Trainz/Trainz: A New Era

Trainz: A New Era

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Fundamentals for Trainz Trainees Trainz Version: Trainz: A New Era (TANE)

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Glossary

HKeys-CM

HKeys-DVR

HKeys-SUR

HKeys-WIN

Mouse use

Notations

Trainz: A New Era (TANE or T:ANE) is the 64 bit computer architecture adaptation of Trainz, that was to have shipped as a full release by early summer of 2015. The simulator and gaming system use an entirely new game engine, the enhanced JET 3 game engine of TS12 having been pushed as far as 32 bit operations could take it. It is fair to consider the package as a near total rewrite, which abandons various historic features (Scenarios, archives) and Railyard. The design also incorporates new Driver Objectives facility, that enables easier communication of next task between session writer and Owner/users using the Driver module, which could help broaden the market and/or reduce new user frustrations.

Various parts of the software utilize a Trainz Mac style implementation in place of the look-see-feel and hotkey operations of Trainz's traditional modules—especially the Content Manager module; features which have drawn fire from all quarters, not least in the community of over one thousand Trainz enthusiasts that each contributed serious money as part of a KickStarter pledge to participate in the Beta Tests.

TANE was to have had Alpha testing complete in late Summer of 2014, but only began so called formal Beta testing in mid-September, which by most software industry standards, was a true Alpha test, despite spin titles from N3V Games CEO Tony Hilliam, whose expertise is marketing. N3V's target dates subsequently have slipped again and again, until defacto Beta testing on unstable software which was barely capable of not Crashing-to-Desktop (CTD) in simple operations could begin to take place starting in Mid-November 2014.

None-the-less, in December N3V released a rough community edition to meet contractual requirements of KickStarter Funded projects that December. By May 2015, N3V published a 'Release Edition'—their target for the prior December, which subsequently received a ridiculous series of hotfixes with dreary regularity, and gradually became more and more stable by September, when Hilliam began talking about TANE Service Pack 1. By early winter 2015, the long promised and awaited Service Pack 1 was in Beta Testing, but SP1 candidate builds were necessarily progressed in a succession of hopeful upgrades, so SP1 was also repeatedly delayed. In the end, SP1 finally becoming available for software upload on January 10th or 11th of 2016, depending upon one's timezone. By any fair and impartial standard, TANE-SP1 is best considered a true early release, but since it lacks many user features expected in any Trainz version, is still disappointing. The 64 bit graphics and various fringe operational features (In-Cab Sway, Bumpy Track, collision boundaries, shadows, etc.) are implemented, but at the expense of core user interface progression and advancement. Specifically, map Hotkeys in Driver and their mini-map analog (and hotkeys) in Surveyor aren't implemented. The Surveyor Minimap is static, and fails to follow the viewpoint camera, drastically crippling the writing of Sessions. Content Manager and various terms and modes are very UnWindows Trainz, from Hotkeys doing nothing to very different terminology for historic Trainz terminology. (e.g. One needs to Submit an asset now, not Commit the asset to the data base.

TANE - Community Edition

Main article: Trainz A New Era: Community Edition

In keeping with Auran tradition, new products primarily made available by software download that may not yet be fully stable and tested are given the Community Edition moniker. This tradition began with the original release of Trainz. To comply with Kick Starter contractual requirements, N3V Games just barely released a software download version in December 2014 with partial functionality. This sort of version should be considered a wide scale Beta Test version and avoided until at least six months after the first service pack is released.

Tip: (Buy TS10–TS12 or a TS-Mac2 instead while the experienced Trainz community helps iron out the more serious software bugs in this new release as we always do!) New or wanna-be Trainzers are well advised to avoid this product group until December of 2015, when hopefully, several service packs and bug fix software upgrades will make the TANE product something like what was promised so optimistically. It should be understood, as this book has emphasized from the outset, that the most beautiful part of Trainz is it's operational stability and Backwards compatibility. For those not experienced with Trainz, this means you only can gain from starting Trainzing with an older established, bug free product, for there are so many learning curves you don't want to be slowed down by an idiosyncrasy of a bug.

 

T:ANE-Release Edition

i.e. Real General Release 

'The Name' "Release Version" by TANE update's list page creation by chief programmer Chris Bergmann (Windwalkr).

• The TANE Release Edition was available by download on May 15, 2015.

 

Editor's note: Trainz software engineering being reliant on a small staff with little experience in co-coordinating and managing the gaggle of out-sourced software engineers hired for the project, the late spring release of TANE (announced and promised in December by N3V CEO Tony Hilliam) seemed very likely to slip again when this page was begun in late February 2014. When revised in mid-March, it seemed even more likely. Glad we were to hear the download version was released on May 15th 2015, with the Developers user groups and the programmers working hard to stamp out the list of bugs in short order, though at the time they were being reported and recorded at a pace of as many as a dozen a day. For that reason alone, this editor has always considered N3V Games initial releases 'Beta Test Versions', no matter what they called the software they released regularly to the user groups willing to take the risk of running such unstable code. Now, here on 20 August, we find none other than CEO Tony Hilliam announcing the 1st Service Pack for the TANE general release (without a release date!); so the release is finally becoming stable. We take this as both good news and proof that it was a Beta Test gamble to switch over early to this new Game Engine. FrankB 01:21, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

TANE - Mac Edition

  With the ambition to create a common MAC/Microsoft OpSys source code as part of TANE, Trainz Mac-2 is reported to be a model for certain evolutionary changes in Trainz screen appearance, functions and possibly even the source of some untraditional names.

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3.9

Trainz/Trainz A New Era: Community Edition

Notes and footnotes

References