Iron Roads News

We're largely working on the Endless Mode now. While that is not quite ready for playtesting, we have made fixes and tweaks that apply throughout all the modes of play. This is a bundle of those changes.

We've developed Neptunia's characteristic mechanics this week. You can now make more money by setting up routes to Neptunia, and doing so will encourage Neptunia itself to expand. However it will now do so at the cost of any nearby fields, which in turn limits your ability to make money out of fares to and from Appleberry Farm. We want there to be choices with who you serve and how, with payoffs either way.

Another significant change is that passengers no longer give up on journeys. It was difficult to communicate when and why this was happening, and it can be especially annoying when passengers gave up on their journey at a transfer station.

Other minor changes

• Fields don't just disappear, but are replaced by a destroyed field sprite when you build through them
  
• Removed an artefact on the desert map
  
• Clicking anywhere on a train service row expands it
  
• The top bar buttons now jump to the corresponding graphs
  
• Holding shift means you can WASD around the map a lot quicker
  

Ok, back to work! Recently, our work seems to have been amenable to pushing lots of small patches, so I hope we can keep pushing these small upgrades on a regular basis.

Another small update to get some fixes we made during the week out there. We have:

- Fixed a bug that allowed you to extend stations into town tiles, and sometimes crash when doing so
- Fixed some broken art tiles in Tipsy Tavern
- Fixed a crash that would happen if you deleted a station when a train was loading or unloading at that station

Savegames are broken by this update, so if you need a Steam branch to finish an old game, please let us know!

We are streaming as part of the Capitalism and Economy fest. It is pre-recorded so we can't answer questions live, but drop by our forums if there is anything you want to know!

This patch largely consists of bugfixes ahead of the Capitalism and Economy fest on Monday, but we also added a screenshot button to the highscore screen shown at the end of challenges

• Save slots are sorted now, with most recently accessed first
  
• We fixed a few bugs with the continue button that could occur after deleting slots
  
• We fixed a bug that would open the link discord screen when trying to start the Desert Dew challenge
  
• The buttons in the confirm dialogue have been properly aligned
  
• We fixed a bug where bridges and tunnels wouldn't destroy fields or other ornaments
  
• We fixed a bug where track draws wouldn't reliably destroy ornaments like fields
  
• We removed a special case that would stop you from collapsing a service in the trains window when there is only one left
  
• Adding to a new route, or jumping to the route from a train window, now scrolls it into view
  

This update breaks save games, so if you need access to a Steam branch to finish a game from the previous demo, get in touch!

This update adds music into Iron Roads just before 2023 ends.

We're taking a slightly unconventional approach to music and other than the menu screen music, nothing is authored. It is generated by the game, based on a ruleset that responds to your actions and those of your train network. As always, we intend to iterate this concept, and we'd love to hear your thoughts!

This update also reduces the challenge time from 7 in-game days to 5, and fixes a crash that could occasionally happen when booting. We'll be pushing a few more bugfixes early in the new year in preparation for an event, so do let us know if you notice anything that doesn't seem quite right.

We wanted to use this space to thank you all for your support, and we hope you all have a great 2024!