roeter, on 06 February 2013 - 02:09 PM, said:
Rob Roeterdink
Rob,
IMO explore mode is not a defined activity but instead is the antithesis of any formal definition. There is no need whatsoever for any kind of train control and any CPU cycles spent on train control are CPU cycles that are wasted. The only necessary use of a defined path in explore mode is to locate the starting position of the train. Beyond that purpose, everything else about it should be a don't care.
As far as prioritizing work goes, I am sure that you are doing the right thing with your focus on getting the new code to work properly for all activities. But a lot of people don't use activities, they simply explore, and eventually things need to work properly for them too.
One more thought... it is quite possible that the varying opinions on what is needed is due too many meanings wrapped up in Kuju's labels of Activity and Explore Mode. I'm not saying that for a fact, just observing that many times heated debates over what feature xyz should do are happily resolved with the discovery that people are arguing over two different concepts that are called by the same name. Meaning what to do might become much more clear if the phrases "Activity" and "Explore Mode" were dropped -- at least for discussion purposes -- and we tried something else... for example, perhaps Strict Train Control, Flexible Train Control, Lax Train Control, and No Train Control might serve, where the first two are the Auto and Manual modes being implemented now, Lax meaning there is a defined path to guide you for a while but it can be abandoned at any time with no effort... possibly has AI trains... but essentially other than the initial path no other controls, and the last is you get a place to start and everything after that is on the players shoulders. Just food for thought.