Prototypical-ish scenarios

[LGM118]

I've always been frustrated by how whenever I root around on Steam all the scenarios I seem to find are 25-30 minute "snippets." I do know that I've made a few scenarios on my own that I enjoy that try to cover entire routes (such as, say, running the Empire Builder Whitefish to Shelby). In addition, I'm trying to find a practical way of basically making such scenarios "as real as it gets" by checking the actual station times (again, this works for most Amtrak routes). The problems that I keep running into, and perhaps someone else has some advice on this, are:
1. Should I start putting these up on Steam or something? I'm worried that most people won't be interested in these longer scenarios, while the more hardcore fans might find all sorts of little nitpicky inaccuracies.
2. "Driver failed" issues. This was a huge issue when I was building a scenario of Northeast Regional train no. 185. The scenario had well over 20 trains and was getting extremely picky about routings and other things. This is enough of a problem when I'm doing an NEC route like the one I just mentioned where you're going against the main flow of traffic, but if I wanted to make a scenario for, say, Regional no. 180, which basically is sandwiched between several NJT commuter trains all going in the same direction, I imagine this would be a massive headache.
3. freight ops. The glaring hole in all this is that I can't seem to find a way to get freight train in. While this isn't as much of a problem on, say, the NEC or Surf Line, it's a big problem if I want to make the aforementioned Empire Builder run. I do know that there are some tools out there (ATCS Monitor is something I've used, but I don't know how to distinguish which trains are which, and availability is spotty). Is there something I'm missing?

[artimrj]

A1: Don't worry about what anyone says, upload them to Steam or here, someone will play them. Who cares if they nit pick you, you would get that even if you made the greatest scenario of all times by someone. There is always a jerk in the crowd trying to burst someone's bubble.

A2: Yes that will be very difficult to program with the AI.

A3: no clue what your talking about.

[OldProf]

I've seen plenty of scenarios, on Steam Workshop and elsewhere, that claim to include "actual" (or words to that effect) AI traffic and some of them (which I avoid) run for hours. In theory, at least, any of these could be edited to convert the player-driven train to an AI and one of the AIs to player driven, thus producing as many scenarios as there are trains running. There are also numerous scenarios that require the player-driver to pull over and let AI trains pass. You could try taking one of these apart in the editor and finding out what makes it tick. Just like the proverbial clock, however, putting it back together might be problematical.

Come to think of it, what do curious kids take apart and put back together (or not) these days? Maybe, no, make that probably I don't really want to know the answer to that question.

[LGM118]

I've seen plenty of scenarios, on Steam Workshop and elsewhere, that claim to include "actual" (or words to that effect) AI traffic and some of them (which I avoid) run for hours. In theory, at least, any of these could be edited to convert the player-driven train to an AI and one of the AIs to player driven, thus producing as many scenarios as there are trains running. There are also numerous scenarios that require the player-driver to pull over and let AI trains pass. You could try taking one of these apart in the editor and finding out what makes it tick. Just like the proverbial clock, however, putting it back together might be problematical.

Come to think of it, what do curious kids take apart and put back together (or not) these days? Maybe, no, make that probably I don't really want to know the answer to that question.

Bit of a delayed response (to my own thread, no less, yikes!), but definitely some very good advice. I ended up going through some of the highly rated scenarios available through Steam, took notes, and studied how they really work. My conclusion was that longer scenarios are feasible, but only if I can find a way to hold a user's attention. That means I need to find ways to create a feeling of accomplishment/tension in the scenario, or add variety on a longer route. The first lesson I learned is that it's good to point out traffic along the line. If my goal is to make a route with realistic traffic levels, it would make sense to incorporate that into the scenario's design.

The other thing I can do is to add tension. One of my favorite scenarios is the delayed Southwest Chief scenario for the Cajon Pass route because it created a real sense of tension. I'd almost be inclined to do something like that, except that if you missed a time point in the scenario, you'd end up giving up. The "27 Furious Minutes" scenarios for the NEC did a good job of condensing it down to a single "go from A to B fast" situation. Maybe on a longer route it means having to deal with being stuck behind slow freight or something.

[OldProf]

It's also possible to break what could be a single, long scenario into 2 or more pieces, each a scenario in its own right. There's a special scenario marker for this in TS2014, although RSC hasn't explained its workings yet. I'm tempted to just give it a try, but haven't done so yet. Even without that, I've occasionally divided a scenario that started to take more than an hour or 90 minutes to play into two parts. See, for example, "Conkelly, Ho!" Parts 1 and 2 in Steam Workshop.

[imphantum]

You can make your scenarios however you want really. I like to make my scenarios prototypical-ish if that makes sense. For example, I will always look up the schedule of a passenger train before making the scenario, but because of the way TS2014 works, most of the time you can't recreate the actual timetable accurately. Another thing that I found is that people do not like timetabled scenarios. So usually I would just make a standard scenario and give the player I time to try to get there before.
Long scenarios are good in some cases, but in others not. My scenario "Empire Builder Westbound" is a scenario that runs all the way from Shelby to Whitefish in one run. Given the context of the scenario I believe that it was a good idea to make the whole thing one run, and not divide it in two. If you do that though, give the driver something to look forward to around the next bend instead of it just being a point A to B scenario. But most of the time, scenarios are best when between 30-90 minutes.
One more thing I can tell you is don't use un-needed DLC. I've seen people use extra DLC for AI and it makes no sense. An example of this is when you make a scenario that uses the F40 Cali Zephyr and run it over Donner Pass, and include DLCs such as the GP20 and SD45 for more "realistic" AI. The fact is, for every DLC you include, that's a few more people that can't play your scenario, and in generally people don't care too much about the AI.
LAST THING- Always play through your final version of the scenario before uploading. Your scenarios will have issues here and there, so it's best to always check your work.
There are some other things to tell but I don't want to bore you, if you have questions feel free to ask.
Good luck and best regards,
-John

[arizonachris]

If I can make a few comments, from a driver's point of view (well, this driver's point of view anyways ) I like the 30 or 45 or 60 minute scenarios best. And, if it keeps me busy, I'll do a 90 minute scenario. But I really can't do a long, boring scenario, I'll literally fall asleep, make dinner, write a letter, you get the idea. Passenger runs are my favorite; then there's a "general" category, like "rescue a broken engine" stuff like that. Switching can be difficult because of the way the "9" map works, to me anyways, always scrolling to find the right tracks, but routes like Ohio Steel 2 are just genius, the way the scenarios were done.

My hat is off to all of you that create scenarios; the ones from RSC, for the most part, are just lacking for some reason. Put a little adventure into things. I look forward to seeing what you come up with.