Sweet Transit News

Gooooood morning! It's another bright, sunny day to seize -- your workers are ready. Listed below is fixes, chages and additions comprised in Hotfix 4.

Thank you for your continued support and feedback. Please don't hesitate to join us in the official Discord server: https://discord.gg/aNat4N93wS

[h3]Bugfixes:[/h3]

• Fixed farms not respecting factories block ranges
  
• Fixed a crash when replacing a Requirement signal with UI open for it
  
• Fixed trains bad braking calculations
  
• Fixed a screen shake when pressing page up and page down at the same
  
• Fixed a crash when hovering over travelers that have their destination village deleted
  
• Fixed some blueprints not loading
  
• Fixed edit definitions not copying methods
  

[h3]Changes:[/h3]

• Updated console font
  

[h2]Limitations[/h2]

Hello again, everyone!

Last week's focus was mostly on limitations. Sweet Transit has different kinds of challenges which means that some limitations will always be there such as a single warehouse. A single warehouse forces good station designs as most traffic will be directed to that point and that challenge constantly evolves the more you expand. There are plans for difficulty settings that will allow players to customize their experience while disabling specific achievements. But some limitations were not adding much apart from limiting how players can play and I have tackled some of them.


[h3]Expansion[/h3]

Villages had a limited build range. Now it is possible to expand indefinitely while growing your population and it works really well with new station distance calculations. Later I will have to take a second look at the population limitations balance.




[h3]Relocation[/h3]

Many newer players had problems with workers not going to their stations. This usually was caused because a village had reached its growth limit either due to the max population limit or there not being enough work for the current inhabitants to attract new inhabitants. This resulted in players trying to build new houses to fix this problem which did nothing as nobody wanted to move in. Now people will relocate inside a village from residences with no work to residences that need workers in nearby stations. This will make village growth more natural and as a bonus with fewer problems that do not add anything fun to the table.


[h3]Roads[/h3]

The next change is enabling road building under a bridge. This should lead to more interesting village designs having more ways to connect everything. On top of that, I have added a small QoL feature that allows building bridges on top of roads without removing them beforehand.




[h3]Production[/h3]

Build distance limitations are removed and only Warehouse keeps that rule. Placing farms and other production buildings inside of a village will be possible. It was a natural choice after allowing villages to expand their build range. With this change, it will be possible to connect production structures with roads directly allowing to pass workers and manage goods. However, this will have some downsides such as attractiveness and smaller growth due to fewer workers needed. For the next week I will continue working on this adding a pollution system and a new incentive to have trains delivering goods tied to the progression system.

The image below is a valid bricks production setup. Coal is being supplied to the village and brickworks, and bricks are produced while getting clay via roads. A village just makes sure that enough workers are in those workplaces.




[h3]Fertility[/h3]

Now tiles will hold height, resource and fertility information to provide more control over how farms and factories can be placed. This will be more strict to motivate the usage of the train. Map generation will also be iterated.


[h3]Rail Remove[/h3]

Rails and signals can be removed in a box drag mode. Some wanted a universal box remove tool as well and I am looking into that.




[h3]Optional Destinations[/h3]

I have added an option to mark destinations as optional. This works by testing wait conditions beforehand and deciding based on that if the trip is needed.


[h3]Zoom[/h3]

Finally, for mostly widescreen players a better zoom-out option will be available in the settings. I have implemented new systems for culling and distance-based occlusion to keep performance impact minimal.




Until the next week!

[h3]Bug fixes:[/h3]

• Fixed trains not saving their colors when being sent to the train depot
  
• Fixed a crash when mods are trying to edit missing definitions
  
• Fixed Diesel trains not using fuel going backwards
  
• Fixed a crash when hovering over commercial building with output that does not have production chains defined
  
• Fixed requirement prefer option not allowing other trains to pass
  
• Fixed distribution centers reconnecting on build
  
• Fixed blueprint not saving requirement signals information
  
• Fixed a crash when loading a game with a train that previously had destroyed rails in its path
  
• Fixed distribution center not updating connection after road removal
  
• Fixed distribution center not showing the correct amount of goods
  
• Fixed stations connecting to parts that are disconnected from the main structure
  
• Fixed Cattle Ranch showing wrong wheat input per min
  
• Fixed copied train preset modifying the original
  
• Fixed after upgrading residences craftsmen boarding laborer trains
  
• Fixed a crash when hovering over a factory building with output that does not have production chains defined
  

[h3]Changes:[/h3]

• Disabled achievements on saves that are not made by the player
  
• Changed Spanish mass and cargo mass translations
  
• Made Upgrade UI and Train Presets UI choose the cloesest Train Depot when opened with a hotkey
  
• Made Commercial and Service buildings accept floats as production amounts
  
• Made Distribution Center UI show the same information as Station UI connected to it
  
• Made distribution center connect to factory roads
  

[h3]Additions:[/h3]

• Added train depot to the selection cycle
  
• Added nighttime halo on highlight settings
  
• Added option to set wagon passenger graphics same as with cargo
  

[h2]The Launch[/h2]

Hello again, everyone!

Thank you for all the positivity and feedback following our Early Access launch. It's wonderful to see so many people enjoying the game and creating many different ways to beat the game. Release was quite stable, but with some problems nevertheless.

Please continue to share your feedback and suggestions in Discord, we read them all.

Feedback shows that the biggest issue is the late-game balancing and difficulty curve. This leads experimental players to thrive, while others struggle to progress, The first update will tackle accessibility and QoL, ensuring the base game is more fun with added polish. This will include, but is not limited to:

- Unlock Tree UI
- Various production stats UI
- Train Presets/Depot UI rework
- Difficulty settings with proper sandbox mode
- Steel bridges that can have rails underneath them in any variation


[h2]Going Forward[/h2]

I want to continue the blog posts I started prior to launch. However, I will start sharing what I've been working on over the past few weeks. It has only been a week since I shifted from purely bug fixing and adjusting the v.0.2. There is still one bigger update in the pipeline, but after that - only bug fixes will be uploaded until the v.0.3, which arrives later this year.

[h3]⚠ The following additions & changes will be released in future updates
[/h3]

[h3]Station[/h3]

One of the biggest changes is that people now wait at stations. This is a purely visual change to identify if people can be loaded. In an ideal world I would love to make animations for boarding trains, but at this moment that is unpractical, as workers do not know at which platform a train will stop until it arrives.



[h3]Village[/h3]

The most requested feature was connecting village roads to station platforms or bridges; this is now possible. I did not enjoy seeing square villages with stations at the edges, and when you minimize mountains to remove terrain difficulty, this becomes the most optimal way to build. I have plans to remove village expansion distance limitations altogether, allowing you to have one enormous village through your playthrough. It will require a lot of balancing changes to not make the game trivial, like making farm placement more strict based on the biome. But more on that later.




[h3]Platforms[/h3]

People did not rotate station platforms in build mode and because of that, I made them automatic. You can still rotate them, but this will be useful once more station types are available.


[h3]Workers[/h3]

Stations now hold enough people for required work based on routes instead of the full train capacity. I have tried to tackle trains loading enough people for their trip as well, but the logic approach was not enough due to how the current system is optimized. This is still on my mind, just need to think through what will be the best way to approach this.


[h3]Map Mode[/h3]

Some of you wanted to see station names on the map. You will be able to toggle them in settings if you want to see station and village names in the map mode. I have also added a dark mode which inverts the end of the map colors to avoid blinding people playing in the dark.




[h3]Wait conditions[/h3]

A new wait condition is added for people. You will be able to check for people's rest percentage, allowing trains to wait until their passengers are fully rested, fully tired or anything in between.


[h3]Requirement signals[/h3]

Finally, I have been working on requirement signals. The UI had a minor facelift. A block action was added to block passage for trains that fit the requirement; and on top of that, 4 new requirements:

• Multi-Drive - To allow passage for trains that can both move forward and backward.
  
• Route - To allow passage for trains that are using a specific route.
  
• Name - To filter trains based if they have specific letters or words in their name or route name. You could add for example 'W' letter for trains that are carrying wood and allow passage for only them.
  
• Copy - This will not work on pathfinding, but instead it will copy a signal block in front to other referenced signals. Priority merging or other tricks will be possible with this requirement as there are no limits on the number of blocks that you can copy or signals that you can copy to.
  

Until the next week!

Hello all,

Please see the latest changes and additions in Hotfix 2, now waiting for you on our live platform!

[h3]Hotfix 2 | Patch Notes[/h3]

Bug fixes

• Fixed type keys being repeated when mouse is out of window
  
• Fixed a crash when assigning a structure to a special key, destroying it and trying to save
  
• Fixed inhabitants recalculation from old corrupted save files
  
• Fixed a crash when going into the build mode with a station bridge selected
  
• Fixed station context "Connected to" text being oversized
  
• Fixed sending train to the depot not keeping goods and people lock
  
• Fixed goods missing problem not disappearing after a structure is deleted
  
• Fixed replacing requirement signal with a normal signal not removing requirement
  
• Fixed not being to load goods from distribution center directly
  
• Fixed not being able to drag and place signals around bridge
  
• Fixed being able to destroy a village in the basics tutorial
  
• Fixed being able to complete expansion tutorial without building a second train
  
• Fixed city upgrade tooltip showing negative happiness with 0 inhabitants
  

Changes:

• Made village Station UI always show workers if there is capacity for them
  
• Made text box double click select a word instead of the whole box
  
• Made text box select the whole text on first click
  
• Flipped Train Depot default build direction
  
• Increased ST30 ramp speed from 20 to 35
  
• Increased DT10 ramp speed from 30 to 50
  
• Increased DT10 power from 1250 to 1800
  
• Increased DT10 braking power from 650 to 1200
  
• Made Routes UI resize vertically clamp at 90% of screen height
  
• Made trains remove cost the same as build cost to make upgrades more sensical
  
• Made distribution centers auto connect all stations that are in range
  
• Made signal drag populate possible starting from the existing one
  
• Increased signal build capture rail radius
  

Additions:
Added remove route button in the Train Presets UI

Graphics:
Added DT20 locomotive graphics

Thank you for your continued feedback and support.