Traumflug on the initial installation experience

Traumflug wrote:All advertising is moot if installation and startup is a chore. That's what I just tried to do. Installed the Debian package on my shiny Ubuntu, lauchned the application and ... just some cryptic preferences dialog. No train, no track, no landscape, no engine dashboard, no hint to a need for such things, much less a link to a location on where to find these. A modern application should have a few simple tracks and trains built in to get newbies basically started within, say, 3 minutes. Some graphics, something moving, that's the fun of all of this, isn't it? Once caught, people happily invest more time into searching and learning additional stuff.

Admin's note - moved this here because it was off topic in the original thread. Original post by Ben follows:


I think what he is saying does make sense for someone who is new to the game, but also is aware of other simulator games of the same category. 

You very rarely download a game with nothing to run, if you download a game you would expect a “test route / train” to be there from the start so it’s a download and go type of thing. 


Would be good to get developers on board to accept one of their trains (or route) to be hosted by the developer in a package with OpenBVE. 

That way someone new comes along and from clicking download and opening the game itselfC there is a route and a train to familiarise themselves with from the go

Could there be way on the main menu, having a separate menu page  for downloads? So that the user can see what is available at the time? Very much like the forum here has a links page?

The difficulty of installing the program and the add-ons was always a problem historically. Particularly the add-ons, as they came in all manners of  presentation and had to be manually placed in the correct place, something which new users could hardly be expected to do without mistakes.
The "Package Management! feature which Chris introduced a couple of years ago has made it easier to install the content, and there's no need to muck about with having to find and install "dependencies" like we used to have to do.
Trouble is, how many devs are providing the material in the "package" that the program asks for? It's very poor when they can't be arsed to co-operate with a feature that helps users (and potentially enhances their product ratings).  I could see the potential in the "Package Management" feature and provided ALL the celtictrainsim routes and rolling stock in that format from the time it came out. OK, it may not be perfect, but it's the best we've ever had and I know of people who previously had totally failed to install OpenBVE or the routes/trains who now can get it to work without filling the swear box. Several times.

Yes, this package manager is a great feature. Easy to understand and actually working (as far as I can tell).

Also, on current Debian/Ubuntu/Mint there are two packages bve-train-br-class-323 and bve-train-br-class-323-3dcab, which work fine as well. Package openbve recommends packages bve-route and bve-train, but I can't find them.

Looks much like there are a number of loose ends, just waiting to get connected.

The route in the Ubuntu repos was Anthony's Birmingham Cross City South. That was so from day one OpenBVE became available in the repos. So there was content to play when a user first ran the sim.