Railroader News

[p]Hello Railroaders![/p][p]Today we are happy to share our progress on the Maintenance of Way (MoW) update we've been hard at work on. We knew this was going to be a big update, and as we have playtested and iterated on MoW that has certainly proven true. It's also driven us to revisit some aspects of Railroader's milestone progression and the map itself.[/p][p]We think it's important to note that none of this has happened in a vacuum, so to speak. Since we announced that we were working on MoW we've received tons of great ideas and feedback. Thank you! This is one of those features that makes it challenging to balance wide open vision with what we can make real, and will mesh with the rest of the game.[/p][p]In our last update on MoW we shared that you'll use ballast, ties, and rail to maintain your tracks. One thing we didn't share at that time was our thinking on how the core MoW mechanic of the work train would be a very cool way to do construction milestones. Instead of spotting a few batches of cars next to the missing track, what if you had to purchase and supply loads to the work train as it made its way down the line? This is the direction we're taking for the MoW update, and we're very excited about the richness and challenge it adds to Railroader.[/p][p]
[/p][p][/p][h3]The Price of Ballast: A Historical Reference Point[/h3][p]What loads are needed to rebuild the Ela bridge? Or build from Bryson Bridge to Alarka Junction? We dug into our sources, textbooks and historical records including the Tennessee Valley Authority and Southern Railway's own historical numbers for rebuilding the line to come up with the "at the time" resources. Based on those numbers we estimated the loads to build the 13 miles of railroad between Bryson and Fontana Lake and came up with:[/p]

• [p]22 cars of rails[/p]
• [p]139 cars of ties[/p]
• [p]1,429 cars of ballast[/p]
• [p]Total load cost: $335,039[/p]

[p]Well. As exciting as it was to imagine moving 1,590 cars to and from the interchange, we decided that for the vast majority of players this was not anywhere in the realm of realistic or practical. By scaling those numbers we've arrived at car counts and costs that are both practical and substantial:[/p]

• [p]10 cars of rails[/p]
• [p]20 cars of ties[/p]
• [p]200 cars of ballast[/p]
• [p]Total load cost: $15,080[/p]

[p](Note that for simplicity I've omitted costs and loads to construct the bridges in these example milestones.)[/p][p]Keep in mind that we are still very much in the development/playtesting phase and these numbers are almost guaranteed to change before we release the MoW update, but we wanted to give you an idea of what we're thinking about. What do you think? Let us know in the comments.[/p][p][/p][h3]Rethinking Milestones and The Map[/h3][p]Rethinking the milestones in terms of construction materials has also caused us to rethink the boundaries of those milestones, and even the reward for accomplishing a milestone, which is generally satisfaction of reaching a goal and access to more customers. We understand that for many players the western end of the map, with its lower customer density and heavy grades, may be too much to tackle. To address this we are making the following adjustments:[/p]

• [p]Changing the Bryson Bridge to Fontana milestone to run only as far as Alarka Junction, and adding a second milestone from Alarka Junction (past the spur to Robinson Gap) to Almond. The Nantahala milestone will begin after Almond.[/p]
• [p]Dramatically reworking Nantahala Talc & Limestone at Hewitt to provide more traffic.[/p]
• [p]Adding an interchange and small freight house at Almond. (This is a big one. We have wanted to do something like this for a long time now.)[/p]
• [p]Others?[/p]

[p]Our goal in making these changes is to provide more options for your railroad, as well as to make expansion more rewarding.[/p][p][/p][p]Below: expanded Nantahala Talc & Limestone with placeholder scenery buildings.
[/p][p][/p][p][/p][h3]Speed Restriction Signage and Other Challenges[/h3][p]We've also been busy with some of the more challenging details of MoW. For example, dynamically displaying signs to reflect speed restrictions due to poor track conditions.[/p][p][/p][p]
[/p][p]In some circumstances displaying signs that make sense and don't overwhelm the player poses a real challenge![/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]In addition we are planning on looking at supporting MoW load storage, reevaluating starting equipment, and so forth. Like we said: it's a big feature, but we think the wait will be worth it![/p][p][/p][h3]Scenery and Equipment Models... and the Turntable[/h3][p]As with previous updates we've been continuing to work on equipment model updates, as well as new scenery structures, including a revamped turntable bridge.[/p][p]Speaking of the turntable: we have added a control window to allow "remote control", as well as a new overlay interface which allows you to drag the bridge to the desired position, which it will automatically turn to. Hat tip to the Century of Steam team for inspiring us to improve the turntable interaction![/p][p][/p][p]Drag and drop turntable rotation:[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]Using the window to manually control the turntable, shown at 3X speed:[/p][p][/p][p][/p][h3]New Map Terrain Data Format[/h3][p]Although we don't officially support modding, we wanted to provide a heads-up that this update will change the map terrain data format to one that uses the RIFF format and improves terrain data load times. We expect this to simplify creating/manipulating the terrain data in mods, as we know some of you are keen to do. We'll share more details about the format once this update is available on an experimental branch.[/p][p][/p][h3]Wrap-Up[/h3][p]That's all we have to share for now. Naturally we've got a number of smaller enhancements and bug fixes queued up, and perhaps a surprise or two. We don't yet know when this update will be available on an experimental branch, but rest assured that we want you to have it as soon as possible.[/p][p]Thank you for reading and for supporting Railroader!
[/p]

This is a hot fix release that includes the following:

• Tutorial bug/typo fixes.
  
• Fix for broken Crews panel in the Company window.
  

There's a lot to learn about Railroader and for a long time now we have wanted to create a more interactive tutorial, with better cues and feedback. For those of you who are new to Railroader we hope that it helps get you on the right track, pun intended.

If you run into any stumbling blocks please let us know in the Discord or Steam Community! Note that if you had previously started but not completed the tutorial, you will need to restart it with a fresh Company mode game.

Also in this release:

• Fixed AE Waypoint Mode pulling high of switch when the most logical route would be to change directions. (RR-789)
  
• Fixed/adjusted Bryson CTC blocks. Boundaries are now west of wye and service track switches, and east of easternmost crossover. (RR-783)
  
• Fixed Barker's Creek West occupancy gap. (RR-787)
  
• Fixed keyboard input for diesel throttle/reverser difficult to move notch-by-notch. (RR-805)
  
• Fixed case where loader saved while loading in an older version could continue animating as if it were loading in the new version.
  
• Fixed releasing mouse button over window while dragging control not releasing the control.
  
• Fixed Invert Mouse preference not respected in overhead camera view. (RR-809)
  
• Adjusted `/stats` display to use a rolling average and show top and bottom 1% frame times, rather than min and max.
  
• Increased click distance for angleocks.
  
• Internal: Fixed unload assuming cars have single load. (RR-807)
  
• Internal: The new tutorial is implemented in Lua, but please bear in mind that the implementation is tailored to that purpose and not intended to support modding at this time. Official modding support is still something we plan to look into in the future.

After this we plan to get back to focusing on MoW work. More to come on that down the line!

Hello Railroaders!

Today we are sharing what we've been up to since the release of 2024.6.11 back in March. We've been focused on two big features/efforts: Maintenance of Way and an enhanced tutorial.

Before we go into it, please keep in mind that this is all "work in progress" and may change dramatically between now and when it is released to you!

[h2]Maintenance of Way[/h2]

Maintenance of Way is a big part of running a railroad, and we think the gameplay of Railroader will be made that much richer by representing it. In addition, for quite some time now we've had some visual ideas we've been wanting to try out, including dynamically changing the track and surrounding vegetation to reflect condition and maintenance. It's pretty exciting to see these ideas finally in action.

It's too soon to go into full detail about where we want to take this feature as we are still testing and developing it, but the general idea is that like your equipment, track will take wear and require maintenance. Track that's in poor condition will have speed restrictions.



Maintaining track will require running a MoW train consisting of a work car and material cars (for example, gondolas filled with ballast, ties, and rail). The work car will consume the resources (purchased similarly to how fuel is currently purchased) and repair nearby track.



We're also picturing that you'll be able to control the class the MoW train maintains track to. For example, you could keep your main line sparkling while the sidings and branches receive minimal maintenance. Or allow the entire railroad to gracefully languish!



[h2]Revamping The Tutorial[/h2]

Making a good tutorial is hard. We put a lot of work into Railroader's tutorial prior to our initial release, and while we know that it could be better, until now we haven't felt that we had the time to invest in it to take it to the next level.

We have a lot of information to share with new players, but we want to do it in a way that is more interactive, gives better feedback to the player, and allows them to learn about Railroader in smaller chunks. Getting to this point, which is still very much a work in progress, has taken a lot of work, but we think it will be worth it!

Here's one of the new tutorial pages:



One of the cool things about the new tutorial is that it is built in Lua. We first started experimenting with Lua in Railroader early this year when we used it to write a suite of tests for the Auto Engineer. It's been fun to build this functionality out, as well as think about how it might be used by modders in the future.

[h2]Wrap-Up[/h2]

We're also continuing to work on model updates, scenery, and bug fixes, but MoW and the tutorial are the two big (really big!) features we've been working on. We don't currently have an estimate of when the next update will be available, but we do expect to release MoW on an experimental branch, possibly as an optional feature, and look forward to hearing your feedback on it. Thank you for reading, and for your support!

We are pleased to announce that Railroader 2024.6 is now available on the main branch after several months on the experimental branch! This release brings major new features like Auto Engineer Waypoint Mode and Timetables, along with new engines, new scenery, and numerous other enhancements and fixes. Check out our announcement post for a full overview of what's new:

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1683150/view/498314610455086160

An important note for those of you who were using mods with Railroader 2024.5: please check them carefully for updates for 2024.6! Many 2024.5 mods are incompatible unless updated! (Railroader does not yet officially support mods.)

Also, a reminder that we plan to remove the 2024.5.x branch on March 17th.

[h2]What's Next for Railroader?[/h2]

We expect to continue building out scenery as well as refining our equipment, but there are two key features that we plan to focus on over the next few months: Maintenance of Way and the Tutorial.

Railroader's current tutorial is functional but we see a lot of possibilities to make it much more visual and engaging. One of our goals is that Railroader be accessible to players who are interested but don't know a lot about trains, and we see this as an integral part of that.

Maintenance of Way is something we've been talking about internally for a long time. Aside from being an interesting part of railroading to simulate, we think it would add compelling tension for mid-to-late game players, as well as being a natural means of making completing milestones more immersive. We have a lot of ideas we're excited to work on, but this is a very large feature and we expect it to take some time before we have progress to share – or a new experimental branch to try it out!

Thank you to our Railroader community for your support! We're happy to finally share all of the progress in 2024.6 with you, and look forward to making Railroader even better in the future.