BigVern

Surprised no one else has posted but it came to light yesterday evening, via a post in the SimRail thread on the Off Topic section of the official DTG TSW forum, that we now have the beginnings of a save game feature for single player in SimRail. And I quote:- "Well about fantastic: A polish player was doing some things with files and found a way to enable savegames. A dev confirmed this and even showed how to enable it. 'Testing_SavesEnabled=False' to 'Testing_SavesEnabled=True' in AppData\LocalLow\SimKol\SimRail\settings.conf Now this is very much in an alpha state (the menu will also show this) and loading takes time. But it works, altho bugs are very much possible." I can confirm this does appear to work though there are a couple of caveats... Before you can load the save game, you need to restart the scenario and make sure you are sat in the cab. Hit Esc and the option to load the save game will appear on the pause menu. On completion of loading with the EU07, I had to reactivate the main switch before I could take power again. Also the previous location appeared on the top right of the screen/HUD, though after a couple of minutes that changed to the next timetable location. Edit: I also had to reset the two overload relays to get going, but this is fantastic. So full praise and kudos to the team - presumably this option in the config file was added with this update. Truly a game changer as it means those of us who don't have time to run the long three or four hour SP scenarios in one session can now do so over several shorter sessions. Hopefully the feature will be more publicly added to the game ASAP. Thanks again, SimRail team.

Yes I can see the logistics challenge. What the loco really needs is a nice little branch or even heritage (preserved) railway DLC where you can just run steam specials exclusively up and down all day.

That looks like one helluva signal panel to operate. I wonder if in reality there would be more than one signaller on duty to manage the workload or some sort of auto routing system (ARS) as the modern signalling centres in the UK have.

I was realistically expecting it to be around £22 or £23 GBP, so quite remarkable really. Though all still downloading at present so I won't be firing up the Lodz route until tomorrow. Well I hope the DLC is a huge success and sells 1000's of copies for the development team.

Fantastic news! I don't even need to slip a Steam Wallet Gift card past the wife. DTG, hang your heads in shame for Cardiff City "network". 52Gb download with the updates though, so looks like I'll be playing Snowrunner a tad longer than I thought this evening.

Well folks, we should know in about 15 minutes what the cost will be. Off to finish up a run in Snowrunner while I wait!

Still present. Running the tutorial with the steam loco, once applied the brakes are very hard to release. Putting the handle back to running after fill brings the train to a stand again and you can't move.

Not sure if this is addressed with the forthcoming updates and the Lodz route, but aside from the few scenarios in SP (which are slightly too long to finish without being able to save) the steam loco needs some more scenarios in SP and to start making an appearance in MP, too. Maybe as a Railtour or special train. I appreciate there is more potential for players to mess up with the steam than driving electric but that would be part of the fun and emergent gameplay. If need be, access to the steam loco in MP could be subject to reaching a certain level - say 50 for example.

If we opt into Next Version for beta testing, will this be compatible with the Lodz route if we buy it on Wednesday? Can we still return to and play the current release version or will it be necessary to unsubscribe from the test?

Not sure if that's good news or bad news.

Well I see it now has a release date of 30th April (next Wednesday) and there are some streams happening in the meantime. If the developers are monitoring this thread, could you kindly now share how much the DLC will be selling for.

Well this seemed the best area of the forum to pose this question. Although the route DLC is listed on Steam it doesn't as yet show a selling price. So, what do we reckon (GBP) - £20, £25 maybe £30? Hopefully cheaper than a DTG TSW route DLC particularly the abysmal Cardiff network (all 20 miles of it) they just released. Also wondering if this integrates with the existing route(s) or will it be a standalone separate entity on the servers?

Single player, save game, checkpoints etc... At least you're not wasting resources doing Thomas The Bloody Tank Engine! Thank you for that... 🙂

Thought I would fire up the steam loco for a quick run. First of all, just one single player scenario, no tutorial? And that two and a half hours long with no means of saving the run to resume later. All stations run with a short train doesn't provide much opportunity to test the loco in fast running. Can't find any key commands in the Settings menu for the loco. Figured out the reverser eventually (it's the / and * keys on the keypad) but no idea how to close the cylinder cocks. Sound definitely needs work. Pull away seems very synthesised and once moving, if you shut the regulator there is hardly any track run sound at all. going through points and crossings also sounds rather tinny. So while it's something different IMHO a bit arcadey and not much better than what DTG did with steam in TSW (which they subsequently abandoned). I do like the animated fireman though he keeps shouting something at me and haven't got a clue what he's saying. Needs an English subtitle(s) if possible please.

Further to the above, started a single player scenario on the new Krakow route and credit where it's due, looks very nice - on a par with the new Just Trains route in TSW. But straight away I hit the problem - doing an all stations run with the EN57, I had to come off after about 40 minutes so unable to complete the secnario. ***SimRail Devs, you have created a magnificent long route for us to enjoy along with some superb trains, which is why it's so frustrating you leave the single player game without the means to save progress. Please make implementing this a priority before doing anything else.***

Exactly why it needs a decent single player game with full timetable, ability to work the signalboxes and of course a save game.

Been reading some of the comments on the Steam forum itself and it does look as if the transition to full release has been a bit of a disaster. Going to take a quick look shortly and see what's what but I had real hopes they would finally come through with a better single player experience and save game. I just want to drive a train end to end, on the route in multiple sessions (not everyone can spend 4 hours at a time on the PC) saving and loading as I go. Such as I can do in TSC, Run 8, TSW - even Derail Valley and Diesel Railcar Simulator which are also Unity games support a save. The only other big train game which doesn't is Zusi 3, which is why I don't play it very much.

Think this would need to go hand in hand with a save game and checkpoint system, or the ability to jump to where you left off.

I guess your occupancy time might be less if you had a curry the night before... yeesh.

Good for some that they have that amount of time to sit in front of the PC in one go, but most of us don't (or want to). So back to my original assertion that the scenarios could br broken into smaller chunks or, like Zusi and the Japanese video clip sim, allow you to jump forward to a particular station or event.

Agree Mike. And as you say tutorials are no use if you get stuck in the actual game, maybe there needs to be some form of interactive help or manual you can call up to help out in that situation.

Guess that's where a save game or checkpoint would come in handy... 😁

Well I relented and repurchased the ET22 along with a reinstall of SimRail. If the devs are taking their time over the SP and save game still better than the contempt DTG seem to show for the TSW customer base.

Having invested in the ET22 and Cargo Pack, as expected a very elusive item to find on many of the servers. Even the quiet ones (and it doesn't help that some of the servers seem to be permanently offline now). Best I've been able to manage so far is a couple of runs around the Lazy area which is painfully slow and doesn't give any opportunity to use the loco to its full potential. Yesterday evening I managed to cover 15km in 35 minutes, staggering from one signal check or 20km/h goods line to another. So the suggestion is, please increase the percentage of trains worked by the ET22, maybe even consider adding a couple of extra fast freights to the hourly service pattern. This is also why (dare I say it) we need a much improved single player timetable (preferably with the save game 🙂 ) which would avoid this angst. Or the ability to drop a free roam/quick drive consist into the single player game, so we can actually use the content we paid for...

Agree Mike. I bought the ET22 pack to show good faith but I would still like something that improves the SP game. Either as already suggested an easy to use scenario editor (i.e. not scripting) so you can chain the run into smaller sections. Or some sort of Quick Drive or Free Roam mode where you can put down a consist of your choice and drive it as far as you can towards a specific destination. As regards the save game, still can't really understand what the problem is. Apart from Zusi 3 every other train game on the market allows you to save a run in progress even if there is some compromise, like Run 8 having all trains restart from a stand or TSW sometimes not reinitialising the signalling properly. But most of the time it works and that's a chance worth taking.