Iron Roads News

[p]We've done a lot of work on making Iron Roads smoother to play recently, and those changes are collected into the 0.6.7 update that we have just pushed to the beta branch.[/p][p][/p][p]If you are interested in trying it there are instructions on how to try Steam betas here. We'd love to hear your thoughts![/p][p][/p][h2]Create routes directly on the map[/h2][p][/p][p][/p][p]No more need to memorise town names! When editing a route, buttons will appear directly on the map to add a town to the end of the route. The old UI remains to fine tune the route, but for the most part you won’t need to use it.
[/p][h2]Town screen overhaul[/h2][p][/p][p]The town screen is an interesting problem for a designer. Iron Roads’ minimalist aesthetic is a core part of its identity, but for the game to have depth, players need information on how their network is performing. The town screen had become a bit of a dumping ground for us to add in this detail, and the screen had become crowded over time.
[/p][p][/p][p]The most important question the town screen can answer is why is my town is not growing? because the answer to that is also the answer to what should I do next?. To simplify this, we’ve added a new *issues* display up top of the town screen to summarise growth problems. This saves you from reading the growth numbers scattered across this screen like tea leaves. All the information we had previously is still there on the new screen, but have now been collected together in an infographic for clarity.[/p][p][/p][h2]New map generator[/h2][p][/p][p][/p][p]There is a new map generator. Maps in sandbox used a very small subset of the available landscape tiles, and as a result they were aesthetically lacking. The new generator uses the WFC algorithm to fill the shorelines with a wide range of tiles and patterns.
[/p][h2]Mini town badges[/h2][p][/p][p][/p][p]There has been a lot of feedback that town badges are too large, and cover critical map space. We’ve added a smaller variant of the town badge with just the name that shows at low zoom levels. It will automatically swap back to the previous badge as you zoom in.[/p][p][/p][h2]Automatic collection of growth rewards[/h2][p][/p][h2][/h2][p]When a town grows, the game rewards you with resources. Previously it was necessary to click to collect this reward. The intention was to ensure players understood where the funds were coming from, but collecting rewards became irritating busy work. The reward indicator still shows in the updated version, but closes automatically, animating the reward into place.[/p][p][/p][h2]Bugfixes[/h2][p][/p][p]We've fixed:[/p]

• [p]A bug with the cargo chooser that could cause issues with custom loadouts[/p]

• [p]A crash that could occur after removing a stop from a service[/p]

• [p]A bug where clicking the arrivals table could jump to random screens[/p]

We are doing final touches on a big update with a slew of quality of life upgrades, but it wasn’t quite ready in time to push the August challenge. This patch contains the August challenge, and we hope to push out the bigger changes in 0.6.7 in a few days!

This is a tiny patch to prepare the July monthly challenge.

Initially we hoped to finish the map generator for this update, but work on that led to some UI improvements, all of which snowballed into experimentation with a new game mode. We think you’ll enjoy the results of this work, but you will need some patience as it grew far enough that we couldn’t finish it all in this month’s update.

Assuming the update doesn’t snowball even further, the plan is to push this to the beta branch sometime in the coming month. Keep watching, and we’ll announce it here when we do!

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!

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!