Specific thread for Gerry ;)

[tooltroll]

Man-O-Man, I couldn't disagree with you more, perhaps if you'd kept up with developments, went over to Trello, you'd notice that many of those items your are talking about are being debated, implemented and planned for. The details of which I'd be happy to discuss with you...if you'd start a specific thread in the OR forum...till then...TCS only byeeeee!.

Gerry,

As requested. Never let it be said that I'm not willing to listen. Ok, perhaps I was feeling pissy and put it a bit harshly, but I've seen a lot of debate on ET end with physics and compatibility trumping all else, and have heard the same observation from others. I can't keep up with all the developments all the time (and what the heck is 'Trello', anyway?) because I've always got a ton of projects on the go; ATM, I've got exterior stucco to finish up, interior renos, an album to finish mixing and mastering, a long distance move to prepare for, my bride to murder, and Guilder to frame for it. No, wait. Those last two are from 'The Princess Bride'.

Anyway, I'm swamped, so what computer time I get I'd rather spend on: 1. Actually working on my route (and assets for it); 2. Finding solutions to issues with TSRE/OR (and Blender, plus a few other utils.) as they crop up; and, 3. Perusing the forums for items of immediate technical interest. Following multiple threads of debate and gossip on multiple forums is just not a productive way to make progress, IMHO, especially since I can only work on it in little bursts every few weeks. ATM, I've got a few days to kill, waiting for weather and a drummer, thus the present activity. So admittedly, I'm not up to speed on everything, but if I tried to be, I'd never get anything done. As I said in the other thread, I was just moved to respond to a comment that seemed to indicate that things haven't much improved, re: The OR team accepting outside input. All I've got is a view from the cheap seats, so I called it as I saw it. By all means, please correct my misapprehensions.

[R. Steele]

After reading your all's -- it's Saturday morning, and while not waiting for a drummer, ( I do remember waiting for one in my youth ) -- my princess bride and myself have errands and chores to do. I'll reply in more detail later....however, couple things...
1. Yep, what with all other interests one may pursue, it is hard to keep up with developments and sort out the gossip or misconceptions with what is actually "real developments".

2. Trello is where the Open Rails development cards are. Things that people have suggested, that are voted upon for development.
You'll get the idea once you see it...you'll have to register --- quite easy, and then vote on what you would like to see developed. The developers do take this seriously...but since this is all volunteer, things don't tend to move at the pace of payware.

https://trello.com/b/DS2h3Pxc/open-rails-roadmap

Also, my apologies if my initial replies in that other thread were impolite or came across as dismissive. Sorry.
Regards, Gerry

[tooltroll]

Nope, you weren't rude or dismissive. Ok, I have seen Trello before, now that I see it again. I probably got there via a link on the OR site, and didn't realise (because of the green colour theme) that it was a separate site. Indeed, the activity there allays some of my fears. The last time I saw it was probably shortly after it was established, and there wasn't a lot there yet. Now there's quite a lot, which is promising, but again, it all takes time to read through. This caught my eye, though:

20 votes CARD NUMBER #124

When you have a long train, you can't see the condition of the cars past a certain point. If we could scroll this info, it would be helpful.
Allow the user to underline or highlight an entire line in the extended F5 Brake info.
This is not an issue with ½ dozen in a string, but when you get 20 + cars, it is a chore (specifically for us older eyeballs) to sight across that string of tiny type.
The things we really need to know, train line stuff, is at the end of the line with the ID in first column.
This would help eliminate selecting the wrong car for brake operations...
I always make bad cursing noises when my crewman (me) disconnects the wrong hose and flushes the train line...

James Ross 15 Jan 2017 at 06:36 Reasoning: These screens are for debugging, so should be showing just the information required to debug particular areas of the game. E.g. the locomotive screen can just show locomotives, while the brakes screen can show the front and rear of the train with a selection of middle cars.
If we find specific, conflicting requirements I would reconsider; but please remember that the aim is for the average player to not need the extended HUD at all.

Well ok, they were originally intended for debugging, but people have found another use for them, and I think arbitrarily dismissing the notion is a bit short sighted. I guess this doesn't qualify strictly as devotion to 'physics', but to 'realism', which is a bit broader. I get that the extended F5 info isn't commonly available in the real world, except that some of it is; Perhaps not all neat in tabulated columns, but things like brake pipe stopcock positions and hose connections; The things a brakeman can see as he walks the train, basically. When I 'alt+click' a switch, I can visually confirm that it's lined the right way, unlike hose connections, etc. Unless I'm missing something somewhere? I'd like nothing better than to have a walk/run mode (like the free cam, but stuck to the ground) and be able to manipulate such things and see that things are properly set, but that information is only available on the F5 summary. Sure, we have key commands for some of these things, but no feedback to confirm or check them (not even on the popup menu when you click the car number in the F9 window: Just 'toggle this' & 'toggle that' with no status indicators. Frankly, I'm still unclear on the use of the '\' & 'shift+\' hose connect/disconnect commands. How do you know which hose you're fiddling with, and how do you open/close the cocks?)

Anyway, all that is a specific example of a more general issue. The thing is, that card has 20 votes, more than most of the cards in the approved & 'released' categories, and it's been sitting there for over two years with apparently no reconsidering done, no alternatives offered. (Which may be Trello's fault, not offering a way to link to a forum where it's being discussed?) It's something the community clearly wants, if the votes are to believed, but James (responding for the team, I assume) seems to think that it's irrelevant due do a preconceived notion of how the players are supposed to interact with the sim. Shouldn't the players have some options? Especially when they're asking for it? This is, after all, a consumer-lever game simulation, not a professional simulator for training railroad engineers. Everybody prefers different levels of realism, even the same people at different times. Some people like long hauls through the mountains, I'd rather do switching puzzles without hours of uneventful driving between stops. . . Except sometimes I do enjoy a longer trip, especially if the route is well decorated.

I'd eventually like to see an option to start an activity by opening the hood doors, priming the pump, starting the diesel, setting the breakers, etc., while I'm sure that others would find such details unnecessarily fiddly and boring. I understand that something like that would require quite a bit of work, and additional modelling/texturing on the part of the community, and might not happen for a good long time, but I'd like to think I could suggest it without it being 'pooh-pooh'ed out-of-hand because the people reviewing it personally don't see the appeal. The F5 example above requires much less work, but was shot down for a pretty arbitrary reason, despite much community interest, IMHO.

I've blathered on long enough. Am I wrong?

[R. Steele]

I just caught your reply, I'm on my way to a movie, so I'll read it carefully tomorrow, and post something....although when you wrote

Well ok, they were originally intended for debugging, but people have found another use for them, and I think arbitrarily dismissing the notion is a bit short sighted

Yeah, I agree...I like having the extended HUD, and not just for debugging...

[tooltroll]

No worries, no rush, the thermometer's still low and the drummer's still off gallivanting with his wife (The noive o' sum people! ). Enjoy your movie. I'll take this opportunity for an addendum, though:

Doing my due diligence, I downloaded the current (released yesterday!) manual to check a few things, and I found "8.6.4 Using the F5 HUD Expanded Braking Information - This helps users of Open Rails to understand the status of braking within the game and assists in realistically coupling and uncoupling cars.", so it seems that the team, or at least whoever wrote this bit, is aware of the usefulness of the 'SHIFT+F5' HUD. I really don't understand how, if they recommend players use this data, they've neglected to present it in a usable way, and refuse a request to fix it. If anything, at least for this particular issue, this just muddies the water more. As an experiment, I'm trying to clear it: Card #415 on Trello is new, outlining my suggestions to better work with the brake data in-game. See what you think. Frankly, making the SHIFT+F5 HUD scrollable would probably be a lot easier, but it wouldn't be as authentic, IMHO. We'll eventually see what everyone else thinks, I guess.

[R. Steele]

...Frankly, making the SHIFT+F5 HUD scrollable would probably be a lot easier, but it wouldn't be as authentic, IMHO. We'll eventually see what everyone else thinks, I guess.

It is scrollable, has been for quite a while in Monogame OR...I'm running that with Reshade, a big visual improvement IMO. Now, I don't know if the HUD scrolls in the lastest stable version, I'm almost certain it scrolls in the latest experimental version.
You know you can download the lastest automatic build from James Ross's site

http://james-ross.co.uk/projects/or/builds

I started using OR in the early months of 2013, it was having trouble running the LaSalle, Rockford and Central fictional route at that time.
Now 6 years later....operational turntables and transfertables, DDS textures, Activity and Weather Randomization, RailDriver Calibration has been integrated into the game -- in a specific OR Raildriver version which is waiting to be integrated into the Monogame Version that eventually will become the standard when the switch is made to Monogame...which is planned for the near future. There are literally too many things that have been added to list them all. OR has begun the transistion away from MSTS ( some are not happy about that ) but it is inevitable. I have read threads about new file formats, but this has to be planned out carefully, discussed...too many details I do not understand.

I think you need to devote some time to running the program, getting reacquainted with it...until the drummer shows up and the weather warms up...until then as my pops used to say "keep your socks tight and shorts loose - you may need to run to escape a goose"
I think the old man drank too many brewed beverages.

Open Rails Monogame info and download site:

OR MonoGame Downloads and thread (Carlo Santucci)
http://www.elvastower.com/forums/ind..._1#entry244071
Download Link: http://www.interazioni-educative.it/...NewYear_MG.zip

[tooltroll]

Hmph. Well, if they are going to allow that HUD to scroll, they probably should have reviewed/resorted that card on Trello. I'm not trying to be a PITA, but keeping up with multiple forums/sites would be a full-time job that I just don't have the time for, especially if they're not keeping everything synced between them all. Sure, some things slip, but that card has been there for 2+ years, and is on the top of its column with the most votes. Surely someone, sometime between now and whenever they decided to fix that HUD, noticed that it wasn't valid anymore? So now I look like an ass proposing solutions to problems that no longer exist.

[R. Steele]

Hmph. Well, if they are going to allow that HUD to scroll, they probably should have reviewed/resorted that card on Trello. I'm not trying to be a PITA, but keeping up with multiple forums/sites would be a full-time job that I just don't have the time for, especially if they're not keeping everything synced between them all. Sure, some things slip, but that card has been there for 2+ years, and is on the top of its column with the most votes. Surely someone, sometime between now and whenever they decided to fix that HUD, noticed that it wasn't valid anymore? So now I look like an ass proposing solutions to problems that no longer exist.

You've got the wrong end of the stick...the Monogame version and the Raildriver Versions are not in main OR development stream, no bug reports or anything else. The trello board does not apply to them.
Carlo Santucci and perpetual kid, two volunteer OR coders are doing work independently of the main development stream, to get ready for when the main development stream changes to Monogame. Then everything will be merged. Don't take what I'm saying as gospel, I do follow the threads, but I'm certainly no coder, not privy to the Dev Team...and I don't speak for anyone but myself.

Anyway, thanks for the thread, but the thread is really for yourself, so get the monogame and enjoy.

[tooltroll]

LOL, so now I have to also keep track of a branch project that may, or may not be, eventually rolled into the main one? Eeep. Even more forums to check!

No, thanks! I got into this to be able to create, and that's pretty much it. 90% of the time I run OR, it's to test what I'm building, but at the moment (and for the past decade or so) it seems that route creators are second-class citizens in our little community. Perhaps not intentionally, but the OR team seem to have assigned pretty low priorities to having creator-friendly editors, utilities and docs, as if content is just an afterthought to compatibility and realism. Yes, things appear to be turning up, in that the team is finally giving some attention to better file formats and editing capabilities, but still, if it weren't for Goku taking the initiative, we'd still be limping along on the old, buggy MSTS editors. Meanwhile, if the votes on Trello are to be believed, many more people than me have been clamouring for editors for years; There are at least half-a-dozen cards with 20+ votes for route editors, activity editors, consist editors, in-game editing capabilities, etc., and the team's apparent disregard for these concerns has made the atmosphere for creators, if not outright hostile, at least unwelcoming. I think that the compatibility with all the old MSTS content has turned out to be a bit of a two-edged sword: On the one hand, it's enabled OR to take advantage of the sheer number of items available, but on the other hand, we've been basically forced to limp along, depending on increasingly obsolete and ugly assets, because apparently content is irrelevant compared to realism and compatibility. "As long as we have all the old stuff to test our code on, who needs new content?" seems to be the attitude. Look at how much of the manual is devoted to esoteric physics calculations of interest only to coders. Do content creators need that level of mathematical detail? Do the average users? No, but it's all there in agonising detail, while the information that creators and editors need is scattered haphazardly throughout in no real organised fashion. Without new content, this project will die a slow death, but the team don't seem to care. Again: I'm not trying to dump on anyone, just my view from the bleachers.