Replacement Jubilee NLL Line-up

Important Information About Our Jubilee Line and Other Routes

Here is some important information about our Jubilee Line and other routes. We had been intending on publishing an update on the Central and North London Lines, but some recent developments with BVE has meant this needs to be said first. This is very important information so please read this carefully if you wish to continue to enjoy our routes.

Why won't the Jubilee Line work properly anymore?

Recently, OpenBVE has been ported to 64-bit. While this is exciting news it’s thrown up some issues. This change will ultimately result in notable performance improvements in the future. However, it’s still early days for this and some bugs are being ironed out. An unfortunate result of the upgrade is that the Jubilee Line will not necessarily work correctly in the latest version of BVE. The reason for this is because the current plug-in used for the route is written in 32-bit. There are things in place to support legacy content apparently but we are still receiving emails saying these things are not working.

Anyone having problems getting the Jubilee Line, or any other of our routes to load correctly will need to try the following:

That is our short term solution. We are of course looking at fixing our existing content to be fully compatible with the latest version of OpenBVE.

Are you going to convert your existing routes?

Sitting at Stratford

Yes. This is not something that will happen quickly as we have existing projects in the pipeline that we are going to finish first. Before going into further detail, we’d like to be clear that ALL of our existing routes will be converted to 64-bit. We don’t want to spend the next few years telling people they have to stick with an old version – to be completely frank. You will be kept updated with progress and we’d like to think it won’t be too long before it’s all sorted. Besides all that, we’d like to start taking advantage of some of the new features this upgrade offers!

Anyway, about the Jubilee Line...?

Jubilee Line Screen Shot

One of our most popular routes. We wish it wasn’t sometimes as there are days it feels like we created a monster. Before we move onto the good news, we need to talk about the bad news. This is fairly important information as feel we should be open with everyone as to what’s going on.

Certain individuals in the Roblox community have helped themselves to assets from the Jubilee Line, in particular, sounds which they sell in paid content. Not only can we prove this stuff is ours, we even have the original 5 minute sound recording session that features the unedited versions of some of the sounds you recognise from our train. Have we reported it to Roblox? Yes we have, but apparently they don’t take copyright complaints seriously if you live outside of the US. All we get back is a copied and pasted email telling us to supply the information they already have from earlier emails.

As you can imagine, it is extremely frustrating for us to find content we worked so hard on is being sold for profit by individuals who think it’s acceptable to steal. We do what we do for free. All that we ask is that anyone wishing to use assets in their own project ask permission beforehand and respect our reasons for saying no to this.

That's terrible! Is that all?

That’s the first problem. The other is something less specific. Since releasing the Jubilee Line a few years ago, it has gone on to become a very popular London Underground route for OpenBVE and has appeared in countless YouTube videos. This is really good to see. Unfortunately, very few have taken the time to appreciate the route. In fact, all they’ve done is complain that the route isn’t “modern enough” for them. Being set when it is means no ATO because it’s set before the resignalling that began in the late Naughties. Despite this, we see an almost relentless stream of complaints about this subject. Those writing perhaps feel that if they say it enough, it might become true. Well, here it is from the horses mouth: Our Jubilee Line does not and will not feature ATO nor will it ever be set in the present day.

Yes… Here we are saying this again. You are probably as tired of reading it as we are writing it, but people just will not listen. Now, we don’t go into this expecting praise, but to be constantly told we’re wrong for not doing as we’re told is just tedious, unnecessary and rude.

Furthermore, we recently announced that the Jubilee Line is taking a back seat for the time being. This is so the North London Line could be completed and the much anticipated upgrade to the Central Line could receive our full attention. This is being ignored, and people insist on asking us when the Jubilee Line is being extended. If our answer isn’t good enough, fake news is spread or worse, someone from Roblox just helps themselves to our work and sell it…

Considering what we’ve just said, I’m sure you can understand why almost all enthusiasm for this route has been eroded away. We’ve had enough. Which neatly brings us to our announcement – equally important information if you are a fan of the Jubilee Line.

The future of our Jubilee Line

Due to the reasons we have just stated above, any future planned extension of the Jubilee Line is now on hold indefinitely. We are currently making plans to fix any existing bugs with the route, including the much needed port to 64-bit. The opportunity will also be taken to give the line a tidy up, which will a small graphics upgrade in addition to some sound enhancements. This was originally going to be a prelude to an extension, but this will no longer be the case. In part, a lot of the components that will form part of this upgrade have already been created for the upcoming Central Line and North London Line upgrades.

However, please read this next bit carefully before asking us “when are you going to fix the Jubilee Line?”

At the risk of repeating ourselves, our current priorities are finishing the extension to the North London Line (more on that in a second) and the large scale upgrade and extension of the Central Line. Until these have been completed, the Jubilee Line isn’t being touched, even when they’ve been completed we won’t be extending the Jubilee, only fixing the bugs.

Please also note that once the Jubilee Line has been fixed, there will be no further extensions to it. It will still terminate at West Hampstead indefinitely. This may not be something you wanted to hear, but the constant negativity we have been receiving has left us no choice. Those dreaming of driving all the way to Stanmore and eventually returning to Stratford will have to wait a lot longer. In fact, this is assuming we’ll ever want to work on it again.

Well, that's a shame...

You’re probably going to tell us we’re being childish. We’re not. We’re not getting paid for this. It’s a labour of love that we spend our own money, time and effort in creating, only to be given a torrent of abuse and have the Roblox community treat our copyrighted content like a free resource library. The passion for this route has gone. There were many late nights spent trying to get as far as we did with this line, and it feels like it was a waste of an effort. It’s beginning to take it’s toll on the mental health of the team, and as such, the best option is to put the project on permanent hiatus.

You may ask “can I extend it for you?” No, you can’t. If you want to help breathe some life back into the project, you need to speak up. Not to us, but to the platforms where you see our content being stolen. You need to start answering back to those who have nothing better to do than complain about our decision not to change the era.

Enough about that, how's the Central Line?

North Acton Screenshot November 2020

Deep breaths now… Thank you to those who have been patient. This isn’t quite the important information we needed to pass on to everyone, but we felt we’d talk about this anyway. A lot has gone on behind the scenes during this quiet time and those efforts are slowly paying off. Some of us in the BVE Western Region team have had a lot go on in our personal lives outside of BVE which has meant progress has been slow at times. Frustratingly, a lot of time has had to be spent trying to resolve the issue of our stolen copyrighted material.

Many of you ask how we are getting on with the Central Line. It’s one of those things that we daren’t talk about for fear of creating excitement. We love people getting excited, but it can be quite horrible disappointing people as they find a release isn’t as soon as they would like.

What's the latest then?

The Central Line is something we’ll be talking a lot more about in the coming months, as we’ll soon have plenty of new things worth showing. The first year or more of the project involved completely stripping the existing route and re-laying ALL of the track from scratch. There were sections of the line where the mileage didn’t quite marry up with the real thing and we wanted to fix this. There’s also the subject of the 1992 stock. Rebuilding the plug-in has been a mammoth task!

Our efforts have been paying off slowly. It is now far more reliable than it ever was and is considerably more engaging than its predecessor. Part of the upgrade has involved tidying up stations. This hasn’t been a quick job. Many were built to an older standard and needed to be rebuilt in order to improve performance.

In short, watch this space. We appreciate you may have wanted to hear more than that, but there is very little we can say other than “It’s progressing”. You can see our progress on the Project Status page, as usual.

The Waterloo & City Line is also earmarked for a quick spruce up too. This will include an improved Class 482 which uses the upgraded model and sounds from the 1992 stock we are currently working on.

Is the North London Line still being worked on?

Class 313 Near Stratford

It most certainly is! While we’re not quite at North Woolwich just yet, a considerable amount of progress has been made. A picture was recently posted on Twitter of one of the sections under construction. If you haven’t seen it yet, here it is again.

This section of the line is one that has changed so significantly since the service ceased in 2006, that we’ve had to dig deep into archives in order to recreate the look and feel of East/South East London at the time. A post about the progress of this will follow very soon. Watch this space.

Here is the highlights of what we just said...

You may be dizzy from that little roller-coaster. Not to worry, here is the highlights of all this important information:

We hope this hasn’t diminished your love of our routes. There have been times we have considering giving up with OpenBVE altogether, but decided not to because we love what we do. If you also love what we do, please speak up. To all the people in the community who have offered praise and thanks: we salute you. Exciting news to follow soon…