(semi) Complete List of Bugs and Usability issues (4831)

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  • December 27, 2014 at 02:04 #15197
    uzurpator
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    Hi ‘ya all.

    Below is the (semi) complete list of isses of Train Fever as of version 4831. I will update it after each patch, so we can track how good Urban Games is in improving their game.

    The list is not sorted in any particular order. Those are just things I have noticed after ~120 hours of gameplay.

    If you have something to add, just reply to this topic.
    Graphical Bugs:

    1. Vehicles with connecting rods ( such as steam engines or crocodile ) do not animate their connecting rods when being manually sent to a depot.
    2. Bogies of TFV and DualStox do not follow the trackage correctly. This is most visible in tight curves.
    3. Road vehicles are often not correctly aligned to roads. This makes them ride above the surface of the road, or sunken beneath the asphalt.
    4. Vehicles with doors open all doors regardless of the side the platform the vehicle is stopped at.
    5. Wheels of the A 3/5 steam engine are not round.
    6. The Walshaerts/Heusinger valve gear on steam locomotives ( BR75 or A4 ) is not correctly animated. The valve gear works differently as it is presented in game.
    7. Roads in cities sometimes get adjusted to really awkward angles.
    8. Tracks are sometimes adjusted into awkward angles, usually near a level crossing.
    9. Locomotives which emit particles ( smoke, steam ) should not do so when stopped at a light.
    10. Steam locomotives should not emit smoke from their cylinders when speed is above 5km/h
    11. Electric locomotives with several pantographs should always ride with rearmost raised.
    12. Shadowing distance is too short when camera has a very shallow angle ( looking parallel to the ground). This makes shadows flicker and seem appear suddenly at a distance.
    13. Roads are drawn with very low polycount.
    14. Near Clipping Plane placed in a way that clips away some parts of the viewed object.
    15. Vehicles created by “Emu” consists with “reverse” property ( such as TGV or TwinDexx ) do not reverse their icons in build train window.
    16. BE 5/6 Cobra is too long to fit tram stations. When stopped it overhangs the tram stop.

    Usability Bugs

    1. There is no info about crucial gameplay elements
      1. train length ( in carriages and metres ), both in build new train and replacement
      2. average speed and average round trip time of a given line between each stop
      3. length of placed piece of track or road
      4. incline of placed piece of track or road
      5. curvature of place piece track or road
      6. Industry increased/decreased its maxumum production
      7. track and road speed limits
      8. track and road incline
      9. track and road horizontal plane curvature
      10. production of goods/freight should be expressed in production / time unit
      11. No info is given about speed limits and/or differences between narrow/wide/4 lane roads, as well as between country and urban roads. Rail tracks at least display a little speed limit sign when being placed. No such info for roads.
      12. No info is given about speed limits between normal and HSR track.
      13. No info about station capacities.
      14. When a vehicle is introduced, no info about its stats is given. Player has to manually open ‘build vehicle’ window.
      15. No info is given about new roads or electrification.
      16. tally of goods produced by a given industry, Something like:
    • Tiverton Forest: Production: 312, Maximum: 400
      • Destinations
        • Crewe Sawmill: 240
        • Battle Sawmill: 72
    • Crewe Sawmill: Production: 240, Maximum 400
      • Destinations
        • Crewe: 120
        • Battle: 80
        • Looe: 40
    1. tally of passanger destinations from a given city. Something like:
    • Tiverton: population 1000
      • Destinations:
        • Tiverton: 425
        • Battle: 160
        • Hunstanton: 120
        • Crewe: 120
        • Looe: 50
        • Hedon: 75
        • Newbury: 50
    1. Game is inconsistent with its use of time. Sometimes it is expressed in years/months/days ( train age ), sometimes in minutes/seconds ( frequency ), sometimes not at all ( industry production ). Be consistent.
    2. No info is provided how to convert years/months/days into realtime.
    3. The “20 minute rule” is not messaged anywhere in the game.
    4. When saving a game it is possible to overwrite an existing savegame since no protection is given.
    5. Not possible to turn of snapping of built structures ( such as stations )
    6. Gui is, generally speaking way too small. On high resolution.
    7. Impossible to build a level crossing with road over a trackage.
    8. Dragging a track/road across track should automatically create an overpass bridge.
    9. Land modification tools are very awkward.
      1. modified area is not highlighted
      2. “Level” tool should level all terrain to height from the point of beginning of the drag
  • Clicking on currently followed vehicle ( after clicking the crosshair icon ), to bring up its properties, should not unfollow that vehicle.
  • Build Road, Upgrade Road and Remove Road tools should be merged to a single, context based tool. Possibly as with a key combo ( build + Shift – upgrade, build + Alt – destroy ). It is extremely annoying to be forced to switch between those three tools when rearranging a city.
  • Clicking on “Automatic Vehicle Replacement” in lines window should automatically open the “Vehicle Replacement” Tab on the “Line” window.
  • Add “Replace Now” button to “Vehicle Replacement” tab.
  • Add “Electrify” button to “Line” window in train line
  • Add “Upgrade to high speed track” button to “Line” menu of train line
  • “Running”, “Stopped” and “Reverse” on vehicle properties should have button frame.
  • “Go to depot” button should be on the same tab as “Running”, “Stopped” and “Reverse” buttons.
  • Interface is too small in most places. General rule: use % of screen vertical size, no less then X pixels to size UI. Icons in “Menu” menu are kind of right size, but once people switch to 4k screens even those will become microscopic as well. Those include, but are not limited to:
    1. Icons showing production and consumption of freight by industries
    2. buttons on most windows
    3. “Cargo”, “Land use” and “Contour Lines” buttons
    4. Finances, city directory, industry directory etc
    5. Most tooltips and texts.
  • It is not ergonomical to place the game tools UI on the side of the screen when most of the action of those tools happen in the middle of the screen. Most people have panoramic screens these days. Sometimes in the 21:9 format. I shudder to think how bad it is on eyefinity setup. Having tools along the upper or lower edge of the screen, somewhat in the middle is much more user friendly.
  • Money display box has too little contrast. Use bold font.
  • There is no possibility to review messages once they were closed.
  • There is no way to check and/or redefine key bindings. How many people know that ‘Del’ closes all windows?
  • Display ONLY supported resolutions on the resolution selection window. Moreover. Check if the selected resolution is still supported when starting a new game.
  • Vehicles with “multipleunitonly = true” property should not be introduced with a message.
  • Multiple units should be introduced.
  • It is not possible to adjust order of train cars in “Vehicle replacement” tab.
  • Scrolling of trains along their length in “Depot” window and on “Vehicle replacement” tab is very misleading for long trains. It is better to start adding cars in another row below the locomotive instead of adding a scrollbar.
  • “Depot” window for trains should always have widith of a 160m long train.
  • Warning should be emitted if a train is longer then shortest station on its line.
  • Autosave period is not configurable nor possible to turn off.

    • Gameplay Bugs

    1. Game will sometimes route several lines through the same platform on a station. There is a workaround for trains, but trams, trucks and buses suffer from this bug.
    2. It is not possible to drag track from a converging end of a railroad switch if we remove the little stub of track remaining after the switch construction.
    3. Vehicles replaced by auto replacement will sometimes emit info about “being too old and needing replacement” even if they are 10 or so years old. It seems that age of the vehicle they replaced is taken into consideration. Usually happens with the ‘25%’ rule.
    4. Cargo has no weight.
    5. Multiple capacity vehicles allow for loading of both types of cargo at the same time.
    6. Once the “Main connection” feature considers player built detour a “Main connection”, this detour becomes impossble to remove, even with another detour.
    7. “Main connections” are often not feasible to upgrade to newer road type.
    8. 4 lane roads should always be of the same size.
    9. Performance is generally very bad. Especially when:
      1. Tracking a vehicles through a city
      2. Having several ( more then 1 ) cities in the viewport.
      3. Opening ‘Lines’ window
      4. Opening several vehicle windows with “Render to texture” feature enabled. Hint: Transport Tycoon did not allow more then 6 vehicle windows to be open. Messages with “Render to texture” should replace one another. Window with no focus can display just a static ( grayscale, for extra style bonus ) image and turn into “Render to texture” viewport when activated.
      5. Lod system appears to be very simple. It should not only be based on distance from camera, but also on pitch angle. The closer pitch is to 0 degrees, the less distant objects should be visible. I tried to, check how Lod is calculated for buildings, but LUA code you are exposing does not seem to show such data.
      6. Removal of particles and visible passangers seems to improve performance in some cases.
      7. The game is CPU limited, and the little experience I have in 3d suggests it is batch-count constrained. Simulation runs quite fast even with 6-7k of passangers on the map and about 1000 units of cargo with ~400 vehicles.
    10. Responsivity of the game is very poor. Too often it happens that game stutters because something needed to be done.
      1. Do all cities need to rebuild themselves at the same time
      2. I don’t really need the info, that all 400 of my vehicles cost me $Texas with overlays and floating texts.
      3. Sending 40 trucks to depot for sale makes the game pause for a few seconds.
    • This topic was modified 9 years, 3 months ago by uzurpator. Reason: Some Formatting
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