Hi everyone!
It's about three months since our last news post, and we wanted to give you some new information on the update progress and show you a couple of screenshots.
(open images in a new tab for higher resolution)The work on Simulator has been going well, as usual. Finally, as we near the end, we begin to see what aspects of the update can be called done, or at least what it will take to finish them. So, we'll talk a bit about that in this post.
I’ll start with perhaps the biggest goal we’ve reached this year -- putting it all together to a coherent whole. While we've been adding and testing new features internally on a daily basis, for nearly a year the game was not in a shape where much of it was presentable. We were finally able to change that a few months ago, and have been building on top of it since. In that period, our closed beta team was kind and eager to jump in and help us thoroughly test the update and find plenty of quirks that needed fixing.
We’ve been updating the beta almost every week since. It was pleasing to see no major issues being discovered, and feedback mostly revolved around small improvements that we either had in the plans already, or that are relatively quick to do. However, it’s worth noting that a LOT of small improvements had to be made, and many still await their turn.
We're showing more screenshots today because, finally, visual aspects of the game such as day and night cycle, fog, rain, window droplets, lightnings, lighting, reflections and others are pretty much done and more or less represent the finished product. Along with them come the necessary adaptations for VR and settings for low-end hardware. While creating all these features we were adamant on keeping the performance good, and it does play well on the PCs we and the testers have tried it on. However, we are yet to do thorough testing on low-end machines and VR when everything else is complete too, so whether there's additional work to be done on this remains to be seen.
In regards to visible objects, we finished the several new items that are coming with the update, as well as over 25 road vehicles you can see parked around. The new water implementation is done, and the improved HAZMAT and derailing effects are being worked on right now, to be done in a few days.
Another very important thing that we seem to be weeks from finishing is the structural design, both in code and UX sense, of how the game is dealing with multiple user profiles, sessions, saves, scenarios and difficulty presets. Unfortunately it's not something fun or visible that we can showcase outside of the finished product, but it took a lot of time to do, admittedly many more months than originally anticipated. The whole scope of that work wasn't really possible to be known in advance, until we dug deeper into the matter.
Now that it's almost done, the rework really seems to have transformed the game's usability. For example, starting a sandbox run at a particular location with a particular train, just to try out something quick, without having to ruin your ongoing career session, is a major convenience. So is being able to go back to the last autosave when a cat unexpectedly jumps in your lap, causing the entire oil well industry to blow up. We've all been there.
On that note, the design of new graphical user interfaces, as well as localization systems are all in place too, with relatively minor work to be done as we get closer to starting accepting translations. More on that in a few months.
We’ve finished all the diesel locomotives and added them to the game, along with their behaviors, sounds, textures and other aspects. This includes DE2, DE6, DM3 and DH4. Implementation of old locomotives had to be fully redone, mind you, to accommodate for the new train simulation code. Most of their graphical assets received an update (or a revamp) too. The steamers S060 and S282 currently have their models finished, but remain to be added to the game in terms of simulation.
The new train simulation code is a behemoth that took us about two years to write from scratch. There’s a LOT of work put into it, mostly future-proofing the game for new locomotive additions. This is something that's not particularly visible, but is very important in the long run.
With that said, a lot of work still remains to be done on train simulation in regards to mod support. Originally we wanted to keep this for after the update, but we see now how that could slow us down in the future. There are important decisions to be made, and we’re currently working on finding ways to reduce the necessary work to a minimum possible timeframe. At this point it looks to be in the 2-5 months ballpark, and remains to be seen.
Another important aspect of Simulator that wasn’t really properly announced in the past, but was added subsequently and is for the most part finished, is the all new external camera driving UI. I won’t go into details of how this works just yet, but being able to drive the trains from an outside view with intuitive camera controls and contextual UI elements makes it a whole new experience for the nonVR players.
Driving in first person view has been improved too, with the ability to freeze the camera and use your mouse cursor to operate the levers and buttons. The game now offers a really nice balance of using both camera views and many controls methods, depending on your mood and the activity at hand. There are also proper tools in place for easy camera and scene setup, for taking videos or screenshots like the ones shown here. You’ll hear more about all of these features in the future.
With that I should also mention that the game is now powered by a robust difficulty parametrization system, which took a while to implement and lets you setup the game in a whole range from being a “noob-friendly relaxing arcade” to “hardcore realistic simulator”, with individual parameters on what’s allowed and what isn’t -- such as for example the external camera usage. Going forward, we want to continue expanding the game in both directions simultaneously, expecting the most players to find fun somewhere in between. This is why the game will ship with three difficulty presets, but you’ll also be able to make your own.
On the VR side we've replaced controllers with proper hands that naturally adapt their grasp to levers and buttons in their vicinity, adding so much to the immersion. The game also features a whole new inventory experience, consolidated between VR and nonVR -- but more on that later. Of the larger things remaining to be done, apart from the leftovers of train mod support and steam simulation, there’s the environment sounds system and reworked tutorial. Then, of course, there are a myriad of small things remaining, as well as translations, marketing material and other necessary logistics. It may not sound like a lot, but it is still an overwhelming amount of work left.
So, with that, we can see Simulator possibly getting released in the first half of next year. Our aim is the first quarter, but the eventual date may be later and it cannot be foretold yet. Whether the update will be ready in three, five or more months from now remains to be seen. However, as we get closer to the release it'll be easier to reveal more details, so we'll keep making these progress news posts at approximately every three months. Hopefully there won't be many more until the release date is in sight.
As we’ve mentioned previously a couple of times, with the release of Simulator the price of Derail Valley will be increased for new buyers. The new price will be $39,99, slightly more than previously announced. We're making this increase to help support our efforts. We think the new price will be rather fair given the recent developments not only in our game, but also the world and the train sim market itself.
I hope you enjoyed this update and as always, thanks for your patience! We're getting there!
-Slobodan
