Derail Valley News

Hey all,

We've got several controls-related fixes today!



For nonVR players (or those playing using smooth locomotion in VR), your character will no longer drift and suddenly move when they are supposed to be standing still in moving vehicles. You should also no longer be pushed up the tender as easily if leaning in VR.



Using a menu option, you can now teleport back to the last used locomotive. Later on when we add the caboose, it will provide an option to teleport to it as well, making it an essential tool to teleport back and forth between two ends of a train (or map, if strategically located?). This feature is still in experimental phase.



Those of you who wished to invert mouse Y-axis can now do so with the console command debug.InvertMouseY and setting it to either 'true' or 'false'.

We've also fixed an issue from previous build where quitting the game while using smooth locomotion in VR would mess up player position on game load.



Controls:

- Fixed nonVR player drifting when in moving vehicles
- Fixed player being nudged onto tender sometimes in steam locomotive
- Added “teleport to last loco” button to main menu (experimental)
- Added console command to invert mouse Y-axis
\ Debug.InvertMouseY (true/false)
- Fixed smooth locomotion save-state causing faulty game load as of #65

See you soon with another update!

Hi all,



We've completely reworked the way tracks are generated and rendered. They are now generated in real-time, in-game.

This brings many improvements such as significantly smaller build size (60% reduction), much faster build-making process and notable optimizations with all railways further than 350m being drawn with a simpler model, as well as GPU instanced rendering.

In future this change will allow us to further improve performance, dynamically change tracks in real-time and eventually make world mod support, if we reach that goal.



We streamlined many job-related issues with a very simple improvement that involves how players take jobs - by adding Job Overviews.

When you go to a station office, on a desk you'll find Job Overviews. Rather than this paper being the job, it only serves as an overview. Insert it to a job validator to accept it and only then it will print out a full-detailed Job Booklet. You can then validate this booklet afterwards, to print out a Job Report, like before.

This change eliminates numerous sources of confusion among new players, such as not knowing how to take a job, whether Job Report is a main booklet to take, or being unaware of when job timer begins ticking (now it starts when you explicitly accept the job). Job Overview system also prevents cheating (placing cars where they should be before accepting job), and might fix stuttering when nearing stations, due to having less pages to render.



There are a few more notable changes:

• NonVR teleport console command
  
• Selecting Seated VR mode now automatically recenters play area
  
• Further improved WMR controls
  
• Saving locomotion type in VR (e.g. smooth)*
  

*Warning: VR users who play using smooth locomotion - note that due to a bug, loading the game with smooth locomotion setting saved will spawn you under the world in this build. You will need to respawn if this happens. Until we fix this in tomorrow's update, it's best if you don't leave the game with smoothing locomotion turned on, to avoid this problem.



We decided we'll be moving video updates to weekly instead of per build, so that we can be more agile with major updates. You can expect this week's updates to be covered next Saturday. This way weekly video updates will be able to include more stuff in the future, such as development shots, community highlights, etc. They will also provide update information to players who weren't able to follow updates during workdays.



Railway rework:

- Railway is now generated in real-time, as you move around the game world
- Greatly optimized railway meshes outside of 350m radius from the player
- Optimized generation & rendering (Unity Job System; GPU instancing)
- Reduced build size 60% (from 10.6GB to 4.25GB)
- Allows major future improvements (reduced stuttering, in-game changing, better world-editing)

Job system:

- Reworked job taking
\ Stations now spawn Job Overviews
\ Job Overview is a single-page item, describing job essentials
\ Insert Job Overview in Job Validator to accept job
\ Job Validator will then print out an actual Job Booklet
\ Last page/step of Job Booklet says to validate job to complete it
\ Possible stutter improvement when nearing stations, for some players

Controls:

- Locomotion type setting for VR users now gets saved
- Changing VR mode to Seated now automatically recenters play area
- WMR improvements:
\ Fixed the WMR controllers sometimes having unusual interactions with items
- Added pointer spheres to WMR controllers to always know where you are pointing
- Fixed occasional bug with controller being black and unresponsive

Item storage:

- Decreased range for item respawn to L&F shed to 200m

Misc:

- Added teleport console commands (nonVR ONLY):
\ Debug.TeleportToPoint; takes desired x and z world coords (0-16384)
\ Debug.TeleportToPointNormalized; takes normalized x and z world coords (0-1)
- Updated to Unity 2018.2.21f1

That's it for today, see you soon with another update!

Hi guys,

Today we're adding a major save-game improvement that all of you have been waiting for!

https://youtu.be/Fpmy2Ecs5o4


Ever wished you could quit the game while on a job and continue later? Now you can!

Derail Valley now continually autosaves player position, rolling stock and ongoing jobs. When you load the game it will no longer move you to the nearest station, but rather let you continue from where you left off. Note however that fuel and damage states are not being saved yet, which remains to be added in a future update.



- Added console command to reset player position, in case you fell under the terrain
- Various item storage fixes



Save-game:

- Saves player position
- Saves trains and their position
- Saves ongoing jobs and their progress
- Added console command “Debug.DeleteCarsAndJobsSaveData”
\ Flushes all current train and job save-game data in case of a bug

Item system:

- Fixed inventory order getting shuffled when reloading
- Fixed game starting without items for some players
- Fixed certain items sometimes missing for some players (may go to Lost & Found)
- Fixed duplicate wallet appearance (might need to find yours in Lost & Found shed)
- Fixed tutorial items able to render tutorial impossible to complete as of #62
- Fixed shop items not sharing the total available amount of each item
- Added colliders to Lost & Found shed, window tweak

Controls:

- Player position will be auto-fixed if falling under terrain, past the water level
\ Added console command “Player.MoveToLastGoodPosition” for manual recovery
- On Vive enabling option “touch-click” will now use click to turn pages too

Misc:

- Updated various 3rd party plugins (potential bug fixes and performance improvement)

As of the last build, some players experienced all their inventory items gone. With this fix, essential items should now be located at Lost & Found sheds.

Those of you affected - please let us know if it worked!



Item storage:

- For players missing essential items, they will now respawn at lost & found sheds
- Minor graphical tweaks to shed

Hi everyone,

You've all experienced your inventory becoming full but being unable to get rid of items. This is no longer a problem!

https://youtu.be/1Ve-WmBc-QY


Items you throw away will no longer come back to your inventory, but rather stay where you left them! If you go too far from items you own however, they'll become "lost". You are able to retrieve lost items at your own convenience in new "lost & found" sheds, found in every station.

If you leave items in a train cab, they'll stay there. If, however, you go too far from the locomotive and it despawns, your items will be transferred to a lost & found shed.

Apart from job booklets (support coming soon), all player-owned items are now saved at the locations you left them. Mind that this will be improved along with savegame improvements coming soon.



Our new community manager Ivan is doing a fantastic job creating new videos to accompany our updates! You'll be seeing those with every new update.



Item storage system:

- Added Lost & Found sheds
\ Located at every station
\ Lost player-owned items will respawn in these sheds
\ To be considered lost, item needs to be 600m+ away from the player
\ Items will no longer respawn in player inventory
- Rail vehicles are now storage locations too
\ Items left in locomotives and cars will remain there
\ If a locomotive/car is deleted, items will be moved to Lost & Found
- Player-owned items are now saved at their real location, if not lost or in inventory
- Job Booklets and Job Reports are not yet being saved (coming soon)

Jobs:

- Fixed occasional bug with missing jobs in empty stations
- Fixed Food Factory schematic map saying S04 instead of I04