Ai Trains

[Ferol 46]

The Ai train system needs work. I'm fed up of meeting trains coming my way on my track. Another train shouldn't be on my track unless it is going the same way as me and is ahead or has broken down but was going the same direction. I should never have to deal with a train coming my way on my track, it should be on the other track, it's being illegal not been on the opposite track. In the case of a train crossing over from my track to the correct track, the signalling system gives no proper or early warning. I love this game but the signals and AI trains needs a complete overall.

[heliq]

I agree. Scripted Ai trains, not fun.

[Maester Silvio]

A future update will add a gameplay option to force them on one side of the track. A new addition with our latest update added an indicator near the minimap that displays the status of the next blocking signal, drastically increasing the window of noticing when a chosen track is occupied.

[lnomsim]

The question is not really about forcing trains to stay on one side of the track but to respect the local rail guidelines.
in France, Trains run on the left track, in Germany, on the right track.
We shouldn't have to guess or choose on which track we have to run and on which track we might have an unfortunate encounter.

[Maester Silvio]

Originally posted by lnomsim:

The question is not really about forcing trains to stay on one side of the track but to respect the local rail guidelines.
in France, Trains run on the left track, in Germany, on the right track.
We shouldn't have to guess or choose on which track we have to run and on which track we might have an unfortunate encounter.

Right now we spawn them randomly because we feel it has a more positive effect on the gameplay with having to pay attention and switch.

That said, we will likely have a gameplay option in the future to force them on one side of the track, but it will be global -- we don't plan to have it region-based due to technical restraints.

[lnomsim]

How can you feel it has a positive effect on gameplay when people have been complaining about it since day one?

I bought the game when it was released, I accepted the issues because it was early access, and eventually got fed up with everything that didn't make any sense, I'm not even talking about bugs here.

I come back 6 months later, and all the issues with the game are still the same.

You added a next block icon in the bottom right corner of the minimap. great... But... why does the next track portion tooltip on to the right of the screen still tell us we will have a free portion when the minimap tells us the next portion will be blocked.

Where is the logic here?

Everything you cannot do is due to technical restriction, like 90% of the games I have played and where people were somehow able to do otherwise even though they had to deal with the same restriction. (and which led the devs to somehow get past them too and release a paid DLC)

You knew you were building a train sim from the start, right? Why do these technical restrictions exist in the first place?

When you build a car, you can't tell your clients it was too late in the construction stage to add a steering wheel, and due to technical restrictions, you could only put square wheels and not round ones.

Yes, I'm ranting, and no, I'm not happy. The only good thing this game has for itself is the carrier mode.
Speaking of carriers, why can't we still delete our previous carriers? technical restrictions? Adding a delete button on the carrier is impossible at this stage of development?
Wy can I still cheat the slip wheel system by simply throttling down and then back up?

I can make a fully loaded train reach 50km/h in less than 10 seconds this way.

Don't call this game a train sim, it's not even arcade at this point.

if it's too late at this point in development to change anything meaningful, why stay in early access? isn't the whole point of EA to make necessary changes?

Seeing that none of the core issues have been addressed in 6 months and apparently won't be fixed at all due to technical difficulties...

[Maester Silvio]

Originally posted by lnomsim:

--snip--

I can understand you're frustrated, and there's a lot to unpack here, but I am dedicated to getting you answers on each of these frustrations.

At the core of many of these is understanding that we have many things we'd like to improve, many things we are going to improve, and unfortunately a few things that we cannot improve due to the amount of time it would take or the impact it would have on other systems. There are deadlines with specific features we have to meet, so we do our best to balance out these requirements with any overhauls that we need to make.

Addressing things in order of appearance:

• Complaints About AI Train 'Side'
  
  • There's no denying the vocal group asserting their distaste for this gameplay feature. As stated, we do plan to add a gameplay option, but there are technical issues with this. Our track system is not built with an underlying 'side' right now, which makes it impossible for us to reasonably determine when there are complex junctions. I have an idea on how to determine this to pitch to coders, but it has to be discussed, vetted, planned, implemented, and tested. This takes a bit of time, and there's no guarantee my idea will work.
• Notification System
  
  • This has a pending overhaul that we'd like to squeeze into the updates. It's outdated and needs some significant improvements. The reason this hasn't happened yet is because there have been more necessary overhauls that were prioritized first, so taking coders away from that to work on this system would make it so that we can't reach the deadlines necessary for the other overhauls.
• Train "Sim"
  
  • We are not a hardcore simulator; very specific choices were made to lighten the simulation model in many aspects to instead focus on elements of gameplay that are not necessarily found in competing products. This comes with its positive, and its negatives. Certainly there are systems that, if we could go back in time with the knowledge we have now, we would probably do them differently. What we can do for now is focus on improving what we can and meeting deadlines to continue development.
• Career Management
  
  • As seen in our roadmap, advanced career and save management is coming with our next Content Update. This will feature career difficulty customization, including the ability to modify in-progress careers, and the ability to delete saves from in-game. We are very committed to allowing players to play the game the way they want, but implementation does take time. We are not a very large team, and this is a pretty big game.
• Wheel Slip
  
  • We are aware of this issue and have logged it, but it's a very low priority to fix compared to more serious issues and overhauls that are needed. We have to pick and choose things, with lower priority issues being pushed for our last development phase where the majority of polishing and QoL work will be done.

We have performed a ton of improvements and fixes in the last six months. Again, I understand the frustration, but I see firsthand the work and hours everyone on my team puts into this game to make it better. We really are committed to making this product solid, and wouldn't dare to deny or ignore the issues people have.

[Ferol 46]

As per the replies by the Dev's, I'm on board :) with what they are doing and have planned in the future. I get that the game is early access and there will be a mountain of issues to address. I do love this game and will continue to play.

[lnomsim]

Originally posted by Maester Silvio:

" "

Sorry for the outburst, and thank you for taking the time to give a detailed answer.
I am not saying nothing has been done in 6 months. And I do recognize and value your (the whole team) work.

But seeing that such important issues (mainly the AI and blocks) are still here, issues that are a core part of the gameplay, and being told that doing things in a meaningful and more logical way is impossible because it's either too late or due to technical restriction is not a good thing to hear/read.

I'm still giving the game a chance, I hope a lot of things will change in the final release, but right now, to be honest, some things are still quite frustrating.

[lnomsim]

And with some more constructive criticism, you shouldn't simply change the distance at which trains spawn, but the number of blocks down the track.

I just got fined for passing a block, the thing is, not only did the AI train never get on the block, but it appeared exactly at the same moment I was approaching the block at 100km/h.

AI trains should spawn at least 3 blocks down the line, that way we'll have plenty of time to slow down/stop, and most importantly, instead of having a blue block transforming instantaneously to red, we will actually see the useful orange block. This way, we shouldn't even need the message "a train has been spotted" anymore.

Because for now, this message only means doom.

[Maester Silvio]

Originally posted by lnomsim:

Originally posted by Maester Silvio:

" "

Sorry for the outburst, and thank you for taking the time to give a detailed answer.
I am not saying nothing has been done in 6 months. And I do recognize and value your (the whole team) work.

But seeing that such important issues (mainly the AI and blocks) are still here, issues that are a core part of the gameplay, and being told that doing things in a meaningful and more logical way is impossible because it's either too late or due to technical restriction is not a good thing to hear/read.

I'm still giving the game a chance, I hope a lot of things will change in the final release, but right now, to be honest, some things are still quite frustrating.

No worries, every customer has a right to be honest!

I wish there was a better way to discuss the development than through text posts. We're very happy with how Train Life is doing so far on the market, but admittedly there are things that would take a significant chunk of time to rework from scratch. As much as I'd love to do that in an ideal world, the cost to fund 3-6 months of development for a single feature would probably not pay off.

It's something to keep on the backburner for the future. There's a good reason why many games in this genre have sequels, and can only afford to perform massive changes to them if they have massive success.

Originally posted by lnomsim:

And with some more constructive criticism, you shouldn't simply change the distance at which trains spawn, but the number of blocks down the track.

I just got fined for passing a block, the thing is, not only did the AI train never get on the block, but it appeared exactly at the same moment I was approaching the block at 100km/h.

AI trains should spawn at least 3 blocks down the line, that way we'll have plenty of time to slow down/stop, and most importantly, instead of having a blue block transforming instantaneously to red, we will actually see the useful orange block. This way, we shouldn't even need the message "a train has been spotted" anymore.

Because for now, this message only means doom.

I pushed my changes onto a testing branch for our 3rd content update before this message was sent, but we'll see how the tests of it go. I can discuss a 3 block requirement with the coding team to see if it would add a helpful redundancy or ensure that, as you said, we get to see the actually useful warning signal rather than just an immediate 'occupied' one.

This is for sure not the last that players will see of spawning and behaviour improvements with events and AI trains, it just has to be balanced within the rest of the content we are obligated to deliver.

[boguslaw.p1]

This is a simulation game, and it is in the simulators section. The main and basic advantage of the game is to be the artificial railway traffic and not the appearance of trains from nowhere, if they do not improve it, then they should change the department in which this game occurs. I am so disappointed so far because I don't even come close to simulating.
Graphically, the game is already at a very good level of development, and so is the goods collection and delivery system, but people who buy this game as a railroad simulator will be dissatisfied with this game every time if they don't do anything about it.

[Maester Silvio]

Originally posted by boguslaw.p1:

This is a simulation game, and it is in the simulators section. The main and basic advantage of the game is to be the artificial railway traffic and not the appearance of trains from nowhere, if they do not improve it, then they should change the department in which this game occurs. I am so disappointed so far because I don't even come close to simulating.
Graphically, the game is already at a very good level of development, and so is the goods collection and delivery system, but people who buy this game as a railroad simulator will be dissatisfied with this game every time if they don't do anything about it.

There are various levels of simulation, and we are not masquerading as a hardcore simulator or attempting to be one. This will understandably not satisfy every person on the market, but we do not have plans to drastically overhaul the level of simulation for this product.

If there is a specific problem that you see with our Steam store page, this would have to be referred to our publisher as they are the ones responsible for writing and maintaining those descriptions.

[boguslaw.p1]

Did I write about extreme simulator.
It is about artificial rail traffic.
Trains appear at certain places and then disappear immediately. Nothing is going in front of you, you don't have to slow down on straight stretches.
No artificial traffic train goes from Berlin to London, for example.
That's what I mean.

[Maester Silvio]

Originally posted by boguslaw.p1:

Did I write about extreme simulator.
It is about artificial rail traffic.
Trains appear at certain places and then disappear immediately. Nothing is going in front of you, you don't have to slow down on straight stretches.
No artificial traffic train goes from Berlin to London, for example.
That's what I mean.

This is something we can look at improving in the future, however it is of much lower priority than other systems and features.

[boguslaw.p1]

Exactly, and it should be the other way around, because artificial railway traffic is the main basis of a good railway simulator. I can see that writing about AI is pointless.