Christmas, fixes, features & news v5.9

It's time for Christmas! This update adds a bunch of new features (like more advanced signal options), lots of bug fixes, and of course brings back the Christmas coat of paint for the game.

And that also means all of Rolling Line's previous Christmasy features get to resurface!
Some of the previous year's themed updates added things like:

[h2]Snow cover effects for trains:[/h2]

[h2]The Canadian "Christmas train":[/h2]

[h2]Rotary plow:[/h2]

[h2]Snow plows and snowy tracks:[/h2]

[h2]Snow globes:[/h2]

[h2]Christmas props:[/h2]

Unfortunately this year I have been very busy over the last month (travelling overseas!) so there won't be a new Christmas themed update this year, but this update does include a bunch of fixes & features, including some highly requested improvements to Signals!

[h2]New signal features[/h2]

You now have several new options for setting up signals!
You can place custom "bounds boxes" which allow for signals to be triggered by trains that are not on the track directly ahead. This means you can make working diamond crossings where trains will stop to allow for other trains to cross:

You can also now set a different "source track" point for AI trains to detect the signal. This means you can have the signal checking for trains on one track, and have trains respond to it on another track. This is very useful for making sidings, where trains need to wait for the main line to be clear before moving:

In the above example, the signal on the siding is actually checking if the main line is clear, not the track directly ahead of the siding. But the "source track" that the AI train is waiting at is still on the siding.

Meanwhile, the main line signal is just checking the track directly ahead.

This means that when the main line is clear, the train waiting on the main line will get a green signal first, then the siding signal will only turn green once the line ahead is fully clear.

You can access all these new options on the signal edit pop-up menu:

[h2]New control bindings[/h2]

This update adds a few new control bindings, firstly, you can now create a custom binding to toggle AI-auto-switch on the current driving train. This is useful for when you are controlling modded trains which have no buttons inside the cab:

There is also now a new binding to toggle "pause time".
Previously, there was an option to use the pause button to instead pause time (rather than opening the menu) or you could also choose to make the pause button create a spray.

Since this option was quite confusing (people would often accidentally change their pause button to do different things and not understand what had happened) I decided to just remove this setting for PC and instead give the option to bind controls for each of these options individually.

So this means there are now dedicated bindings for "go to pause menu", "pause time" and "place spray" in the controls menu:

[h2]System to detect bugged controller input [/h2]

There is now a system in place to detect broken joypad input.
tons of people have run into issues where some unintended joypad input has caused the screen to spin and makes it very difficult to disable the joypad afterwards. Usually this is caused by something like a flight-stick being plugged in and unused, or a broken controller.

So basically the game now keeps track of input (only during the main menu stage) to check if identical repeated input is happening, e.g. if a joystick is stuck fully to the left/right and spinning the screen.
If input is frozen on an identical value for more than 4 seconds, it will show this popup:

[h2]Halloween menu map[/h2]

A bit of an unrelated feature, you can now play the halloween main menu scene as a map included in the "New game -> Mini maps" list:

[h2]Other fixes[/h2]

This update also includes:

Fixed bug where pressing ESC while editing a text box while inside a 2D menu would cause the text box to get stuck on the screen.
Fixed bug where held bounds-boxes would be disabled when changing items in your inventory.
Fixed errors caused by having an empty save file included in your local saves list.
Fixed issue where signals taken from the drawer would default to having zero as their red range.
Fixed bug where the signal popup menu was not removed when the signal prop is deleted.
Fixed specific crash from loading broken mod files.
Cleaned up the post-processing options in the pause menu and split them into multiple menus.
Fixed bug where the tooltip text for save file lists were not visible in 2D menus.
Fixed issue with fog affecting loading screens in some niche situations.
Fixed bug where pressing ESC during thumbnail capture would cause problems.
There is now an on-screen help message about enabling/disabling track side-snapping (just like the message that shows up when track snapping is disabled).
Fixed bug preventing one of the Weka Pass map easter eggs from working correctly.

[h2]Southeast Asia trip![/h2]

I've just spent the last month overseas on a trip to Southeast Asia! (Vietnam, Cambodia & Thailand).
It's the first time I've been overseas since visiting Brazil (4 years ago) which lead to the Paranapiacaba map.
This was an incredible experience, and included some places which would make from some really amazing Rolling Line maps, including places like the ancient temples of Angkor Wat, Thai-Burma "death railway", urban railways in Ho Chi Minh City, and several train trips through rural Thailand. I really hope to make something surrounding these locations in-game, but there will be more news on that in the future.

Here are some highlight photos:

Since I was away overseas for so long, and I'm also quite busy of Christmas, updates will be a bit sparse until after January when I can get back to work properly.
But don't worry, i have HUGE plans for 2024!
After 2023 having some quite experimental updates (like circuitry) I'm going back to the game's roots, focusing on trains, operations, freight and maps. But there will be more information on that in the future.

But to give you a hint... it might involve logging with Shay's in the Sierra mountains ːsteamthumbsupː

In the meantime, have a lovely Christmas and keep an eye out for future updates in 2024!