Derail Valley News

Hi everyone,

We're incredibly flattered to see the 98% positive rating on Steam from 50+ recent reviews, and will continue to do our best to make Derail Valley better and bigger, going into 2020!

Given our story of how we went from a few flatmates dreaming about a next-gen train sim to now having our own train simulator be the highest-rated one in the world, it seemed that going for "The VR Game of the Year" Steam Award might be worth a shot.

Vote for Derail Valley in the embedded widget above, or here:
https://store.steampowered.com/steamawards/nominations

Thank you so much for the superb positive feedback over the past few months, we can't wait to share the huge new update with you in Q1 next year!

Hi everyone!

It’s been a few months since our last post, and with many of you asking about the progress lately, we decided we needed to make a new status update. In principle, our news hasn't changed much - the whole team is still working on the new major update every day, focusing mainly on bug-fixes and polish. The release date is still unknown, however we do realize that it’s time for some fresh information. Therefore, this time we’re excited to reveal some never-before-seen footage and screenshots of the stuff we’ve been working on!



What used to be known as the ‘Hazmat’ update, we now call ‘Derail Valley: Overhauled’. With the new name we want to illustrate that almost every aspect of the game has been improved. The Hazmat cargo will only be a small part of it.

‘Overhauled’ is extremely important to us, as its success will define the future of Derail Valley. Despite the time pressure, we need to get things right the first time we launch it. This means that, given there’s still a lot of work to be done, we’ll need to stretch the update’s release into 2020. We didn’t originally plan for this, and technically could still rush to have the update released this year; however, that would leave us with two major problems:

1. We’d need to cut bug-fixes and polish in order to meet the deadline. This is what we needed to do with the original release, which left us with numerous issues that we can now afford to avoid.

2. We’d clash with AAA releases and the general press saturation that comes with the Christmas period. With the update being so important to us, we need to maximize the chance of having good press/influencer coverage when ‘Overhauled’ comes out.



Needless to say, rest assured that we want the update released sooner than anyone else, but “when it’s ready” is simply the best approach we can take for everyone involved. The same is also why we don’t like revealing information too much in advance, but we understand the need to be in the loop.



Prior to the release we’ll have videos going into detail about what’s new, but knowing that you guys are thirsty for info, here's a list of some of the upcoming changes:

The complete overhaul of derailment, coupling, and brake simulation, major changes to UI, inventory, item retrieval and in-game economy, as well as a fully remade harbor complex. The update also includes the addition of Hazmat cargo and effects, worldwide railway signs, new licenses, military base, train status saving, damage detection and many related interfaces and gameplay features. One of the core goals with the update is to have a much more engaging career building gameplay, leaning towards the eventual 100+ hour playthrough mark. Apart from that there are numerous improvements to performance, VR controls, non-VR controls and many, many bug fixes, and we’re still not done.



With all that being said, we hope you guys understand why this took time. Once ‘Overhauled’ is out, we plan to go back to our regular weekly updates, just like we used to do before build #77. Please be patient a little more and we’ll do what we can to have the update ready for release as early next year as possible.

Hi everyone,

With the next update increasingly becoming a hot topic, a proper status report post is due. Technically, our statement didn't change much from the last Steam post, but it's time to reiterate. We frequently respond to questions about the progress on Discord, but understandably not everyone can follow that.

As most of you know, for several months now all of the team has been working on the first upcoming major Derail Valley update, titled “Hazmat.” Due to notable code differences between the game versions, we stopped releasing small updates to the public version and are entirely focused on completing the Hazmat one instead.

The Hazmat update will be big, and despite its name, will include a lot more than just hazardous cargo. We’re treating this update as if we were releasing the game for the first time, except this time around we have a lot more time to properly address things than when the game was originally released. We'll make everything in it as ready as reasonably possible, before announcing the release date.

Knowing it would take a while, we weren't sharing many details about the update in order not to prematurely over-hype it. It is still too early to know the exact contents of the update which is why we've been quiet, but when it does get announced we’ll need half a dozen video updates just to showcase the highlights.

I'm glad to say that, even though there were some very tedious, difficult and risky hurdles to overcome, at this point most of them are behind us. The update is progressing very well and we’re doing internal test builds on a weekly basis. Almost all of the core features and changes are now complete and usable in-game. For a while now we’ve been in the phase of testing, resolving bug fixes and doing general polish and balancing.

Our primary focus with this update was about giving the game a focus on gameplay, with more goals to strive for as a player, and more challenges to overcome - however, to achieve that, we had to make a lot of changes to the game that would otherwise make it unfair. Therefore, we’ve entirely revamped how derailments work, how couplers work, how you retrieve items, we’ve added speed signs and made a ton of core improvements that are yet to be revealed. With Hazmat we aim to get Derail Valley to a state where we can focus on adding new content, rather than the bug fixing.

That concludes this status report. The release announcement will still take a while, but if things go according to plan, it should be the next post coming from us!

-Slobodan

Hi everyone,

Today we have another small update, while the major one is in progress.



For the SteamVR version of the game we added support for Valve Index, or namely its unique controllers. With Index you can grab and let go of items and levers in Derail Valley by physically squeezing or letting go of the controllers, which are attached to your hand by a clever strap system.

Apart from that, the behavior is mostly the same as with other kinds of VR controllers. We couldn't take advantage of finger tracking unfortunately, as this isn't supported by the third-party VR input system that Derail Valley is based on, yet.



We fixed some of the most pressing recent bugs, namely the locomotive remote being unusable in VR, and the cars appearing sunken through the rails.



In case you missed it, we wrote a bit about the Hazmat update progress in our Build #78 news post. We're happy to say that we've solved some major obstacles since (got massive explosions working, made a notable performance improvement and got coupler & derailment overhaul working), and the update has been shaping up nicely, day by day.



Controls:

- (SteamVR) Added support for Index controllers (legacy, no finger tracking)
- Fixed being able to get stuck moving in VR smooth locomotion, when no input was given

Bug fixes:

- Fixed locomotive remote joysticks being difficult to grab in VR
- Fixed some cars having bogies appearing off-tracks until touched with another car

Hey everyone,

For many months now, we've been working on an upcoming major update, known as the "Hazmat update". In the last few weeks the whole team's been working on it exclusively, so the number of isolated fixes ready to release in the meantime was limited. Still, today we've accumulated enough of the fixes to constitute an in-between update.



Today's update mostly focuses on bug fixes, such as:

- Fixed the camera tilt bug
- Fixed VR belt points taking items when they shouldn't
- Optimized item spawning
- Alt-tab now pauses the game
- Pause stops the sounds too



Despite being called "Hazmat" (short for Hazardous Materials cargo), the update will include a lot more. We grew the scope, so its primary mission would be to reach a stable version - as if we were releasing Derail Valley for the first time. Apart from explosions, the main improvements will include the overall fidelity and game-play improvements (more goals, more challenges, better tutorial). This will involve a complete coupler rework, speed signs, new licenses, among many more additions. We will have dedicated news posts for each feature subset, as we near the update release.

At this point, most of the core features for the Hazmat update are near completion. About two weeks ago we started testing them and are now doing optimizations and general polish. That's the current status, but note that this will take a while. There is no release date estimate yet.

In the meantime we are likely to release a few more smaller bug fixing updates, such as this one!



Bug fixes:

- Fixed the recent bug with camera tilting while in a locomotive cab
- Fixed VR belt point getting stuck in grab mode
- Fixed sound playing when the game is paused
- Improved prevention of falling through ground when teleporting to steep slopes in VR

Misc:

- Optimized item spawning
- Game will now pause when switching windows (alt-tab)
- Controls booklet now dynamically adapts to current input device
- Fixed being unable to zoom with a booklet in hand in NonVR
- Extended remote controller battery life
- Command debug.toggleui now also disables in-game tooltips (NonVR)
- Shunter’s reverser can no longer be changed when throttle is applied, in NonVR
- Increased NonVR crosshair and interaction text font size on high-res screens (e.g. 4k)