Route Editor Availability

[taoroot]

Hello, I would like to ask the developers when it is planned for the route editor to be functional, please?

Thank you very much for the information, looking forward to hearing from you.

[GoppelPL]

Not yet. We still are improving the core game, adding the editor and having it catch up with the game updates would make you wait even longer for progress with both. For example, the currently available scenarios may or may not work with the nearest update, introducing a new scenario system - the new ones can be much more advanced than the old ones though. It's an upgrade for the users, but may cause all the work made by both ours and community scenario creators go to trash. It would be a shame if you made a map, put a lot of work in it, and then had to do all the work from scratch, because something was changed with the game in the meantime. 

[Maciej_ZG]

Is it planned to provide some "developer guide" for new scenario system to enable community to create new scenarios ?

Edited March 18, 2024 by Maciej_ZG

[taoroot]

1 hour ago, GoppelPL said:

Not yet. We still are improving the core game, adding the editor and having it catch up with the game updates would make you wait even longer for progress with both. For example, the currently available scenarios may or may not work with the nearest update, introducing a new scenario system - the new ones can be much more advanced than the old ones though. It's an upgrade for the users, but may cause all the work made by both ours and community scenario creators go to trash. It would be a shame if you made a map, put a lot of work in it, and then had to do all the work from scratch, because something was changed with the game in the meantime. 

Thank you very much for your time and the information, Goppel, I appreciate that you are putting a lot of work into the SimRail quality experience! For me it's the best train simulator so far 👍 I was just curious since there was no information in the dev logs. Really looking forward, since the reason I bought SimRail was because of editor and multiplayer 🙂

[Moooritz]

Am 18.3.2024 um 11:14 schrieb Maciej_ZG:

Is it planned to provide some "developer guide" for new scenario system to enable community to create new scenarios ?

yes, there will be a documentation

Edited March 21, 2024 by Moooritz

[SER 235]

Thought it would be best to ask this here and not create another thread.

Reading through the private server thread I see that private servers for the Main Routes wont be a thing, but I was wondering if that would be different when the route editor is eventually (hopefully) Released publicly?. For Example, Route editor is released and I make the Hurstbridge/Mernda lines in the 1980s Complete with all the boxes simulated, would it be possible to self host a server because one of the things that makes potentially developing routes and such like for this is the potential multiplayer aspect with the signalling/dispatching and the driving?

[taoroot]

Would it be possible for dev team to share a bit about route development, please? (with some screenshots) For example, how do you create tracks? Can I use orthophoto images as a guide? How do you import terrain? What kind of projection is the terrain expected to be in?

Thank you very much!

[Kaito Kid]

Hello! Long time without writing here as I'm doing some works at home, I would like to use this post as an opportunity to express some doubts that I have concerning MP, developing and content creation, I would like to have some answers if possible. I only have one short question. 😂

 

Will be multiplayer compatible with content creation? For example, would it be possible for me to create a route and trains from my country and let people download this content and play it on a multiplayer session? I haven't seen nothing related on how 3rd part content (be it payware or freeware) is going to work and this worries me a lot as I'm having a lot of déjà vu. 😅

Edited July 17, 2024 by Kaito Kid

[taoroot]

Dear dev team, can you please share information about the editor development, features and ETA, please? It was supposed to be one of the features in the full version of SimRail, but it's still not available. It was the reason I bought SimRail, so I'm a bit disappointed, to be honest. Thank you very much!

[Guest]

35 minut temu, taoroot napisał(a):

It was the reason I bought SimRail, so I'm a bit disappointed, to be honest.

Refund with false advertisement proof, you can use developer messages as attachment. Steam will refund if you haven't abused it in the past, even if you have more than 2 hours played.

[taoroot]

Any news about the route editor? I would appreciate some answer from the developers, please! Thank you very much.

[taoroot]

OK, so new DLC is around the corner, but still no router editor? And no answer from the team? What is going on? At least some ETA?

Edited March 21 by taoroot

[taoroot]

OK, so as it seems, no one from the development team is even willing to answer the simple question, neither on this forum nor over the email. So to me it seems like the whole SimRail project was a big scam with false promises and lies in order to extract the money from people and delivering half-finished (if even that) product. Releasing the DLC before even completing the development of the base game that people have actually paid for in advanced is a big no-no! How are you as a company want to position yourself in the eyes of the customers when the communication is missing, deadlines are constantly moving, features are not delivered and you still want more money for unfinished content? Really? How can I get in touch with you? How can I get some honest and straightforward answers when NO ONE is even trying to pretend to care about the customers!?

[MALECKI]

No niestety, kolego. Komunikacja z graczami w tej firmie, to najsłabsza strona. Jedyne pocieszenie dla Ciebie, to gra nie jest scamem. Trzeba niestety poczekać. Sorry for writing Polish. I'm tired after work.

[taoroot]

No problem with Polish, I can use translate to read it.

Well, not quite sure about it since there still features missing and they removed the mention of editor on the Steam page so it may as well happen that there will be no editor at all (or non functional one like with the TSW). Also controller support is still missing and was removed from the Steam page as well. That's not a good outlook when you lure customers with promises of features that you remove later on. Really disappointing.

And still not a one single comment from developers. It seems like they really don't care about the customers at all. It's beyond my understanding why would anyone give them any money for DLC when they have not delivered on their promises and released game from early access so just they can say it's "finished" when in reality it's not and missing features. That's exactly how can developers get away with false promises and get money for half-finished product. Does not look good from outside point of view as a customer. 😢

[Fightdrug]

vor 2 Stunden schrieb taoroot:

No problem with Polish, I can use translate to read it.

Well, not quite sure about it since there still features missing and they removed the mention of editor on the Steam page so it may as well happen that there will be no editor at all (or non functional one like with the TSW). Also controller support is still missing and was removed from the Steam page as well. That's not a good outlook when you lure customers with promises of features that you remove later on. Really disappointing.

And still not a one single comment from developers. It seems like they really don't care about the customers at all. It's beyond my understanding why would anyone give them any money for DLC when they have not delivered on their promises and released game from early access so just they can say it's "finished" when in reality it's not and missing features. That's exactly how can developers get away with false promises and get money for half-finished product. Does not look good from outside point of view as a customer. 😢

that editor will come they remove it from the store page because it was say that you can make your own tracks etc. they change it ingame now to a ,,make your own scenarios" i guess they just remove it from the store page to not confuse there costumers and make fall hope for them 🙂 see the problem would be with making own maps is that you need to lay the dispatcher AI yourself when when you think of that it take years to make a working shunting AI that make stuff of his own you can say that it would be to hard for the normal player to make that them self on own maps

[taoroot]

1 hour ago, Fightdrug said:

that editor will come they remove it from the store page because it was say that you can make your own tracks etc. they change it ingame now to a ,,make your own scenarios" i guess they just remove it from the store page to not confuse there costumers and make fall hope for them 🙂 see the problem would be with making own maps is that you need to lay the dispatcher AI yourself when when you think of that it take years to make a working shunting AI that make stuff of his own you can say that it would be to hard for the normal player to make that them self on own maps

Thank you for your point of view, but I don't follow, to be honest. What you have said implies that people are not intelligent enough to create maps and that's completely not true in this sense, I believe. Why decide for the people what is too easy or too difficult? Why not let people choose themselves whether they want to learn how to create map/route? It's like saying that: "Oh no, don't let people control their sound volume, let's hide that control completely so that they don't have to learn how to increase or decrease the sound level and we don't have to even program that feature" (this is an extreme example, but I hope you get the point). If someone want to learn and create something, give them the option, especially when it was one of the selling points. When you have an option, it does not mean that everyone has to use the editor, only those that want to. And, since we still don't know how the editor works, you can't even say whether it's hard or easy to do something.

[Gazz292]

SimRail is a kind of side project for the guys who's main job is making the professional training simulators used to train real life drivers, It's not like other 'train games' where the company exists purely to make money, and the content they make is dictated by what will sell the best.. hence the tons of uk and German content out there, as that's the biggest market guaranteed to make them millions.
A fair bit of the stuff we have in SimRail is from them getting permission to put content in SimRail that was created for train operators paying ?? billions ?? of Złotys for a specific route and rolling stock for their driver training program.

To use content from the professional sim is not as simple as dragging a few folders into unity and clicking 'make game' (well, i don't think it is, i could be wrong of course)

What works perfectly on the dev's computers often does not work well with home users setups that may be at the budget end of the spectrum, so i imagine a lot of the dev's time is spent getting things to play nicely on a range of computer specs, something that is likely not needed with the professional sim where the finished product includes the computer system it was written for.

:

I imagine that the software a group of professional devs use to create routes is not going to be very suitable for general home use,
firstly that software could need a computer system that will cost 10 grand or more to build, it'd be designed for professionals using pro spec computers, not a home user with a 5+ year old consumer budget pc. 

Then you will need to learn how to use the software, that's ok if your day job is a software dev / graphics artist etc, but for the general public where some expect to drag and drop a few pre-made sections and click a few buttons to make it all work, it ain't gonna be easy to learn, 
So the devs need to find time to 'dumb down' the route builder software and make it 'idiot general public proof' which means taking devs off working on other parts of the sim. 

People have mentioned releasing DLC's when the main sim is not 'finished' is not on....

• The cargo pack DLC was made by an outside company, and the reason one of the cargo waggons was missing for a year after release is because it didn't meet the SimRail teams quality standards, so the dev's had to find time to remake it themselves in-between all their other work. 
• i believe the EN57 / Kibble (which was added for free to the main sim) was also from an outside company.
• The Kraków route extension was made by the main devs (i believe) and was added for free to the main sim.
• The 1980's route was also made by the main team i believe, again added for free (only to single player, would love it to be available in multiplayer with a full timetable)
• And the SimRail team have been working on the Lódż extension which will be a DLC, this is only fair, devs are humans who need to earn money to live you know.  

 

And then we get to the real issue,  everyone wants something different out of SimRail, and the devs have to prioritize things. 
i personally couldn't care less about a route editor, i've also never spent any time dispatching, nor ever loaded up the TY2 steam loco, i only drive the EU07, EP08, ET22 and EN57 trains as i find modern trains boring, 
The thing i am eagerly waiting for is the I/O api / sdk, so i can get the lights working on my laptop controllers, then start making a full size replica EU07 driving cab.

 

But i can imagine most people don't want to have their computer desk looking like the cab of a train, let alone build a full size train cab in their house (for some that could be grounds for divorce), so most people are perfectly happy using the keyboard and mouse to drive, as the computer is used for other things.

The most important thing with SimRail is to get the core parts of the sim working perfectly before releasing route editors, as how well will it go down if you spend a year working on a route to have a core update that's needed to ... say, get shunting working properly ... break everything you've done so far, 

[taoroot]

Thank you for the very long and expansive information, but the point in here is that there is still no official information from developers! What you have written is just your point of view and I agree that everyone has different things that are important for them, that's natural. But even with all you have written it does not make sense to ignore the people that supported your project, that's a bad PR! Just a few words from my point of view to the info you've provided:

13 hours ago, Gazz292 said:

SimRail is a kind of side project for the guys who's main job is making the professional training simulators used to train real life drivers, It's not like other 'train games' where the company exists purely to make money, and the content they make is dictated by what will sell the best.. hence the tons of uk and German content out there, as that's the biggest market guaranteed to make them millions.
A fair bit of the stuff we have in SimRail is from them getting permission to put content in SimRail that was created for train operators paying ?? billions ?? of Złotys for a specific route and rolling stock for their driver training program.

Well, I don't have to really care about that one, not in a bad way, but it's just a fact: The developers decided on the scope of the SimRail and it's features and presented them publicly, wanted to create the simulator and I in a good faith supported the project. That's why you have a company running the projects, I'm not and I don't have to be understanding about the internal processes of a company. And if something changes, it's a good think to do as a developer to inform the customer about important changes. If I would do this to my customers, I would be out of business in a few weeks! And if anything else, this just shows that the company probably have a unrealistic, overly optimistic estimate of the development cycle that really did not go as planned. (But again, I'm a customer, it's not my responsibility to care about things like these.)

13 hours ago, Gazz292 said:

To use content from the professional sim is not as simple as dragging a few folders into unity and clicking 'make game' (well, i don't think it is, i could be wrong of course)

What works perfectly on the dev's computers often does not work well with home users setups that may be at the budget end of the spectrum, so i imagine a lot of the dev's time is spent getting things to play nicely on a range of computer specs, something that is likely not needed with the professional sim where the finished product includes the computer system it was written for.

:

I imagine that the software a group of professional devs use to create routes is not going to be very suitable for general home use,
firstly that software could need a computer system that will cost 10 grand or more to build, it'd be designed for professionals using pro spec computers, not a home user with a 5+ year old consumer budget pc. 

Again, the decision is in their hands as a developer to decide what they want and how they want it to perform. And if you need a powerful hardware, just state it in the requirements. As an end user, it's no my responsibility to decide what kind of hardware I want it to run on, I'm not going to tell the company: "Hey, I have a 10 year old computer, make it run on it as well". If the simulator requires modern hardware to run effectively and if I want to use the simulator, I will buy the required hardware.

13 hours ago, Gazz292 said:

Then you will need to learn how to use the software, that's ok if your day job is a software dev / graphics artist etc, but for the general public where some expect to drag and drop a few pre-made sections and click a few buttons to make it all work, it ain't gonna be easy to learn, 
So the devs need to find time to 'dumb down' the route builder software and make it 'idiot general public proof' which means taking devs off working on other parts of the sim. 

That reminds me of my previous comment: Let people decide what is hard or easy and whether they want to learn it or not. Not everything in life has to be dumbed down. On contrary, every time you learn something new you reach a new level of understanding that makes your life better in other areas too. 🙂 But I digress...

13 hours ago, Gazz292 said:

People have mentioned releasing DLC's when the main sim is not 'finished' is not on....

• The cargo pack DLC was made by an outside company, and the reason one of the cargo waggons was missing for a year after release is because it didn't meet the SimRail teams quality standards, so the dev's had to find time to remake it themselves in-between all their other work. 
• i believe the EN57 / Kibble (which was added for free to the main sim) was also from an outside company.
• The Kraków route extension was made by the main devs (i believe) and was added for free to the main sim.
• The 1980's route was also made by the main team i believe, again added for free (only to single player, would love it to be available in multiplayer with a full timetable)
• And the SimRail team have been working on the Lódż extension which will be a DLC, this is only fair, devs are humans who need to earn money to live you know.  

This brings me back to the development decisions by the team what they want to include and when. But what I wanted to express is that the communication and support from the company is virtually non existent. You see the information they present, like the development timeline with date estimates. Then the features list changes because there are some obstacles they need get over to continue development. OK, that is not a problem since there are always some unexpected circumstances in life, that's completely understandable. What is not very encouraging is when you are waiting years for features to be implement that were presented as being available in the full release and you have absolutely no communication from the company (and in the mean time they release paid DLCs)! If you have problem with something, just say it! People can't read others minds, so it's good to know what is going on. But when the communication is missing and customers are just waiting years for promised features that are slowly being reduced or taken away without even notice, that's a bad look for a company. And if they have changed their mind and does not want to include the feature, at least be straight and honest about it!

13 hours ago, Gazz292 said:

And then we get to the real issue,  everyone wants something different out of SimRail, and the devs have to prioritize things. 
i personally couldn't care less about a route editor, i've also never spent any time dispatching, nor ever loaded up the TY2 steam loco, i only drive the EU07, EP08, ET22 and EN57 trains as i find modern trains boring, 
The thing i am eagerly waiting for is the I/O api / sdk, so i can get the lights working on my laptop controllers, then start making a full size replica EU07 driving cab.

But i can imagine most people don't want to have their computer desk looking like the cab of a train, let alone build a full size train cab in their house (for some that could be grounds for divorce), so most people are perfectly happy using the keyboard and mouse to drive, as the computer is used for other things.

Sure, I would love to have the hardware integration that was also mentioned in the sales pitch. But that might also take years to realize or might be scrapped completely. But that's the problem, we don't know anything, just waiting in the dark. 🤔

 

13 hours ago, Gazz292 said:

The most important thing with SimRail is to get the core parts of the sim working perfectly before releasing route editors, as how well will it go down if you spend a year working on a route to have a core update that's needed to ... say, get shunting working properly ... break everything you've done so far, 

Let me be honest with you, there is never anything that's perfect. 😀 And with updates, take the SCS Soft (ETS2 and ATS) for example. They are slowly upgrading they engine, editor and adding features and most of them are working without any major breakdown. It can be done if you know how to do it. 🙂

But to summarize the whole point: Please, more communication effort from dev team would be really appreciated! But in the end, maybe this project is really just side project as you've said at the beginning, but in that case it should be presented as such. That fact the players and not developers are responding here it's really funny, though.

Edited Sunday at 08:20 AM by taoroot

[jirovy.filip]

I like this game but yeah the lack of communication is annoying. 

Full game released but single player scenarios with AI are only available for the Kraków extension. Shame, I enjoy them. I hope more is to come with the Lodz DLC. 

Would be nice to get some new trains too, or at least some info on the ČD train.