Iron Roads News

A large number of bugfixes and small changes to get ready for expanding the playtest. We spent some time finessing the scenario contracts, making sure they still make sense in light of various updates and balancing changes we have made in recent weeks. We created various new contracts, minor changes to the map layouts, and rethought the Desert Dew scenario to includes passenger contracts alongside cargo.

The new Desert Dew scenario isn’t in the demo, but we are going to start a smaller, more focussed playtest of the non-demo content, so please get in touch if you are interested in trying that!

Other changes include:

• Removed minimap that showed towns in route screen
  
• Added stop names to the ‘remove’ buttons
  
• New game window now has a text background to make it easier to read
  
• Added new art for challenge mode menu screen
  
• Single add/remove/max button on edit train
  
• Fixed the “Bermuda triangle” issue with waypoints where trains would mysteriously disappear as they pass through
  
• Fixed a bug where unstraightened trains would incorrectly set the occupancy flag on track and not allow any further trains in
  
• Renamed trains
  
• Added new trains (not in demo)
  
• Further performance work for busy maps
  

The first big change in this update is that trains now slow down around tight corners. The second change is that we’ve stripped Appleberry Farm and its fields out of the Forgotten Valley scenario, in favour of a town called Hazelmere. Hazelmere has a similar, but improved (we hope!) version of the Appleberry Farm mechanic. The third big change is that potential passengers only spawn when there is track laid that would allow completion of their desired route.

On the music front, there are now melodies to play over the generated beeps on completion of contracts, as well as an update to the title track.

There was a lot of work on the core engine to make these changes, so this update is more likely than most to introduce new bugs. If you see anything, please let us know!

This update also marks the beginning of our path to Early Access. To that end we’ll likely hold off on new mechanics until after Early Access, and look to focus more on bugs and playability issues. Also, we’ll be starting a playtest of the Endless mode and other content that will not be part of the Steam Demo. This will be a Steam playtest with a smaller group of players who have given feedback in the past, so let us know if you are interested!

Some other smaller fixes:

• Fix for bug that would allow you to build a tunnel directly underneath another tunnel as long as they were in line
  
• Fix for a number of bugs with routing, specifically one where trains would do laps inside the station when they were unable to exit to a nonstop zone
  
• Fixed a bug where we were incorrectly quoting departures as arrivals in the town screen
  
• Added departures to the town screen
  
• Update to shore/sea art
  
• Significant performance improvements for large networks
  

Another minor version increase, another batch of bug fixes. Our focus is still on the new Endless mode, but we’ve ticked off a few bugs along the way, so we’re pushing 0.2.9 with those

We have:

• Fixed a bug where the top bar did not show in certain modes in the Desktop version
  
• Fixed a bug that could cause the train stuck warning to flash on and off
  
• Reduced zoom inertia when using QE keys
  
• Fixed a bug that could cause settings not to get upgraded and preserved
  
• Fixed a bug that could block deletion of an old save game in some cases
  
• Reduced an editing lag that happens with big networks. There is still more work to do here though as network sizes continue to grow
  
• Fixed a bug where clicking on trains was selecting a nearby, but incorrect, train
  Improved graphs on the mobile version, though again, there is still more work to be done on this
  
• Updated the SDL version from 2.0.22 to 2.28.0 - hopefully this will change nothing, but it may be the source of some curious bugs, so do let us know if that happens
  

Apologies, this update resets your settings completely, so you’ll see the welcome screen when booting and have to update all your settings (oh, the joys of pre-release software!). That said, we have altered the code so this shouldn’t need to happen again in the future

Thanks for all the bug reports and other feedback, and back to Endless mode for us!

Oops, 0.2.7 went out with a crash in the new tutorial section. This is a tiny patch to fix that!

The changes are fairly minor this week. Most notably we’ve swapped to a new map generator for the Challenge mode. The shapes are larger and more continuous, which looks better, and gives more variety for gameplay. Also, rather than evenly distributing fields across the whole map, they are grouped in certain areas.

Other than that, some more minor changes:

• We’ve swapped the challenges to be Fortnightly rather than Weekly
  
• The late graph has been removed
  
• We’ve expanded the tutorial to show some example uses of nonstop zones, oneway orders, and waypoints. This is following feedback from quite a few people that the tutorial often explained how to do something, but it rarely explained why you may want to
  

Thanks as always for the feedback, it is a critical part of our process for improving the game!