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Iron Roads News

0.6.4 - A few bugfixes

Our biggest news this month is that our baby arrived! While exciting for us, it does mean that our Iron Roads updates have been a little lighter than usual. Work on the new map generator is going well, but it is not quite ready for release yet.

Some fixes we have made however are:

  • Starred contracts are hidden during the tutorial
  • We’ve adjusted the UI scaling on small screens to avoid content spilling off the screen
  • Fix for a bug with some preference switches that we introduced in 0.6.3


Thanks as always to those who have given us feedback, and we’re looking forward to sharing the new map generator with you very soon!

0.6.3 - A new UI for load selection

The most visible change in this update is the new load selection system. It is simpler than its predecessors, but it is also more flexible for restricting what cargo and passengers can run on a route.

The other major change is essentially invisible, but we've reworked how the game draws UI screens to be more flexible, and make it easier for us to improve the UI in this and future updates. The new cargo system was our test patient for that new system!

[h3]Load selection system[/h3]



In this update you can choose between 4 top-level options when restricting what a service will carry:

  • Load anything Still the default; in this case a service will carry any and all types of passengers and cargo
  • Load only cargo and Load only passengers These options allow you to restrict a service to carry only cargo or passengers. From feedback we realised that most people who did want to customise loading, wanted one of these two options, so we've made them more easily accessible
  • Load custom When you choose this you are presented with a full list of cargo types and passenger types, and you can enable/disable them individually for total control




We've also edited the information box on the service screen that leads to this UI to clarify what buttons correspond to specific displays

[h3]More minor changes[/h3]

  • You now earn rewards when manually upgrading a town so you don’t lose out on non-track rewards when upgrading that way
  • There was an exploit where you could generate infinite money using the reserve land tool, that is gone!
  • Today is the last day of April, so the May challenge begins tomorrow!


[h3]Up next - new map generator![/h3]

The next update is already well under way - we've been experimenting with the Wave Function Collapse algorithm to improve our map generation. Initial experiments are encouraging, and we hope to have that ready for release quite soon.

Thanks as always for all the feedback!

0.6.2 Update

0.6.2 is live now with a new monthly challenge for April, and a fix for services that call at the same town multiple times in their route. For example in the screenshot shown below, passengers waiting at Trembley for Neptunia should not board until the train calls at Trembley the second time on the way back from Mercy. Previously the passengers would board immediately, and hog seats on the leg to Mercy, but now they wait politely for the train to return before board.



It is a smallish change, but the previous behaviour had made routes where the train called at the same station many times non-viable, and this fixes that!

We'll be working through a number of issues like this, and other UI issues, in the 0.6.x series of updates. Generally we'll push them to the beta branch as we make them, and group/test these into updates from time to time!

A fix for multi-city routes on the beta branch

I've just pushed an update to the beta branch to improve passenger routing on services that call at the same town multiple times in their route. For example in the screenshot shown passengers at Trembley for Neptunia should not board until the train calls at Trembley the second time on the way back from Mercy. Previously the passengers would board immediately, hog seats on the way to Mercy, and sadly this skewed the game quite strongly towards 2 city routes.



This is fixed on the beta branch now - please let me know if you find any issues with it. We'll be working through a number of issues like this, and other UI issues, in the 0.6.x series of updates. Generally we'll push them to the beta branch as we make them, and group/test these into updates from time to time!

0.6.1 Fixing a crash

There was a crash if you added carriages to a train just after it had flipped direction. This is fixed now, thanks to those who let us know about it!