[railguy]

First of all, we all owe a huge debt of gratitude to the OR Team and to Goku for the continuing development of OpenRails and for developing of a stand-alone Route Editor and Consist Editor for the OpenRails platform. That said, if OpenRails is going to continue to develop as the replacement for MSTS, it MUST have a workable Activity Editor, and soon.

I use myself as an example of why. Other than for storage of files, I have essentially abandoned MSTS. More and more of my rolling stock is "OpenRails only" stock. I have made a few activities that utilize OR-only features--changing weather, extended AI shunting, etc. I have enough of both of these that a ) my MSTS Activity Editor doesn't even want to open without showing a bunch of "errors" and b ) every time I modify an activity in MSTS and save it, MSTS wipes out all of the OR enhanced activity features in the activity file. Maybe unlike some, I have very limited time for simming, so I don't have time to "re-invent the wheel" every time that I want to create or modify an activity. As I result, I've built less than a half-dozen activities in the last year. Were I to have a workable OR Activty Editor, I could create more activities on one day off than I have in the last year.

I have a bunch of fine routes loaded in my computer--with a new one showing up every so often. BUT, they are of little fun to run without activities. This is where I think the cart got put before the horse. The simming community needs an OR activity editor, or even a deluge of new OR-created routes are not going to generate enough interest in the simming community to keep OR going. It's also time for the simming community to recognize what numerous payware and freeware content creators already have figured out: MSTS is on its death bed and has no long term future.

So, I respectfully suggest that the OR Team, Goku, or other interested developers make the building of an OR Activity Editor the highest priority. I would gladly pay for a fully working OR Activity Editor developed by a third-party developer if one was available. Candidly, the payware rolling stock developers should have a big interest in getting this done--the lack of an OR Activity Editor is likely really hurting their sales of new content. Of course, the refining of the OR Route Editor and the development of an OR Activity Editor would likely be the death knell of MSTS, but that is pretty much inevitable, anyway. It's time to move on.

[Goku]

I wanted to make AE first, but when I saw it's not one week job, I prefer to work on RE.
But if someone really wants AE, he can pay me for it. But new features in RE will be delayed.

[Genma Saotome]

Some years ago one of the OR developers collected a whole bunch of ideas on how to extend the capabilities of activity editing. He's still w/ the team and so perhaps those ideas will eventually see the light of day.

The problem here is there are simply not enough developers to address all of the many good suggestions (and required changes). Seems that most everyone who could code AND has the interest has already come... and gone.

[railguy]

It would seem to me that a fair amount of the pieces to form an OpenRails AE are already there. Between Goku's RE (with its consist editor) and the OR-add-on path editor (both of which I use), what remains is being able to construct the actual Activity file--services, traffic, weather, times, etc. With OR's Dispatch window, time acceleration, and activity replay features, the "VCR" checking of an activity as is done in the MSTS AE can also essentially be done already in OR. So, a lot of the pieces are there.

Now, to the ridiculously cumbersome process that an OR user has to endure now to create an activity:

• Create consists (loose, player, and AI) that will be used in the activity.
  
• Use Train Store to store everything that won't be used in the activity AND anything will cause an error in MSTS.
  
• Now unstore the consists, etc. that will be used in the activity.
  
• Open the MSTS AE and hope that you stored everything that could cause MSTS to hiccup, hope you don't get an error and that you have all the stock that you need to create the activity.
  
• Create the paths that you need (if you haven't created them in OR or MSTS already). Place the loose consists, start times, weather, etc. for the activity. Save all that, then exit MSTS.
  
• OK, now open the .act file in WordPad or Context and put in all the OR-specific features that you can't enter in the MSTS AE. Save the .act file.
  
• Try to run the activity and hope that you don't have to edit anything again in the MSTS AE--you will lose all the OR-specific stuff in the .act file and have to do all that entry again.
  
• Oh, yeah--make sure that you make multiple backup copies of the .act file at various points along the way, so you don't have to start all over if something gets corrupted or erased in all the editing and going back and forth.
  
• Be preparded to spend hours on a relatively simple activity--or days for a complex one . . . most of the time spent dealing with the temperamental, buggy, and inadequate MSTS AE.

It's no big surprise why hardly anyone is creating OR activities and that most of the wonderful OR features that the OR team has created for activities lie largely unused.

As for an OR AE as payware, if I'm willing to pay $30 for Conbuilder (which I did), I'd gladly pay that and maybe a little more for an OR activity editor that would allow me to break free of MSTS for good. I'd bet a fair number of other OR simmers would, too.

[Genma Saotome]

If you are able to code I'm fairly sure the OR team would like to hear from you.

[railguy]

Sorry to say, I'm not a programmer. In my past career, I was one who was a liaison between software users and programmers, guiding programmers to write software that would actually do the jobs that the users wanted it to do. That wasn't an easy job, either.

I remember a great saying from those days: Software will eventually work and hardware will eventually fail . . .

[conductorchris]

As for paying, there are two ways to go . . . payware or patronage. I mean donations (probably larger ones), maybe a "go fund me" or something. I'd probably chip in.

I don't really know what kind of funds are required, though. Is this within our capabilities? One person's capabilities?

I also wonder if there is money if there would be the chance to outsource some of the work. The civiCRM project (open source) which I have used, has programmers in the west and in India working in collaboration. I have the idea it is more affordable that way.

Christopher

[Goku]

 railguy, on 03 September 2017 - 11:41 AM, said:

As for an OR AE as payware, if I'm willing to pay $30 for Conbuilder (which I did), I'd gladly pay that and maybe a little more for an OR activity editor that would allow me to break free of MSTS for good. I'd bet a fair number of other OR simmers would, too.

I don't like payware software, but solutions like kickstarter may be acceptable for me. If people really want to pay for an AE.

Quote

I also wonder if there is money if there would be the chance to outsource some of the work. The civiCRM project (open source) which I have used, has programmers in the west and in India working in collaboration. I have the idea it is more affordable that way.

It would be expensive, because any new programmer needs to learn how msts works first.

[James Ross]

 railguy, on 03 September 2017 - 08:32 AM, said:

So, I respectfully suggest that the OR Team, Goku, or other interested developers make the building of an OR Activity Editor the highest priority. I would gladly pay for a fully working OR Activity Editor developed by a third-party developer if one was available. Candidly, the payware rolling stock developers should have a big interest in getting this done--the lack of an OR Activity Editor is likely really hurting their sales of new content. Of course, the refining of the OR Route Editor and the development of an OR Activity Editor would likely be the death knell of MSTS, but that is pretty much inevitable, anyway. It's time to move on.

We have had a proposed direction in this area for a while now, which per the roadmap is:

• 1.3
  
  • Consist editor
  
  
• 1.x
  
  • Content directory editor (content manager)
    
  • Wagon editor
    
  • Locomotive editor
    
  • Timetable editor
  
  
• 2.x
  
  • Route metadata editor
    
  • Terrain generator
    
  • 2D terrain editor
    
  • 2D track/road editor
    
  • 2D scenery placement editor
    
  • Activity editor
  
  
• Future
  
  • 3D world editor

However, please note that:

• We do not plan to edit MSTS formats, so all new editors must be accompanied by new file formats and in-game support
  
• Very little has been done on any editors despite the demand for them for years

My plan for the Christmas/New Year holidays is to just go ahead and write the consist editor, if still nobody's interested by then, but there is only so much I can do without other developers on board.

[Metro4001]

The unfortunate truth is that without an ORAE, many people will be turned off from OR. There are a number of great features that have been added but that cannot be used by many because of the buggy and hideously outdated MSTS AE. Maybe if someone who has a stable version of the MSTS AE working and is currently creating OR activities would like to share them maybe that would be a stop gap measure until we got the proper tools needed to create our own. Unfortunately, the whole community has gone into a private use/me and my friends only/only to showoff in screenshots mentality so anything that is created ultimately isn't shared. And I have offered compensation. Train Simulations is strictly OR now. Are they making activities with the more robust OR specific features? That right there could potentially draw in holdouts from MSTS that can now see these much more advanced features in action and realize they no longer have to play pretend with outdated software. They can actually play MSTS as it was intended (or should have been). To be perfectly honest I think an AE should have been top priority, even over the RE. The current editor is buggy as heck but people are still building and sharing enough routes that of course will work (and often times BETTER ) in OR. People aren't creating OR specific activities so that leaves us to do it ourselves with the proper tools and if they aren't available sit OR to the side until they become available.

This isn't to slag on the team. You all do A LOT with so little and for free. I'm just pointing out a sad reality. The MSTS AE was always the least stable aspect of an unstable and poorly optimized product. It's holding on for dear life at this point. OR has to move beyond it.