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No, they are too gutless to comment on anything that is in the slightest bit critical. They went to the ‘Steam’ school of customer service I’m afraid. Over and over again in the past few months there have been PAYING CUSTOMERS on here with all sorts of problems and they are ignored, the lucky few that are helped are done so by members of the online community.
It’s such a shame, to me, it seems like the game was thrown together by a bunch of teenagers in someones bedroom and now it’s turned into a commercial entity that involves REAL RESPONCIBILITY, they are all too shy or scared to face people head on and remain silent. I think the real problem is that they KNOW its fucked, they KNOW now the game was released way too early but they are scared of admitting it as they would legally then have to compensate people, so I doubt they will ever have the balls to respond to threads like this.
This is a great format and one day, will be a great game. I have no doubt. I congratulate the devs for getting it this far, I have had fun with it afteral, just please let me know when it is finished! Fuck it, I’m going back to CIM2.
If admitting software contains bugs would legally bind someone to compensate customers, i doubt any company would still release patches to fix them … . Hell, even Battlefield 2 to this day contains some major bugs and while the entire community around that game had been highlighting the bugs in it’s prime days, DICE and EA decided to concentrate on adding more content and f*cking up the game balance.
And yes, someone could say about this game as well. Altough i have to say most of the fixes so far haven’t been that bad and do add to the realism (like cars at least stopping at railroad crossings).
Nearly every game has its bugs, e.g. GTA series also had (and have) bugs, but even with the bugs it allows me to play it more than 5 hours. And it is not a bug. Bugs are flying or diving cars, some collisions and other unwanted “features”, that are annoying, but do not kill your game in general. In most cases there are some ways to avoid the bugs or make some workaround. But this bad performance makes you to begin a new game nearly every day. I have never had a city with more than 900 people. It was totally unplayable. My PC meets and exceeds the requirements, so why can’t I play the “whole” game, which means to start with slow trains and horses and end with railjets, shinkansens etc. and develop from a small village to a huge metropolis?
Quite. Will Urban Games answer your question? no. Let’s face it, we’ve all been conned into paying to become Beta testers. If Urban Games had ANY decency they would at least release a statement acknowledging the problems and at least try to reassure us that they are working on it. But no, what do we get instead? Fucking opening depot doors (that reveal an untextured floor covered in grass) and a patch that gave us a feature no one wanted or cared about (main connection feature). Bugs I can live with, this game isn’t bugged, its fucked.
Can we get back to a reasonable discussion?
Clarification as people seem to misunderstand me.
TF uses two threads at the same time and is parallel/concurrent.
However thread 2 is simply very CPU intensive and so it’s not finished yet to merge the calculations.
Some point you have to merge the data.While I can read x86/amd64 assembler only a static analyse is possible – Steam is in the way –
and optimized c++ in assembler is a pain.Writing a game that complex isn’t an easy task. Specially get it run on current hardware.
The depot doors animation files are in the game since the beginning, so it’s reasonable to assume that the feature simply got a bug fix and isn’t anything new.Urban Games seems to have a strategy to work on performance every second patch.
So back to a new small map (with patched out main street connection error)
Everybody wants to discuss reasonably… with the devs. Yes, you are right, these discussions among players are worth nothing. The only thing we want from the developers is to tell something like this: “Yes, we are working on the performance, we are going to release the patch tomorrow/someday and everybody, who meets the requirements will be able to play the game smoothly forever.” or “We don’t know, how to fix that, sorry.” The worst thing is that they say nothing, if they admitted that with this game they bit more than they could chew, I would be really ok with that. A bit angry, but at least satisfied, that they have balls to admit their fail.
I understand that programming is hard, but they could wait with the release until all the issues are not fixed. Wouldn’t you be pissed off, if you had to start a new CoD game after two misssions? I would. Wouldn’t you be pissed off, if you bought running shoes that last only half an hour of running and then they had to rest to be able to run again? I would. Wouldn’t you be pissed off, if you had to begin a new university thesis after five pages of text, because Word couldn’t handle more? I would.
I paid for a game (not really a little money here in Czech Republic), so I want to play. There wasn’t any warning, that after a couple of hours of playing the game becomes unplayable.
Ok, First off, ALL software has bugs. It’s expected, no about of development or beta testing can find them all.
Second, every seems to be mixing bugs with “bad design”. A bug is something that happens that the developers did not intend eg flying cars. “Bad design” is something that is as designed, but doesn’t work well eg performance.
Thirdly, As eis_os stated, programming modern software is not easy. Asynchronous programming is probably the hardest thing to get right, so it’s no surprise that a small company like urban games opted for synchronous/parallel threads instead.
It’s going to take many hours, if not hundreds of hours, of programming to improve the performance. However if I was in their shoes, I would create a tempory fix by splitting the threads into 4 threads, and maybe use the .NET threadpool to help manage them. It would at least let people with 4 logical cores to benefit while a permanent solution was worked on.
Coujou is right, the devs do need to comment, the only way forward for a small company is to utilise the community and to listen. They need to be on here posting and letting people know that there not being ignored.
Coujou and I really are saying exactly the same thing. I KNOW bugs happen, hell I’ve got Train Simulator 2015 and that has been in development for over 2 years, more if u count the previous Railworks editions and yet I still have random people walking off platforms into mid air!
No, bugs can be patched, modded out or even just used for amusement. The core issue here is not that, its the fact that the game CANNOT be played properly. A random person floating in midair in TS2015 does not stop me driving all the way to Kings Cross, or anywhere else I choose. This game DOES stop me from completing my goals. I play for 20-30 years in game and get enough money to really build something interesting then bang, HUGE lags, stuttering, freezes and the occasional total crash. WTF is the point if you can’t play the thing?
Remember, this is not an open source freeware thing. It is a Commercial product that we PAID money for! As a consumer, I have a RIGHT to get a working product. Not 100% maybe but WORKING.
Except, for most people, for most of the time, the product works as advertised. It’s like complaining that photoshop is barely useable when you load in a picture that is 1GB in size and has a few gigapixel … It’s the same with TF, the amount of data is simply too much for the system to handle. And as stated before: that is not really a bug. A designflaw? Probably.
I had a quick look at the save games, and I have to say that that has shown me a thing or two. My save files on the maps that become unplayable are around 130MB of compressed data. Uncompress that file and you get to around 400MB of data. That data has to be taken from the game at every turnover of the year and it is that data that the game needs to keep it’s calculations going. That’s still a massive amount of data to keep reprocessing over and over again.
Further more, I would like to point out that as far as I know, digital goods are still exempt from legislation offering a 2 year waranty on goods. Which means that as a consumer you only have the rights that are granted to you in the licenses that you agreed upon while installing the software. While there was an attempt to modernise this legislation in the first half of 2009 ( http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8044125.stm ), it apperantly died a quiet death. Which means one has to fall back to the game’s license and the Steam Subscriber Agreement:
Steam Refund Policy
As with most software products, unless required by local law, we do not offer refunds or exchanges on games, DLC or in-game items purchased on our website or through the Steam Client. Please review Section 3 of the Steam Subscriber Agreement for more information.An exception is made for games purchased during a pre-order period if the request is received prior to the games’ release date.
Now can we please go back on topic (which is talking about the actual issue instead of complaining that it’s a gamebraking bug that demands legal action)
Except, for most people, for most of the time, the product works as advertised. It’s like complaining that photoshop is barely useable when you load in a picture that is 1GB in size and has a few gigapixel … It’s the same with TF, the amount of data is simply too much for the system to handle. And as stated before: that is not really a bug. A designflaw? Probably.
I have an Intel i7 920 cpu and a thumping great Radeon card that can run things like Flight Sim, Train Sim, Crysis, Farcry, etc, etc EASILY with ALL settings on MAX. Don’t imply that my system isn’t up to it because short of NASAa research department, there are few PCs that are much better.
I had a quick look at the save games, and I have to say that that has shown me a thing or two. My save files on the maps that become unplayable are around 130MB of compressed data. Uncompress that file and you get to around 400MB of data. That data has to be taken from the game at every turnover of the year and it is that data that the game needs to keep it’s calculations going. That’s still a massive amount of data to keep reprocessing over and over again.
Fine, good, great. So basically the game chocks itself to death. That is not my problem is it? It shows the game was BADLY designed.
Further more, I would like to point out that as far as I know, ………..
I know the law, I stated before that IF this was a normal commercial product, then they would be breaking the sale of goods act. However, because this kind of thing isn’t covered, we pay our money and get RIPPED OFF. You are seriously defending this? How about YOU refund my bloody money then?
Now can we please go back on topic (which is talking about the actual issue instead of complaining that it’s a gamebraking bug that demands legal action)
Game cant be played = Broken. What else is there to say?
The developers aren’t going to fix the problem faster if you yell at them more. In fact, the more you yell at them, the more likely they are to want to abandon the game altogether. If you made a mistake, would you feel like fixing it if everyone was screaming at you? Or would you just give up and walk away and free yourself from all the stress that being yelled at causes? If you know that you’ve made a mistake, do you like being reminded of it every few minutes or would you prefer to be left alone so you can fix it?
The message has been made clear enough. They will work on it if they can and when they can, you can’t ask for more. If you have ideas on how to improve it; great, let’s hear it. Otherwise, shouting about how it’s “broken” is not helping anyone, least of all yourselves.
Remember: The developers are humans, just like you; they all respond to criticism the same way that you do.
Your point is well made and done with the best of intentions, however, I run a business. Let me tell you that if I treated my customers like Urban Games do, I’d be bust. If a customer of mine has a problem should I;
A, Totally ignore their complaint, maybe cheerfully offer some mundane service which has nothing to do with their problem?
or
B, Listen and respond to their problem. Even if I can’t immediately fix it, at least reassure them that I am being taken seriously and that the problem is being worked on?
You don’t have to be Mr Trump or Lord Sugar to work out the right answer and they are making things worse for themselves by treating paying customers like they don’t exist.
Let me be clear, 1. I LOVE TRAIN FEVER! At its heart is a fantastic little game, that’s why I want to use it!
2, I don’t for one second think Urban Games wanted to rip anyone off or mislead anyone. However, their Beta testing was obviously not up to scratch and now they have a game with MAJOR flaws.
All they have to do is learn a little customer service and public relations. If they simply released a little statement words to the effect of “we are deeply sorry that these issues are still present and are working hard to resolve them. We would like to thank the community for its support and patience….” etc. Something like that would shut people like me up in second.
But they choose instead to act like nothing is wrong, or at best, that there is some ‘minor issue, affecting a minority’ and then release cheerful updates that no one asked for like depot doors, main connections and USA download packs when most of us can’t even play it for more than a couple of hours before it locks up.
I feel ignored, I feel let down and I feel frustrated, as do many others here and elsewhere and that is THEIR FAULT. If they cant take criticism then may I suggest they don’t rush a half finished product to market far too early.
You may run a business, but I doubt you write software and I doubt you have to content with a community. While leaving these forums unmanaged is (in part) a bad thing, I can assure you (from my own experience on a major project) that telling people everything is going to be all right is not really gonna help. People will keep complaining. And when you do finally improve on the issue (performance late game will ALWAYS be an issue, it’s just a matter of mathematics in this case, so you can’t really fix it) people will immidiatly start complaining about something else.
to LB: If you have ideas on how to improve it; great, let’s hear it.
Yes, Krogoth_mk2 suggested this: I would create a tempory fix by splitting the threads into 4 threads, and maybe use the .NET threadpool to help manage them. It would at least let people with 4 logical cores to benefit while a permanent solution was worked on.
What I would expect from the devs is a short statement, sth like this: “Yes, this is good idea, we can try.” And couple of hours after: “We created a temporary fix, which at least helps the performance, please wait a week/fortnight/… for a final solution.” or “It did not help at all, we are trying hard to make it better.” That would be enough.
I also love TF, I just hate the way the devs avoid the discussion about the performance, which is bad. I am sure, that I don’t have a most powerful PC in the world, but nobody said the game is only for train-loving Germans with superpowerful desktops (otherwise I cannot explain to myself the screenshots from years 2100+ on train-fever.net 😀 )
Around ingame year ~2230, I have roughly up to one and a half minute break every month, 1 minute wasn’t nice but now it’s simple to much so I started a new map.
Maybe we Germans are very patient people when we play simulations? I don’t know….
.Net? You can’t be serious… Adding GC and even more runtime to the problem won’t help.
You need a solid solution splitting the mathematical equation into smaller parts and across more cores…
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