Railworks America

Not trying to stirr the pot, so moderator please delete in case I am breaking forum rules.

When I took my TrainSim sabbatical (my last screenshots are from Jan 2017) I was playing TS2017 also tested TSW. But I decided TSW was not the right thing for me and went back to TS2017 and I still feel that way.

How have things evolved in the last 3 years between TSW and TS ?

Which one is bigger / better / has a bigger following / has more new routes and locomotives / are both still fully supported by DTG ?

Any worries for the future ? Is TSW going to take over from TS ?

TSW is build on a more modern game engine, which offers lots of possibilties. But also huge difficulties, for it doesn't seem to be particularly suited to railway simulator type of games.

TSW the train driving game, however, is very restricted when it comes to user creativity, it is geared towards commercial DLC on closed system consoles.

TSxx is almost a fossil now, but allows user creativity. The commissions DTG receives from Steam store sales by third parties are substantial enough for DTG to keep the franchise alive.

DTG's own DLC of recent, IMO leaves a lot to be desired, since IMO is is subjected to the same economic limits as TSW: only a limited amount of dev time and resources are allocated, and almost no quality assurance.

EVen if DTG pulls the plug on TSxx, the community will keep it alive for a couple more years. But like with MSTS, commercial providers will loose interest, and alike MSTS, the dedicated freeware authors get on in years and slowly fade out by natural causes.

TS2020 has a far larger following and TSW seems to be just being marketed as some sort of x box thing with no ability to do anything but what they offer up for operations. TS2020 has a pretty dynamic third party bunch making new locomotives and cars both freeware and payware. In spite of some saying it's a old game engine since we now have a 64bit version it's very stable if you have any kind of decent gaming rig. I can't imagine most of us leaving this anytime soon. There have been literally hundreds of new pieces of rolling stock put out in the last year and several very nice routes. You mentioned elsewhere about not wanting to mess with Steam however again there is a lot of content in the Workshop that can really add to your experience.

Yes, it does indeed seem DTG will position TSW more and more in the gaming console market while trying to keep TSxx alive on the PC's.

Research done on prototypes for DLC can still be shared between the platforms, but it has been stated by DTG there is no cross financing between the franchises.

TSW still needs lots of development effort, time and costs. Which have to be recuperated before the game starts to give real return on investment. I think DTG secretly wants to get rid of the demanding, spoiled and soured PC player community and instead solely concentrate on the console market where they have no competition at the moment.

TXxx, well, will we get a new TS2021 this year without any improvements or enhancements, just with a repackaged collection of base routes (Germany, United Kingdom and USA)?

_o_OOOO_oo-Kanawha wrote:Yes, it does indeed seem DTG will position TSW more and more in the gaming console market while trying to keep TSxx alive on the PC's.

Research done on prototypes for DLC can still be shared between the platforms, but it has been stated by DTG there is no cross financing between the franchises.

TSW still needs lots of development effort, time and costs. Which have to be recuperated before the game starts to give real return on investment. I think DTG secretly wants to get rid of the demanding, spoiled and soured PC player community and instead solely concentrate on the console market where they have no competition at the moment.

TXxx, well, will we get a new TS2021 this year without any improvements or enhancements, just with a repackaged collection of base routes (Germany, United Kingdom and USA)?

Of course all of this is just speculation on your part. I respectfully disagree about the future of TSxxxx. As you know I have little or no interest in TSW.

Thanks guys. Your opinions and insight is realy helpful.

Yes, as far as basic 3d developers that do freeware items TSW is a no go, since it probably won't ever offer any editors anyways. In order to do items for that game you pretty much need to work at DTG, and even then it's hard to say if they will ever offer anything that isn't modern diesel since most modern day railroad fans seem to not have a use for steam power.

That's one reason I probably will never buy TSW myself anyways, since there's no way I can show off my models in it.


...Cheers...


Big J


Yes, Railworks isn't going anywhere anytime soon if we can help it.

To each his own. But for me, no editors and no ability to add my own assets to TSW = no money spent on TSW. After spending time porting assets into the Unreal world, I just cant go back to what TSxxxz has to offer. Therefore, my sabbatical continues on...

Why not give the rumor mongers their own forum down at bottom of the board. There they can happily speculate to their hearts' content. Meanwhile the rest of us can safely ignore it and go about enjoying our favorite game for years to come.

Wouldn't be so bad if they would not talk about things that have nothing to do with the thread. Make a new thread for the new topic. Then we can ignore that.

OK this is NOT an idle speculation and is relevant to the topic.
TS 2020 vs TSW

TSW
No Editor
Mainly End to End, very few other duties
No Steam Locos
No Community Scenarios. Mods, addons, etc
No 3rd party DLC suppliers
No station names in 2D map
Not easy to tweak
Limited Forums
Driver (Engineer) can walk and do duties he/she is not meant to do (coupling)
Better Weather/Time selection – no real world time and weather
Good In-Game Menus
Nice Graphics
Cabs quite interactive
Sound is reasonable, but no 3rd party add-ons
DirectX 10.0 (really needs 11.0 and/or 12.0)
64-bit
CPU Intensive
Limited controllers work with TSW – no Raildriver yet.
DTG Limited countries provided
Poor Instruction Manuals
Need some dexterity for some switches etc

TS2020
Quirky Editor
End to end plus Shunting and other duties, much more variable than TSW
Steam Locos Galore
Plethora of DTG DLC, Routes, Locos, Re-skins
Thousands upon thousands of Community Scenarios. Mods, addons, etc
Some very realistic loco models available
Very good sounds
In-Game menus improving
DirectX 9.0c (the slowest of all DirectX's)
Cabs - some interaction all 2D
Weather is set but has some awesome addons, no real world weather like FSX
Many 3rd party DLC suppliers
Many interactive forms
2D map is excellent
32 and 64-bit
CPU moderate
Manic Passengers
Good In-coach passenger views
Graphics reasonable but not as good as TSW
More stuttering than TSW
Easier than TSW to tweak
Easy to operate keys, switches, knobs etc.
Rail Driver Support
Joystick and other controllers supported by 3rd party apps
No driver walking
DTG Covers UK, USA, Canada, Germany, France, Japan, China, etc
Instruction manuals very good.
This list is based on my observations and may not include every difference.
pH

Nice.

TSW 2 is due out in August, and will apparently offer a scenario editor and a paint shop type of thing.

DTG kinda ruined TSW for me when they implemented the scoring type system - akin to making everything a career scenario. Once you've run the handful of scenarios and services offered for a route, that's it. You can buy add-ons if you want more to do.

I plan to give it a whirl again when TSW 2 comes out, but I don't think it's going to take me away from TS20xx.