Mashinky News

I released the third vehicle pack today!

This time you can choose from 16 new trucks or buses in the game! We now have a total of 37 vehicles available. The new pack addresses some of your transportation needs in era 3, 4, and also 5, so you'll now be able to transport things like limestone, steel, or cement. To this day, a truck for the delivery of sand was also missing.

As always, there are minor improvements and bug fixes, so hopefully the gameplay will now be even smoother and more stable.



[h2]Detailed changelog:[/h2]

[h3]3rd era [/h3]

• Blitz truck for Goods
  
• Blitz truck for Sand
  
• Blitz truck for Mail
  

[h3]4th era [/h3]

• Bach 302 Bus
  
• Zilon truck for Logs
  
• Zilon truck for Wood planks
  
• Zilon truck for Steel
  
• Trambus truck for Coal
  
• Trambus truck for Crude oil
  
• Trambus truck for Sand
  

[h3]5th era [/h3]

• Metropolitan Bus
  
• Wack truck for Coal
  
• Wack truck for Iron ore
  
• Wack truck for Steel
  
• Wack truck for Limestone
  
• Ania truck for Cement
  

[h3]Fixes[/h3]

• Fixed animated doors of road depot
  
• Merged locomotive into another train is properly unbind from its shared routelist
  
• Fixed clipping of cargo type filter in depot window
  
• Fixed wrong shortcut in driver mode
  
• Fixed vehicles sharp yank when entering new road tile
  
• Fixed clipped destinations visualization in vehicle info window
  
• Fixed crash in some circumstances (reproduced on 150+ mods active)
  

That's all for now, we're working on the final era, but first I'd like to add the rest of the vehicles and planes to the game, so stay tuned for the next update ;)

Best regards,
Jan

Just a smaller holiday update, but hope you will enjoy it as you do every year :) Obviously It is the Christmas quest with unique task and unique reward.

We were thinking about this year's challenge to use some of the new features like airports and planes and finally decided to fly Santa again with some kind of delivery mission.

There was quite a mystery (and a bit of stress from my point of view :) ) this year. The release of the Christmas mod ended up being way more spontaneous and hectic. Here is the reason behind it:

- Several weeks ago, we prepared the mod at our internal branches and continue to test and polish it.
- Meanwhile, out of nowhere, several players reported crashes, but mysteriously on the public branch, where the last update added planes in October :) Nothing changed since that day, and basically no crashes reported until December 17th.
- Fortunately, I quickly found the cause of the sudden crashes that started yesterday - The public version of the game still contained last year's Christmas mod - the one before the introduction of airplanes to the game, the one where you had to control Santa and find some old houses on the map.
- The old mod has its own time limits and on December 17th this mod was automatically reactivated. But since the game's codebase has changed so much, and last year Santa was the only flying object before the implementation of airplanes, it's unfortunately no longer compatible...
- So I've released the new Christmas mod within the hour after finding the cause of crashes. It is reimplemented Santa and added new task and new reward.

I have to apologize to all of you who encountered those crashes between the 17th and 18th of December. I will keep improving and polishing the game and continue testing the mod, but hopefully the current version is a lot more stable.

And last but not least, I want to thank you so much for helping me improve the game, reporting crashes, and keeping an eye on our virtual traffic worlds! You are the best community I could ever dream of and I want to wish you all the best for the holidays!

Best regards,
Jan

Finally, airports and aircrafts landed into our game! It has been a ride, but although there are still some isseues toaddress in upcoming days, I'm happy to welcome all of you aboard!

Please keep in mind, that this is only first pack of planes available, more will come hopefully soon (for later eras).



Here is a changelog:

• Added new transport vehicle type - Airplanes
  
• Added ground infrastructure - old and new airport facilities
  

• There are currently 17 planes in the game (more will come later)
  
• You can transport limited cargo types by airplanes (passengers, mail, goods and food)
  
• It is quite expensive way to transport passengers / cargo, but it can be extremly fast
  
• Planes can smartly plan their path from one airport to another, and on the airport itself
  
• You can manage airports in routelist, add air waypoints or even use specific runway's / taxiway's tiles waypoints
  
• Planes reserve a runway 5 tiles before landing, and can cancel landing maneuver anytime and circle around airport instead
  
• They can wait on the last taxiway junction before occupied airport stands or stop and go through hangars if they get stuck
  
• They can even change altitude while circling the airport, when they need to avoid obstacles
  
• Each plane requires different runway length and may require modern runway type, and each can have different fly altitude
  
• Added new visualization of obstacles around airports (terrain, buildings or even trees can prevent plane takeoff / landing)
  
• Planes can be controlled from pilot perspective, althought it is very difficult when flying :)
  
• Planes use fuel only when flying
  

• You can design your own airport by placing runway tiles one by one, taxiways, junctions, airport stands, airport buildings and hangar
  
• You can also create, share or use airport stamps of interesting airport designs, making their reusing easier
  
• Minimalistic airport needs runway and airport stand, which is 2x1 tiles, but the actual building part can be overlapped with another airport stand building. This allows for even more unique airport designs
  
• There are several basic airport stamps included for your inspiration
  
• Airport has several automatic signals to smartly control movement of planes, while maintaining maximum airport throughput. Runway has signals on both ends reacting to incomming plane reservation. Runway and stand have also entry signal and stand and hangar have exit signal. There are several single plane only areas: airport stands, hangar and runways. On the other hand, airport taxiways allow multiple planes lined up on them, so there is buffer for planes waiting between loading/unloading at the stand and landing/taking off on the runway.
  
• Airport runways have huge 4 tiles pollution distance, so it can be better to place airports away from the town.
  
• Airports can be naturally combined with other transport types and act as a transport hub when using passenger destinations feature
  
• There could be railway or road tunnels under the airport, making combinations even easier
  
• Old airports can be easily upgraded to a new one when the upgrade becomes unclocked reaching specific era
  
• Taxiways are one way only and warning icons show you if there is missing entry/exit or unusable road
  
• Each runway has its own number shown on the runway ends. The number is also shown in routelist when runway is used as a waypoint.
  

• Planes can be managed in a similar way as other transport types, duplicated, replaced by newer type, driven manually, etc.
  
• Icons for planes are bigger, so hangar window and all lists have been updated accordingly
  
• Planes cannot be stopped or turned around while in the air or while performing landing / takeoff maneuver
  
• There is a new dynamic parameter in plane info window. I call it "runway accumulation" and it shows how many tiles the plane needs for accelerating / decelerating on the runway and if it affects the possibility to take off, stop or even turn from runway to taxiway. This is also helpful to watch when piloting your plane by yourself.
  
• Airport has also key bindings shortcuts that help you to build airport faster
  
• There are error messages when plane is unable to reach destination, when it requires different type or length of a runway etc.
  

• There are several new plane-related quests you can jump in and enjoy
  
• Some other quests can be finished by using planes now as well
  

• Aside from new visualization overlay for flight obstacles, there are many improvements because of planes
  
• Every vehicle part can be animated independently now (used for independent spinning of wheels and propelers)
  
• Vehicle innertia is divided to ground innertia (default) and air innertia, and planes can smoothly transition between them when taking off / landing
  
• Multiple particle generators on each vehicle
  
• Different rotation of plane parts when moving on the ground and when flying (rear wheels touch the ground only when plane doesn't have enough speed to take off. This can also help to see if "runway accumulation" is enough for takeoff when piloting a plane by yourself)
  
• Animation can be driven by power instead of speed (used also for propelers)
  
• Rotating propelers can switch to blurry version when power set above 50%
  
• AI driven vehicles increase power smoothly now, so propelers' spin speed increases gradually
  
• Vehicle path plan visualization has "shadows" in construction mode now, so you can easily see the altitude
  
• It is possible to turn the vehicle path plan visualization on even in realistic camera mode now to help you pilot your plane easily
  
• Crashed planes fall to the ground
  

• Fixed onboard cameras for flipped vehicle
  
• Fixed weight of vehicle speed when planning passenger destinations
  
• Improved stamp setup window (now each infrastructure type can be selected independently)
  
• Properly flipped engine's/vagon's icons in replacement list
  
• Fixed placing one way curve onto the same tile as diagonal track
  
• Fixed garbage tutorial Czech text endlines
  
• Fixed typo in caption when placing signals
  
• Fixed crash in path finder in some rare circumstances
  
• Added colors into routelists
  
• Fixed skybox flickering
  

Enjoy the flight! :)

Best regards,
Jan

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Today I have just a small update. While working on airports and planes, I have generally improved the game, fixed bugs, optimized the engine and added some new rendering features.

[h2]Borderless window rendering[/h2]

• Long time requested feature is finally in Mashinky. You can choose borderless rendering and launch the game without changing the monitor resolution, as well as seamlessly switch between Mashinky and other desktop applications.
  
• In order to be able to choose the resolution again even when using a borderless window, I refactored the engine's render pipeline a bit so that the render resolution can be decoupled from the window size.
• Additionally, I modified the UI to always render at native resolution. This way, you can reduce the resolution on weaker hardware while maintaining a crisp and readable user interface.
  

[h2]Drive mode improved[/h2]

• I also tried to improve the driver mode experience and since the track may not be visible from all driver camera positions, you can now see the track in front of you including signal states or stations thanks to simple visualization so you can enjoy the ride.
  

[h2]Bug fixes and improvements[/h2]

• Added AI now smoothly increase/decrease throttle (only visual usage, not affecting acc)
  
• Added possibility for animation per each wagon part
  
• When adding waypoint, only reachable stops icons are visible
  
• When adding waypoint, only same type of vehicles are visible (to copy routelist from)
  
• Added Prev/Next button for vehicles, stations, buildings, depo
  
• Keeping the Tab selected when switching to next / prev item (vehicle / stop / depot / building)
  
• Improved winter ground, grass and trees colors a bit
  

For Mods

• Added: All garbage-type cargo should affect station pollution area
  
• Added: Wagon part flags "visible_when***"
  
• Added TrackType/Version flag "alter_wall", able to change internal station wall
  
• When multiple local mods detected in MP, only first 10 are shown in a warning
  
• Added possibility to specify terrain type having huge river across the map
  
• Fixed animspeed param properly gathered from xml even when old vehicletype format used
  
• Fixed using 3D asset name with "2" at the end (which means it is animated), while not having animation on it
  
• Fixed crash when removing industry building (by removing mod)
  

For Scripts

• Added GetNumUpgrades improved so it can count upgrades for all buildings of specific type
  
• Added Script function int GetVehicleType(vehicle);
  
• Added Script function string GetListOfVehiclesByMaxSpeed(vehicleTypeFilter, hashTypeFilter, maxListSize);
  
• Added Script function string GetListOfVehiclesByMaxSpeedReached(vehicleTypeFilter, hashTypeFilter, int maxListSize);
  
• Added Script function string GetListOfVehiclesByMaxAge(vehicleTypeFilter, hashFihashTypeFilterter, int maxListSize);
  
• Added Script function string GetListOfCitiesByPopulation(maxListSize);
  
• Modified 45-NeedForSpeed and 56-DeliveryTele quests
  
• Modified script function GetRemoteQuestVariable so it can return any type convertible to string
  

Balancing

• Modified Slowing station cargo rating drop by 25x
  
• Modified Road vehicles stopping in the station cannot overpass other vehicles there
  
• Modified Cement delivery affects city growth again
  
• Modified Lowered penalization for passing through non-destination station
  

Fixes

• Fixed vehicle slowing down removed before crossroads when other exit from junction is a dead end
  
• Fixed terrain type switching buttons in editor
  
• Fixed face consistency when loading saved game
  
• Fixed stamp signals in tunnels consistency
  
• Fixed Save/load of last load stop id (used to properly choose new destination in autorouting)
  
• Fixed selective removing of rail signal
  
• Fixed block yellow signal
  
• Fixed flickering of signal glow when TXAA enabled
  
• Fixed performance when path has been redundantly recalculated when moving vehicle's info window (due to reselection of vehicle according to it's window focus)
  
• Fixed wasting of performance on repetetive path searching in some other cases
  
• Fixed removing of all industry on map works again in editor
  
• Fixed pixel alignment when upscaling image
  
• Fixed rendering transparent surfaces
  
• Fixed selection highlighting overbrighted colors
  
• Fixed ending of track wrongly positioned in some circumstances
  
• Fixed flickering of loading bar or face of company boss
  
• Fixed buttons in depot according to vehicle type
  
• Fixed rare crash when open the list of vehicles
  
• Fixed smoother movement interpolation in curves (to avoid goniometrics, there were 8 curve points, now raised to 256 precalculated)
  
• Fixed ALT press stayed after Alt-Tab, showing all icons on the map
  
• Fixed ghost non clickable space in depo bonus tab
  
• Fixed depot bottom bar height consistency
  
• Fixed missing some vehicle icons on map after load
  
• Fixed highlighted vehicle path flickering (vanishing and reappearing)
  
• Fixed vehicle position cache (for better performance)
  
• Fixed full throttle when switch in and out of vehicle
  
• Fixed stamps including stations when placed next to another station
  
• Fixed stamps influencing also station upgrades (WIP, still some issues there)
  
• Fixed wrong openning of station window when creating stamp from station
  
• Fixed duplication of vehicle by wrong-type-depot
  
• Fixed crash in pathfinder
  
• Fixed collisions ignoring where track's side wall clipped out
  

It took me long time, while this update has been just sitting on the experimental branch. When I originally planned to release all these new improvements, there was a nasty bug on a particular GPU that I couldn't get my hands on and fix directly. After some time (and many, many blind fixes and additional debug outputs), I have realized that I could reproduce the similar problem (same occurence, just with different behavior) on a CPU-only renderer (called Reference by the GPU vendors).

Fortunately, this helped resolve the bug without ever reproducing it on my computer, so I was finally able to release this update and resolve many of the reported issues today.

Best regards,
Jan

It's been too long since the last post, I deeply sorry for such communication silence and huge thanks for your patience.

The work on planes advanced a lot since the last post, yet there are some bugs to be fixed and flaws to be polished. I am finally almost satisfied with the AI movement on the ground, so we advanced this version to internal testing.

[h2]Airports & Planes in Mashinky[/h2]

We are currently testing very promissing version of planes movement over the air and especially logic on airports.

Movement over the air is quite simplified, obstacle-awareness including hills, buildings and trees, changing altitude in circles when needed, curves with the same radius as trains on the ground etc).



On the ground, the sitation is a bit more challenging to implement. Player can build his airport tile by tile, using airport stands, hangars, taxi ways, runways and airport buildings.

This plays like a puzzle. Planes moves like road vehicles on roads, but occupy the whole tile (like road vehicle if occupies both directions on roads), so it can easily become locked by another plane heading opposite direction.

I've implemented several different approaches to address this (including automatically placed signals on bi-directional taxi ways, separate airport into signal blocks etc), but none of these survived due to either very low airport capacity, deadlocks or due to be non-intuitive for the player.



Current version uses only one-way taxi ways, planes can enter the same "signal-block" freely and the only restricted signal blocks for just one plane at the time are: Airport stands, Runways and Depots. "Signals" are placed automatically, so it is very satisfying to make your way to the perfect airport layout and share the "stamp" with community.

With the latest approach, the airport has high capacity with a small map footprint and most importantly without freqent deadlocks (there are some, but caused mostly by the wrong layout, easy to understand where the issue is).

Planes can lock runway when approaching to the landing point from air (5 tiles ahead from runway), cancel landing maneuver if anything goes wrong. Later it can waits on the very last junction on the ground if all stands are occupied.



There are first several planes ready as well as airport infrastructure, AI works almost seamlessly, so if this version survive testing, I will finish bugs and some last 3D assets, do last ballancing touches, prepare very first airport stamps and soon we will fly together on experimental branch. This will include driver mode, although it is very challenging to land properly :D

[h2]Borderless and improved driver mode[/h2]

Meantime, there is a new (non-planes) update on experimental branch, adding many fixes, borderless window, improved driver mode etc, so you may already switch to experimental and try some new features before planes come!

Thank you for your time, reading this update and for your patience. I has been a bumpy flight, but we are almost landing with this delivery ;)

Best regards,
Jan