Arosa Route addon now on Steam from DTG.

[trev123]

http://store.steampowered.com/app/62187 ... ute_AddOn/ Developer Thomson Interactive.

[BNSFdude]

Yeah, not from DTG. From Thompson. They have a great attention to detail.

[JohnS]

I think I just found my first none USA Add-ons. I should dig deeper since I think there is more steam add-ons for European routes. Sweet!

[NorthernWarrior]

I'm fairly keen to get this but never buy anything for TS on Day 1. Any unbiased, honest opinions from those who've purchased and tried in particular how the author has gone about detailing and painting the mountain terrain given the shortcomings of the texturing tools. And being a Thomson route are the assets locked down to prevent referencing in a freeware project?

[Chacal]

This and the Albula line are on my wishlist.
But the price is as steep as the grades in the routes!
The wishlist will have to wait.

[NorthernWarrior]

This and the Albula line are on my wishlist.
But the price is as steep as the grades in the routes!
The wishlist will have to wait.

Never know, they might do a special and offer both routes combined for a discount. Otherwise, when's the next sale - Thanksgiving?

I would also have preferred to see the route with more classic RhB traction rather than the modern Allegra plastic "karts". When I visited the line with the wife in ~1988 it was loco hauled/push pull stock. Nice evening trip, stop over in Arosa for an hour for a beer (at mountain resort prices!) before catching the next train back.

Edit: Well as the reviews on Steam are mostly positive and I found a bit of credit in my Steam folder, I purchased anyway. May need some help with what parameters to edit in the bin file, if Thomson have put restrictions on the assets.

[NorthernWarrior]

Update:

Assets are indeed locked down, behind a double wall of the ap file then the bin. Nice one, DTG and Thomson. Way to encourage third parties who would otherwise be delighted to reference these in their own freeware routes and as a result maybe bring in some additional sales. People wonder why I sometimes admit to a dislike of DTG and their practices, this being a perfect example of why. A full price short route with one trainset and we can't readily use the assets ourselves.

Route looks nice, claims to use custom terrain textures but I honestly couldn't see much difference - considerable use appears to be made of fixed objects for rock, tunnel formations etc.

The Allegra really needs a good read of the manual and/or play the tutorial scenario. There's a cruise control setting which needs to be set using custom key commands. Even after I figured that out, still seemed rather overpowered with 20% throttle adequate to maintain 30 km/h on a 6% gradient. There was an insistent vigilance sound which I could only suppress by keeping my finger on the Q key, not ideal.

Verdict still out on whether to persevere or refund, the latter in part as a protest at the asset policy (if DTG/Thomson happen to read this).

[Chacal]

Assets are indeed locked down, behind a double wall of the ap file then the bin [...] Way to encourage third parties who would otherwise be delighted to reference these in their own freeware routes

Vern, I believe I know this game's file system quite well, and yet I don't understand what you mean.
How do ap and bin files lock down assets?

[NorthernWarrior]

Well why did DTG suddenly move to putting all the files for a route in "ap" format rather than as individual folders if not to prevent tinkering?

If a developer has chosen to make an asset non-selectable (so you can't easily work with in the route editor) you need to first of all find the bin file, then open in RW Tools, and change the settings. Unfortunately from what I can see after my brief foray into this area you have to do it for each and every asset which you may want to use which could amount to 50 or more.

I've got a list of potential metre gauge routes in various locations around the world for which this route would have provided an excellent base of materials but they can stay on the drawing board. I accept that's a prerogative of the developer and I think this protection of assets actually started with Rich Garber and one of his routes and Thomson have followed suite, starting ISTR with Glasgow to Edinburgh. Most people wanting to use these assets aren't out to rip the original artist off who should, if anything, be pleased their work is sufficiently highly regarded to be chosen to embellish another route - so long as it is freeware and no money is being made by the user.

What with that and the fact the route is so short, I just don't think the pack is worth £24.99 so I've refunded for now. May consider again if I can get 50% (or better) off in a future sale.

[Chacal]

Honestly I don't know what you're talking about.

As far as I know, files packaged in .ap files are fully visible to the game and the editor. As long as you are working with DTG's building tools it shouldn't make any difference.
It is only when using some 3rd-party tools like RW-Tools, or obscure utilities like DTG's "namemyroute.exe" that have not been updated, that you have to unpack the files. Other tools, like LuaCreator 0.5, will open the files directly from the .ap.

Packaging game files in archives is a standard technique, it's been around for years. It is done for efficiency and ease of update. It has long been the standard way of handling Python scripts for games, because the mechanism is simple: official files are in the archive, mods are outside, if a mod exists the official file is not used.

Compiling sparse files in binary form (such as compiling xml files to bin files) is also a standard practice and is also done for efficiency. The process is reversible, this is not encryption.

None of the above is done for "locking" files in any way.

What IS done for locking files is compiling lua scripts into ".out" files without debugging info. This makes it impossible to reverse-engineer the scripts. This is done by DTG and 3rd-party providers (several of which are active members here) who don't want to share their scripting techniques.

I'm much more annoyed by asset builders who use automated UV mapping for texturing their engines, thus making them next to impossible to repaint. They probably don't do this for preventing repaints, most likely they don't know better.

[NorthernWarrior]

Not to labour the point Chacal but Thomson *do* make their objects unusable. You can initially place them in the editor (apart from their catenary wires which didn't even generate the yellow arrow) but once deselected you cannot reselect to rotate or position further. That (I believe) is determined by a pickable switch in the bin file. Ergo, mere mortals like me have to unpack the ap file to get at the bins, then edit each bin file in turn to make the object pickable. Sorry if either I wasn't clear or you didn't understand what I was getting at.

This is the same system I believe Rich Garber employed for Ohio Steel which caused some disgruntlement from third party bods hoping to reference the assets in their own freeware projects.

[Chacal]

Ah, I see what you mean.
Didn't know about that one.