KRS a flop....

Spirit of Progress · Posted: Sun Oct 21, 2007 9:04 am

Thought I'd post my views after trying out KRS.

I seriously cannot believe they have gone ahead and released this product in its current state. There are so many bugs that need to be addressed. For example....my trains have no brakes because I don't have a uk keyboard lol.

-passengers morph into carriages and just disappear.
-trains derail frequently because a junction is switched the wrong way ahead (where the hell does it tell me this!)
-no way of re-assigning keys
-long wait for developers tools
-activities are crap
-refuelling steam has a constant stream of spewing coal out (though the tender fills up....kinda cool)
-hard to navigate

ok maybe i've been a bit harsh...some good features are
-amazing graphics
-full 3D cab
-great route detail

All in all it has potential to be a good product. There are many glitches that need to be ironed out in order to achieve this.

I would rate it a 5/10. This is mainly because of the brilliant graphics. I would love to hear other opinions.

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Kind Regards
Ben Shields
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flathog · Posted: Sun Oct 21, 2007 9:17 am

574M · Posted: Sun Oct 21, 2007 9:27 am

Spirit of Progress · Posted: Sun Oct 21, 2007 12:29 pm

To answer your questions - Bought in the UK by family over there and airmailed. Was about 30 pound or something....$70(?). I've been playing it since friday.

Its good, but it could be much better.

The HUD display is F3 and it does not indicate the points are switched the wrong way. I just tested it again.

I can agree that there isn't a better simulator graphically, but until you try it for yourself you probably won't understand how annoying some of these things become. As for the tools, I'm patient...but it would be smart for the product to come complete never the less.

In terms of being hard to navigate I meant in particular making consists. I find it quite challenging. I also can't work out for the life of me how to change the weather or the time of day. Again....just annoying. The information provided with the sim is no better than useless to be blunt.

I will be interested to see what the community can bring to this product. Especially with Kujus restraints on 3rd party licenses etc.

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Kind Regards
Ben Shields
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Spirit of Progress · Posted: Sun Oct 21, 2007 12:32 pm

Another thing that annoys me while I think of it....No visual wheelslip. Especially irritating to us steam enthusiasts.

To those wanting this product I do recommend it....but just wait for the patches to come out.

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Kind Regards
Ben Shields
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574M · Posted: Sun Oct 21, 2007 10:15 pm

superheatedsteam · Posted: Mon Oct 22, 2007 1:34 am

Spirit of Progress · Posted: Mon Oct 22, 2007 9:23 am

Has anyone else had the opportunity to try KRS out yet? I'd be interested to hear your p.o.v.

superheatedsteam is right about the developers tools. I don't understand why they didn't wait an extra month or so and fix the bugs and release the dev. tools with it. Maybe money is more important than logic.

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Kind Regards
Ben Shields
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GeoffreyHansen · Posted: Mon Oct 22, 2007 11:19 am

I'm waiting to find out what the difference will be in the US version. This may encourage more persons to buy.

flathog · Posted: Mon Oct 22, 2007 3:52 pm

The release date is at the will of EA games (the publisher)

If Kuju are told that the product has to be finished by a certain date it HAS to be finished by a certain date, especially considering they signed their lives away to EA games.

I have tried the game and am happy with it, yes there are some bugs but they CAN be ignored and so far I have not let them take away from my experience.

I have found the HUD DOES show when the points are against you but it is not very obvious.

Tom

Spirit of Progress · Posted: Mon Oct 22, 2007 8:47 pm

you must be a very tolerant person

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Kind Regards
Ben Shields
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thelastname · Posted: Tue Oct 23, 2007 9:43 am

Yes the game does have some bugs, but it is still playable. Which doesn’t surprise me coming from EA, they haven’t learnt after BF2.

Graphics are excellent, scenarios are very limited. Would have like to have seen at least another 30 scenarios included.

The way I see it the UK release was UK and German trains and routes. So I would say the US will have US content, and the AU will have AU content. I think it should been a global release with all content available to all nations.

One think that has pissed me off is the lack of support for multiple monitors, flight simmer have enjoyed this luxury for years on end.

cjennin · Posted: Tue Oct 23, 2007 3:49 pm

Just putting in my 2cents worth of rant & rave.
I just got the sim a last week from game uk. I was kind of surprised on how quick it took to deliver consider the mail strike that was expected during the official release date.

I’ve tested RS on a few PC’s and found that RS runs pretty smoothish on even the slowest of machines I own (a Dell laptop with a 1.6mhz Pentium M). Of course you have to trim of the settings down but in all, the graphics still look great. On average, the frames rate I’m getting are 15-30 with obvious slowdowns on heavily populated areas & when changing trains. Using the track monitoring panel is a big performance drain on the laptop & a few mid rage PC’s.

Controls are more-of-less identical to MSTS, except for a few changes. I love how you can restart your engine if you hit the emergency brakes or fall asleep on the AWS. What I hate about the controls is that you have to press the ~ key (on top of the tab key) to engage the brake. That because we use the US keyboards down here. Plus there is no way to change the layout within RS. Unless your willing to play around with XML scripting. Mick Simpson has released a tool for decompressing RS scripts. I do think the train physics are pretty much spot on. The cab’s look just as good as their real life counterparts.

Driving on the routes increases the feeling that the sim was rushed out the door. The Oxford to Paddington is missing a few speed limit warning signs (and the track monitor doesn’t help either). This is annoying when playing the “returning ticket” scenario as you get very little warning of sudden speed changes when you get close to your final stop. Signalling also needs some work too. But besides that, I think routes are more livelier then the default MSTS routes.

The editor’s pretty good for making fictional routes at the moment as it’s kind of difficult create a route within Australian boundaries (or any other country outside the UK) or jump to your desired long/lat coordinates without modifying certain files. But I found track laying easier on RS then you would lay track with the other 2 sims. You will have to practice with the cross-over & snap tools if you want to lay points.

What I truly hate about this sim that you have no exporters, tech docs or other tools out of the box except a good route editor that it’s self feels watered down. Alot of people who want to produce their own content will have to wait until the dev kits come out on the 12th of November (free to download). The true survival of this sim relies on 3rd party developers & hobbies developers like myself & the other good people on & off railpage. I do have hopes that the dev kit will fill-in the gaps in the route editor and will make it easy to produce some good content.

All up, I think RS has some potential. Let’s not assume that the developers have written it off like some dissatisfied buyers have. It’s still early days. I reckon Kuju are at work on fixing the biggest of the bugs.

As I said, RS survival relies on 3rd party developers. We should wait until the dev kit comes out. We should see some great content, providing that the docs & tools are in a format that can be easily understandable and usable, even for the most amateur of developers.

>you must be a very tolerant person

Some of us are, unlike a small number of folk at ukrailsim.com. I can understand that a lot of people are upset that Rail Sim didn’t turn out the way they expected, but a few people at that ultrainsim talk like Kuju (or whoever was responsible for releasing RS) released the game in the state that it is, packed their suitcases with the sales money & fled to some Interpol-unfriendly country. Confused

cjennin · Posted: Tue Oct 23, 2007 3:59 pm

GeoffreyHansen · Posted: Tue Oct 23, 2007 5:44 pm

I apologise if this has been asked before but how much is KRS costing in Australian dollars if purchased online?