Derail Valley News

Hi everyone!

For posts like these, usually there's a couple days of preparation. Today's post, however, is rather improvised, as everyone on our small team has been extremely busy with the upcoming release. There's a lot going on, and we wanted to give you a very quick update.



We're 30 days away from the definitive release date of Simulator, a big free update to the game. We're doing our best to have the update as complete as possible on that day. I'm sure something will not be entirely finished (there always is), but that's okay – we'll have a number of small updates following the release, to compensate for that. It's a huge release, after all.

Due to intense involvement with the development and the business side of things, I haven't been able to work on short videos at all this month, unfortunately. However, someone outside of Altfuture but very dear to us will hopefully satisfy your needs – with an episodic long-form video coverage of Simulator coming soon. Stay tuned!



In the past month we've made big strides on finishing the VR side of things and the tutorial. They're not done yet, but are close to the final stages. We've done a lot of further work on the steam engines and preparations for the new translators. As always, we've also been fixing a load of bugs, caught by our closed beta team, who had been also doing an amazing job translating Derail Valley to nine languages.

Today we're admitting dozens more people to the closed beta. The carefully chosen group will help us do the translations for 15 more languages and help us get VR calibration right for various types of headsets and controllers out there.



As the days get increasingly hectic, this may be the last you hear from us until the release. Soon you should start seeing new marketing material on our site, store fronts and social media pages. A new trailer will be be made and shown on the release day.

That's all for now! If you have any questions, please comment on this post and I'll try to reply to all. Thank you for your time!

-Slobodan

Very exciting news today — The long awaited Derail Valley update, Simulator, is coming out on June 30th, 2023!



After several years being in development, the update will bring massive improvements to the game in the domains of graphics, simulation dynamics, user experience, bug fixes and future development productivity! You can see a lot of what's coming previewed on our YouTube channel.

An update of this scale can always be further improved, however, we've done enough preparations and testing over the years, both internally and with the closed beta testers, to safely conclude that any further improvements can be made after the release.

Simulator is a major stepping stone towards our even more grandiose future plans, that we've just recently outlined on this new page: http://www.derailvalley.com/future/




As we've made this massive update entirely from the game's sales so far — we'd like to say thank you to everyone who has supported us over the years!

In order to help fortify our next actions, we are ending the early supporter price period. The price of Derail Valley will go up for new customers, starting May 12th, 2023 at 19:00 CET, to $39.99 USD, or a region-tailored equivalent in other currencies.

We announced this change back in 2020, and now, more than four years after the initial barebones version of the game was released, we feel the change is justified. The team is now double the original size and all that time was spent working full-time on new features and content. Derail Valley has come a long way since, and it is especially the upcoming Simulator update that is driving the sales nowadays, with even more exciting coverage as well as a new trailer coming up in the following months!



If you're in position and willing to support our team for further development, please consider buying the game at the new price. If you'd like to buy it at a lower price, however, we've kept a time window for you until the 12th.

If you're wondering about the Early Access status - the game will remain in it, potentially, for years to come. This is because we want to add more features and content going forward, despite the product being stable and well rounded in its current form already. We'll keep at it for as long as possible, in our mission to make Derail Valley the best train simulator in the world.

[h3]April Recap[/h3]

April's been absolutely packed with work and we haven't had the chance to produce that many shorts this month. Next recap will, however, cover both April and May. In the meantime we've done a ton more bug fixing, finishing the UI, improving the translation workflow and have started work on the tutorial. The translation and closed beta teams have done a phenomenal job translating and finding bugs so far — thank you guys! We are about to start translating the second batch of languages soon.

That's all for today, we'll see you soon with more exciting content!

-Your DV Team

Hi everyone,

The March recap is here! We'll go over the shorts we've been posting, as well the development progress, from the past month.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

It's been a challenging month for the shorts, as a couple of sicknesses and intense development involvement came in the way. However, we came out of it with a decent amount of material to show. All the shorts combined now count at almost 40 minutes, and there's lots more to come.

The past month saw a lot of work done on the update, with the main highlights being setting off the translation project, finishing the new environment sounds system (some of which you can hear in the videos), further work on the steam engine simulation and countless bug fixes.

Translators and testers have been admitted to closed beta. We are happy to say that the process has been going very well. For about 10 languages that we started with, most are nearing finalization, and the teams have been very dedicated and passionate about it. Thank you so much, guys!

In the following weeks we'll do some improvements to the localization system, before admitting translators for the other languages. If you'd like to help translate Derail Valley, please apply here. We pick the best candidates, and in that sense it's never too late.



We are still expecting the release at around the end of June. After adding more testers in, things are looking good, but there's still no telling if something will pop up along the way (e.g. necessary performance or newbie UX improvements that aren't obvious now), so take that tentative time frame with a reserve. The real date is yet to be announced.

That’s all for this month. In the meantime, be sure to follow us on Discord, Twitter, YouTube, Reddit, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and stay up to date with the shorts as they come!

-Your DV Team

Hi everyone,

As some of you may remember, a couple years ago we announced that we would rename Derail Valley to Delay Very, to better illustrate our specialty in postponing updates, while keeping the same rhythm to it.



However, some of you complained that it's not ideal from a grammar standpoint. We took this point very seriously and decided to do what we do best — postpone the rebranding.

This happened in 2020, just before our last major update, Overhauled. Today we're potentially months from releasing the next major update, and we saw this opportunity to continue where we left off — by rebranding the update itself.

With that, we proudly present you the new identity of the update, Derail Valley: Simulater!



We feel the new name and visual identity are perfectly in line with the original goal, to wrap the update in a looming aura of a possible indefinite postponement, while increasing transparency and being more grammatically accurate! Moreover, this way we're optimizing for search engines, as the word Simulater is less common on the internet and in the gaming world.

We hope you like the new name and can't wait to see your reactions. Until next time,

See you later, Simulater!

Hi everyone,

We’re here with another recap video of the shorts made in February!

[previewyoutube]https://youtu.be/PLM_OFYK2qw[/previewyoutube]

You may notice that the video production speed for this month was reduced compared to the previous month. That’s mainly due to the content being a lot more sophisticated than originally planned, where previously many of the posts were going to be mere screenshots with descriptions, but ended up being full-fledged videos.

Being grouped together in a video format, however, a lot of the topics can now also be covered in fewer videos so we've modified our scope a little. We no longer pursue two videos per day, but still have a lot of video material to be posted regularly all the way until the release.

If you’re wondering about the release timeframe, our Q2 estimate still holds, namely sometime by the end of June.



In the past month we’ve done quite a bit of work. We’ve made VR functional again and started testing it, we’ve brought back the now revamped steam engine simulation (still work in progress), we’ve added the hefty manual to the game, we've added the system for dynamic environment sounds and have made a countless amount of bug fixes.

That said, the highlight is probably that we’ve brought the in-game textual content close to completion and have finalized the inner workings of our translation tools. This means we’re ready to start the application process for translators!



The first translators should get accepted in about two weeks. Those who prove themselves fitting will be given access to Simulator closed beta. To apply and learn more, please take a look at this form: https://forms.gle/3aYW1ogjK1GXxvwg7

That’s all for this month. In the meantime, be sure to follow us on Discord, Twitter, YouTube, Reddit, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and stay up to date with the shorts as they come!

-Your DV Team