NIMBY Rails News

Version 1.5 development is now underway, with timetables being the star of the show. But before timetables development was started it was time to make train AI multithreaded in order squeeze as much performance as possible from the game. With that goal finished, a first prototype of timetable data and pax pathfinding was implemented, with encouraging results, but with a big performance impact, as expected. More optimizations and even game design changes will be required before timetables are playable, but the current foundations appear solid and correct.

https://carloscarrasco.com/nimby-rails-june-2022/

Version 1.4.23 is a small bug fix release.

• Fix: double accounting for some items in the parallel pax code
  
• Fix: handle more kinds of cases of train stops in stations, including trains (partially) outside of the platform limit, as valid train stops. This is meant to help with the "pax do not board/leave" bug.
  

The last build of the 1.4 series is now live in the default branch! Development for this last build series was focused on preparing the game for the optimizations required in version 1.5, but a new major user feature was also developed, for blueprint sharing in the Steam Workshop.

• Multiple blueprint collections
  
• Steam Workshop support for sharing and subscribing to blueprint collections
  
• New building modding features
  
• More multithreading optimizations, the most visible being much faster game loading
  

Version 1.4 development wrapped up in May, with workshop blueprint collections as the last feature to be implemented. Still some tweaks and optimizations were tested and implemented, again with focus on improving the multithreading usage of the game, although most of the new ideas won't be put into use until 1.5 arrives. The current 1.4 beta will be made the default version and 1.4 will officially end its development soon.

https://carloscarrasco.com/nimby-rails-may-2022/

April saw a slate of technical work, with overdue attention given to improving the multithreading capability of the game. First the general threading framework of the game was replaced by an new one, then some areas of the game were made to be at least partially multithreaded. The result is some speedup for games with higher ratios of pax+stations vs trains, but trains remain the main CPU hog. Making trains multithreaded will be a much more complex challenge and it will be attempted in the future.

https://carloscarrasco.com/nimby-rails-april-2022/