Rolling Line News

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!

Today's update adds a bunch of helpful (but a little complex) features as well as something that's going to make precise map making 100x easier!
You can now enter a "Transform edit" mode by pressing 'F' when hovering over any placed prop.

In this new mode you can manually edit the rotation, position and scale of the prop using classic transform handles with the mouse (this new mode is only for PC and is not available for VR unfortunately).



Getting the position and rotation of props perfect was always a real pain in Rolling Line in the past, but with these new controls its so much easier!

Of course this is a completely optional extra level of control and you can still build maps using the normal control style without any extra complexity.


Simply press F when hovering over a placed prop to enter Transform mode, then you can:

- use the left mouse to move the various position/rotation/scale handles
- use the right mouse to orbit the camera
- middle mouse/space to pan the camera
- scroll wheel to zoom in/out
- Ctrl-Z to undo a movement
- Ctrl-X to redo a movement
- Ctrl-C to copy rotation
- Ctrl-V to paste rotation
- Tab to switch between local and world space
- Hold Ctrl for more precise movement.

And then press F to exit transform mode and return to normal gameplay


In addition to the new transform mode, you can also now use a bunch of helpful shortcut keys while editing maps:

- F1 to toggle angle snap
- F2 to toggle prop & track snapping
- F3 to toggle fast prop scaling
- F4 to switch between surface snapping modes
- F5 to quickSave
- F6 to set time to day/night

Make sure you have "advanced controls" enabled! otherwise you wont have access to these shortcut keys.
You can find this option in the menu "Misc -> Advanced controls"


Something very useful for creating complex custom track is that you can now copy dynamic track data from a placed piece of track, then paste it into the dynamic track generator to copy over values.

For example:
If you copy a curve with Radius 12 and Angle 30,
Then paste it into the dynamic track generator,
The corresponding values will update to 12 and 30.

This is very useful if you want to make matching sizes of track or make small changes to a previously placed piece of track.

You can copy track data by pressing "Enter" while hovering over a piece of dynamic track.
Please note that you need to have "context help" and "Dynamic track info" enabled to do this. You can turn this on in the menu "Misc -> Show contextual help" and "Misc -> Show dynamic track info"

You can then paste track data by pressing the paste button on the custom track generator:



There are also a few useful quirks to this system:

• If you copy a curved piece of track, the paste it onto a turnout, only the curve part of the turnout will be updated.
  
• If you copy a straight piece of track, the paste it onto a turnout, only the straight part of the turnout will be updated.
  
• You can copy a turnout and paste it into a curve to generate a curve that matches the turnout.
  

This update also fixes some issues with the backup system and adds a "backup_log.txt" file which will list all of the backup additions & removals.
You can find these backups in the "Rolling Line -> Saves_backups" folder.

Remember, backups are automatically made every time you save over/delete a map!
You can load them in-game under the menu "manage saves -> backups"



There were also a few other features added:

• A few new help messages that show up when you first play the game, open the custom camera and open the transform mode. Simply press H to hide these messages and they will stop appearing.
  
• Added the ghost train horns and whistles to quickMods. You can find these new values in the quickmod guide here on Steam.
  
• Added "remove all backups" button in the backups menu
  
• Pressing Ctrl to slow you movement now also makes the camera height changes using the scroll wheel smaller.
  

And that's all!
This has been quite a "technical" update, with lots of little features to make complex map building a bit easier.

If you would like a more in-depth explanation of how any of the new features work, feel free to ask in the comments and I can explain in more detail.

Enjoy!

Time for the Halloween update!

There's lots of fun stuff in this one, from new decoration props to ghost trains!
The best part though is a loot pumpkin which you can open to get special train variations (and tons of candy).
I've been playing a ton of Borderlands 3 recently and felt inspired to make a "loot explosion" feature of some kind, which took form as these loot pumpkins! You can duplicate these pumpkins and keep opening them as much as you want, they are just for fun!



As well as these 'loot pumpkins' there is also a whole new drawer of Halloween themed props:



These new props include gothic-style fences & gates, various decorations, autumn leaves, light-up pumpkins, gravestones, colored lights, hanging lights and even a bubbling cauldron:



Another part of this update is the new ghost trains!
You can get them as rare rewards from opening the loot pumpkins, and there are a bunch of different wagons and locos:



As well as ghost trains, you can also find golden variations of a bunch of trains & wagons in the game! Some of you might even recognize some of these "golden trains" from an Easter egg... ;)



During Halloween there is a special main menu scene as well as the Halloween skybox seen in last year's Halloween & Christmas updates. You can turn off the Halloween skybox by going into the "weather & time menu -> advanced" and turning off "Halloween mode"

You can find the main menu map on the Steam Workshop here:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1901286392

I hope you enjoy these new features and props!
And of course, Happy Halloween!

Today's update adds a small but very useful feature, an emissive material painter!

Just like the other material painter in the game (that makes props transparent) this new one gives props an unlit material effect which makes them glow in the dark, without actually being a full light source.

You can find the new painter in the second paints drawer, along with the other material painters:



This "emissive" lighting effect is perfect for making glow-in-the-dark objects and things like LED's, neon signs and even adding your own lights to things like cars and traffic lights:





Along with this new emissive painter, this update also includes a few other small things:

• Lowered the minimum prop scale size, so you can scale down props MUCH smaller now.
  
• Made props size and height scaling more precise when at a low scale (to make placing very small objects easier)
  
• Fixed the glitch where dynamic track would sometimes generate strange curves when switching the direction while placing.
  
• Improved collision on the hotel sign prop.
  

This is just a quick update which I'm releasing before Halloween, since I've got lots of stuff ready for the actual 2019 Halloween update!



The Halloween update is going to be a big one, but i hope you enjoy this nice little feature in the mean time!

Today's update is the 3rd and final part of the big track upgrade!

This update brings turnouts over to the new dynamic system and adds a bunch of new types of turnouts.
You can now generate turnouts of any angle, radius, length etc and even make wye switches!



There are several new pre-made track pieces added to the track drawers as well as four new options in the dynamic track generator:
- straight
- curved
- double curved
- wye



When placing turnouts you can now also change the direction by holding "shift" plus "Q and E" while snapped on to track!



There were also a few smaller bugs fixed in this update:

• detail paints and and track styles are kept when picking up dynamic track pieces
  
• fixed decimal rounding on dynamic track values
  
• collision on track now updates to match the ballast style used
  
• fixed unusual collision on flexytrack
  
• made changes to the dynamic track generator UI
  

Now that the track is all finally converted to the new system I can move on to some new things!
There will be a small update soon that adds the option to set different styles of turnout levers, as well as possibly some other new track detail features.

But the next major update is likely to be some fun stuff for Halloween, I've got some pretty exciting stuff planned!

Enjoy!