parent.

Ian

Importz2k1 wrote:I would like a working ballast spreader!!
Painting it is a pain!

Now that you mention it, how about more textures to go along with it! Cheers; Chuck F.

- "brakeman" external camera positions, like the head-out cameras in the SD40-2, except it should be at both ends of the train, instead of both ends of the loco.
This would make switching (shunting?) much more realistic. Currently I use the 2 and 3 camera positions but the angle is awkward.
- realistic night illumination in cabs
- better sounds! I like the new F7 engine sounds on the HSC, but in the cab they are far too weak. Also we need better sounds for coupling, pulling slack, brakes, etc.
- a better control panel, instead of the current F4 one. Just the speed and brake gauges would be enough.
- movable F3 window
- realistic headlight illumination (should not brighten the ground in full daylight)
- more brightness in full daylight (someone here will love this)

For me, I'd like to see more random elements. I'd like to see variable performance between units of the same type and that reflect the age and condition of a loco.

"brakeman" external camera positions, like the head-out cameras in the SD40-2, except it should be at both ends of the train, instead of both ends of the loco.
This would make switching (shunting?) much more realistic. Currently I use the 2 and 3 camera positions but the angle is awkward.

I second this one!

I'd like to be able to write Career mode scenarios and Tutorials scenarios like the ones on the HSC with the pic of the guy who is talking to you.

I just wish my copy would run !

harryadkins wrote:I just wish my copy would run !

... now stop that, Harry.

Hey, I thought of something the other night that seems so obvious yet I've never thought of it before nor heard it mentioned here... how about some snow on the trains?! Houses and trees have Winter texture sheets... don't locos and cars have those?

Toripony wrote:Hey, I thought of something the other night that seems so obvious yet I've never thought of it before nor heard it mentioned here... how about some snow on the trains?! Houses and trees have Winter texture sheets... don't locos and cars have those?

Already been done , here's one way of two ways .... http://forums.uktrainsim.com/viewtopic. ... 6&start=15 .. I'm sure I've this said before when you mentioned snow on Locos/stock , people just need to want to do something .

This also applies to animated animals ,, substitute an mesh with 4 legs for a mesh with 2 legs ,, No reason you can't put a coyote or a cougar or a bear in game .

I got a few fixes I'd like to see .

Have fun

You can also open a geopcdx in RW_Tools (or hex edit if un-openable in RW_Tools) and change the flag associated with the textures to recognize the _WI flag. MikeSimpson posted what the flags do a while back. I had a GP9 snow covered when you changed the season to winter, and clean when back to summer. It's a rough process though.

Chuck F wrote:1 AI trains that can couple and uncouple automatically, so the player trains can interact. ... Chuck F.

I'm not sure exactly what you mean. All AI train actions are "automatic", in the sense that they are programmed by the scenario writer and run "automatically" while the scenario is being played. AI uncoupling was already available in RW2, although getting it to run as desired wasn't always easy. I've used it in a lot of scenarios. I don't have access to TS2012 yet, but apparently AI coupling is possible now, with the single restriction that cars/wagons to be picked up have to be in place at the start of the scenario. Obviously, the RS programmers are interested in this function and my guess (and hope) is that full switching functions will be available fairly soon.

Tom Pallen

I would like the RW team to focus less on eye candy and more on the core simulation for the next version. Windshield wipers that remove simulated water from the glass is cool and all, but the fact that it was a higher priority than getting brake pipe pressures to increase and decrease at realistic rates on long trains seems a little strange for a train simulator. Hopefully now that the graphics improvements are out of the way the attention can turn to other things.

Also, one of the big advantages that MSTS still has over RW is the amount of content, in the form of routes, rolling stock and scenarios. I think a huge improvement would be to include a scenario generator. That way, instead of shipping with a couple of scenarios that probably took weeks to make, routes would have infinite replayability. The player could specify start and end points for their train, a priority for their train, and traffic density and priority for AI traffic, a scenario would be generated and off you go. The AI dispatcher would get you across the line making real time decisions based on what traffic is around you and whether it is a higher or lower priority than your train.

On a related note, I am amazed that the scenarios in the horseshoe curve route are locked when you first load it up. For a simulation that is lacking in content, limiting the number of available scenarios is the wrong approach. I am not so interested in switching scenarios. Forcing me to do a switching scenario to get to the long haul scenarios made me go back to MSTS for a while last night.

Lastly, make it so that I can have more than one save file at a time. This isn't some crappy console game. I hope.