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Post by Keith Heitmann on Feb 24, 2005 8:55:16 GMT -5
I spent a few days downloading this 223MB demo on my dialup connection and finally got it isntalled last night.
I've spent a few hours with the turtorials and tried my hand at the scenario running a passenger train.
The sim runs smooth as glass on my P4 3Ghz system and Radeon 9800 Pro with all the graphic options cranked up to max.
The scenery is nice, the sound effects are very realistic. I only wish the U.S. demo had U.S. locomotives rather than the British Rail loclomitives. Other than that the demo seems to be interesting.
My passenger train kept over running a red light here or there and I finally had to give up because I'm just too tired to continue.
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Post by Redbirdy on Feb 24, 2005 10:32:19 GMT -5
Yep, gotta keep an eye out for those signal lights! Especially if you have half-a-dozen or so trains running on your layout, lol.
Well Auran is an Australian company so I suppose you could expect to see more British locos in the demo than US. You can download almost any loco/car/etc. imaginable from their site though, from all kinds of RRs: Union Pacific, Canadian National, Chessie, and on and on.
-J
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Post by Keith Heitmann on Feb 24, 2005 18:49:18 GMT -5
Keep in mind that this is just the demo though, Phil. 
You just have to get used to sitting on the left of the cab to run the Brit locomotives.
The problem with the signal lights is that they tend to come up very quickly without much warning when you enter a track block and the size of the red light makes it hard to see on a 1024x768 display until you get relatively close. By that time if you are running at high speed it's too late and even with the train brake on and engine in hard reverse you manages to slide past the signal.
It took me about a dozen tries but I managed to complete the passenger run successfully with about 344 points. I'll have to see if I can improve on that some. I only had a minor deduction here or there for being late at one station by 54 seconds.
I wonder if I could install one of those custom U.S. locomotives into the demo. Probably not. That would be too easy.
That Brit loco's horn sounds like a sick cow my wife tells me.  Not nearly as authoritative as the horns on the U.S. engines.
There is a steam locomotive in the demo too, which for some reason has a U.S. style whistle, instead of what that British tea-kettle whistle they used on their engines. I didn't spend much time running it, and I didn't figure out how to re-coal and fill the boiler with water, or if I had to in the demo.
All-in-all, not a bad sim. The game runs beautifully on my system, a P4 3Ghz 1GB RAM Windows XP Radeon 9800 Pro w/128MB in either the DirectX mode or OpenGL mode with all the graphics cranked to maximum. The only problem I had is at the end of my passenger run when the score sheet came up, after a moderate pause the game suddenly crashed to the desktop with an Exception Error message. No big deal since I had compelted the run and didn't experience any problems while running the actual sim itself.
I suspect it was trying to access another screen when it crashed.
I'm also going to download their Bridge-It game demo, where you have to construct rail and road bridges. Seems like a game that might interest me, since I tend to like builder-type games like Caesar III (et al), Sim Tower, etc.
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Post by Redbirdy on Feb 25, 2005 11:07:37 GMT -5
I agree Phil. They should have a US demo for those downloading from the states. The idea is to sell the game, and people want to see their favorite lines moving down the rails.
I agree with Keith's wife on those British horns! I winced when I first heard them and thought there was a sound bug in the game 
-J
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Phil Walker
Scharfuehrer
VERY opinionated. Best stay away from. You've been warned!!!
Posts: 251
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Post by Phil Walker on Feb 25, 2005 13:14:55 GMT -5
Well Redbirdy,
Let's say I do AND don't agree with your synopsis. It would be nice to have a demo just for us in the US, but at the same time, that CAN be expensive if you go to other markets. So, that I can't say as I agree with as it will lose its "cost effectiveness". On the other hand and more cost effective is a "one size fits all" as they have. They just need to have variety that is not soley to THEIR market. THEN, you'd have a decent demo for ALL!!!
Sincerely,
PHil
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Post by Keith Heitmann on Feb 25, 2005 17:20:50 GMT -5
It is probably and easy fix for Auran to put a U.S. engine in the U.S. demo, since it is so easy for the same thing to be done by the game owners with the registered release version. They just chose not to do it. I'm sure I'm not the only one that has mentioned this before. I still may point it out to them, even if they have heard it before, I'll just be one more drop in the bucket.
I played around with the steam locomotive last night and setup a schedule to have the traind pickup and deliver coal.
This part of the game appears to be a simple operation but it had some strange effects when I tried doing it. I think the readme file warned about changing the schedule while the driver had the train in operation so that may have effected my results. The problem is as soon as you select the first station or industry the driver takes over. There needs to be a scheduling phase in the demo where you can setup where you want the engine to go and what you want it to do before it actually starts doing it.
I tried adding a decoupling and re-coupling step to my schedule and that seemed to bring the entire thing to a halt and the engine refused to move after decoupling.
Also, the coupling and decoupling of cars in the demo, at least, is not very intuitiive. When you click on the decoupling function, it will list all the units of the consist attached to the locomotive. In a consist of all coal cars, there was no way to disover where each car was in the consist. I clicked on the cars that I thought were attached to my tender car, but when the train moved it turned out that the last two cars were decoupled from the train instead.
TrainMaster, a 3rd party sim, has a much easier way of doing this. A small screen comes up with your consist pictured on it in miniature. Then you select the the decouple command and then click on the point between the two cars you want the decoupling to occur and VOILA!...the correct cars are left behind...no muss no fuss.
I also couldn't figure out why the tender car for my steam locomotive unloaded its load of coal at the power station when coal was delivered there. That was strange indeed. My loco had to make the trip back without any coal onboard.
Also, the coal tender got filled at the coal mine just as if it was a coal hopper card the train was pulling.
Not only that when I pulled the consist into the water and coaling station for steam engines, the coal tender got filled with water and then coal, and all the coal hopers I was hauling also go filled depleting the stock of coal on hand at the filling station. Hence, my attempt above to decouple the coal hoppers before entering the stataion and recouple after leaving via the scheduler.
These may just be a problem in the demo program. Many demo programs are based on pre-release betas of the game and often have bugs in them. I'd hate to think that this problem was in the release version.
Another odd thing that happened at the coal mine. After the hoppers (and tender) were filled with coal as scheduled, the train pulled out, switched track and pulled up to a filling station on a side track that had coal and dieself fuel, even though the tender was already full, and only then did it proceed on its way to deliver coal to the power company.
Again, this could just be a peculiarity of the demo program.
I did finally manage to complete a passenger run in the scenario section of the demo last night. So that part of the "mission" was accomplished at least.
I also started playing around with the editor program of the demo. It's fucntions seem to be less than intuitive also. There is no command to place level ground, in the event you need to fill in or level off a terrain mistake you made. You have a button to make elevations and one for depresions, and one that will let you drag up or down for either type terrain, but there is no just plain level terrain function.
Working with the editor is all guesswork as there is no instruction manual on how to use it. Nevertheless, I have map under construction with some terrain and tracks on it at this point. I've got one half of map covered with track and once I have the other half done I'll take a "test drive" on it and see how it looks.
If I get Trainz, my hope would be to reconstruct the small regional railroad that my grandfathers worked for and I lived a block away from as kid.
The Chicago and Eastern Illinois (C&EI) ran passengers from Chicago to Florida in its heyday as the "Dixie Flyer", as well as freight from southern and central Illinois to Chicago. The railroad was bought by the Missouri Pacific in 1969, and eventually was taken over by the Union Pacific in 1975 when they took over MoPac. The Dolton, Il, switchingyard, that I lived near became a intermodal yard for piggyback trains and the hump and turntable and round house were all demolished.
For some info on the C&EI try these links:
www.rr-fallenflags.org/cei/cei.html
www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8859-1&safe=off&q=C%26EI
www.ceihs.org/historians_main_1.html
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Phil Walker
Scharfuehrer
VERY opinionated. Best stay away from. You've been warned!!!
Posts: 251
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Post by Phil Walker on Feb 26, 2005 6:18:28 GMT -5
ONE word Keith, WOAH!!!
Even though before my time, I don't THINK any model railroader hasn't heard the "Dixie Flyer". Frankly I did have some of its cars in my first set I ever had, and that dates WAY back, at least in my terms.  ;D
Even thought I don't have the demo as of yet, WHEN you contact them, let them know you're speaking for 2 ! In all honesty though, I'm not so sure I'll even get the demo with what you have said. With my poor vision, probably get "lost in the shuffle" if you know what I mean. Thanks for your "2 bits" though !!! It does sound like something to definitely put on my "to get" list!!!
Sincerely,
PHil
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Post by Keith Heitmann on Feb 26, 2005 14:13:45 GMT -5
The demo is still interesting, but with your eyes it may be a little hard to see the track signals at a distance. You won't know until you try it.
I scrapped my first editor file. I was building it all on one tile section and the tracks weren't lining up properly for me especially the junctions.
I figure out how to add new tile sections to the one I'm working on so I can construct a larger layout than before.
I'm also laying the track first this time and I'll add the scenery around it. I did it the other way around and I and track going over small hills and bumps that I couldn't see until I got down to drive the engine.
Doing it so that the track is first ensures it's on a flat surface. I'll just have to be careful not to get too close with any elevation changes which may raiese or lower the terrain under the track. The editor, without instructions, is a bit confusing too, but I'm working it out litlte by little.
The real star of Trainz is actully sitting in the cab and driving the train on the tracks. The one passenger train scenario in the demo is supposed to be EASY but you still have to be careful. If you overshoot a red signal the scenario ends and you have to go again. The scenario does give you a good taste of what the full game is like, as you must stop at stations on-time to pickup passengers, and obey track signals and speed limits, and there are three other trains on the tracks that you pass or have to wait for to go by.
You have two modes of controlling the train that you can pick from, the CAB mode that lets you work the controls directly in the engine cab with your mouse cursor or via keyboard keys, and the DCC mode, which is more like the model train controller where a knob controls speed and direction and a handful of buttons controls the brakes, lights, horn, etc.
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!!!
! If you knew me, you'd know why too. Even so Redbirdy, as Keith said NO U.S. locos at all. So, give me a break 
! I don't care WHERE the company is from there should be AT LEAST ONE as it IS marketed and sold here!!!
Not nearly as authoritative as the horns on the U.S. engines.