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I was actually using the comparison to support the point you’re making. Saying that people want too much in too short a timespan from too small a team. But people compare the two to no end functionality-wise, so I used it as an arguement.
Nothing I can say to that except, even though your logics are correct the developers have the freedom to configure the game mechanics the way THEY envisioned it. Adding features or rebalancing the entire game is not going to happen soon, because as stated earlier, the devs have stated that they are currently still working on game performance (with waypoints as a secondary objective). This was in the most recent patch newspost. If you are unable to enjoy something that isn’t made to your exact preferences, I suggest you learn how to code and model and create a railroad sim that’s just right for you. Or you could wait until the performance issues are solved and the devs actually start working on rebalancing and adding features. At which point I doubt they’ll look for your suggestion in this post.
It’s too bad the forums are so rudimentary. Having a single sticky topic with links to specific and well-supported suggestions would save them a ton of digging later on.
I agree these things need to be said. I just believe it needs to be done with dignity.
If there’s a gamebreaking issue, report on the issue.
If there’s a bug, report about the bug.
If you have a suggestion, make a topic about your suggestion (after checking if it’s not already there a dozen times).They have one thing in common: dramatizing and acting peeved off don’t add any value to the case (as usual…). I am not saying you do this. I am saying the OP does this and a lot of complaints are made in this manner.
If you’re invested enough into the game to even make suggestions, then how much of a stretch is it to convey your issue in a proper, soundly supported manner. Is the point I wanted to make. 🙂
@Traian Trante Sure, add another personalized preference to the list of non-relevant replies. Then presume the solution is in balancing and that you know exactly what other gameplay factors are directly influenced by silly things like capacity and running cost.
Here’s a few you probably hadn’t thought of:
Average city->city distance.
Average non-player route travel time.
How about nr of busses/trains required to move the same number of people to the station?You can’t make the drop in capacity equal for all vehicles (ie. 25% of the original), because passengers have to be transported in whole. A vehicle can’t carry 1,25 passengers.
If you want to change the capacity for trains, but not road vehicles, road vehicles will become even more desirable (they already outperform trains).
In other words, your idea would pull everything off balance even more.
Edit:
Yes, you have every right and every freedom. But it won’t help anything, and is basically a waste of effort. I can complain to the Train company that my train was delayed all I want. It doesn’t turn back time and make my train be on time; it doesn’t mean it won’t still happen in the future. They are working at the top speed of their 5-man team. There is nothing to be done about it. There is no reason to complain because even if they wanted to (and trust me, by now they REALLY want to) they couldn’t speed up the process.
This is the difference between an independent developer like at Kerbal Space Program, who have a relatively large team for an indy developer and multiple people with years of experience; and a 5-man motley crew that probably finished their game design/software engineering studies relatively recently.
I am not a Game Developer, I have nothing to do with the development of this game.
Simutrans most likely calculates the destination overhead (x% from zone 13R destination 13C, x% from zone 14R destination 13C, x% from zone 13R destination 14I). TrainFever is developed by 5 people (of which 3 seem graphics involved). They picked a wrong approach in destination determination and it’s costing a load of PC resources.
I also believe a passenger represents multiple people. After all, the max travel time is 20min, which is 2,5 years in game time. Nobody ever goes on a 2,5 year train ride to commute. It’s representative. If you want 10.000 people standing at your station, feel free to play Simutrans. I’m not really bothered by the low number of peons as long as I make a profit and can build cool rail systems.
I guess it is very unlucky you have performance issues all through-out the game. Here it only starts after significant growth. For me it’s still late-game breaking, but I can still enjoy the rise of transit era.
Still, they have pledged to work on it until it works. They are not very experienced and don’t have a lot of manhours. And people have no idea how much work goes into rewriting an entire feature. I say if you enjoy even the thought of what this game could become, give them a break, put the game down while they fix it if that’s what it takes to be willing to give it a shot later.When I am waited on in a restaurant, I take his/her efforts into account, as well as behaving in a way that makes the experience positive for him/her as well. When I get on a bus, or get ticket checked on the train, I’m nice to the driver and the conductor. The same goes for software development. They aren’t more capable than other human beings, the same laws of nature that restrict us, restrict them. They have to work with an infinite number of variations in computing resources of their users, and solving a problem is often not as straightforward as in the real world. Because this thing is something you have created out of thin air and logical systems, if something doesn’t work, and that something is connected to many other aspects of the application, then all those aspects have to be rewritten too. And that is just HOPING you’ve interpreted the problem correctly and even then, that your solution works.
It’s a tough occupation and people never seem to empathize with that, seemingly because they don’t understand the effort and complexity.
Hmmm. I get your issue now. Could still be the issue I said (incorrect order in the route list).
But it could be different,
So to give it context:
A=Industry, B=City, C=Raw Materials.
Route order is A-B-C.
Raw materials walk from C to B; then get picked up by train at B and not dropped off at C, but at A.
The line between B and C is therefor obsolete, the trains waste profit by driving this part.If I were to make a guess, I’d say the time it takes to wait at station C before being picked up is longer than the time it takes to walk to station B. Because the round trip is equally long from each station, it needs a way to pick one if you (in this case: the Devs) don’t want to use a “just pick one” with a random-generator. Since making routing choices logical is one of the points this game wanted to bring, they have picked one of the following two methods:
Line order (When chosing between two (or more) stations where the total travel time is the same, pick the station that is serviced before the other(s)).
This is why I asked to switch the order around, if it makes no difference in delivery time, they might go to the first station in the route list after the final destination(A), which in your list would be B. Because B will always be serviced before C on the line’s direction.Closer to final destination(In which case it will also always go to B)
This would be a cheap method, because it doesn’t take into account the route length, whether the route is direct or indirect. They most likely havn’t picked this method. But your example makes it testable.If switching the line order doesn’t change anything, I can’t imagine the following option not working.
I think if you seperate the two (into C-A and A-B), the problem will likely go away.
Because this creates a seperate frequency time for the C-A and B-(through C)-A options, rather than the travel time and frequency time both being exactly the same.@crossmr There are path signals. Block signals are essentially useless when you have path signals.
I’d rather see pre-signals than block signals.
If you look at openTTD early in it’s lifetime, it was just a recreation of TTD that would run properly on modern OS. It’s still adding features, and has done so for 10 years now.
People are just too impatient. All they want is instant gratification. “Anything I want and can afford, I can have in a week, at most two weeks, time.” might work for anything mass produced, it doesn’t work for anything that takes a longer time to complete. For example, fixing the performance issues inherent to late (highly developed) games. And adding the new features everyone’s complaining about because “openTTD has it”, is probably going to be improbable whilst these issues are not fixed.
Because from an engineer’s point of view “Making it work” is more important than “Making it do more”.
Yeah, I have been lobbying for that too Viljainen. A road-map or a weekly post keeping everyone up to date is not too much to ask.
Not sure if this helps but it’s worth a try. I noticed your route goes City-Industry-Raw Materials. I generally start the route at the raw materials for logical sake. If the route is as described, the train will pickup goods at the industry (which it can’t unload at C, but has to keep till A). If the type is wood (uses same carts for raw and goods) the train can’t be filled with goods.
In the case you describe I don’t see why any of the stations need to recur in the route’s list. C-B-A would be the correct order. not C-B-A-B. And even then I find it more effective using two lines, at least until production picks up enough to use more trains.
My reply was directed at the OP. Whose complaint was about the 400 production limit. Saying he cheated the whole game and still didn’t have fun. In goods I’d say a bigger problem is that the demand is too low, than that the max production is not high enough.
It’s true that the larger the populations get, the more work it becomes to calculate all their destinations. However, this was the intended feature so that the mechanic of TTD where passengers just gather at a nearby station and don’t care where they are taken to. And yes, this mechanic makes for more restrictive gameplay. Personally I think determining destinations per building instead of per person would work well enough.
Regardless, I think you didn’t need to bring that up in this topic. Which is basically some player who doesn’t like the game (anymore?).
You do realize this game is being made by a team of 5 people?
(http://www.train-fever.com/about/)Where can I find one of these inaccurate descriptions of the game prior to release?
There are enough Let’s Play… clips of TF to showcase gameplay. I personally use these as an indicator to see if I’d like the experience.You’re also very paranoid. Just because I believe people shouldn’t dramatize on their own experience so much and just move on, I am a mole? Here to rescue the PR reputation of…oh right Urban Games and protect their interests? You should write a book!
But seriously. Check out the about page. This is a game by two brothers and their friend(s) by the looks of things, maybe just finished their study? Maybe even with this project? Aren’t you just being a little ridiculous, demanding the same performance from them as experienced studios who have the manpower, resources and planning ability required to make such estimations and deadlines?
I say either have realistic expectations, appreciate what there is and be patient. Or don’t, complain and whine and feel self-righteous. But it’s not going to change anything. If anything you’re making it worse because they have to pile through pages of bile rather than just improve what was the basic premise of their game. Yes, the game was released. Yes the balance and performance turned out worse than expected. This happens to a lot of games. More so now in the era of AGILE based projects. Major
For the record, I’m a software engineer, not a game developer. So I know the kind of things they have to do, and I sympathize. I’m glad my occupation isn’t so dependent on the individual experiences of my users, but on the effectiveness of functionality. I’d go crazy if users with no insight in technical matters could just drone in my ear like that.
Personally I think people who want to stop playing a game should just stop playing the game. Not write some letter to the Devs. Either you are invested in the game, which means take the bad with the good, give your suggestions and let the Devs do their work. OR you’re bored/think this game lacks factor x/is too hard or not hard enough and you just go to your little steam account and look for something else.
Patience…a thing of the past. Games take time to build. And test. And balance.
And ANY independent developer has to either outsource this to the audience or painstakingly do it themselves if their game requires a lot of “technical” testing.Greedy Scoundrels!
No *I*** got the direction wrong, I thought they were heading the other direction because I hadn’t fully zoomed it.
Yes. The forum seems to be very rudimentary (basic). Luckily it isn’t that big so a manual search still works.
@Maj_Solo Where did you get that information about the textures? I havn’t seen that anywhere.
Yeah, Buying land for future expansions would be really great.
