Shame on this game and it's developers.

[NadaCAT]

Yesterday, this game came out as a "complete game", a meaningless lie, not even a changelog link was provided on the post.

The game is, in fact, not completed, not even close to be, in things that were promised, in optimization, bugs and in broken promises.

A post by steam user, "HYPER ", explains the matter in a more specific way.

By "HYPER", 14/12/2024 13:00:

 

"Did you forget about their road map from beginning of the year (2024) "1st anniversary road map"? Didn't you?

Before you read anything below and just respond with "oh you are a hater", "haters gonna hate", etc. I'm watching this game since it was in production/before playtests. I was a playtester of this game. This game hasn't had any major updates since playtests. ED250 was already in game. Ty2 too. But they were locked. “Changing files” and sharing screenshots of them or sharing ways to unlock them was rewarded by banning people. However, it's the developers' fault for not removing them from the game's files or blocking them in such a way that they wouldn't be spawn.

The main gameplay changes since playtests are:
- Kind of better optimization/update to a newer graphics engine
- Seasons
- Unlocked full route to Warszawa (but it has been done before, so they only limited the map for the playtests)
- Tunel - Kraków route
- Some additional signal boxes, which should be on release (No Kraków signal box on "complete game"/full game release is crazy [aka ironic]. Nothing new. Sadly.) - They were releasing this game in a hurry, but money blinded them. So now they want to milk everybody from their money.
- ET22 with "cargo" pack
- ETCS(?) If could be called "major gameplay change"...
I don't recall anything else that would change the gameplay for the better. With each update this game gets more bugs than it had before. Releasing a "full game" with bugged Kraków Główny station and what I mean by snow under roof is not a funny joke. They are redoing their mistakes with each "update". The same problem was in Katowice when they released the seasons update... It looks like they don't have enough testers, if they had any at all.

1-3 months:
- Where's the LUA mission editor with AI trains?
- Should shunting operations be limited to a singleplayer mode in the "complete game"?
- No possibility to save the game (checkpoints)?
- Congratulations! You have added Tunel - Kraków route after 11 ♥♥♥♥ months (promised 1-3... well, maybe 6... BUT AFTER ALMOST A YEAR AFTER CREATION OF THE ROAD MAP?)
- Ty2 (BR52) the same as above...
- Cars liveries from 80's - the same as above... (also no licensed pkp intercity [major polish railway company] liveries in the "complete game" xD)
- ETCS system - the only thing that was promised in 1-3 months and it was done (let's skip the bugs for now...)
- DId devs completely forgot about Łódź - Warszawa route DLC?
- Cargo Pack DLC (ET22, Fals, Zas, Sggnss) - they released it, although they promised not to release DLCS before the release of the full game.... Also this DLC was not complete at the time of release XD!
Can you even imagine releasing a paid DLC that's not complete for a game that's in Early Access?
- Early Access exit... yeah sure...

3+ months (okay, I get it, by 3+ they meant at least 12 months, or maybe never hehe):
- No updates regarding Zgorzelec - Dresden route DLC.
- But they did the Katowice - Sędziszów route 80's version, even if they didn't complete everything on the 1-3 months list...
- No updates of the USA route... maybe it's in trash bin, who knows?
- No support for RailDriver
- No mechanical signal boxes, although there's a gif with them in the app description on the steam website lol...
- No home cockpit I/O support (or very poor support for custom controlers...)
- No train editor
- And let's not forget their “.... to be continued” where they keep promising things and never do them, or even if they do, not as promised!

Congratulations for not keeping their promises and being lazy developers with the support of blinded, deceived customers. People, open your eyes. You are being scammed by developers who are making money from your stupidity and gullibility. Their C. E. O announced on X (old Twitter) that their cargo pack dlc paid for itself in less than 2 days (if I remember correctly, it was about 24 hours...) AND THEY STILL WANT ALMOST FULL PRICE FOR IT. Take SCS Software for example with their much bigger project in comparison - ETS 2 (Euro Truck Simulator 2), they stick to their promises and almost never disappoint, especially when it comes to surprises. They sell their dlc at a discount for less than half their price about a year after release. A COMPANY THAT IS AT LEAST 10x BIGGER. And you still believe everything that SimKol S.A or SimRail S.A says... They already have 2 games of the same scale (as SimRail) in production, although they haven't finished the first game. If you don't want another company "EA Games like" to grow up, you'd better stay away from their products at least as long as they ignore their customers and silence all criticism because “they're Polish fans, don't mind them”...
I understand that SimKol S.A has other projects (simulators) in works for Polish real life companies, but maybe "pie in the sky" (POL: "gruszki na wierzbie") isn't best long-term strategy.

Besides, don't you think that forcing people to pay for the Łódź - Warszawa DLC when you already took money for the Pabianice - Łódź - Warszawa route from ŁKA (Łódzka Kolej Aglomeracyjna [ENG: Łódź Metropolitan Railway]) for creating a “simulator” for them (based on the already created SimRail [funny, right?]) is not fair?
There is evidence of this in the SimRail game files... LOL.
P.S. I hope the invoice didn't mention anything about paying for the game (just the cockpit, creating the game map, etc. And no, the game mechanics [programming - not including support for cockpit] most likely can't be either, since you've already done everything needed to make such a simulator work; what I mean by that is, you just spawn the train at certain map coordinates, which should be already possible if you test your game), and even if it did, not more than the normal SimRail price, or else someone might have problems with Polish Supreme Audit Office (NIK)...
(I hope I won't get banned after this or this will be deleted xD)"

I hope devs realize this is wrong and, at the very least, apologize to the player base.

 

 

[Isambard Kingdom Brunel]

Completely agree with you, still no editors after god knows how many years or a single player save function.

Just like DTG and N3V, the developers are a load of charlatans.

Edited December 14, 2024 by Isambard Kingdom Brunel

[Bazinga]

3 hours ago, NadaCAT said:

- Cargo Pack DLC (ET22, Fals, Zas, Sggnss) - they released it, although they promised not to release DLCS before the release of the full game.... Also this DLC was not complete at the time of release XD!

DLC still incomplete as the sggnss is missing. There's a total radio silence about it.

[Gazz292]

oooohhh.. i was a playtester too... so were a few hundred other people,  all you had to do was click a button in steam saying you were interested in being a play tester.. and you'd get access granted in the next batch of slots they opened up.
A few of us have been playing SimRail constantly since being a 'play tester' and not just coming back each time an update is announced to rant and shout.

SimRail has advanced quite a bit in the past 2 years, we've had a lot of free content added for our initial ~£25 (which where i live is the cost of a large pizza and a beer)  sorry to those people who live in a country where the equivalent of £25 seems to be the price of a brand new top of the range car, or those who are not old enough to get a job and earn their own money yet, 

But i think SimRail is underpriced for what we get... a fairly hardcore multiplayer dispatching and train driving simulator based on the software used to train real life train drivers, 

Do people complain this much when they spend £60 plus on a FPS game which takes about 50 hours to complete.. then £30 for some DLC that adds another 10 hours or so before you have seen and done everything and got bored with the game? 

I've enjoyed every minute of the 1000 plus hours i've had in SimRail, i only drive the trains on the multiplayer servers... so i am not even using half of the game (the dispatching side) but i for one hope to be playing SimRail in 20 years time and still enjoying it. 
 

[dos1]

5 hours ago, Gazz292 said:

I've enjoyed every minute of the 1000 plus hours i've had in SimRail

I've enjoyed it too, but let's be honest - it's only because I was forgiving to a buggy game in its "early access", unfinished state. Now they claim it's a finished product, while what has been released shouldn't have passed through any kind of internal QA in the first place.

[NadaCAT]

6 hours ago, Gazz292 said:

oooohhh.. i was a playtester too... so were a few hundred other people,  all you had to do was click a button in steam saying you were interested in being a play tester.. and you'd get access granted in the next batch of slots they opened up.
A few of us have been playing SimRail constantly since being a 'play tester' and not just coming back each time an update is announced to rant and shout.

SimRail has advanced quite a bit in the past 2 years, we've had a lot of free content added for our initial ~£25 (which where i live is the cost of a large pizza and a beer)  sorry to those people who live in a country where the equivalent of £25 seems to be the price of a brand new top of the range car, or those who are not old enough to get a job and earn their own money yet, 

But i think SimRail is underpriced for what we get... a fairly hardcore multiplayer dispatching and train driving simulator based on the software used to train real life train drivers, 

Do people complain this much when they spend £60 plus on a FPS game which takes about 50 hours to complete.. then £30 for some DLC that adds another 10 hours or so before you have seen and done everything and got bored with the game? 

I've enjoyed every minute of the 1000 plus hours i've had in SimRail, i only drive the trains on the multiplayer servers... so i am not even using half of the game (the dispatching side) but i for one hope to be playing SimRail in 20 years time and still enjoying it. 
 

I bought this game the week early access launched to the public because of two reasons

1: I love trains

2: I hate Dovetail

When I first played, I thought a project by a smaller studio, may could free us all train enjoyers from having to pass thought Dovetail or having to use hilarious outdated sims, a sim with expectations to develop and evolve.

We. Don't. Have. A. Freaking. Save. Button.

And it's in V1.0, ok

[sTuPid.rar]

Come on. Lot of games are sh*t, costing 60+ euros. We have a simulator with multiplayer for 24 euros, and you are complaning about a save button. Lot of top tier simulator don't have one (Maszyna, Zusi, TD2 for example). It has bugs, yes, but it's a quite new product with lot of revolutionary concepts for a train simulator. I think that at the end people will always find a way to complain about something. We as human being can't just be satisfied of something...

[sTuPid.rar]

To some extent I get your point. What I just want to say is that it seems to me that they are trying to do things right. During a development process lot of things can change (and some are even outside of your control) and so the path will change lot of times. I will always prefer slower development rather than millions of dlcs or updates with zero content or quality. I am sure that most of the things promised will arrive in the near future. We just need to be patient and collaborative, in order to shape a better product all together. I see a quality in the product that is already higher than most of train simulators out there. Locomotives are well implemented and driving/dispatching is really fun. To be honest before this simulator I wore out Maszyna (probably more that 1000 hours during years) because i see in that simulator the passion of people developing it. And the same thing is what I see here. I may be wrong, but this is just my opinion.

[BigVern]

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.

[BigVern]

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.***

[the810]

The game looked very promising but the development has clearly stalled. In the early days we got exciting updates every month or so, nowadays we had to wait half a year for a somewhat underwhelming one which didn't even has features that were promissed to be delivered months ago. The features that are there are mildly underwhelming in delivery, i.e. the historic route has no multiplayer, and only two singleplayer scenarios (+ tutorial). How hard is it to make more scenarios? I also feel like performance is getting worse rather than better. Then there's the cab sway which used to be really great but has now been enhanced away.

I'm not "angry", I got over 250 hours of gameplay for a fairly low price (on that note, I always kinda doubted sustainability of the business model behind the game) and I'm still enjoying playing it every now and then. But it certainly didn't deliver on the very high expectations I had when I started playing it.

[NeoPyro]

10 hours ago, NadaCAT said:

Part of the problem is not what the game is, but what the said they will do, I wouldn't be mad at the save button if they had not said it was going to be a thing, is coming out as a DLC or what?.

Not that but also the lack of communication, and update and then radio silence for months, wtf.

The DLC was a horrific thing, who f-ing makes a DLC for a game in EARLY ACCESS, finish the fucking main thing first.

Also, a lot of the defenders of this sim are using a "but 60 euro FPS..." kind of argument, came on guys is not the same we're talking bout sims is not even the same kind of product as SIMrail is a simulator not a game and the simulator market is a different one.

All this with all due respect btw I don't mean to disrespect you @sTuPid.rar as English is not my main language I may use expressions which can be considered as and offense, is not my intention just to clarify.

I agree. It's very frustrating. I understand they're a very small development team working on a niche game, but a little transparency would go such a long way.

[Simon]

I don't know if I'll go so far as to shame the developers, but my most anticipated feature was custom controller support and Raildriver support, and that was not delivered. The wait continues for me.

[PlagueDoc]

Wasn't the "paper timetable" feature supposed to come this week? "This" week is almost over. I hope to be proven wrong by the much-anticipated patch...

[Maty556677]

13 hours ago, PlagueDoc said:

Wasn't the "paper timetable" feature supposed to come this week? "This" week is almost over. I hope to be proven wrong by the much-anticipated patch...

This is done by 3rd party site

[Maty556677]

Well, my opinion here too.

I'm not going to say if the game is under/overpriced, but I think developers should really set their goals and stick to them. That's the first point. The second point is that developers should first make the editor available (and focus 100% on developing the SDK). Now just do the Steam Workshop integration. After the SDK is released, the community would create their own routes. And that's the point - a lot of people say the game has no content for 34€. In the meantime, the developers would start adding Ty2, mechanical signal boxes, 1980 route, Kraków - Tunel, etc. But they decided to swap these 2 parts... I know that after the SDK release the game can't change its core, so they have to fix some issues before release, but if the devs had fixed these issues instead of developing (for example) the 1980 route, it would be much better for the game long-term.

 

[sf_giants15]

Am 23.12.2024 um 09:32 schrieb Maty556677:

a lot of people say the game has no content for 34€

In my opinion thats just crazy to say if you compare it to simular games. 34 Euro is a good price for what you get 

[Domin92]

Well, probably the project is underfinanced and i think 2, maybe 3 people are working on this game. It just looks like that. This could be a great simulator but it ends up being just an almost forgotten project...

Edited December 24, 2024 by Domin92

[Maty556677]

19 hours ago, sf_giants15 said:

In my opinion thats just crazy to say if you compare it to simular games. 34 Euro is a good price for what you get 

Hmm, well if you compare it to Dovetail Games, it's great price, if not, it's quite OK. But imagine you are completely new to train simulators, buy the game for 34 €... Now you don't know if you will play the game or not... It's not that crazy for me

Edited December 25, 2024 by Maty556677

[Maty556677]

On 12/20/2024 at 9:54 PM, Simon said:

I don't know if I'll go so far as to shame the developers, but my most anticipated feature was custom controller support and Raildriver support, and that was not delivered. The wait continues for me.

To be honest, I am not excited about Raildriver because it has an American style of controlling trains. If there was something like Raildriver, but with a more European layout, it would be more interesting for us.

[Gazz292]

11 hours ago, Maty556677 said:

To be honest, I am not excited about Raildriver because it has an American style of controlling trains. If there was something like Raildriver, but with a more European layout, it would be more interesting for us.

As the owner of a raildriver i can confirm that the raildriver is horrible to use with european trains, people who don't own one often do not realise it's size either, it's only about the size of a shoe box!, so if you have adult sized hands it's levers are tiny.. the shafts of them feel like matchsticks in my hands, 
then you have the constant recalibration needed due to how loose the connections are to the electronics, and the need to leave 5 to 10mm of travel at each end of the throws to enable you to move the ingame control fully on or off. 

So about 3 or 4 years ago i started working on making my own 'Euro-raildriver' with 3D printed parts in a laser cut perspex case :

The levers had fast swappable notch mechanisms that allowed me to change the levers feel to suit different european trains, and as i was making this to play tsw, i had to incorporate a way to change the controller mapping on the fly, as the tsw raildriver control assignments changed depending on which dev set them up for each train,
The control reconfigurator is what goes in the empty holes on the top right of the top panel above :

Unfortunately half the switches i'd made would never work due to the very limited keybinds and raildriver assignments in tsw, it would have been so much easier if i could have simply set each lever up as a joystick axis, and each switch and button as a joystick button input.... but the tsw devs said that as most people are happy to play with a keyboard or a console controller, there's no reason to spend time adding user assignable joystick inputs
Then i really got disillusioned with tsw when they made it so you basically had to buy the game again to use new dlc's with it, so i gave up when tsw3 came out, and waited for SimRail to be released instead. 

So my Euro-raildriver controller sits on one of my 'never finished project' shelves, maybe to be brought to life one day when SimRail gets joystick inputs. 

.

So... as i much prefer driving the EU07, EP08 and EN57 style trains in SimRail, i instead made some 3D printed controllers for my laptop desk to suit : 

 

The wheel and levers rotate potentiometers via gears, and arduino's inside each controller convert the movement into key-presses ... as that's all SimRail accepts for input right now, for the power wheel, reverser and shunt levers, and EN57 power, reverser and brake levers this is easy, as they all have notches for each position the arduino's simple send an increase or decrease key when the lever moved to a new notch. 

For the EU07 brake levers, the train brake lever has notches, but it also has the main portion of the travel smooth,9 for infinitely adjustable brake pressure in that section (like IRL), and the loco brake lever is just a 180 degree smooth travel with end stops.
So for this to work the arduino's send an increase or decrease key-press for every few degrees the lever is moved, this isn't perfect and needs a stable fps rate to work reliably (thankfully my gaming laptop runs SimRail at between 40 and 100 fps, so i limit it to 60 fps and 95% of the time my brake levers stay in sync). 

But things will be so much easier when we get joystick support, and then when we get the full input / output system, i will go on to making the indicator lights and gauges work (in a similar way to my Omsi driving cab i built back in 2012) 

So for me too, it's the input / output system that i am mostly looking forwards to in SimRail, and for now every new keybind added makes me happy, as i really do not like driving the trains having to use the mouse to operate certain switches or buttons.

.
One day i may get into driving 'newer' trains a little more, as i have the driving desk from a BR111 wittenberger steuerwagen in storage that i've partially converted to work with the computer....
i got this originally to use with train simulator 2012 (now train simulator classic) , as that allowed input and output via an external program, but then i got into tsw for the better graphics, and realised tsw has very limited input, and is never going to get output options... so that kind of made that project useless... it's better to be used with Zusi, but i just can't accept it's outdated graphics 😞
So it was put in the storage container of projects i'll likely never finish (this was before i discovered SimRail)



One day i may get back into connecting the BR111 driving desk to the computer, but before i do that i want to at the very least have made a full size 3D printed EU07 style driving cab (i'd really love to buy the real controls from a scrapped Polish loco, but when i have tried buying parts advertised in Poland before, i was met with hostility and told they do not want scrapped Polish train parts going to the uk, and that the Polish train simmers who are making driving cabs should get access to those parts firs, even tho i was willing to pay more to get what i wanted. 
But then there's the whole brexit thing that makes 'importing' even scrap parts much harder than it was when i got the BR111 driving desk and NG272 bus parts from Germany.  

Anyway, enough waffeling, i've really taken this post off topic... it was about how some people really hate SimRail and seem to want it to fail, and here's me going on about how much i love SimRail and am looking forwards to it's future. 

Edited December 25, 2024 by Gazz292

[sTuPid.rar]

Incredible job. Amazing. This is really cool! I would love to have something similar but I don't have a 3d printer 😥 (yet 😉)

[Maciej_ZG]

3d printer is not mandatory. Using jigsaw and circular saw You can do it as well. It is only about the creativity...

[Maty556677]

On 12/25/2024 at 5:35 PM, Gazz292 said:

So... as i much prefer driving the EU07, EP08 and EN57 style trains in SimRail, i instead made some 3D printed controllers for my laptop desk to suit :

That's awesome! Did you upload the printable models and the code somewhere? One day this might be useful for me!

[Gazz292]

21 hours ago, Maty556677 said:

That's awesome! Did you upload the printable models and the code somewhere? One day this might be useful for me!

i really should have replied to the 'raildriver' post with the link that shows mine and a few other peoples controllers we are building instead of derailing this topic... now there's been replies if i change my original post, it will mess things up even more? 

The link to the controller build 'blog' :