Irritation.

June 15th, 2005

senji	2005/06/15 11:44:00 - Irritation.
	Today I'm irritated at TfL. Now, you see, if I'm interested in traveling on the Docklands Light Railway then the nice DLR people will let me download a nice timetable like this. On the Tube and the other hand you can't download such things, even though they exist for at least some (possibly all?) stations. Current Mood: ranty Entry Tags: rant, tube ( < \| 8 glosses \| comment \| > )

requiem_17_23	2005/06/15 11:19:44
	Is it bad that I read DLR as DDR, then thought "no, not the memory, the arcade game", then thought "Philistines!" ? ( reply \| thread )

bellinghman	2005/06/15 12:13:43 - Wandering off on a World of Warcraft theme
	Hmm, timetables for arcade games. Or even just timetables for games. OK. I want the timetables for the ships departing Menethil Harbour to Auberdine and Theramore Isle. Or, if that's too much, I want bus-stop-style expected waiting time indicators. (If you don't know WoW, this will pass right over your head.) ( reply \| parent \| thread )

fluffymormegil	2005/06/15 12:35:21 - Re: Wandering off on a World of Warcraft theme
	I love CoH. Travel between zones is easy; I just walk through the inter-zone gates, get on a boat, or get on a train, as appropriate. I then wait for a bit while the game loads the map data for the destination zone, and voila! I am there. ( reply \| parent \| thread )

bellinghman

2005/06/15 12:49:32 - Re: Wandering off on a World of Warcraft theme

City of Heroes?

Do you have to wait for a train or a ship, though? In Wow, the ships, trams or Zeppelins can be a few minutes wait if you just miss one.

Wow has the interesting feature that you can actually get from one end of a 'continent' to the other without ever having to load data. It _will_ require data loading for ship trips between the two continents, but you can theoretically run at full speed for ... half an hour, I'd think ... without ever having to pause.

(In actuality, you'd have to be very high level to be able to do that. Oh, and pretty bored. It's quicker to fly, or even ride.)

( reply | parent | thread )

fluffymormegil

2005/06/15 13:09:19 - Re: Wandering off on a World of Warcraft theme

The ferry from Talos Island (which sits in the mouth of the bay, and has rail links to three zones of Paragon City and gates to three others) to Peregrine Island is a piece of static terrain (a RoRo ferry); you just walk into the car bay.
The smuggler freighters (again, static terrain pieces) connecting Independence Port and Talos Island to Striga Isle, you click on the door into the freighter's cabin area, and if returning to Paragon City from Striga, select your destination.
The wait for a train is less than a minute. You click on the train access gate, then select your destination from the areas served by that line; next time a train leaves, you will zone. There are two train lines; the Green Line connects the two level 20-29 city zones and one of the two level 30-39 city zones to one of the level 10-19 city zones (Steel Canyon), while the Yellow Line links the level 1-5, 5-9, and 10-19 city zones. Annoyingly, the Yellow Line and Green Line stations in Steel Canyon are at opposite ends of the zone.
The trains are also used as the access mechanism for "instanced outdoor missions"; in this case, when you click on the train, you get an additional destination option that will take you to your mission. When you exit the mission, you will reappear at the station from which you departed.

( reply | parent | thread )

slakko

2005/06/15 16:37:12

Similar boards exist for all stations, but they are far less informative than the DLRs versions. Further, recently the format of these has changed, to remove the useful 'here are all the times for the first 2 and last 2 hours of operation' information and replace it with first train, last train and typical frequency information in a simpler format and larger font. Let me be the first to accuse TfL of 'dumbing down' in this instance.

I suspect that a board which has as much information as the DLR version for most tube lines would not be particularly helpful. During morning peak a large number of lines claim to be operating 30+ trains per hour - so having a board which says "and at these minutes past each hour:
00 02 04 06 08 10 11 13 15 17 19 21 22 24 26 28 30..."
might not be particularly useful. The DLR can give so much more detail precisely *because* it is a less frequent service.

( reply | thread )

senji	2005/06/15 18:41:02
	I'd settle for less detail, so long as I could download it from the safety of my desk :). The bit that really impresses me about the DLR is that they're organised enough to have this information on the web at all. ( reply \| parent \| thread )

mooism	2005/06/15 21:32:49
	This sort of information used to be available on their website for London buses, but they took it down about a year ago sigh ( reply \| thread )

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Irritation. - Squaring the circle...

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