Train Life - A Railway Simulator News

Well, thankfully Mike is gone and I (Joey) am back. I hope he treated you well and included plenty of jokes in his post. If not, we shall certainly ensure he's punished swiftly and harshly. The sounds of my justice shall echo through the mountains, and all will know that Mike's lack of humour has been thoroughly destroyed.


*cough* ...so moving on! We have a new patch for you following our recent content update. We've been carefully monitoring the Discord and forums for any issues, just like my mom monitored me at night to make sure I didn't wake up and play games instead of sleeping. (Never worked, I always found ways to play games)

While this first patch addresses many of the issues, we have more coming in another patch. It would also be nice to have a post-update dev blog, as is tradition; will have to find some time to write it. The best news, of course, is that with the return of Mike I'll be joining him on a livestream to talk about how things are going, answer any questions, and talk about the future of the game while trying not to say things that will get me in epic trouble. It's okay though, I've packed an emergency bag just in case I do say something terrible.



[h2]Changes & Fixes[/h2]

• Tracks & Railways
  • Fixed missing markers on some service centers
    
  • Fixed a problem with 50km/h speed limit of Bypass of Bern Main
    
  • Fixed a problem with a clipping signal in Calais Smeltery -- It has been discovered that trains do not routinely drive through signals, which is good information
    
  • Fixed a problem with a blocked track at the Northern entrance to Innsbruck Main
    
  • Fixed a problem with missing bumper blocks at Poznan Main -- This was a pathetic attempt to get you to derail your train and we apologize for it
    
  • Fixed a problem with missing entrance points in Stuttgart, Reims, and Brno
• Tablet
  • Fixed a problem with controller button prompts on scenario ending screen
    
  • Fixed a bug with showing map when player tries go back to gameplay after using station panel
    
  • Fixed various input remapping issues
    
  • Updated cabin accessory icons -- Anyone able to purchase the gross, evil, and soul-crushing pineapple pizza yet?
    
  • Fixed GPS problem with setting route through station instead of bypass -- Don't worry, you'll still unlock stations by going through their bypass routes ;)
    
  • Fixed double displayed scenario reward on unplayed scenarios -- Double rewards? Unacceptable!
    
  • Fixed UI panel overlapping a tutorial cutscene
    
  • Updated OPTIONS and SHARE button icons
• Gameplay
  • Fixed a problem with camera after exiting service center -- We decided to service the camera too
    
  • Fixed a bug with a gap between locomotive and wagons after removed wagons in service center
    
  • Fixed a lack of light visual effects during daylight in the Newag locomotive -- This darkness required an exorcist, it was a very dramatic affair
    
  • Fixed the back cabin position of Newag locomotive
    
  • Fixed a problem with getting the fine “unauthorized access” in Nuremberg Station when using a bypass
• Level Art & Design
  • Fixed derailing between Poznan Smeltery and Gorzow FPP -- Only unintended derailing though, so don't go thinking you can joy-ride at max speed with wagons of steel sheets
    
  • Fixed lack of camera collision in tunnels between Zurich Warehouse and Zurich Iron Mine -- Despite what you may have seen in our game, in real life there is a lot of dirt if you could see into the walls of a tunnel
    
  • Adjusted the height of flying tracks near Bremen Coal Mine -- This 'adjustment' generally means we clipped the wings of the track
    
  • Adjusted the position of several trees placed too close to the tracks -- This is not indicative of a "Lumberjack Life" spinoff
    
  • Adjusted the position of corridors in several places
• Language
  • Added some missing localization texts
• Stability & Performance
  • Fixed performance issues near Calais Smeltery

[h3]That's All....For Now[/h3]
We'll have plenty more for you in the coming weeks, both with regards to information but also with fixes and improvements. Keep your eyes peeled like a pineapple -- wait, you can peel a pineapple? I have never once heard the term 'peeling a pineapple'...

Either way, pineapples are great, but don't put them on pizza. You will be subject to police investigation, put on a no-fly list, and your Steam account will be auctioned off on the black market. You have been warned.


[h3]Have questions or issues about the game?[/h3]
You're all, as always, invited to join our Discord Server and chat with us directly! It's a great way to get more immediate feedback, or just send me memes.

You may also follow our Twitter, if you want to tag Elon in some great screenshots of our game, and our Twitch account if you plan on joining us on Monday livestreams.

We're very proud to announce the 3rd major content update for Train Life! Talk is cheap, so lets get into the meat and potatoes of the update you've all been waiting for!



We mentioned before on our socials and Discord that this update is going to be the biggest yet, and we weren't kidding! Buckle up, cause it's going to be a long one!

[h2]Additions[/h2]

Features

• Station Gameplay Overhaul - A long time in the making, but we’ve made some significant adjustments to Station Gameplay. We’ve added a new Station Panel in the tablet, contract reservations, a brand spanking new cargo coupling/decoupling mode as well as an overhaul to the Radio Communication system.

Weather

• Now, you’ll be able to experience all the seasons in Train Life: Rain, Snow and Storms. Before you ask, there will be no rain in the tunnels and the rain drops that hit your windshield will interact with the wipers!
  

Customization

• As opposed to our April Fools post that our genius Community Manager made with the help of others, you can now customize your cabin with certain bits and bobs. You can now add the company colors to the exterior of your locomotives as well to even more, pimp out your train.
  
• Added new locomotive drivers – now, you don’t ONLY have to look at the bald head of Gerald (atleast that’s what we call him)
  
• Driver model in cabin according to player’s avatar – so when you pick an avatar when starting a new game, that avatar will now correctly correspond to the model in the cabin of your train.
  

Player and Track Improvements

• Added Track/Platform Number Signs and Track/Platform Directional Signs
  
• Added locomotives wheels animation
  
• Added automatic train parking on station's track
  
• Added Achievements – Now you can get that hit of dopamine when you complete tasks.
  
• Added job completion screen
  
• Added level up screen
  

Regions

• Added a new region: Alps. People living in warmer parts of our blue planet, will now get to experience snow for the first time 😊
  

Locomotives

• Added a new locomotive: Newag Griffin
  

Sounds

• More ambient sounds that add life to the surroundings: church bells, dogs barking, sirens in the cities.
  
• New horns for the locomotives. Now each brand of locomotives has its own unique horn sound. This is something that has been asked by the community since day 1 launch of EA. We're super stoked that we can finally deliver new horn sounds, thanks to our amazing sound designer, Greg, the sound guy.
  

Settings

• Inputs remapping
  
• Add player option of NPC trains spawn place
  

[h2]Changes And Fixes
[/h2]


Tracks & Railways – a lot of you have been letting us know about misplaced signs, signals and not having the option to bypass certain stations. So we did a deep dive, and fixed those to hopefully, deliver a more fluid and close-to-realistic experience as possible:

• Fixed blocked tracks
  
• Fixed misplaced Sign and Signals
  
• Fixed improper Speed Limit Signs
  
• Fixed z-fighting on tracks
  
• Redesigned railway-schemes to create easier-to-navigate junctions
  
• Added passthrough tracks to all stations
  
• The speed limit on all passthrough tracks has been increased to 80km/h
  
• Station Gameplay - Showing track for pickup and deliveries
  
• Fixed marker of NPC moving locomotive
  

HUD

• Fixed GPS route after loading save data
  

Tablet

• Service Center shows supported transportation modes for locomotives
  

Gameplay

Since we launched the scenario system, a lot of you have been enjoying it, however, we know that it was missing a lot of stuff like rewards and stats. With update 3, we believe we gave the player more of a “carrot on a stick” per say, to go back and make scenarios great again.

• Scenario system update
  
• Scenarios now start on different times of day
  
• Scenarios now have rain and fog
  
• Scenarios that go through more than one country display all the countries on the list
  
• Changed some of the time estimates for scenarios
  
• Train station in scenarios should have more people on them
  
• Fixed missing/redundant scenario barriers
  
• Scenario system is part of career game
  
• Added Scenario level requirements
  
• Added Scenario total time play of scenario session
  
• Added Scenario reward to player career
  
• Added Scenario save in Load Main Menu
  

Difficulty

• Specific difficulty options can now be seen when choosing difficulty
  
• More difficulty presets
  
• Added Custom difficulty setting
  

[h3]Post Update 3 focus and beyond![/h3]

First of all, on behalf of Simteract and Nacon, we would like to thank the entire community for sticking it out through thick and thin throughout the development of Train Life. To us, Train Life is a work of passion. Passion that we want to bestow upon the gaming community and show people that they dont have to settle for nothing less when it comes to Train Simulation games.

We are already hard at work with Update 4, and as usual will keep you guys on the up-and-up regarding that. Expect more fine tuning in Update 4, the release of the famous Orient Express, new shunting and towing scenarios, an overhaul of the GPS system and much more. Of course, our Lead Game Designer Joey will write the next blog for you all as we have a little bit of a secret as to who wrote this one. Hey guys, it's me, your community manager Mike ;)

[h3]Follow us on all the things[/h3]
Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Twitch and of course Discord, is where you can get all of the latest and greatest information regarding the development of our game. You can also follow the development process on the official Train Life Trello and when Joey gets back from his vacation, you can even @ him with any questions, comments or concerns you may have on Discord among our other fantastic designers, QA testers and programmers. I (Mike) will be there as always :)

Have fun in Update 3 everyone!

Join Mike and Maciej Litwin (Senior Game Designer) later today on our Twitch Channel or on Train Life Steam page to discover everything you need to know about our 3rd Major Update, coming on April 20th!

You might leave with a free key 👀

See you at 7.40pm CEST!

Disclaimer: This was an April Fools joke and we will have a real Dev Blog post closer to Update 3! Hope you get a few good laughs from this one :)

[h2]Greetings, engineers![/h2]

Today’s blog post will have a lot of information that players have been expecting for Update 3. We understand that it has been quite some time between update 2 and 3, and we wanted to quell some of the communities' doubts and let you guys in on some things to expect for the next major content update. Without further ado, let us get into it.



Starting off in Update 3, some things that players will expect right out of the box, is the new dynamic weather system. There will be a variety of liquids hitting your windshield ranging from rain, snow, and blood from hitting deer! We discussed briefly about adding hail, tornados, and other forms of dynamic weather, but we concluded that this would extend update 3 to sometime around next year.





While we’re nearing completion of Update 3, we have already set our sight for the future and are thinking of Update 4. We call it “The Map Update”, and for a reason! First of all, we’re going to add borders and some geography – country borders, regional borders and water! You’ll no longer drive around an endless sea of grey-ish blue.

But wait, that’s not all! Right now, as you’re reading this, Joey, our Lead Game Designer (known from classics such as TrainLife Stream and Fast and Furious 9) is in Wisconsin, doing research. Research for what? Oh... for the new regions to our game!! Update 4 will bring you Michigan, Wisconsin AND Chicago – first final areas of the game, replacing the placeholder European stations! We can hardly believe we have reached that point in the project, but it’s really happening. Hopefully we’ll get some photos from Joey soon, along with his report on the state of the famous Wisconsin cheese.



A lot of you were excited to hear about finally having a new locomotive added. Our original idea was to add the Newag Grifin, but we decided to cater to the younger audience playing Train Life, and instead, we will add Joey the Tank Engine.





You asked for it, so we delivered. You will be able to customize your trains on the inside and out. Ranging from the type of graffiti you want on the side of your train and the hula hoop bobble head you want on the Saltzgetter dashboard. We hope you enjoy the wide range of customization options we added for you and feel free to send us some screenshots of how creative you guys are getting with personalizing your trains. The picture below is from our community manager, Mike, who really hit the nail on the head judging he is from Chicago!





What more is there else to say? You are going to be talking with Morgan Freeman via radio communication. And yes, he was expensive, but we believe it was worth it.



And last but not least - after some consultation, and very rigorous interviews, we have made the decision to employ some of our mothers to be consultants for Train Life. The reason we made this decision is because we understand that they lived in an era where trains were more prevalent, and people rode trains more often (this is something that will help us improve upon the station gameplay that we cannot wait to show the community).

Some of the responsibilities of our new team members are going to be as follows: Making sure we dress warmly, finish our meals, and give us life advice we did not ask for.

Overall, we cannot wait to show the community all the new features we have in store for Update 3. Thanks for coming to our Ted Talk, see you in update 3!

Hello everyone!

We hope this message finds you well!
We wanted to start off by mentioning that we have a public Trello that is made for the community to follow along with the development of Early Access (and eventually the full game) of Train Life: A Railway Simulator.

You can check it out here:
https://trello.com/b/Qd8tnu03/train-life-early-access-roadmap

In addition, after our recent patch #15, we implemented some performance changes that were a pain in the butt for you guys. So, we fixed it and we hope you’re enjoying the game even more this time around!

Along with the performance change – we also gave you guys the ability to go load the game in a “Legacy Build” so that you can go back in time and play the game until we fix whatever is happening. However, this does come with its own set of caveats.


When going into the Legacy version of Train Life, please be aware that your saved games MAY not be compatible with an older version of the game. This means that you will have to back up your save files to avoid file corruption and lose your progress.

You can find all your saved games on Steam by following the link below and back them up accordingly:

https://store.steampowered.com/account/remotestorage


That’s about it for now! Thanks for playing our game and stay tuned for future patches and content updates by joining the official Train Life Discord server and joining our streams on Twitch every Monday @ 7PM CET for the most up-to-date news there is!

See you on the tracks engineers!