Railroader News

Happy New Year! This build contains an assortment of improvements and fixes:

• Added Interchange Blocking setting which controls the degree to which cars delivered at the interchange(s) are blocked (grouped) by their destinations.
  
• Added proper UI Scaling preference, allowing you to set the scaling that works for you.
  
• Revamped overhead camera (2) control to move more smoothly.
  
• Revamped Auto Engineer to improve stopping accuracy. Reduced fusee stop distance.
  
• Improved fouling distance calculation.
  
• Fixed not able to maintain tier if selecting a lower tier when performance is below current tier conditions. (RR-223)
  
• Replaced daytime environment audio.
  
• Limited tree and detail density to 1.0 in the hopes that this will mitigate crashes.
  
• Changed base road numbers for a number of cars.
  
• Fixed issue for multiplayer clients that could cause cars to show up out of position, e.g. at Robinson Gap. (RR-154)
  
• Gravity fed mines (Robinson Gap, Alarka Copper) now run regardless of whether there are players present.
  

Hello Railroader-ers! What a year this has been! Started out quiet, going out with a roar! The past three weeks have been a whirlwind. We've been amazed by the response to Railroader. In building Railroader one of the things I wondered was whether people would "get it". My guide was (and continues to be) to build the game I wanted to play. It's been extremely gratifying to find that, yes, people "get it"!

At the same time, we have a lot of work to do! Transparently, as much as we've been delighted by the positive response, we've been quite surprised by some of the bugs and crashes you've managed to find! Thank you for your patience as we continue to learn how best to support you, and work to prioritize and fix those bugs. We're also working on balancing bug-fixing vs carving out time to build and refine the systems in the game, such as the contract system and the AI engineer, so that Railroader can continue to stabilize and move forward.

Speaking of the future, perhaps you are wondering what our plans are? We're working on refining our roadmap and aim to share it with you in early January!

Thank you for supporting what we are building here. We wish you a wonderful holiday season and hope that you are able to take some time for the things in life that are important to you. Whether that's spending time with family, hiking in the Smoky Mountains, or classifying that cut of cars that just showed up at the interchange.

Happy Holidays and Happy New Year!

-Adam (Imtzo)


p.s. – Here's a sneak peek at something we're working on for next year.

In response to your feedback we've made further adjustments to the contract system. We aren't done tinkering with it - this is part of what Early Access is about - so we look forward to hearing your impressions!

• Contract tiers can only be raised after 3 days of performance data. Raising more than one tier requires 5 days.
  
• A penalty is assessed when downgrading a contract. $250 per tier downgrade, plus an additional penalty depending on how new the contract was. (The longer running a contract, the less the penalty.)
  
• If performance averages below 50% for three consecutive days, the tier will be lowered by two and penalty withdrawn.
  

Also:

• Customer performance is now updated at midnight. Payments for captive service are now received before paying shop crew wages. Fixed -1 shop crew. (RR-197)
  
• Connelly and Walker no longer share storage between the camps. This change will cause existing saves to start with 0 logs/pulpwood in storage in these camps, but going forward they will maintain a higher - ahem - backlog of logs. (RR-208)
  
• Fixed map icons with incorrect scale. (RR-207)
  
• Fixed reputation not updating due to unexpected data. (RR-201)
  
• Fixed MU logic not using correct locomotive as its target. (RR-209)
  
• Lean Left/Right bindings are now used by the overhead camera rotation, and their orientation has been fixed. (RR-204, RR-205)
  

• Contracts have been reworked: (RR-144)
  
  
  
  • Contracts no longer expire or have a term.
    
  • Contracts may be changed each day (change takes effect at midnight).
    
  • Performance at each tier is calculated only after delivery at that tier.
    
• Added customizable key bindings for most keyboard input. In game, open: Preferences, Input, Customize Bindings.
  
• Locations panel enhancements/fixes: (RR-174)
  
  
  
  • Customers now display correct percentage for loads in storage.
    
  • Cleaned up display of output rates.
    
  • Formulaic industries such as Whittier Saw Mill, paper mills, etc. now display a warning when they are not able to produce due to lack of input loads or full output storage.
    
• Yard mode AI will now stop upon coupling with a cut. (RR-29)
  
• Enabled disconnecting gladhands when not coupled. (RR-51)
  
• Extended length of Bryson Bridge and Fontana Bridge sites. (RR-189)
  
• Removed condition that interchange track contain only freight in order to add ordered cars to it. (RR-173)
  
• Fixed Bryson W interlocking block tripping up AI trains. (RR-178)
  
• Fixed error parsing autosave filenames with "- Copy" appended to filename. (RR-166)