Rolling Line News

Time for part 2 of the Christmas update!
Now that there's dynamic snow to clear, what better way to clear it than with a rotary plow. This loco has always been a personal favorite of mine and it's so great to finally add it to the game!

You can find the new rotary plow locomotive & tender in the Christmas 2019 drawer, along with a few new snow pile props better suited to fit on to tracks:



Custom livery support is also ready, so you can make your own liveries for the rotary plow in time for Christmas!
You can find some liveries that people have already made on the Steam Workshop.



This update also includes a few other fixes & changes:

• Snow no longer melts at night, only during the day when the weather is not snowing.
  
• Improved the collision on snow piles.
  
• Added a few new snow pile props that are better suited to fit over track.
  
• Several newer props (e.g. the Halloween ones) couldn't be painted directly in the drawers, as well as their scale would be wrong when the drawer was a different scale. This has been fixed.
  
• The height offset of the multi-paint UI box has been improved for all props.
  
• Fixed the misaligned mesh of the Puzzling world stairs prop.
  
• Fixed the equip UI still being visible when returning from the menu, as well as several other quirks caused by this same issue (like the save messages being in the wrong position).
  
• Saving your game after using one of the new custom table example maps will now automatically give it a blank name, instead of the default.
  
• Fixed the sound location of horns/whistles when using the Caps-lock key to sound the horn from outside the cab.
  

I hope everyone has a great Christmas! All these new snow related features and props should make for some great inspiration for snowy maps over the holidays.
After new years ill be working on the Compact Comp winners prizes, followed by tons of exciting features planned for 2020!

Enjoy!

It's time for some Christmas updates!
Today's update adds a range of attachable snow plows which actually clear snow off the tracks!

There are 4 different variations and you can attach them on to any locomotive:



This also comes with several "dynamic snow" props which you can place on the ground which react to the snow plows. These piles of snow will grow in size if the in-game weather is snowy, and if the weather is sunny they will melt.



You can find these new plows and snow pile props in the "Christmas 2019" drawer:



This update also makes a bunch of quality of life improvements which I've been meaning to add to the game for ages. These include:

[h2]New options for custom tables when starting a new game[/h2]
The old tables (from back when Rolling Line was first released) have been removed and replaced by proper editable tables in the custom table room. Old maps made using these tables will still work perfectly fine!
The "new game" menu has been cleaned up and re-organized in general too:


[h2]
Several changes to settings and defaults[/h2]
These changes will automatically happen when you next launch the game.

• Dark mode is now the default.
  
• The graphics menu has been re-organized a bit, mainly the "custom track view distance" setting is now much easier to find and hopefully makes more sense.
  
• The custom track chunk size & map loading settings have been removed (since they only complicated things).
  
• The "infinite" object view distance setting option has been removed.
  
• Resolution & full-screen are now set properly when you first launch the game. It was previously defaulting to the VR resolution instead of your desktop native resolution.
  This will happen automatically when you next launch the game.
  

[h2]You can now control trains in miniature outside the cab[/h2]
If you are driving a train then you can now change its speed using Q and E even when outside the cab. You can also press Capslock to sound the horn/whistle. You can also press F to teleport into the cab of the train you are currently controlling.

[h2]Several VR improvements[/h2]
VR has been generally cleaned up and simplified a bit:

• Selecting objects is now much nicer.
  
• Hand physics are now off by default, which means your hands will not collide with the environment. You can turn this setting back on if you wish!
  
• Various VR related settings like "distance interaction" have been removed to help clean up the VR controls.
  
• The ability in VR to delete props in your hand & enable "clone lock" mode using the up/down actions is now permanently enabled, and the settings for this have been removed.
  When "Clone lock" is enabled you can keep placing props while still keeping the original copy of the prop in your hand! just like holding shift on PC.
  

[h2]New "sunny snow" weather type [/h2]
This keeps it nice and sunny with the snowfall effects at the same time.



[h2]Plows on QuickMods[/h2]
You can also set up support for plows on QuickMods!
All quickMods are able to have plows by default, but you can change the positioning of the plow using the value "snowPlowOffset" in the mod.txt file.
This is a small decimal value, between around -0.05 and 0.05.



Along with all of these changes there are also a bunch of other things:

• Fixed the "remove all dropped objects" button in the "manage saves" menu, it wasn't deleting props properly.
  
• Added a "remove all trains" button in the "manage saves" menu which you can use to delete all the trains on a map.
  
• Fixed grid snapping on the table backdrop props.
  
• Added a small diagonal table piece.
  
• The main layout & legacy rooms are now no longer accessible from the custom table room.
  
• View distance for menus and prop drawers has been adjusted.
  
• Fixed bug with the pause/resume position being lost when capturing thumbnails.
  
• You can now move around a bit when at the pause menu without loosing your resume position. e.g. if you pause the game while driving a train, you can move around (with a small distance range of the menu) and still resume back into driving the train.
  
• You now remain "attached" to the last wagon/loco you touched regardless of distance. The setting for this has been removed too.
  

Tons of little things in this update for sure!
Christmas is a good time to clean up the game a bit and get things organized for the new year. I hope you all have fun with the new snow plow mechanics and all these quality of life improvements!

Oh, and there's still more to come before Christmas... and it's going to be great!

Congratulations to everyone who took part in the Compact Comp, It was an awesome competition and SO many great layouts came out of it!
Remember to have a look on the Steam Workshop to try them all out for yourself!

But without further ado, here are the winners!

1st Place: by Ze Trackmeister



2nd Place: by Long



3rd Place: by Magnum MacKivler



I'll be getting into contact with all the winners to discuss the prizes, and I'll be adding the new props & freight wagon into the game after the new year, as there is already lots planned for before Christmas!

Now, there is one more thing that needs to be mentioned. You might have noticed that Joas "The Sabotage" map actually received the most votes (over 6x as many votes as any other map for that matter). Unfortunately this was clearly a popularity influence, as 90% of the votes were from people who don't even own Rolling Line.
I was hoping that leaving the voting up to the public would work out fine, but asking for votes through Facebook from people who aren't even involved in the community really goes against the spirit of the competition.

So sadly "The Sabotage" wasn't included in the winners, but it has it's own special award:



I might try out some other kinds of voting methods in the future to see what works best, but either way there are certainly going to be more competitions in the future!

I'll be posting some "honorable mentions" over on Twitter over the next couple of days, since there were so many clever and creative maps made for this comp, and there are still tons of maps I want to give shout-outs to!

But that's not all, there's a winter-themed snow plows update coming in just a few days! Plus even more after that in time for Christmas. Lots to look forward to!

The Compact Comp is over, and there are so many incredible entries!
Have a look on the Steam Workshop to try them all out for yourself!

I'm so happy with how this competition turned out, some of the very best maps Ive ever seen in Rolling Line were made during this event!
There were 84 total entries, which is even better than the Color Comp earlier in the year. Congratulations to everyone who took part, I absolutely loved playing every single one of your maps (and i did play every single one!).

For this competition I've decided to try having a community vote this time to choose the winners, so I've narrowed it down to the 12 most impressive entries as finalists.
I hope I've made the right choices, there were so many excellent maps to choose from! There were several that definitely deserved to be finalists, but i wanted to reduce it down to just 12 choices.
I'll be posting a ton of "honorable mentions" alongside the winners, so even if your map wasn't included in the finalists, then It may still be getting a shout-out!


I will then count up all the votes in a couple of days and announce the winners!
Please only make one vote per-person, any repeated votes from the same person wont be counted.

The finalists are:
by Ze Trackmeister



by Long



by Biggles



by The Pain Train



by Magnum MacKivler



by Ze Trackmeister



by Kugel



by Joa



by Biggles



by Blacksa



by Mwdodgerblue



by William Tremblay




Simply make a comment on this post with the name of the map you want to vote for!
I will be announcing the winners in a couple of days, along with some fun snow-themed updates in time for Christmas!

It's time for a new layout competition!
The "Color Comp" earlier in the year was heaps of fun and I can't wait to see what kinds of layouts you can come up with for this one!

The concept is simple, just make a small layout using one of the tables in the new "compact comp" drawer as a size limit. You can build as much as you want above and below, just keep within the bounds of the table. Be as creative as you want!

There are no other requirements, you dont need to even include track. Simply build a layout and submit it to the Steam Workshop. Make sure to tick the "Compact Comp entry" option when you upload it!
You can also submit as many entries as you want, it's not limited to one-per-person.

Use one of these tables in the new "Compact comp" drawer as a size guide:
Remember you can build as high/low as you want!



Entries close on December 8th (next Sunday) But as long as you get it submitted before the weekend is over you'll be fine, regardless of time zone.

There will also be prizes for the winners! (much like the Color Comp)
The 1st place winner will be able to request a freight wagon of their choice to be officially added into the game. This will then be made by me and added in a future update.

The 2nd and 3rd place winners will both be able to choose a general prop to be added into the game in the same way.


That's not all though, this update actually makes a bunch of changes to the in-game workshop uploading systems.
Most of it is background programming-related improvements, but there are several new features added to the upload process.

- There is now a "requirements" panel which shows you which data is required for your upload and which things you need to fill-in:



- You now have a cropping guide around your view when choosing a thumbnail! This makes getting the right screenshot for your workshop items 100x easier:



- You can also new choose custom thumbnails for you local save files! You can do this when making a new save:



These new workshop features will hopefully make the uploading process much nicer, and just in time for the layout competition!
I hope everyone has fun making entries for the new competition, and I can't wait to see what kinds of creative ideas people come up with within the limited space.
Enjoy!

Oh, and of course there's going to be some fun stuff coming for Christmas soon!