If a person was skilled enough, couldn't he just create the whole thing from scratch? Just saying because I don't see that logical at all. It's like if I worked for a furniture store, I can't make a certain table because the original blueprints are kept by him; but I'm skilled enough to make my own table and it'll look exactly like it. I can't really explain it.
Otherwise yes, if you think your up for the challenge, then you most certainly can. I am doing that with the LIRR Atlantic Avenue Route that I'm building. If Joe magically has a skeleton, that would be great, but what I'm doing isn't based on anything other than the resources I have.
Fictional Routes yes they are a bother, especially in this age. While it certainly fills in the "audition" role, today there are just WAY too many. Fictional routes used to serve more than just the audition purpose. It was used to showcase new technology which we can implement into our non-fictional routes. This is where our research and development team came up. Ray's Riverbank Park Shuttle was supposed to demonstrate timers, with the hope that it will one day be implemented in our real routes. My Second Avenue Route was just a graphical demonstration, which I later fully implemented into the G.
Unfortunately today, fictional routes dont really serve much of a purpose anymore, since most of the skeletons are taken and are supposedly being worked on. Nothing new or original has came up from new fictionals, other than filling in the author's imaginations of a route to this place. Especially with the current fictionals being worked on, what purpose do they serve? Eye Candy, and thats about it. Eye candy was invented when I brought on the new onslaught of routes when I released the G. Not as to say we should stop there, but Eye Candy isn't anything new anymore. There are still alot of things we haven't tapped into, and thats what our fictional routes should be for, especially for the current developers.
For new developers, I encourage you guys to do something that wasn't done before. We have a million "NYCT" (yes in quotes) fictional routes already, its a shame that we may have more released (here or not). I encourage you guys to think up of something new, and use completely new objects in making whatever you plan to make. By creating an example is how we improve our non-fictional routes.
You may ask why dont we just do it on the non-fictional itself, well we do that too, objects like the Coney Island Station (textures by me) and my new tunnel walls were built for those purposes and then modified by others for improvement. But there are some things that do require a test on an actual route. Things like timers on ray's shuttle is an example of that.
It seems anybody can make a route these days, it wasn't like how it used to be in the past. And its quite true. But not everybody has something new and interesting they can make.