TS2015 Post Release Thoughts

[Nobkins]

Post your thoughts / views etc.

I am finding the new UI very hard to use. It took me a few minutes to work out how to load a freeroam in my TPR route as it does not seem to show unless I search for the route.

Maybe I will get use to it but it does not feel intuitive.

[styckx]

I think it's awful. The menu system is a cluttered overworked mess. The Academy is unnecessary bloat that is just culling tutorial scenarios into yet another overworked UI. One of those "Well, you're on the payroll, guess you have to do something" features. The rest.. Meh.. Nothing scream unorganized more when you see things changed just for the sake of changing them.

[AndyM77]

Currently downloading a nice fresh copy of just the base game (all my DLC deselected), so haven't played just yet (wiped my old large install, which I do each year to limit old installs corrupting new ones - it shouldn't - but... )

Anyhow, i'll edit this post later with my thoughts. but the "Academy" is actually listed as a separate DLC within the DLC tab of the game. So if you don't want the Academy simply bring up the properties for TS2015 go to the DLC tab and untick it. Game should then take a minute or two to uninstall, job done!

Edit (after a quick play):

The Good! -
You can now disable the intro video via the in game 'gameplay' setting.
FXAA appears to have been tweaked slightly, I guess they finally realized that it was blurry..

The Bad -
Sliders now represent Shadow quality, water quality, etc.. with no reference to either a number i.e 1 being lowest or 10 highest / low, medium, high, very high. Not good if you're tweaking for best performance / quality
Menu music is only slightly happier, than previous (yes, you can turn it off in the menu too)

Undecided -

UI, well it seems that what used to be the 'Career' button has transformed into a profile button which also now has the workshop, items you own integrated into it, etc.. So in one way it's less confusing to a "newbie" in the sense that you would hit that 'Career' button thinking that the scenarios would be there when they were actually under 'Drive' / 'Career'. A small improvement there..

But lets face it. the best and most simple interface was the original RailSimulator / Railworks (&2) title screen. I guess though everything has to look flashy rather than be functional


I really need to set some time aside to really evaluate it and at the moment I've got other games on the go on other distribution platforms so my Steam catalogue is semi-dusty

[styckx]

It says it removed it, but it's still there and loads. No big deal.

[cjbarnes5294]

To be honest, whilst I've not spent a lot of time with the update to give it fair judgement, I can't say I'm terribly impressed with the new menu so far. To me, it's very clunky having to click through pages of content just to find the route or loco I want, and each page contains 9 items, so if you have a fair amount of content, that's potentially a lot of pages to click through. I think my biggest gripe though is that I think it's the slowest UI yet, in that it can take quite a while to transition between tabs and menus, from QD, Career, Standard etc.
I don't know if it will remember the last session in TS2015, but it had forgotten my last session in TS2014 - hopefully it will remember previous free roam setups and sessions, otherwise with the combination of having to click through lots of pages and slow menu response, it's going to take an unnecessarily long time to just give something a quick test. It is not a developer friendly UI for testing purposes, in my opinion.
Give it more time and no doubt it'll grow on me, things usually do and I try to be positive about most things, and the niggles might be fixed in the near future. But at the moment, it feels like a step back from the previous UI.

That all said, I'm looking forward to exploring the new content and gameplay systems, such as the new weather.

Chris

[Crumplezone]

Honestly? I think the UI menu is crap to put it politely, its unnessessary clicking, tedius to work through, most route images don't work and the search function doesn't even work 90% of the time. Eras and locomotive power e.g. steam/diesel/electric has been removed so its impossible to sort through locos.

No real graphics or sound changes, still the same old there, anti alias still isn't straight edged all jaggies still visible and causes wonderful disort effects on grids still.

I agree the academy is pure bloat for a installation with no way to remove it since its intergrated into T2015, they could have just sorted a proper tutorial system out rather go through the academy.

The new 3D clouds is only on a few selected TS2014 routes, like shap, ECML S etc, yet not in WLOS which is one of my favourite routes and just as big as those other routes which they selected to have the new system, I don't see why this couldn't have been retroactively implemented into the old weather system, it just needed the files to be the same and the routes set to the old weather system could then pull the new 3D cloud/lighting/weather.

I'm seeing a additional 3-4gigs of memory usage which I can't even put a finger on why its needing that extra memory when it cant utilise more than 3gig max as its 32bit, so I'm seeing a 5-6gig usage when driving and looking about on a route, this is on a i7 rig, I'd hate to think what its like on older rigs.

Couldn't DTG have just put the year they spent on this mess into the UE engine instead and called it quits at TS2014? It doesn't feel like anything much has changed besides a even worse UI than previous and 3D clouds.

[styckx]

My favorite part of this trash is how so many routes have no thumbnails associated with them. What a lazy development team. The menus are such trash and look incomplete with all the missing thumbnails.

[Crumplezone]

Oh I see, the new 3D clouds work in QDs on all routes...but if you load up a scenario the scenario won't use the new 3d clouds, so every single scenario created to date will need toggling to the new 3D cloud system to have the new lighting/weather system in each scenario.

So again..I ask why this wasn't retroactive to existing weather system..

Also the TS2015 thread has already been removed on UKTS, suppose I shouldn't be surprised there as it turned into a personal insult-fest between a few members.

[styckx]

Oh I see, the new 3D clouds work in QDs on all routes...but if you load up a scenario the scenario won't use the new 3d clouds, so every single scenario created to date will need toggling to the new 3D cloud system to have the new lighting/weather system in each scenario.

So again..I ask why this wasn't retroactive to existing weather system..

Also the TS2015 thread has already been removed on UKTS, suppose I shouldn't be surprised there as it turned into a personal insult-fest between a few members.

And let's be honest. The new clouds aren't exactly anything to brag about anyway.. I actually prefer the old clouds.. "Cloudy" with the new clouds is practically clear skies because the new clouds hardly have any presence.

They should have just stuck a fork in it at TS2014 and taken a year hiatus.

UKCensorSim removing threads? NO WAI? They never do that!!!

[Rockdoc2174]

My thoughts are much the same as everyone else's: the new menu is a serious mistake on the part of DTG that is anything but intuitive and difficult to navigate at all, never mind quickly. I'd sack everyone involved with it.

The text size has been reduced in the menus of the scenario editor, making them quite difficult for me to read but it seems to have got rid of the scrolling effect which gave me a headache.

In terms of running, it doesn't seem to have made any real difference. I noticed the new clouds on The Riviera Line but they don't do a lot for me. I pay little attention to the sky when I'm driving. Yes the new clouds are an improvement on the old sky-dome type and I did notice their loss on another route but was that the highest-priority item DTG could come up with as a graphical improvement?

All in all, I'd be happier with TS014 because the improvements in TS015 are insignificant, the old menu was easier to get around and the resume option didn't need me to randomly scramble through all my routes and scenarios to find the last one I ran.

Keith