SimSig Life

(The following is entirely my opinion and nobody else's. I'm working through the entire thread and just writing stuff that comes to mind as I read it, rather than anything organized. I'm also not going to say who I'm referring to when commenting.)

Something that I seem to be picking up from this is that people see SimSig like a company, with a boss and staff that can be told what to do. Not in the sense of employees, but some people here seem to think that Geoff assigns people to sims and can move a sim between people and people between sims. In fact, it's more like a franchise: devs in effect own individual sims and nobody else can take them over without permission. Geoff ensures things are done right and maintain quality, but even he doesn't grab sims off others. (There can be special situations, but that's the basic rule.)

When I first got involved with SimSig there was only freeware. I got involved because I loved the idea of SimSig and wanted to do stuff for it. Because it was all freeware, I got into the mindset that things should be free. People might not remember, but the idea of charging was very contentious when it was first announced. Now everybody's used to it and I'm amazed to see people saying that there shouldn't be freeware!

My last new sim was HongKongEast. I could have made it payware, but during the discussions about paying I promised (the late) Maxand that the sim I was working on would be free. What I've got planned as my next sim will also be free, but for very different reasons that I can't reveal until (if it ever) gets released.

In the meantime, I'm in the process of converting Cambridge to Loader (more about that later) and updating it. Right now I have a loader sim that works, it offers both the original layout and the current one at Cambridge station and both before and after Cambridge North station. But I have a long list of fixes and adjustments to make; every time I think the end is in sight, I come across more information that needs to be applied. Any my personal life is complicated enough that I only have odd hours or half hours here or there to work on it. I hope to have it finished this year, but I have no idea whether I will or won't. (If anyone has access to information that I might not have, please drop me a note.)

I don't recall why Geoff withdrew access to the exe sims. What I can say, though, is that there's no way we can update them without converting them to Loader and doing a lot of other work. It's not as hard as writing a sim from scratch, but it's still a lot of work. Even Royston wasn't trivial to convert and Cambridge has "interesting" problems, some of which are unsolved.

Someone mentioned Peterborough. Changing it to include the current layout in the station area is on my list, but behind Cambridge and the next (unnamed) project.

And that's all I have to say for now, though I'll keep an eye on the thread and might be able to answer some questions (not policy ones, though).

clive in post 155370 said:

(The following is entirely my opinion and nobody else's. I'm working through the entire thread and just writing stuff that comes to mind as I read it, rather than anything organized. I'm also not going to say who I'm referring to when commenting.)

Something that I seem to be picking up from this is that people see SimSig like a company, with a boss and staff that can be told what to do. Not in the sense of employees, but some people here seem to think that Geoff assigns people to sims and can move a sim between people and people between sims. In fact, it's more like a franchise: devs in effect own individual sims and nobody else can take them over without permission. Geoff ensures things are done right and maintain quality, but even he doesn't grab sims off others. (There can be special situations, but that's the basic rule.)

When I first got involved with SimSig there was only freeware. I got involved because I loved the idea of SimSig and wanted to do stuff for it. Because it was all freeware, I got into the mindset that things should be free. People might not remember, but the idea of charging was very contentious when it was first announced. Now everybody's used to it and I'm amazed to see people saying that there shouldn't be freeware!

My last new sim was HongKongEast. I could have made it payware, but during the discussions about paying I promised (the late) Maxand that the sim I was working on would be free. What I've got planned as my next sim will also be free, but for very different reasons that I can't reveal until (if it ever) gets released.

In the meantime, I'm in the process of converting Cambridge to Loader (more about that later) and updating it. Right now I have a loader sim that works, it offers both the original layout and the current one at Cambridge station and both before and after Cambridge North station. But I have a long list of fixes and adjustments to make; every time I think the end is in sight, I come across more information that needs to be applied. Any my personal life is complicated enough that I only have odd hours or half hours here or there to work on it. I hope to have it finished this year, but I have no idea whether I will or won't. (If anyone has access to information that I might not have, please drop me a note.)

I don't recall why Geoff withdrew access to the exe sims. What I can say, though, is that there's no way we can update them without converting them to Loader and doing a lot of other work. It's not as hard as writing a sim from scratch, but it's still a lot of work. Even Royston wasn't trivial to convert and Cambridge has "interesting" problems, some of which are unsolved.

Someone mentioned Peterborough. Changing it to include the current layout in the station area is on my list, but behind Cambridge and the next (unnamed) project.

And that's all I have to say for now, though I'll keep an eye on the thread and might be able to answer some questions (not policy ones, though).

Really appreciate the decision to make HKE a free sim---I will personally pay it if it wasnt, but I know many(by many, I mean around a dozen) Chinese Railfan wont/unwilling to spent 30 pounds for a game they never heard off. With it being free I can bait/attract/invite them to give a go to SimSig for free with something they actually familiar and associated with.