Dear Community,
once again, thank you for all your feedback, your questions and your general interest in the development process of Railroads Online!
Today, we’d like to give you an update on the current status of the game, what we’re currently working on (or waiting for) and what is going to happen next. Additionally, we would like to answer a few more of your questions. So, let’s get started!
What we are currently working onThe current focus for any updates and patches to the beta branch is improving the overall performance where we can right now. This includes fixing random game crashes and low performance issues, even when no train is being moved.
In addition, we are working on optimizations for the render distance of both vehicles and rails which will ultimately affect vehicle components, particle effects, animations, and blueprints. We are also investigating further improvements to vehicle physics and the associated collision behavior. An improved vehicle setup to prevent popcorning is in testing but still in a very early phase.
We’ve also started working on new vehicle models, buildings and even new sound effects – but they are still quite some time away.
What is happening behind-the-scenes As mentioned before, quality assurance runs are our main priority in order to work out a clean development plan. We’re happy to announce that QA runs are happening right now and we should receive the first results soon. At the same time, we’re looking into possible partners that can support us for the source code review, as well as for proper localization. Depending on the results of the QA runs and the code review, we will be able to move forward with the roadmap planning – YAY!
More questionsWhat’s the makeup of the astragon team?astragon is supporting the development of Railroads Online! with a team of experts from different departments: Producing, product management, sales, marketing, PR and social media/community management. As a publisher we offer expertise and resources to lessen the responsibilities of the development team so that they can solely focus on just that – developing the game.
Will updates take longer now?Possibly, yes. We do want to keep up a regular update schedule, but with QA testing updates before their release, it might take longer than you are used to. We do believe that introducing QA to improve the output is more positive than some assume.
But if your QA team will be testing the beta before it releases, what’s the sense of having US play the beta?The QA team will try to make sure that the updates do not break things in the game that are already working and flag the most glaring and obvious issues. However, your feedback, support, knowledge and bug reports will still be super important for the development of the game. This project would not be possible without you!
We hope this status update gives you a bit of an insight into what’s currently going on behind the scenes. If you have more questions, feel free to ask them in the comments below and we’ll try to answer as much as we can at this moment in time.
We wish you all a great weekend!
The Railroads Online! Team