Train Sim World 4 Roadmap: October 2023
[h2]The Train Sim World Roadmap[/h2]
[h3]TL;DR (too long; didn’t read) summary [/h3]
A quick summary for those who don’t want to go through the whole article. There are more details on all these points within the Roadmap.
Whew, that was a bit exciting, wasn’t it? Welcome to the first Roadmap since the release of Train Sim World 4!
Thank you for all your excitement, feedback, and patience as we’ve released TSW4 into the world. We’ve been so happy to see all the amazing screenshots, Free Roam chaos, and first forays into the PC Editor – and, of course, start absorbing all your questions, suggestions, and thoughts. We’re still in the early stages of checking through it all – we hope this Roadmap will hopefully answer some of those initial questions and thoughts, as well as sharing what we’re working on to improve and enhance your game.
We’ll be revealing our new German route, talking about Formation Designer and Suspension improvements progress, checking in on Just Trains’ Blackpool Branches: , and summarising as much as we can that has come from the release. In this month’s Inside Development, we’ll also be chatting to our friends at LNER, to find out what it’s like to have your trains developed into a game!
Shall we get on with it, then?
[h2]NEW ROUTE - Maintalbahn: Aschaffenburg-Miltenberg[/h2]
Happy October to all of you, and happy German Unity Day to all our German players. We have a big, fat, Bavarian-shaped treat for you in this month’s Roadmap.
We can officially confirm that the first Dovetail-developed route for Train Sim World 4 is Maintalbahn: Aschaffenburg-Miltenberg! Congratulations to you eagle-eyed viewers who noticed our tease in the ’10 Things to Check Out in Train Sim World 4’ video from Friday.
Full of regional charm and featuring the new, sleek DB BR 642 DMU, as well as being ably supported by the BR 363 offering local shunter freight across the route, we can’t wait for you to wind alongside the Main river on this Diesel Desiro beauty.
Set in the modern day, and layering in the Red DB BR 628 – a recent addition if you own Niddertalbahn, there’s a lot of diversity and opportunity to explore in many different ways – particularly through the new-and-improved Scenario Planner, and Free Roam modes!
The price will be £24.99/$29.99/€29.99.
We’ll have much more information for you in the coming weeks, but, for the meantime, here are some WIP screenshots of what you’ll have to look forward to:
[h2]BLACKPOOL BRANCHES: Preston – Blackpool & Ormskirk[/h2]
The Just Trains team have been hard at work getting to the latter end of development of the route, and for this Roadmap, we wanted to direct you to their In Development blog (and, of course, show you some nice screenshots).
This time, they’re talking all-things landmarks, and boy are there some iconic places on the route! Check out the Blackpool Branches blog (plus, some more screenshots!)
The Iconic Blackpool Tower
Blackpool Pleasure Beach
Ainscough Mill
Ribble Viaduct
St Walburges Church
Warbreck Water Tower
And, in case you missed it, you can check out a little bit more about the route’s timetable (with a handy timelapse video), and the stations on the route with their handy Development Updates.
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
[h2]Formation Designer[/h2]
Work is ongoing to bring Formation Designer to Train Sim World 4 – your opportunity to create your own consists and use them in Scenarios or Free Roam Mode – and, whilst our current priorities are supporting your launch feedback, we wanted to share some screenshots of how it currently looks in-game.
Here you can see a sample custom formation within the new interface. Trains can be 100 vehicles long, but the longer the train, the more powerful you’ll need the locomotive to be!
Some of the options available whilst creating your Formation – including the (very) handy ‘flip formation’ option.
Here is the general UI for Formation Designer – you can see the key details around your formation including weight and power, to identify how you might want to use them in-game.
Work is ongoing, and we’ll update in future Roadmaps when we have more to share!
[h2]Suspension Improvements[/h2]
As mentioned in the Train Sim World 4 keynote video, the team are working on we can do to implement suspension improvements (i.e. include vertical as well as horizontal sway, that coincides with the way you’re driving).
You can see a first pass at this in the BR Class 323 in TSW4’s Training Center, but we still need to add air suspension to the locomotive (it is very bouncy at the moment). Our Train Physics team will be continuing to work on what this might look like across the trains that feature in the Standard Edition’s 3 Core routes, and, as with Formation Designer, we’ll update when we have more to share.
[h2]New Köln-Aachen timetable[/h2]
Work continues on the new Köln-Aachen timetable, which Joe is beavering away at. You can find out more details of what we’re planning by checking out August’s Roadmap article, linked above.
[h2]Post-launch patch (#1)[/h2]
We’re putting together the first post-release patch (after last week’s Early Access patch, and wanted to share some of the content you can expect.
We’re putting the final polish to it now, so players can expect this to launch very soon.
[h2]Future Patches[/h2]
Our plan is for smaller, frequent patches in the early launch window of TSW4, much of which will be dictated by your early feedback.
From our current lists, some of the areas we’re looking at include, but by are no means limited to:
[h2]Give us your best shot(s)![/h2]
We asked you to share with us your best shots using the new Photo Mode. And you did not disappoint. You can see the full Photo Mode collection, but here are some of our favourites:
Player captaingunadeep, showing off the Vectron during a rainy sunset.
Pixelade, capturing the unlikely combo of F125 and Austrian mountains on Free Roam.
Player nhilsubsolenovum, showing a foggy, moody British evening.
We genuinely thought richardwwoodward’s shot of Flying Scotsman was a photo. Phenomenal!
The Azuma hurtling through the East Coast Main Line, captured by paintbrushguy
And finally, bence950906, making full use of Free Roam and Photo Mode to make this German locos meeting!
[h2]The PC Editor (Beta)[/h2]
One of the biggest changes to come with the release of TSW4 was the opportunity for Steam and Epic players to experiment and create their own content with the launch of the PC Editor (Beta).
We’re very much in the early stages, and thank you for everyone who has been giving it a go and letting us know where your challenges are, so we can tailor tutorial materials accordingly.
Our first priority development-wise, is to establishing what does and doesn’t work with creating the basic types of content (assets, scenarios, routes, trains), and understanding how you play it – and therefore, which tutorials are needed.
We’ll be populating our PC Editor forum with helpful guides and FAQs to support those giving it a go – as well as providing some Masterclass sessions with our developers (starting next week!), to help you through. It isn’t an easy tool to learn, and collectively, we’ll be able to support each other to create something wonderful.
As a first step, we recommend learning about UE4, to give you some of the basics that will enable you to understand our adapted version of the Editor a little easier. Here’s a good beginner’s guide to kick you off:
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
Some of you, however, are taking the lead, and to finish off this section we wanted to share the work that player fecrails has done building his first simple route, with tracks, trains, and some scenery assets. Well done!
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
We also wanted to share the work undertaken by some players creating locomotives:
Oystein’s NoHAB Di3:
Check it out: https://forums.dovetailgames.com/threads/my-first-loco-for-tsw-nohab-di3.74459/#post-729555
Spac#1043’s P42DC:
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
[h2]Livery Designer usability[/h2]
Whilst this is a recurring theme of this month’s Roadmap, we want to work with you on the changes to Livery Designer, and how you’re finding using the tool.
Please let us know your thoughts on our Livery Designer Feedback Forum.
[h2]Community talking points[/h2]
Xbox Crashes
Our #1 priority at the moment is resolving an issue which is causing some Xbox players to crash in-game. Thanks everyone for your patience as we’re trying to diagnose the source of the problem. We’re working on it, but don’t have a full explanation for what is happening and why, but we will get there.
We generally use what we call ‘dev kits’ for our QA team to review new builds, as they (in most cases) are reflective of what you as players will see in-game upon release. Unfortunately, with the release of the Compatible Content last Tuesday, we’ve seen the ‘Retail kits’ (i.e. what we can access when certification from the platforms has taken place) behave differently to our testing environment. In this way, our beta community also were not experiencing issues until the day content went live too.
As a result of this situation, we now understand how to make dev kits simulate the Retail (live) environment, and will be implementing this into our testing plans moving forward.
As a temporary workaround if you’re experiencing this issue, putting your Xbox console into Offline mode (via Network Settings) will offer as a temporary workaround and all you will be able to access Train Sim World 4 without experiencing crashes during startup.
Please note, some users have reported it can take a short while to launch (up to 5 minutes) if you have a large amount of add-ons installed. Whilst this workaround should let you access the game without crashing, due to being offline you will not be able to use services that require an internet connection (such as Dovetail Live and Creation Center / Online Sharing Hub).
We will be updating this thread when we have an update: https://forums.dovetailgames.com/threads/xbox-crashes-weekend-update.74409/#post-728277
Note: we have held the Creators Club update for Xbox so we can get the crashing update live as soon as possible after we’ve resolved and tested a fix. If you would like to subscribe to Creators Club content in the meantime, you can do so via our website: https://creatorsclub.dovetailgames.com/
Player Mods
We are working on providing documentation for modders in the wake of TSW4’s launch, so hang tight everyone! Thanks for being patient.
To debunk one myth: it’s less of an Add-ons Manager issue, and more due to the fact that we've changed the compiled material format to support the Public Editor. It's not the whole reason, but it's a contributing factor.
Essentially, core mods seem to be in reasonable shape (like ‘God Mode’, which we believe has a TSW4 update for it already), but content mods will need a little more TLC. There are some fixes that help them work better which are in a future build, but it'll be an ongoing process. Texture mods, for instance, have had a good response to the improvements in the future build (previously mentioned).
For the time being, we recommend that players who do mod content hold fire until we’ve been able to offer guidance – otherwise they risk their work going to waste if we have to update anything to support them longer term.
We have a lot of modders in our beta community, who we’re actively working with to support, and we’ll update as soon as we have something tangible.
[h2]Audio – we need your help![/h2]
We’ve had some lovely feedback for the Audio work done on Antelope Line, as part of our trip to California to record real-life sounds from the route and the F125.
As we’re UK-based, getting authentic sounds for some content can be a huge undertaking for our Audio team, so we’d like to ask for your help. If you have direct access to and can record real-life sounds (safely, and with permission) – or have recorded them in the past (YouTube videos and non-in situ recordings aren’t what we’re looking for, apologies), we’ve set up an 'Audio - We Need Your Help!' thread where our Senior Audio Designer, Adam, can chat to you about them. Thank you in advance!
[h2]New-York Trenton performance[/h2]
We’ve noticed some players have been experiencing performance issues with the NEC: New York timetable with the updated timetable.
We are taking a look at the source of the issues – our initial investigations at this stage are reviewing passenger density, signalling computation, and the bi-level cars – however, at this stage we are unable to provide any more information or detail.
Any improvements made would be backported to the TSW3 version of the new timetable, when released.
[h2]Roadmap Livestream[/h2]
Exec Producer Matt, and Director of Community JD, will be talking about all the things we’ve featured above, and answering your questions in tonight’s Roadmap Live Stream, from 18:00 UTC on our YouTube and Twitch channels.
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
Have a question for us? Put it in our October Roadmap Q&A thread and we’ll answer as many as we can live tonight!
Find out more about Train Sim World 4 by following @trainsimworld on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Twitch, and TikTok.
[h3]TL;DR (too long; didn’t read) summary [/h3]
A quick summary for those who don’t want to go through the whole article. There are more details on all these points within the Roadmap.
- A New Route! - Announcing our first new German route for Train Sim World 4!
- Blackpool Branches: Preston – Blackpool & Ormskirk - Update on Just Trains’ Blackpool-Preston-Ormskirk route
- Formation Designer and Suspension Improvements - An update on where we're at with the upcoming features.
- PC Editor Initial Thoughts - Spotlighting useful guides and some early-on community projects!
- Photo Mode Showcase - Your best screenshots from TSW4 launch
- Update on Xbox crashes, Mods and New York-Trenton.
- A Patch is coming today! - Find out all the improvements and fixes we have planned.
- Inside Development: Train Sim World and Licensors - featuring Gareth Peate, a Graphic Designer for LNER!
Whew, that was a bit exciting, wasn’t it? Welcome to the first Roadmap since the release of Train Sim World 4!
Thank you for all your excitement, feedback, and patience as we’ve released TSW4 into the world. We’ve been so happy to see all the amazing screenshots, Free Roam chaos, and first forays into the PC Editor – and, of course, start absorbing all your questions, suggestions, and thoughts. We’re still in the early stages of checking through it all – we hope this Roadmap will hopefully answer some of those initial questions and thoughts, as well as sharing what we’re working on to improve and enhance your game.
We’ll be revealing our new German route, talking about Formation Designer and Suspension improvements progress, checking in on Just Trains’ Blackpool Branches: , and summarising as much as we can that has come from the release. In this month’s Inside Development, we’ll also be chatting to our friends at LNER, to find out what it’s like to have your trains developed into a game!
Shall we get on with it, then?
[h2]NEW ROUTE - Maintalbahn: Aschaffenburg-Miltenberg[/h2]
Happy October to all of you, and happy German Unity Day to all our German players. We have a big, fat, Bavarian-shaped treat for you in this month’s Roadmap.
We can officially confirm that the first Dovetail-developed route for Train Sim World 4 is Maintalbahn: Aschaffenburg-Miltenberg! Congratulations to you eagle-eyed viewers who noticed our tease in the ’10 Things to Check Out in Train Sim World 4’ video from Friday.
Full of regional charm and featuring the new, sleek DB BR 642 DMU, as well as being ably supported by the BR 363 offering local shunter freight across the route, we can’t wait for you to wind alongside the Main river on this Diesel Desiro beauty.
Set in the modern day, and layering in the Red DB BR 628 – a recent addition if you own Niddertalbahn, there’s a lot of diversity and opportunity to explore in many different ways – particularly through the new-and-improved Scenario Planner, and Free Roam modes!
The price will be £24.99/$29.99/€29.99.
We’ll have much more information for you in the coming weeks, but, for the meantime, here are some WIP screenshots of what you’ll have to look forward to:
[h2]BLACKPOOL BRANCHES: Preston – Blackpool & Ormskirk[/h2]
The Just Trains team have been hard at work getting to the latter end of development of the route, and for this Roadmap, we wanted to direct you to their In Development blog (and, of course, show you some nice screenshots).
This time, they’re talking all-things landmarks, and boy are there some iconic places on the route! Check out the Blackpool Branches blog (plus, some more screenshots!)
The Iconic Blackpool Tower
Blackpool Pleasure Beach
Ainscough Mill
Ribble Viaduct
St Walburges Church
Warbreck Water Tower
And, in case you missed it, you can check out a little bit more about the route’s timetable (with a handy timelapse video), and the stations on the route with their handy Development Updates.
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
[h2]Formation Designer[/h2]
Work is ongoing to bring Formation Designer to Train Sim World 4 – your opportunity to create your own consists and use them in Scenarios or Free Roam Mode – and, whilst our current priorities are supporting your launch feedback, we wanted to share some screenshots of how it currently looks in-game.
Here you can see a sample custom formation within the new interface. Trains can be 100 vehicles long, but the longer the train, the more powerful you’ll need the locomotive to be!
Some of the options available whilst creating your Formation – including the (very) handy ‘flip formation’ option.
Here is the general UI for Formation Designer – you can see the key details around your formation including weight and power, to identify how you might want to use them in-game.
Work is ongoing, and we’ll update in future Roadmaps when we have more to share!
[h2]Suspension Improvements[/h2]
As mentioned in the Train Sim World 4 keynote video, the team are working on we can do to implement suspension improvements (i.e. include vertical as well as horizontal sway, that coincides with the way you’re driving).
You can see a first pass at this in the BR Class 323 in TSW4’s Training Center, but we still need to add air suspension to the locomotive (it is very bouncy at the moment). Our Train Physics team will be continuing to work on what this might look like across the trains that feature in the Standard Edition’s 3 Core routes, and, as with Formation Designer, we’ll update when we have more to share.
[h2]New Köln-Aachen timetable[/h2]
Work continues on the new Köln-Aachen timetable, which Joe is beavering away at. You can find out more details of what we’re planning by checking out August’s Roadmap article, linked above.
[h2]Post-launch patch (#1)[/h2]
We’re putting together the first post-release patch (after last week’s Early Access patch, and wanted to share some of the content you can expect.
- Issues with Bremen-Oldenburg red lights
- Passengers not being visible on Peak Forest, Linke Rheinstrecke, and Luzern-Sursee
- Xbox Creators Club access
- Increasing the brake hiss from Rotem cab cars
- Azuma Coaches gangways now connected by electrical wiring
We’re putting the final polish to it now, so players can expect this to launch very soon.
[h2]Future Patches[/h2]
Our plan is for smaller, frequent patches in the early launch window of TSW4, much of which will be dictated by your early feedback.
From our current lists, some of the areas we’re looking at include, but by are no means limited to:
- Haptic feedback being too strong
- Missing collectible on Vorarlberg
- Scoring
- Imported liveries from TSW3 missing layers
- Camera navigability
- Free Roam crashes
- Azuma AWS and motor sounds
[h2]Give us your best shot(s)![/h2]
We asked you to share with us your best shots using the new Photo Mode. And you did not disappoint. You can see the full Photo Mode collection, but here are some of our favourites:
Player captaingunadeep, showing off the Vectron during a rainy sunset.
Pixelade, capturing the unlikely combo of F125 and Austrian mountains on Free Roam.
Player nhilsubsolenovum, showing a foggy, moody British evening.
We genuinely thought richardwwoodward’s shot of Flying Scotsman was a photo. Phenomenal!
The Azuma hurtling through the East Coast Main Line, captured by paintbrushguy
And finally, bence950906, making full use of Free Roam and Photo Mode to make this German locos meeting!
[h2]The PC Editor (Beta)[/h2]
One of the biggest changes to come with the release of TSW4 was the opportunity for Steam and Epic players to experiment and create their own content with the launch of the PC Editor (Beta).
We’re very much in the early stages, and thank you for everyone who has been giving it a go and letting us know where your challenges are, so we can tailor tutorial materials accordingly.
Our first priority development-wise, is to establishing what does and doesn’t work with creating the basic types of content (assets, scenarios, routes, trains), and understanding how you play it – and therefore, which tutorials are needed.
We’ll be populating our PC Editor forum with helpful guides and FAQs to support those giving it a go – as well as providing some Masterclass sessions with our developers (starting next week!), to help you through. It isn’t an easy tool to learn, and collectively, we’ll be able to support each other to create something wonderful.
As a first step, we recommend learning about UE4, to give you some of the basics that will enable you to understand our adapted version of the Editor a little easier. Here’s a good beginner’s guide to kick you off:
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
Some of you, however, are taking the lead, and to finish off this section we wanted to share the work that player fecrails has done building his first simple route, with tracks, trains, and some scenery assets. Well done!
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
We also wanted to share the work undertaken by some players creating locomotives:
Oystein’s NoHAB Di3:
Check it out: https://forums.dovetailgames.com/threads/my-first-loco-for-tsw-nohab-di3.74459/#post-729555
Spac#1043’s P42DC:
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
[h2]Livery Designer usability[/h2]
Whilst this is a recurring theme of this month’s Roadmap, we want to work with you on the changes to Livery Designer, and how you’re finding using the tool.
Please let us know your thoughts on our Livery Designer Feedback Forum.
[h2]Community talking points[/h2]
Xbox Crashes
Our #1 priority at the moment is resolving an issue which is causing some Xbox players to crash in-game. Thanks everyone for your patience as we’re trying to diagnose the source of the problem. We’re working on it, but don’t have a full explanation for what is happening and why, but we will get there.
We generally use what we call ‘dev kits’ for our QA team to review new builds, as they (in most cases) are reflective of what you as players will see in-game upon release. Unfortunately, with the release of the Compatible Content last Tuesday, we’ve seen the ‘Retail kits’ (i.e. what we can access when certification from the platforms has taken place) behave differently to our testing environment. In this way, our beta community also were not experiencing issues until the day content went live too.
As a result of this situation, we now understand how to make dev kits simulate the Retail (live) environment, and will be implementing this into our testing plans moving forward.
As a temporary workaround if you’re experiencing this issue, putting your Xbox console into Offline mode (via Network Settings) will offer as a temporary workaround and all you will be able to access Train Sim World 4 without experiencing crashes during startup.
Please note, some users have reported it can take a short while to launch (up to 5 minutes) if you have a large amount of add-ons installed. Whilst this workaround should let you access the game without crashing, due to being offline you will not be able to use services that require an internet connection (such as Dovetail Live and Creation Center / Online Sharing Hub).
We will be updating this thread when we have an update: https://forums.dovetailgames.com/threads/xbox-crashes-weekend-update.74409/#post-728277
Note: we have held the Creators Club update for Xbox so we can get the crashing update live as soon as possible after we’ve resolved and tested a fix. If you would like to subscribe to Creators Club content in the meantime, you can do so via our website: https://creatorsclub.dovetailgames.com/
Player Mods
We are working on providing documentation for modders in the wake of TSW4’s launch, so hang tight everyone! Thanks for being patient.
To debunk one myth: it’s less of an Add-ons Manager issue, and more due to the fact that we've changed the compiled material format to support the Public Editor. It's not the whole reason, but it's a contributing factor.
Essentially, core mods seem to be in reasonable shape (like ‘God Mode’, which we believe has a TSW4 update for it already), but content mods will need a little more TLC. There are some fixes that help them work better which are in a future build, but it'll be an ongoing process. Texture mods, for instance, have had a good response to the improvements in the future build (previously mentioned).
For the time being, we recommend that players who do mod content hold fire until we’ve been able to offer guidance – otherwise they risk their work going to waste if we have to update anything to support them longer term.
We have a lot of modders in our beta community, who we’re actively working with to support, and we’ll update as soon as we have something tangible.
[h2]Audio – we need your help![/h2]
We’ve had some lovely feedback for the Audio work done on Antelope Line, as part of our trip to California to record real-life sounds from the route and the F125.
As we’re UK-based, getting authentic sounds for some content can be a huge undertaking for our Audio team, so we’d like to ask for your help. If you have direct access to and can record real-life sounds (safely, and with permission) – or have recorded them in the past (YouTube videos and non-in situ recordings aren’t what we’re looking for, apologies), we’ve set up an 'Audio - We Need Your Help!' thread where our Senior Audio Designer, Adam, can chat to you about them. Thank you in advance!
[h2]New-York Trenton performance[/h2]
We’ve noticed some players have been experiencing performance issues with the NEC: New York timetable with the updated timetable.
We are taking a look at the source of the issues – our initial investigations at this stage are reviewing passenger density, signalling computation, and the bi-level cars – however, at this stage we are unable to provide any more information or detail.
Any improvements made would be backported to the TSW3 version of the new timetable, when released.
[h2]Roadmap Livestream[/h2]
Exec Producer Matt, and Director of Community JD, will be talking about all the things we’ve featured above, and answering your questions in tonight’s Roadmap Live Stream, from 18:00 UTC on our YouTube and Twitch channels.
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
Have a question for us? Put it in our October Roadmap Q&A thread and we’ll answer as many as we can live tonight!
Find out more about Train Sim World 4 by following @trainsimworld on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Twitch, and TikTok.
Photo taken in-game by tester Maik Goltz
