How to avoid future update disasters (user-client)

[Adam Beckett]

I keep reading, people having still issues and being affected after the 'update'.

Here's an imperfect 'solution':

keep your ASSETS and ROUTES folders outside the Railworks root directory!

[Even better, push the RAILWORKS folder out of Steam and have a 2nd (core) installation.*]

Keeping the assets and routes separate avoids them being affected by any 'core' game updates. Mostly, those are only the newly baked executables and the couple dlls, the exe points to.

I do hope, DTG will TEST their updates in the future, before pushing them into the public on their one and only existing 'stable' branch.

Having said that, the Steam API and patch system they are having to use is very strict and any checksum failure can trigger the Steam client to wipe out the installed game folder and start re-downloading the game.

Happend to me with multiple games over the decades. DTG is not alone.

If DTG wants to continue to 'update' their executables, maybe it is time to follow the example of other developers and introduce a 'testing' branch in the Steam client beta tab?! It does not cost extra money.

A cautious (new) TS player would ideally disable 'automatic updates' and would not start the game, but check first, if there is another (unreliable) update.

*) Such a player should only install the core game (deselect all DLCs - except Euro & US Asset Pack, no WS items) and let that be the 'visible' TS installation. Let the update do it's thing. See, if it works.

Meanwhile a 2nd installation (all your stuff) should be installed once and then kept away from Steam, only to be updated with the core files and linked to the Steam folder (mklink /j) when it is 'safe' to do so. (There are guides on how to do this, in this forum and the wider Railworks community).

Is this 'ideal'?

Absolutely not!

It is a nuisance and terrible - especially for new Steam players, who are expecting a modern standard of 'just works' for their money. But, this is what you get, when TS is hopelessly bound to the Steam API, DRM and business eco-system, not allowing for offline executables, which can avoid force-fed updates. Or, having an auth-server, which binds customers (and purchases) platform independent to DTG and not to Steam and only Steam.

If your TS install is only Steam DLC, your annoyance is 'just a forced re-install'. If you own 3rd Party DLCs or are a developer, your Terabyte(!) of brittle, delicate asset structure, you accumulated over decades and your routes are at risk, each time a DTG employee presses 'upload'?

Is this smart?

[englishkeymaster]

I've owned TSC for quite a few years, and I think this is the first time an update I'm aware of has actually gone wrong in this manner and caused this level of harm.

Not ideal, but it's not a trend either so what I'd recommend people do - to sort of respond to this threat in a proportionate manner - is just include the tsc installation in your backup strategy.

We have one, right? External SSD's are cheap and my install, whilst over a hudred GB is not a massive job to copy, and you only have to do it on occasion.

[Spikee1975]

My main installation is hidden from Steam on a separate NVMe SSD, and I have a second official "dummy" installation (only core + Academy) in the Steam path. Transferring updates manually and juggling with two appmanifest files, this is pretty safe as Steam can never touch my full 750 GB installation.

Additionally I keep a full backup on a HDD drive. Nothing to worry about for me.

[Felix.AVMP]

To quote an old (yet still valid) article from PC Mag:

"Hacking only makes sense when its part of a two-step process. Step one: Acknowledge a product sucks. Step two: Fix it with a hack. This is good. The problem is when geeks add a third step: Claim the existence of the hack means it didn't suck in the first place, or that the hack makes things better for non-geeks."

Feel free to substitute the word "hack" with "back up".

[cuavas]

Originally posted by Felix.AVMP:

To quote an old (yet still valid) article from PC Mag:

"Hacking only makes sense when its part of a two-step process. Step one: Acknowledge a product sucks. Step two: Fix it with a hack. This is good. The problem is when geeks add a third step: Claim the existence of the hack means it didn't suck in the first place, or that the hack makes things better for non-geeks."

Feel free to substitute the word "hack" with "back up".

That’s a great quote. When I was a kid and I had plenty of spare time, I was happy to hack stuff up to make it usable. But now I just want software I paid for to work. Even if I theoretically could fix stuff, I shouldn’t have to.

[x1Heavy]

The problem with terabyte redownloading runs against my ISP's limit. Then 50 dollars a 10 gig over in a month.

The entire botched updating situation with TSC is grostesque and costly. Both in terms of time, power burn and so on so forth etc.

What I did is simply made a backup. Much good it will do sitting on the spare drive.

I deselected automatic updates from steam. Any future updating from DTG will be prevented for a day minimum pending further SNAFUS. I can wait. Less costly to wait a day instead of three it took to reinstall, verifiy and play TSC again. Another two for another steam game and a third will be two more days minimum.

Theres about 20 on the library. 18 of them will be let go.

Never again.

I spent years with Novalogic betatesting under NDA decades ago for I think three of their game products which made it to retail release. The company failed specifically becuase they cheaped out and did not spend a dollar on license keys for the necessary software system wide used in making these games and running the company and data centers. So they got taken off the market the hard way.

Thats one reason I do not do beta anything anymore. Its hard on the hardware and whatever you have to say as a peon against developers who do not listen and will do what they do... theres no point.

That was both a innocence lost and a learning of the gaming industry in ways that I wish I did not bother with. So its all water under the bridge.

New players alive today who were not born then 20 years ago have every right to expect a good game software running well on a decent machine and supported without these kinds of errors and essentially F ups. Its royal.

In trucking when we break really expensive stuff like that they not only fire you but also extract it from your hide.

It probably comes down to dollars. Money. Cheaper to hash out something basic for a update with what you got instead of paying for a better product production against a known good version on a seperate computer in house. BEFORE deploying the damn updates.

They cannot bear to spend a dollar making a patch good and double checking work. Then wonder why the people left the game in the dust when it broke with a bad patch. Leaving millions with them. What a waste.

[Spikee1975]

Originally posted by Felix.AVMP:

To quote an old (yet still valid) article from PC Mag:

"Hacking only makes sense when its part of a two-step process. Step one: Acknowledge a product sucks. Step two: Fix it with a hack. This is good. The problem is when geeks add a third step: Claim the existence of the hack means it didn't suck in the first place, or that the hack makes things better for non-geeks."

Feel free to substitute the word "hack" with "back up".

While this is true, it's not helping anyone.

Steam is doing nothing wrong, it will restore your game to the default state based on the files delivered by the devs (apart from the error that happened with empty depots, whoever was responsible for that). And if mods or addons manipulate original files and you don't want that to be reset due to a verification, you have to take action yourself. And just making a simple backup is not a hack - it is essential as there's other risks of losing your data.

Maybe think and make suggestions in the DTG forum. A simple idea, separating DLC from user files, would be the answer - like ETS2 does among others. If that is possible, who knows. TSC has a good but old fundament, and back in 2007 the devs surely wouldn't have thought that it's still being played now and that content would grow so massively. I'm thankful for that and the core updates.

So if you are saying it's basically crap then just don't play it. The game is running better than ever. And I know, I'm spending a lot of time in it. Playing and modding.

And all of you who are relying on cloud storage, there might be a bitter awakening someday.

[englishkeymaster]

Just to add to the above, a backup is fundamentally not a 'hack'.

It's something anyone who doesn't have a risk appetite for data loss should do regardless of the quality or operating status of their machine and software, the extent to which should be your appetite of likelihood vs impact.

[Spikee1975]

Originally posted by englishkeymaster:

Just to add to the above, a backup is fundamentally not a 'hack'.

It's something anyone who doesn't have a risk appetite for data loss should do regardless of the quality or operating status of their machine and software, the extent to which should be your appetite of likelihood vs impact.

It's just the usual unconstructive posts from that user, and completely off topic here. Idealism vs Realism. "They should..." vs "What can I do". Way to get bitter, cynical, and frustrated. Not my way :)

[englishkeymaster]

Dispell the myth then down to the pub it is then? :)

[Spikee1975]

Fair enough :)

[cuavas]

There are multiple problems with continuing to defend a substandard product.

Firstly, if you accept the lack of quality and continue to buy DLC, it sends a message to DTG that this is acceptable. The quality will continue to drop as long as you accept it and continue to buy content.

Secondly, by recommending things that require workarounds to get full functionality, you’re failing to understand that most people just want stuff they pay for to work. You don’t buy a new car expecting to need to replace the ECU and injectors before you can safely drive it on a public road. DTG is selling content that isn’t fit for sale. Recommending that to potential new users is unethical.

[Felix.AVMP]

Originally posted by Spikee1975:

Originally posted by Felix.AVMP:

To quote an old (yet still valid) article from PC Mag:

"Hacking only makes sense when its part of a two-step process. Step one: Acknowledge a product sucks. Step two: Fix it with a hack. This is good. The problem is when geeks add a third step: Claim the existence of the hack means it didn't suck in the first place, or that the hack makes things better for non-geeks."

Feel free to substitute the word "hack" with "back up".

While this is true, it's not helping anyone.

Steam is doing nothing wrong, it will restore your game to the default state based on the files delivered by the devs (apart from the error that happened with empty depots, whoever was responsible for that). And if mods or addons manipulate original files and you don't want that to be reset due to a verification, you have to take action yourself. And just making a simple backup is not a hack - it is essential as there's other risks of losing your data.

Maybe think and make suggestions in the DTG forum. A simple idea, separating DLC from user files, would be the answer - like ETS2 does among others. If that is possible, who knows. TSC has a good but old fundament, and back in 2007 the devs surely wouldn't have thought that it's still being played now and that content would grow so massively. I'm thankful for that and the core updates.

So if you are saying it's basically crap then just don't play it. The game is running better than ever. And I know, I'm spending a lot of time in it. Playing and modding.

And all of you who are relying on cloud storage, there might be a bitter awakening someday.

I could write a lot as an answer, but I will restrain myself to one simple sentence as there is no point in escalating the issue:
"Thanks for making my point."