Rolling Line News

Welcome to the Railroad History Jam!

Last year there was a "Fantasy Livery Jam" which was all about making liveries for your own fictional railway ideas, and it was SO MUCH FUN!
So here's something I've been planning for a while, which takes my favorite parts of the Fantasy Livery Jam and makes them even better.
And guess what, my favorite part was the history! I love designing layouts that have stories behind them, and a sense of time (like older and newer areas, different logos & livery versions, new & old rolling stock, and an ever changing locomotive fleet).

The goal of this event is to make a collection of liveries/mods/layouts that showcase a railway's history, be that a fictional railway you design yourself, or a real-world railway that you want to re-create the history of! (So unlike the Fantasy Livery Jam, you can now choose to base your ideas on a real-world railroad this time if you want to).

But of course (in my opinion at least) the best part is being creative and designing your own fantasy railroad! With fictional locations, logos and history.

Here is the full info:



You can make as many liveries, QuickMods, liveries of QuickMods & prop mods for your railway as you like, everything is free-game.
Then you can combine all those elements together into a layout to show your railway in action.

One idea is to even create multiple layouts, showing the same location at different points in the railroad's history! e.g. one in the modern day, then a separate layout set in the steam era.

[h2]The GeTA Sulfur Railroad [/h2]

Now of course I wanted to join in on this jam myself too!
So I've created my own example entry already, which you can use as inspiration for creating your own entries.

It's called the GeTA Sulfur ("Geo-thermal Tranz Alpine" Railroad) and It's a fictional railway based around sulfur mining in the mountains!
You can find the full collection of liveries and mods here on the Steam Workshop, and of course the layout itself:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2411234288

You can read the descriptions on each workshop item to learn more about the fictional history of this railway.

I had a ton of fun making this layout, and it makes use of all the new features (like switchboards, turntables and skyboxes).
I hope you have fun exploring it and learning about it's history!

[h2]Custom text signs[/h2]

But that's not all!
This update also adds a new feature, which is custom text labels and signs.
This means you can easily type your own text labels (which are perfect for adding name-plates to your layout, or adding some extra info to the map).



You can also use them for signage inside your layout too!



You can find these new custom sign props inside the "Room -> tools" drawer:



When you have placed one on your layout, simply use the "Edit options" popup (Q on PC) to set the heading, sub-heading and text alignment.



You can also type in new-lines by holding 'shift + return'




And that's everything!

You've got all the way till the 18th of March to work on your entries for the Railroad History Jam.
I can't wait to see the kind of stuff people will make!
Remember you can design your own fictional railway, or base it on a real-world railway. both are fine.
The goal is just to have fun and celebrate some history that you are passionate about.

Just remember to check this option when you upload to the Steam Workshop:



Enjoy!

This update adds the ability to create a "switchboard" which you can put anywhere on your layout to display a map of the track (and control turnouts with little switches!).
You can make as many of these as you like, and you can choose which track they display.
This means you can have different switchboards for different parts of your layout!

On the same topic as skyboxes and turntables, this is another feature from the old "top of the south" layout that you can now create yourself!



These switchboards are designed to be like the real-world switch panels you find on real model railways!



You can customize the width/height/size etc of these switchboards and give them a name. As an example, the "Miami Shelf" layout (accessible by starting a new game and choosing it from the list) now has switchboards included.

These switchboards also appear inside the cab of your locomotive when you are driving in miniature!
This means you can control the turnouts around you from inside the cab, plus the switchboard also shows an icon for where your train is on the map! (plus the direction it is facing)



The potential for these switchboards is pretty crazy, members of the community have already started using them to map out their huge yards, like this:
(created by Doggo The Doggo on the Discord server)





To make your own switchboard, start by grabbing one from the "Room -> tools" drawer.
Then place it on the ground/table/wall.

Then use the "Edit options" popup (Q on PC) to open the options menu for it.





From here you can change some basic settings like:

• Set the name label text
  
• Show/hide the name label
  
• show/hide the turnout control levers (like if you would prefer to have these hidden and just show the track map)
  
• Set whether this switchboard will show up in train cabs. (this is very useful if you want to have one big switchboard for your whole map, but then have lots of smaller individual ones for each area. You can make only the small ones show up in cabs!)
  
• Change the rotation of the track (if you want to display the track map at a different angle)
  

You can click on the "Board size options" button to access more display options like:

• width/height
  
• scale factor (this will zoom-in/out the map)
  
• offset center x/y (this changes the center of the map, to move it up/down left/right around the board)
  

If you go back to the previous menu and choose the "track region options" button then you can set up which track this switchboard will use.



Click the "add bounds box" to spawn in a cube (just like with skyboxes!) which you can then place on your layout. You can place as many as you like to cover the area.
any track inside these boxes will show up on the switchboard.

Click "back" to apply changes and the new track should appear on the switchboard!



Please keep in mind that these "bounds boxes" cannot be rotated! they need to follow a 90-degree grid. This is a technical limitation, but you can place as many individual cubes as you like to work around this.


Anyway, that's all for this update!
It's great to have another one of the old legacy features finally built into a tool that everyone can use, this means I am one step closer to making a full-on remaster of the "top of the south" layout using modern editing tools!
Lots and lots of updates are on the way, and plenty of stuff to look forward to! In fact there may even be a big competition/jam just around the corner *wink* *wink*

Enjoy!

Have you ever noticed the extended scenery that you can see on the "top of the south" layout? (the original New Zealand main layout).

When you are in certain areas you can see things like mountains and sea off in the distance in miniature scale, even though the edge of the table is all that is there in large scale.



Up until now this feature has only existed on the old "Top of the south" layout, and this is because that layout was made using entirely different tools than what modern player-made layouts use.

But piece-by-piece I am bringing every feature of the main layout over to the new editing system, so everyone can use these features in their own layouts!

And one of the big ones was the "extended scenery" you can see.

Well you can finally make this same effect yourself!

There is a new panel of options on the wall (next to all the room options like wall size and colors):



From here you can place props on specific layers and start creating and editing your own skyboxes.

The "large scale only" layer is useful for:
- walls and room details that you only want to see when looking at the layout in large scale, but you want to be hidden when driving trains in miniature.

And the "miniature scale only" layer is useful for:
- scenery that extends beyond the sides of the table, like backdrops and landscapes that surround your layout. These are hidden in large scale but you can see them when driving trains in miniature.

Beyond this you can also create your own "skybox regions" which allows you to make unique scenery show up based on where you are in the layout (e.g. show a mountain backdrop from one area, but a huge desert from another area)







But this starts to get a bit more complicated, so I've written a full step-by-step guide on how to create a layout that makes use of these new features:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2390114947

With these tools you can make your layouts so much more immersive to explore, since being in miniature mode can have fully detailed skyboxes and scenery off in the distance, while you can still keep that model railway table & bench-work in large scale at the same time!

As an example, I've updated the official "Puzzling World" layout to include extended scenery using these new features! You can access it in-game just in the "new game" menu:



You can also find a copy on the Steam Workshop:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2391154447

This is just a simple example with one layer of skybox scenery.
But if you get creative with the more advanced "skybox region" system you can have multiple types of scenery on the same layout! like a vast desert that transitions into a city or mountain valley after passing through a tunnel and entering into a new skybox region.

There are already lots of map makers who are super excited about this new feature, so there's bound to be some awesome skyboxes showing up on the workshop soon!

Enjoy!

They are finally here!
Turntables may very well be the most highly requested feature in Rolling Line's history (aside from multiplayer of course).

And three years down the line, here we are!
Fully operational and customizable turntables you can use in your own custom layouts.

You can find a few examples in the new "track -> turntables" drawer:



But the real flexibility comes from generating your own ones in the "track -> generator" drawer, and switching over to the "Turntables" track type:



In this view you can customize the size, depth, and the number of track exits you want the turntable to have.

This means you can have massive turntables, or even very tiny ones!





But of course that's not all!
Once you place your turntable down on the table, you can then customize all sorts of details and colors using the "Options" popup menu (left-hand-context option):



Inside this menu you can change a range of visual features of the turntable.
These are:

• Base - the circular base of the turntable, which scales with the track length and stays stationary
  
• Center detail - an option extra detail in the center of the bridge that rotates with the track
  
• Side detail - an optional small building/platform attached to the side of the bridge
  
• Bridge - the rotating section of the turntable (the part the track is connected to)
  
• Pivot - the center point that the bridge spins on (doesn't rotate)
  
• Terrain - an optional square of land that fills in the gaps around the turntable, which makes it easier to build around
  

All of these extra details can be painted their own colors!

But also remember that turntables are the same as any other piece of track, which means you can paint them with track details like bridges, 3rd-rails, different ballast etc.



On the topic of track painters, this update also adds a bunch of new track bridge styles!



[h2]Controls [/h2]

Another thing you can customize in the turntables options menu is the control style, along with a couple of other things in the "Turntable control options" menu:



In this menu you can:

• Set whether the control levers are visible or not
  
• Set the turn speed of the turntables (how fast it rotates)
  
• The control style
  

The two control modes are:

• "Stop at next exit" - clicking on one of the turntable levers will make the turntable spin until it reaches the next available exit, and then it will stop automatically.
  
• "Continuous" - clicking on a lever will make the turntable spin continuously until you click it again, at which point it will stop at the nearest exit.
  

Aside from clicking the individual levers to control the turntable, you can also easily control it using one of the hand held controllers (the same ones you use to drive trains!)



Simply select the turntable and then use Q and E to change the direction that it turns.

Oh, and another new thing you can do with the hand-held controllers is you can control wagons with them! Before you could only control locomotives, but now you can control every wagon too. This can be really useful for shunting, hump yards, and just for fun of course.
Though it may not be "realistic" it felt like such a useful feature it was worth keeping!



And that's basically everything!
I'm so happy to have finally added working turntables into the game, as this is something I've been just as excited to see as the the community has.

This is actually the first proper track-related feature i've added to the game in a long time, so it's great to add some more variety to the trackwork that layouts are built upon.

I can't wait to see what kind of stuff people can do with these new tools!



Enjoy!

Today's update includes something I've been meaning to add for ages!!

The original default paint colors have been slowly added to one-by-one ever since the game was first released, and have never gotten a real clean-up.
For example, the choices of greens and browns have been incredibly limited, so 90% of maps all use the same shade of green. Well that's finally going to change!

This update completely re-does all of default colors, and adds tons of new useful color ranges and pallets that the game desperately needed.

But that's not all though!

This update also adds a bunch of quality-of-life changes which include:

• a new "unlit transparent" material painter
  
• "alpha cutout" material for mods
  
• copy & paste buttons for all text input boxes
  
• the option to copy & paste tags between mods
  
• Ability to copy color hex-codes from any painter
  
• Ability to clone colors from the multi-paint popup UI
  
• an exit button to close the multi-paint popup UI
  
• buttons to copy-paste dynamic track data from within the drawer
  
• Small fixes for the index controls
  

I'll go into more detail on these new changes in this news post!

[h2]New "Unlit transparent" material painter [/h2]

Much like the other material painters (like "transparent" which makes props see-through, and "unlit" which makes them glow in the dark without shading) the new "Unlit transparent" material painter makes props both see-though and glow in the dark!



This material type can also be used in mods!
Along with a new version of transparency called "Alpha Cutout"
(this version has less depth-fighting issues and sharper edges)



[h2]New colors [/h2]

The main part of this update is the re-do of the default colors.
You can still find all the original legacy paint drawers in the "misc" category!

Here are the new 4 drawers of colors:



Some new color types to note are:

• Far more green options
  
• more autumn yellows and oranges
  
• Wide range of browns (dirt & dry grass)
  
• Lots of desert soil colors
  
• Set of pastel colors
  
• Set of metallic colors (for cars)
  
• Lots of tans and reds for brick and building materials
  
• Rust colors
  
• "Solid" colors, like pure red/green/blue etc
  
• Wider range of water shades
  

[h2]Lots of copy-pastes [/h2]

You can now copy-paste text from any textbox input window:



You can also copy-paste tags between mods and workshop uploads!
This means you can easily import your own comma-separated list of tags from outside the game, or save your in-game tags to a text file.



Copying track data has always been possible by pressing "Return" while hovering over track, but there is now a dedicated "copy" button inside the dynamic track generator drawer. This is useful for copying data between track types.



[h2]Cloning colors [/h2]

Much like with dynamic track, you can copy the color of any prop by pressing "Return" while hovering over it. This will spawn a painter in your hand with the corresponding color.

But this update now makes it possible to clone colors from the popup multi-paint UI by clicking on them:
(the multi-paint UI also has an exit button now!)



Doing so will also copy the color hex-code to your clipboard!
You can also now copy the hex-code of any painter in the drawers using "Q"



And whenever you have a color hex-code on the clipboard you can easily paste it into the custom color generator UI using the "Clipboard" button!



This also means that you can copy a hex-code from outside the game (like from an online color picker) and paste it into the game to make that color!

[h2]Index control fixes[/h2]

Lastly, this update fixes the controls for cloning and editing paints from within the drawers for Index controllers. This was something i overlooked during the earlier VR updates.


Anyway, that's about everything!
Lots of quality-of-life changes that make dealing with custom colors a lot easier.

These new default colors are sure to make a visual difference for maps being made beyond this point. Even though custom colors are always an option, people are far more likely to stick to the easy access of the default colors. So having more options is always great!

Enjoy!