Closure of openBVE "Discussion" Board

[guillyman]

No, I can't shed any light as to the reasons for this. And no, there is no truth in the rumours that either I or Ben has hacked it either!

Openbve discussion board appears to have been withdrawn by its owner, since if you look at her main site the link to it has been removed too. We presently have no further information as to why, nor whether it is going to be moved elsewhere.

It is left for you to speculate whether this means the end of openBVE itself, also as to the thought whether the author of openBVE has indeed accepted that her capacity to deal with human matters lies diametrically opposite to her undoubted programming skills, an opinion shared by much of the openBVE community.

What we do know is that here at BVE5 Support Pages we will continue to promote what we feel is the true future of railway simulators, in a way which will create respect and harmony right across the board. BVE5 lives!

[pedned]

Just spotted this with regards, on BVE World Wide...
Hopefully Quork doesn't mind me re-posting it... although if he does tough I guess!

Michelle very thoroughly purged the site of any notice there'd be or even there'd ever have been a forum. However, on the other hand, it might also be it wasn't her "fault" or not planned, as as late as last evening (speaking in middle european time) she wrote a post of a, for her terms, uncommon length, explaining on several examples, how a cab is not placed correctly in a model, so it seems she is or was interested in investing time and energy in board and community. Well, let's wait and see if there will be some information...

Well we all know that's never going to happen, she probably thought about it for 2 seconds, then realised "Im going soft in my old age, i best close the forum before I actually help anyone."

[pedned]

A few quotes form BVE World Wide which may be of interest:

Hiya,

I'm just letting you all know that with michelle's agreement, I'm letting the trainsimframework.org domain name and hosting package expire tomorrow. This is not because openBVE has been discontinued, and openBVE is not being discontinued because the hosting isn't being renewed, but rather it's because the invoice is a bit expensive and unfortunately the timing of the renewal is really bad, and I need to save every penny this month in particular. I'd renew it otherwise, regardless of whether development continued or not.

I've not really been involved in the community for a long time, so I don't know the full reasons behind the discontinuation of openBVE...

A small team at BVEStation will be taking over development of OpenBVE as a fork.

More information is avaliable here: http://forums.bvestation.com/index.php?topic=1642.0

Adding on to the previous post, the developers at BVEStation are very willing to collaborate with bveworldwide on creating a single fork.

We have already modified OpenBVE to redirect to a BVEStation as a provision for a temporary download page until a permanent solution can be set up (optimally a similar to exact copy of the original OpenBVE website).

This modified version of OpenBVE should be online as soon as possible, once our admin uploads it to the site.

[eezypeazy]

There seems to be a rush of people to take over the mantle. Still no word as to what pushed Michelle 'over the edge'.

It's interesting that Anthony B said: 'I've not really been involved in the community for a long time.' I thought he was Michelle's main collaborator in driving openBVE forward.

So how much UK openBVE-specific content was completed? By my reckoning, only NWM, Birmingham Cross City South and East Lincolnshire Railway. I wonder if it was lack of content development that finally convinced Michelle to give it up? (Not surprising that few content developers came forward, as the demands of 'she who must be obeyed' were rather exacting! Alan W knows exactly how I pictured her in my mind!).

So, in summary: Michelle's gone, Anthony B is a spent force. That leaves BVE 5 in development.

It may be worth asking ourselves the question: what went wrong?

And the short answer seems to me to be that the programming demands of a 360 degree view train simulator - bridging the gulf between 'professional' driving simulator packages and the exterior views of the 'electronic train set' type of simulators - was simply too much for the 'amateur' (in the sense of 'unpaid part-time volunteer') developer to be able to get to grips with in order to produce acceptable output in a reasonably satisfying timescale. For goodness sake - building a 'cab view only' route takes too much time, let alone one you can view from every viewpoint in every direction!

[pedned]

So how much UK openBVE-specific content was completed?

There were quite a few trains unfortunatly.
Although I have had the go-ahead from Martin to convert BVE TMD trains, including the new class 31...
I don;t have a clue how to go about this though. Anyone want to come to the rescue?

[guillyman]

Alan W knows exactly how I pictured her in my mind!).

Sorry! Couldn't resist...

Seriously, I have my views as to which straw was actually the deciding one for Michelle. I'm attempting to add just a little more to this complex character profile of hers. Despite her undoubted programming skills, I was wondering if she actually derived some of her kicks from having her ego massaged. When less and less people were doing so, mainly because she'd scared most of them away, could it possibly be that she became depressed that nobody was lapping up to her any more?

And as far as Anthony is concerned, we all know he is a genius, but one who had had his mind distracted to other things, including changing address. It was at about this time that Michelle posted a very public insult on her "discussion board," calling Anthony a "fictitious person" alongside the same insult directed towards me. The insults were actually reported to her hosts. Now I wouldn't blame Anthony for withdrawing his support after this, especially in view of all the sterling work he has carried out in support of this sim. (I humbly feel that I too was treated shoddily after my own contributions.)

What went wrong? Well frankly I blame the openbve community as a whole. Instead of recognising the true problems and addressing them, they chose to jump on the collective lick-Michelle's-arse bandwagon, making villains out of the wrong people. I advised Michelle on her forums when she asked about the state of openbve that she would do well to utilise a strong moderating team in order firstly to free herself for programmingf, secondly to present a "moderate" view across the board. I also indicated to her that her own attitude could be what was driving people away. Many people indicated their agreement with me. Did they act upon it? No. Did Michelle act upon it? Yes, she banned me! As I said, her puppets have only themselves to blame.

And Jamie - Mackoy's site does have a convertor for the drivable trains. I've never converted one myself, but I think you have to beware of the image sizes. Ben is the one to ask here.

[Taffy Cross]

Hi all,

As usual work has kept me rather busy of late, long hours and no time to much when I get home than to get ready for work the next day and straight to bed.

On converting trains, it works and you do not have to change the .bmps to .pngs either. Like always the need to change your transparencies from 0,0,255 (blue) to 255,255,255 (black) is a wise one.

I have driven Alan's Twickenham route in a converted Cl. 455. The need to have a full 360* view is only really practical for those lovely (and tempting) screenshots. In real life and that is what a simulation is all about, a drivers view is quite restricted and hey all they need to worry about is the track ahead and the aspect of the next signal. I do not see a need for a cab based simulator to need external views. Putting the internals in a train is also very nice but only now because we have the opportunity to have passing trains on route (both directions). I do like 3D cabs and I do not see why we cannot continue with this.

The conversion process from OpenBVE to BVE5 does leave the route builder a fair bit of work still to do. Signals just don't come across and from the screenies out there you can see that they're missing their top bits. I hope to take Alan's route this weekend and grind my way through the transparencies, it will take a while but from now on if you're making new content then use black.

As to OpenBVE's demise, I am saddened but it was only a matter of time before the development stopped. The fact that it got this far is amazing. As for the person behind it, well I cannot comment as she never even took the time to answer my correspondence (nuff said there). Also all those that have been part of the wider BVE community for many, many years must have know something but Michelle thought otherwise. It is not a perfect world but we are only here for a short time and I for one want to enjoy that time not get into endless arguments.

So we now have a wonderful if unsupported development tool for our BVE5 routes, OpenBVE but we should really take the time to learn more about BVE5. I also think it would be a great boon for BVE5 if we got a fully working route there ASAP. I will do what I can with Alan's Twickenham route and will also assist Aaron with his CityRail Norhern Line project.

Bye for now,

Stephen.

[eezypeazy]

I also think it would be a great boon for BVE5 if we got a fully working route there ASAP.

... which is why I'm working on my Aln Valley route. With a bit of luck, it will be BVE 5 ready in a couple of weeks; the 'conversion' process will also be a 'learning' process, so, again, with a bit of luck, I hope to have something completely new and not previously published to release a little while later (I'm talking weeks, not months).

Wish me luck!

[Sponsored content]