Rail Route News

Hello, fellow Dispatchers!

As you may be aware, we've never shared a roadmap for our Early Access title Rail Route. Instead, we've opted for a different approach than the "industry standard." After a year and a half in the EA, I can confidently say that this decision has been excellent. Let me explain why - and, of course, I understand that not everyone may agree with me. We've heard a few voices stating that we should make our roadmap public. However, this approach has allowed us to remain flexible and better understand our Dispatchers; how you play the game, what difficulties you experience, what you enjoy the most, and so on. By observing this feedback, we were able to form an actual roadmap, which has resulted in much better outcomes than if we had simply stuck to the ideas we initially thought were great. Additionally, it has enabled us to experiment and be creative.



It's worth mentioning that while we are seasoned software developers, some of us have been in the industry for more than 15 years, the Rail Route is our debut game title, which means we needed to learn bits of the game design as well, right? It was a great ride, but the time has come! We can confidently share a detailed image of what the game will be once hitting the 1.0 release, hopefully, this year. Or just soon (tm) if you want us to use the typical jargon, which we have learned as well :). And I'd like to welcome you to this weekly RailLog blog series, where I will share and explain that image until we hit that release.





It looks simple, but keep that from fooling you; there's A LOT underneath these sticky notes. I already covered some topics in my previous dev log when I shared our work on improving track building or the new user interface and what we plan with it. I will keep informing you how the development in these areas is going weekly. But let's focus on the Reworked Tech Tree because that's where the fun begins.





As you may read, we are giving the Endless mode (should we rename that to Tycoon mode?) the purpose. You need to handle different types of traffic in some quantities to progress through the game and ultimately reach the highest point for a sweet gold star reward (for every category of train traffic). The Unlockable System Upgrades are here to help you achieve that task, allowing you fully automate it all. There will be three types of very different traffic to handle, and every one of them will require you to use a different approach to its automation and incorporation. You will need to optimize your network layout and its configuration. Let's have a look at the traffic categories.

[h2]The Through Passenger Traffic - Green points[/h2]



Passenger traffic contracts are something you are already familiar with from the current game (if you already own the game. If not, you should definitely buy it right now). InterCity and Commuter services run from the border stations to the stations you operate and back to the border stations, repeating every cycle (currently set to one hour). Each contract consists of one train, and every successful handling of a train rewards you with a green point. While ordinary Commuters are in slower-paced traffic, InterCities require more speed and timing. Check out the proposed green Upgrades.



In the following weeks, I will cover the Upgrades in more detail, so stay tuned and only speculate a little until then! In the comments, of course. The gray-colored cells are the new additions! You can see new signals, sensors, and stuff - great stuff. We are following the trend of more buildable elements than more UI elements. We want to keep the UI to its minimum when the design allows us. That's why we introduce the accept sensor rather than a toggle in the UI, as in other cases. It will enable us to give you even more configuration options, like an option to accept ANY platform trains.

[h2]The Advanced Passenger Traffic - Red points[/h2]



We are reworking the red points from the ground up to provide a smoother progression and unlock a new set of upgrades. Forget the current red points; these are different! You will now have to manage more complex contracts with multiple trains connected via your stations. This means that you need to handle the finished trains, such as shunting them off the station or to a different one, and switch their train numbers and schedules, according to the timetable, to fulfill the contract. This eliminates the need to accept two contracts (as of the current state); instead, you will have the whole route of multiple trains (with one train set) in just one contract. No more balancing issues or a missing train set!

These more complex routes require you to incorporate the traffic into your already-built layouts. This includes handling the finished trains to be reused later or even moving them to another station where they will be needed. As such, the Coach Yard is becoming a Tier 3 upgrade that helps you solve this traffic faster and more efficiently in a late game, but is optional in the process, especially at the early stages of the game. Just build your stashing tracks and use them!



These changes to the red contract structures will allow for much more diverse and close-to real-world traffic in your operation. Players will no longer struggle with finished trains when there is no Coach Yard and will now be able to balance incoming and outgoing trains without losing any trains due to the lack of available train sets. Every train (contract) will require you to fulfill its routes fully. I will go into more detail in the future but if you need more clarification, don't hesitate to ask your questions in the comments!

There are a lot of possibilities how these contracts could look like, here's just some simple examples:

• Train A -> B (pause 20mins), B -> C (or A)
  
• Train A -> B (pause 20mins), C -> D
  
• Train A -> B (pause 10mins), B -> C (pause 10 mins), C -> A
  
• Train A -> B (pause 10mins), B -> C (pause 10 mins), D -> B -> A
  

and so on.

At first, you need to switch the train number manually at Dispatcher Office, but that process can be automated later in the game using the proper System Upgrades.

[h2]The Freight Traffic - Blue points[/h2]



A new type of freight traffic contracts to the game. Unlike current freight contracts which are one-off, these are recurrent. The stations will ask you to deliver a specific composition of freight cars, but the incoming trains will deliver them all together. Completing the contract will therefore require you to do some shunting work. If you don't already have a shunting yard, you will have to find a suitable space to build one. Shunting the cars can be tricky so having shunting signals, shunting sensors, and command queues will be essential. This new traffic category is still in the game design phase, so I can't share too many details. However, hopefully this gives you an idea of what's to come.





Most things have stayed the same as the previous week as we need another to finish the tasks in a polished state. And this Rail Log is already insanely big, so let's keep it short this time :).

• Seamless menu integration - Editor and Play mode (will be release on unstable the next week)
  
• Tracks building UX
  
• New Accept sensor
  
• Build menu design (see below)
  

That's all, folks! Thanks for reading and give me your thumbs up or comment. I am happy to answer all your questions.

Until the next week,

Happy Dispatching.
-Angel

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Hello Dispatchers!

What a wonderful week, and here's another Monday and Rail Log from the development of the Rail Route. I told myself I could keep you more in the loop, especially after creating the #dev-logs channel on our community Discord. Let's cover the most important thing first.





We are not happy with how our construction works (in terms of user experience), so we address it with improvements. Tracks were the first to hit the train of refactoring. But video can describe the situation better than a thousand words, so let's check it out first:



As you can see, you don't need to lay out each piece of track but connect two points, and the game calculates "what's in the middle." But that would not be enough. Initially, we thought you could cycle through the possible layouts with a mouse wheel, but the result could have been more staggering. Then we tried a different approach, and that was the right hit.



You can select the beginning or the end of a new track and rotate it with a mouse wheel while building the track. It feels so smooth once you get the grasp of that. We are introducing four new keybinds as additional actions during constructions (Q, E, Z, C, or d-pad on the controller). In this situation, you can use them to select the track endpoints and upgrade/downgrade or rotate the signal in other examples.

In short, this will follow:

• Ability to take and move every element (signal, sensors, CY)
  
• Improved bulldozing (whole tracks by default)
  
• Sensor placement won't cut the track in two (breaking your configs)
  

I've covered this previously, but let's go into more detail. We don't see the current structure of the Upgrades as best for several reasons. One of the issues is the need for more natural progression, but Upgrades can be seen as overwhelming and need to be more structured for new players as well. We, who have played the game for more than three years already, must not forget that, in the shade of our curse of knowledge.



The most notable change in the structure is we want the Endless mode to have a goal like the other two modes. To give players a sense of progression and satisfaction. And once it is all about automation and traffic optimization, we build up the structure around that, dividing the Upgrades according to the traffic category.



If you reach certain thresholds in your trains per cycle counter, you unlock more until you get the star - an ultimate reward for each category of unlocks. The upgrades in the corresponding categories are here to help you achieve that, allowing you to automate everything. You'll also unlock a new category of Upgrades pretty soon, so it's up to you to start including red traffic or just continue filling the green bar.



We are dropping nearly all the Interface upgrades as they feel superfluous. We just make most of them unlocked by default. We could have introduced the interface upgrades, little different ones to these. If we do, they will be global, and once unlocked, you'll have them available on all your games.

Next to it, we would like to introduce more granular unlocks in terms of sensors below the arrival or routing "sensors tiers." I'll write about them once they are assigned to the development week sprint in another dev log.





You probably know the "Auto-accept" upgrade. It unlocks a toggle for every station to accept the incoming trains automatically. We don't like toggles and UI, so we redo this toggle into a buildable cheap sensor. After unlocking it, you would place it either on a platform or next to a station - we have yet to decide - maybe you can share your thoughts in the comments. But this sensor will allow us to do a more detailed configuration of auto-accepting (whether to accept ANY trains and where) and will be much better aligned with the rest of the game. We'd like to take this approach once iterating over other Upgrades content.





It's nearly done, but it still requires a day or two to polish it up. But a seamless transition between the menu and the game is there. We'll need to improve the Current Game tab even more to show some statistics about your current game, for example, but we'll leave it on the roadmap and get back to it later.

This week, we'd also like to integrate the Editor similarly. No more loading between editing the map and trying its timetable! Hell yeah! Hopefully.

That's all for now. Don't forget to join our community Discord and/or share your love in the comments :).
Until the next week, Happy Dispatching!
-Angel

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https://store.steampowered.com/app/1124180/Rail_Route
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1896900/Rail_Route_The_Story_of_Jozic/

Hello @Devlogs Dispatchers,

It's the start of a new week, and I've got some fresh news from the development. As you can see in the last hotfix, last week went all great; we delivered a lot of fixes and some improvements to the menu I've covered previously.

Let's see what's in the bag for this week:

[h2]Main Menu integration[/h2]

We want the new menu to be more integrated into the game scene, so we will replace the Pause Menu (when you hit the ESC) with it. It means ESC will open the full-screen menu where you can save, load the current game, or start another game quickly. No more switching to the Main Menu and back from your games.



It requires us to make some addition, like the ability to save a game on the Current Hame tab and some additional actions inside the editor.

[h2]Tracks construction UX[/h2]

We got a whole category of UX improvement of construction (and bulldozing) planned for this month, and tracks will be the first. There are two improvements planned

1. visually, we want you to give a clue about a newly built track, and
   
2. tracks will bend automatically (you can cycle options with a mouse wheel)
   

As you can see, connecting two points will be as easy as clicking on the origin and the end. The game will calculate the track in between these points for you. You can still click in smaller segments if you want more granular control over the outcome. This will be the UX improvement of the month. It will not matter if other tracks need to be crossed! We could apply some hard limits on the maximal length of the track to make that happen.

[h2]New System Upgrades design[/h2]

We've finished the System Upgrades design for 1.0 and are now prototyping the UI before implementing it. I can say now that Upgrades won't be categories (Contracts, Automation, Control, Interface) but according to the type of traffic (and color).



We will have three types of traffic (or contracts)

• Through (green)
  
• Flip (red)
  
• Freights (blue)
  

Every category will have its Upgrades to unlock, divided into Tiers, and an ultimate goal of the Endless map will be operating all of them in some amounts. Automation will be a great help to accomplish that. The primary metric will be the "trains dispatched per cycle," which also gives you the progression in the Tiers dimension. I will talk details later, but you can expect a whole reworked freight traffic contracts and automation of your freight yard just in your Endless maps by 1.0 :-)!



All screenshots are works in progress and do not represent a final state. That's that. Be sure to drop me some comments below or on our community Discord.

Until the next week,
Happy Dispatching!
-Angel

Follow us:

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https://store.steampowered.com/app/1124180/Rail_Route
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1896900/Rail_Route_The_Story_of_Jozic/