Putting It To Rest

Somehow, six years have gone by since I started this site. I think we can easily pull another six, and more... but the original reason SMWorks was made is no longer the focus of the site. At one time, I fancied myself a content creator for the train simulator Trainz. Quite fancy indeed, isn't it?

SMWorks was made to host my Trainz creations to allow for others to download them. Most of that content has continued to be up for download, and in fact I retained most of the sites old pages that linked to that and kept them exactly as they were when I decided to convert the site over to be what it is now.

However, the time has come, and it's time to remove the last of the Trainz content from the site.

If you're familiar with Trainz and that sort of thing, this section won't be of much interest. For those that don't know, Trainz is a sandbox game that lets you build your own routes that you can drive trains on - all on your computer. In many ways, it is essentially a virtual model railroad. It's branded as a train simulator, but, frankly, calling it a simulator is... too kind. It's not simulating anything realistic at all, the game is lackluster at best and infuriating on an average day, packed with ridiculous bugs and errors that any modern game should not be dealing with. If I'm honest, this game kinda sucks!

Yet, here I am still messing with it. I cut it out of my life - and hard drive - for a year and a half, two years, something like that, and jumped ship from its toxic and irritating community at the same time. After some time, some old friends from the game got back in contact with me and invited me onto their discord server. A while later and I finally reinstalled the game, a new version on a new computer, and began fiddling with it again. Almost scary how quickly muscle memory returned me everything I knew about it. Late last year, I started playing it again and keeping a single light foot in the community.

Since then, it's been a background thing. I've made some new friends since jumping back into the Trainz mess and learned some new tricks and techniques on content creation and route building, but that leads me to the point of this post.

The Silver Lines electric project returned in a new form, with a real route this time around.

I've long since given up content creation. I don't have the time, energy, or drive to make stuff to release, and especially not for this game. It just isn't worth it for me. I also don't have a reason to keep hosting Trainz content on this site. Let's be real here, it's hard to take a site seriously if they're hosting stuff like that on it. There's no reason for me to keep it up anymore, and it isn't up to my quality standards anyways.

So, I'm pulling the entire Legacy tab out. Nothing there needs to stay - it's all Trainz related, so it's time for it to go. The content on it will be rehosted on The Erecting Hall instead, a site owned by some good friends of mine who regularly host others content for them. It's a good home for it, and at some point in the next few weeks, it'll show up on there when time allows for it.

In saying that though, some of it will not be going to TEH, but instead will be killed off. Particularly, most all of the Silver Lines content. While I still regularly work on the Silver Lines project and have in fact revitalized it, bringing it to a whole new standard, all but one piece of it on this site is no longer 'canon' or up to any measure of my quality standards. Additionally, none of the routes/modules will be rehosted.

I will say that if you have any of the content not being rehosted and for some ungodly reason somebody wants it, I don't care if it's shared around. It literally could not matter to me any less than it currently does.

New motors, new signals, new... everything, really.

So, that's it. Trainz is gone from SMWorks at long last, save for these blog posts. If I do ever make something again worth uploading somewhere, it'll go to another site. SMWorks is completely dedicated to my photography and music projects, not a dying game. Perhaps there's still stuff to come out, but who knows.

At any rate, it's time to finally say goodbye to Trainz on SMWorks. It's been such a long time coming, and we are much better off for it.

Anyway, back to your regularly scheduled infrequent blog posts.

Cheers,
​SM