Is Chris taking advantage of his die-hard fans?

maartena · Post by **maartena** » 13 Sep 2004 18:31

I think the most common mistake made here is that people compare Locomotion to TTDLX+TTDPatch+OpenTTD+Other Patches instead of comparing Locomotion to the original game of Transport Tycoon Deluxe.

I too have been working with TTDPatch and more recently with OpenTTD to play Transport Tycoon, and the many added features in the patches make gameplay a lot easier, but those additions were all player made and not part of the original programming.

Of course Chris Sawyer could have looked at all the work done by TTDPatch and OpenTTD programmers, and implement some of the nice features found in those patches in Locomotion, but if you compare Locomotion to the game of Transport Tycoon DeLuxe (for Windows) as it came out of the box, Locomotion is a worthy successor indeed.

It does not mean that Locomotion cannot be improved, as there are many bugs and annoyances that have been reported already. I am sure a patch will be released in the next few months to deal with those issues.

Basically, I am just saying that you should not compare Locomotion to TTDLX+TTDPatch+OpenTTD and whatnot, but compare Locomotion to the original TTDLX.

lotrgamemast · Post by **lotrgamemast** » 13 Sep 2004 18:35

Yer good point most peple do play with patches and may forget that those features arnt park of the real game, i did untill you pointed it out then.

maartena · Post by **maartena** » 13 Sep 2004 18:42

Hipshot wrote:I'm dissapointed too, with
# Whats the deal with the music, are there only 4 tracks? Didn't TT have like 20 tracks?

The music changes with the time period. If you started in the early 1900's, you will hear ragtime style music. Then, as you hit the 1920's, you will hear jazz music. In the 1940 you hear a lot of musical/theatre music, and a transition into rock&roll in the 50ties and 60ties. Then in the 60ties you hear some good solid rock. By the end of the 70ties you hear some disco/pop influences.....

I have not played past 1978 yet, but I would imagene some pop influences in the 80ties, and dance influences in the 90ties.

In your music options you can change it to play music from one era only, or to play music from all era's randomly. I did not turn it on yet so I don't know what plays after 1980 or so

It could be that the demo version does not offer all music.

spaceman-spiff · Post by **spaceman-spiff** » 13 Sep 2004 18:47

If you want to listen to all th emusic without playing, go to the data map, copy all biggest maps to some map under c:
Go there, do
rename *.dat *.wma
Now you can play all these files with winamp

Post by **orudge** » 13 Sep 2004 19:12

It should be changed to *.wav instead of *.wma.

lotrgamemast · Post by **lotrgamemast** » 13 Sep 2004 19:15

yer that makes more sence

PennCentral · Post by **PennCentral** » 13 Sep 2004 20:48

Alright. All of you people who don't like it, I suggest you go out and buy a copy of Auran's Trainz 2004. It's a somewhat similiar game (albeit it's trains only), has interactive industries, passenger stations, and graphics pretty enuff to slow down any computer. Here's some screenies of a couple of my skins and layouts:

Now, go buy it. And let the rest of enjoy Locomotion for what
it is. FUN

Born Acorn · Post by **Born Acorn** » 13 Sep 2004 20:51

Microsoft train simulators graphics look better than that.

PennCentral · Post by **PennCentral** » 13 Sep 2004 20:52

Yeah, but which sim is now defunct?

*edit*
I am merely pointing a lot of the complaints in this thread are really kinda pointless. Locomotion isn't trying to be a sim like MSTS or Trainz. It's a throwback game that I wish there were more of out there.

Realgar · Post by **Realgar** » 13 Sep 2004 21:11

Born Acorn wrote: YOU go out and hire a bunch of testers and a couple o guys for two years, in which you take the RCT engine, completey strip it down and rebuild it, see how poor you are then.

I don't need to pay for some beta testers, just release a beta version for the public, or do some beta test like blizzard does all the time, or just get some friends to test it, or test it yourself for quite a while, you're certainly going to find what annoys you more playing the game.

Yes because its a decent system and allows for proper smooth turns to be implemented properly.

It could be a lot easier if the system was more tt-like, instead of a "build this" button cursor could change to the track type you want, and you click or drag on the screen where you want to place the track, actually both things together would be a better build system (this and the "build this" button as the button is only good when building elevated curved tracks, elevated straight tracks would still be easier and faster with a drag form).

Hill Climbing : Loco is much more realistic as the gradient is less steep.

Ah so it is more realistic to make a ramp to go over a hill than using the hill itself ? Even if you only had to dig the hill a bit to make it less steep ? It is also better to build a ramp that will limit the train speed because it can't take as much force as pure land ?

Creating trains : exactly the same, I can't fit the Orient express into my garden shed no matter how much I try.

Well I prefer fitting trains on some crazy depot than making them pop out of nowhere. At least "something" is building the train. It would be perfectly fine to create something that you build like a station and served as maintenance/creation for the vehicles.

The game is so cheap it may as well be freeware. TTD and TTO are not free, and it is actually warez youve downloaded. The gameplay is the same as ttd also.

Well compare both games and compare the amount of things you get for the price you pay then.
Saying that you can't compare ttdp/ottd to loco because they are not created by CS is a poor excuse, at least ttdp I know I heard about for a LONG time, for a few years, that was more than enough time for CS to look at the ideas and add them to loco, actually the only thing the patch added that was truly required were pre-signals, and the shared orders aren't bad either, the other features I'm missing heavily were all in TT by CS himself and he chose not to add them.

Well obviously you can't

Ah sorry, I forgot people have different tastes, if you enjoy renewing vehicle after vehicle after vehicle, making them stop in the middle of the desert and making new machines pop out of nowhere, if you enjoy clicking a button 100 times for each track built, then this is the perfect game for you. Else, look for TTD.

he made it in two.

no, he did not made the game from scratch in 2 years, he's working on it since 1996, and even though he says he had to stop to make rct1/2, he also admitted he used a lot of the same code for rct2, so he pratically worked on both games since 1996.

PennCentral, there are people complaining about the graphics, but a lot of other people are complaining about other things, if we really cared for graphics that much we wouldn't be playing TTD for this long.
Also, these train sim games have no relation to TTD, TDD is a build game, it's like comparing RTS war games to FPS war games...

Born Acorn · Post by **Born Acorn** » 13 Sep 2004 22:22

umm hello? renewing vehicles in TTD is slower than loco! The patch is an unnofficaial patch and is not part of this convo!

Steve · Post by **Steve** » 13 Sep 2004 22:33

I agree. And i'm going to start hurting people that keep saying it.

Kuplo · Post by **Kuplo** » 13 Sep 2004 22:39

I've still got Trainz laying around here. Unfortunately it makes me sick. Literally that is, I get really nauscious(sp?) when I use to play it. So I tried it just a week ago since it's been a year, and it still makes me sick.

Loco is a good game overall, it's highly addictive. I must have played it the first day I got it for about 10 hours +/- It can be better and hopfully it will be better through a patch rather than an expansion.

Pinkyoz · Post by **Pinkyoz** » 13 Sep 2004 22:51

Wow, we certainly have some strong voices on this. In just on 12 hours we have picked this game to bits, yet most of us have only had it in our game libraries for less than a week.

First, I did read some people taking some of my comments out of context. I'm not saying that this is a bad game, Its not, I have found (even in playing the demo) that the game is quite enjoyable, but it has weak points and that is my point.

A lot of what has been mentioned including the RCT style track building, the removal of depots from the game, the tedious task of replacing vehicles and even some sloppy pathfinding (epically with ships) are the major issues. (I do not consider Graphics to be a major concern, they add to the games Look and Feel in a pleasant way, "we don’t need Doom 3 graphics" is right)

But we have to look at the good points as well, personally, I like the new trams system, and (while I am still experimenting) I also appreciate the more realistic track layouts, the interface is solid, and overall the gameplay is quite enjoyable and the learning curve is not too steep.

My comments about CS were more about a loss of his "Innovative" touch, anyone can get stuck into a way of thinking, and hopefully contact with other developers will improve his approaches in the future and inspire him to try more innovative approaches to some of the gameplay problems mentioned.

Ok, that’s about all I have to say on that, I think

Pinkyoz

Realgar · Post by **Realgar** » 14 Sep 2004 00:00

Born Acorn wrote:umm hello? renewing vehicles in TTD is slower than loco! The patch is an unnofficaial patch and is not part of this convo!

Saying that you can't compare ttdp/ottd to loco because they are not created by CS is a poor excuse, at least ttdp I know I heard about for a LONG time, for a few years, that was more than enough time for CS to look at the ideas and add them to loco. Just imagine the mess it would be if game developers decide to never look for ideas somewhere, imagine almost every RTS game without group selection of units for example because one doesn't want to look at another's game for new ideas...

Renewing vehicles is slower ? Funny, I never have to renew them all manually on the patch, only time it is needed to manually do something is when you change the vehicle DESIGN, and that's like around 10 times each GAME (and I DO find it annoying enough like that =P), not every 5 years. Even on TTD I don't need to renew them every 5 years, it's every 15 or so cause they actually go to depots every X days (you choose X) and receive maintenance, (you can also design your tracks so trains are forced to go to depot before loading for example, keeping them at their highest quality without any hassle, which is what I used to do before the patch added "go to depot" order) I don't see how manually having to change them is faster. More automation is what I expected mostly on loco and it acutally have less of it than TT.

He even could add RCT's "full load but leave if another train reach station", that he created, would be helpful too.

A way to lower/raise land in a rectangular area (8x2, 10x2, 8x1, 10x1) instead of only square areas (1,2x2,3x3,4x4) would be cool too.

Loco adds a bit over TT but removes some important TT stuff, and can't even be compared to OTTD or TTDP cause it misses a quite nice list of features (even simple ones). It is more beautiful but not better.

jpinard · Post by **jpinard** » 14 Sep 2004 00:17

Realgar - you're so right. IF a developer was too pigheaded to look to its consumers for advice, ideas, or at its competition - then they are just that.... pigheaded - and probably lazy. PERIOD...

prsphere · Post by **prsphere** » 14 Sep 2004 00:58

The problem is not Chris, really, as often, it's a publisher thing... mostly if they ask the devs to ALLOW expansion later on (as RCT 1/2 show clearly), they have to cripple it a little to had new features later.
Maybe they will had players destination to loco later!

Atari is not different than EA... I guess we will all have to choose our publishers in the future, like we choose to ban Disney for the movies...

Coming to the earth and beyond site today to look how thing were looking for them (game is closing down soon) to find clue of the future... I was directed to the faq of the "Sunset". They write: "The E&B team is being moved onto several other projects, most notably Ultima X: Odyssey. Visit http://www.uxo.ea.com/ for more information."

Well, I dare you to go to that address!!!

That's an sample of things to come... and yet, I'm sure both EA and Atari will lunch plenty of old classics they both have for chrismass to get all the one game a year buyer that don't know much be recognize pac-man and frogger... While I will be playing Settlers 5 and Half-Life...

It's really sad...

But the thing is that you just have to know that when buying from them, you expose yourself to the expansion frenzy and cash hungry machine... I mean, I even had to buy Rush Hour to play Sim city 4 properly! Can you beleive that???

Born Acorn · Post by **Born Acorn** » 14 Sep 2004 09:07

Realgar wrote:
Born Acorn wrote:umm hello? renewing vehicles in TTD is slower than loco! The patch is an unnofficaial patch and is not part of this convo!
Saying that you can't compare ttdp/ottd to loco because they are not created by CS is a poor excuse

No its not. Loco hasn't been patched yet so TTD has an advantage. wait for an add-on patch for loco first before comparing peaches to oranges

Singaporekid · Post by **Singaporekid** » 14 Sep 2004 09:19

As i mentioned before, CS assumes we've never played ttdpatch before, and besides, loco track building is far more reallistic than ttd, i mean, miles and miles of tracks don't just get laid down all in 1 go you know....

Severn · Post by **Severn** » 14 Sep 2004 10:07

There have been NO patches for RCT2, there were several for RCT1.

(Actually that isn't true, there was an RCT2 patch to fix a problem with the CD copy protection making the game unplayable of some drives.)

Most worryingly, the well documented 'peep' pathfinding bug remains in RCT2.

But as for these complaints about having to repair every single vehicle one by one, and place track on tile at a time, isn't that one of the points of the game? It is after all more a micromanagement game than others in the same genre. Sure in RRT3 I can upgrade all my trains at once, and lay miles of track with a single mouse click, but I don't get to place signals and design sophisticated junctions.

(I don't remember TTD so well. Could you mass upgrade vehicles in that?)

It's like comparing apples and pears.

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