Rolling Line News

[h2]The V8[/h2]
It's finally here, Rolling Line's first ever official electric locomotive!
This new loco is called the V8, and its quite a unique one that is rather famous in Brazil. It's incredibly similar to the "Little Joe" in America too!


(Photo by Alexandre Gabriely)

It comes in three different official liveries, and custom liveries will be coming in a future update.



[h2]Pantographs[/h2]
This update also adds the ability to add pantographs on to all the trains in the game! (the things trains use to get electricity from overhead wires).

Pantographs work in the same way as snow plows (added in the Christmas update), you can "paint" them on to trains using the new painters in the electric trains drawer.

Remember you can set the color of pantographs by painting the "painters" in the drawer with colors, just like how you can with snow plows:



You can add pantographs on to any train you want, all the official trains support them!



Pantographs even have a little spark effect every now and then, just for fun:
(you can turn this off in the "graphics" menu if you choose)



Each individual pantograph has a small button you can press to raise/lower it, but you can also raise/lower all pantographs by using the button in the cab.
If you are playing on PC you can also press "p" while controlling a train to toggle pantographs.



[h2]QuickMods[/h2]
As well as all the official trains, you can also add pantographs to quickMods!
QuickMods now also have the option to include addons (plows and pantographs) by default, which means you can set your quickMod to always spawn with a specific type of pantograph. You can also include custom textures for it.



There are several new properties you can edit which are explained in detail in the official steam guide:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1789707835

[h2]Train placement fix[/h2]
Something else that this update includes is a much needed bug fix to a very old problem!

You may have noticed sometimes that it can be difficult to place trains on certain track, or into small gaps. sometimes placing long locos (like the big boy and NR) is almost impossible for no good reason.

Well I've finally fixed this!
Placing trains should now be much, much easier.
i'm sure anyone who's played Rolling Line for a while is going to be very happy about this fix.

There are also a couple of small changes & fixes included in this update:

• The chimney props now have collision.
  
• Addons are copied when cloning trains (both plows and pantographs)
  

And that's everything for now!
This update completes the "electrification" of Rolling Line, and now you can run electric trains to your heart's content. And im sure all the Brazilian players will be very excited about the addition of the V8!
Liveries for the V8 will likely be coming in the next update, along with a few odds & ends, bug fixes and some new props too.

Enjoy!

Today's update is a great one, Rolling line is finally getting overhead wires!
This update adds the ability to "paint" overhead wires on to track (in the same way as bridges & tunnels) and place various types of masts to hold the wires up.

The second part of this update (coming next week) is going to add a new electric train along with pantographs to actually make use of these new overhead wires.

But in the meantime you can make electrified layouts in anticipation!

Since the positioning of wires is based on track, I recommend designing your trackwork around how you want the wires organized.
Wires will always connect one end of a track segment to the other end, so using smaller segments will result in more joints, and longer segments will result in less:



A very useful new feature that's been added is the ability for certain props to snap on to track!

This means that the new wire masts, tunnel entrances and buffers all now snap on to the ends of track, which makes life much easier:



There are a ton of different variations of wire styles and attachable masts.
You can use single standalone masts, or even large gantry's that span multiple tracks. Here are a bunch of great examples of overhead wires in use:



On a side note, I also added a paintable prop version of the new shipping container model used for the double-stack freight wagons:



It's awesome to finally add electrification into Rolling Line, and it's going to be even better once you've got some electric trains to make use of them!

The next update is going to add the Brazilian V8 (very similar to a certain "little joe") along with pantograph support for QuickMods, and I'm sure there will be more electric locos coming to Rolling Line in the future.



In the meantime, enjoy using the new overhead wires!

Rolling Line is getting some new scenery!

Something I've always wanted to add is some more styles & variations of trees, and since I'm making lots of jungle scenery (for Brazil) I added some new tropical jungle plants and even some vines.

This update includes a whole bunch of new scenery props, starting with a whole lot of new trees:



A bunch of tropical plants and ferns:



Some classic trees (for all around the world) with trunks & branches:



And some more unique variations like droopy swampy trees and larger thick trees with twisting branches:



And some vines too!
These new vines are great for decorating jungle & swamp scenery.
I recommend using the recently added "transform edit mode" controls (press 'F' when hovering over a placed prop on PC) to manually position the vines on trees.

In fact, if you paint them different colors you could even use them for electrical wiring...



There are also some new tree trunks, stumps, and dead trees:





As well as trees, this update also adds a ton of new rock styles!
You can use these for boulders, or scale them up to use as terrain & cliffs:







There are also a few extra things, like some lines of grass.
These are great for filling gaps between tracks and placing alongside paths & roads!



And lastly, these new "edge of table" path pieces, which are great for making terrain smoothly line up with the table:



I hope you enjoy all these new scenery props!
With all the focus recently being on buildings, freight & industrial stuff its nice to add some more natural elements into the game.
These new props should make for some beautiful layouts, and lots of new scenery biomes!


The next couple of updates are going to be pretty exciting ones, because Rolling Line is finally getting electrification!! Overhead wires, pantographs and a new electric train will all be coming in the next few updates, so keep an eye out for that!



Enjoy!

Something Rolling Line has needed for ages is proper modular building props!
With these new props you can easily build all sorts of different styles of buildings like barns, sheds, houses, mansions, factories, etc...

You can snap together different shapes and sizes to make the basic structure of the building, then decorate it with windows, doors and chimneys.
The main building pieces snap together too, which makes things so much easier!

You can find all this new stuff in the "buildings -> modular" drawer.
Here is a full view of all the new props that have been added:



I can't wait to see all the creative things people will be able to build with all this new stuff, making custom buildings just got 10x easier!

Here's a bunch of examples of the kind of things you can make with these new props:



On a side note, these old windows are also now multi-paintable:



[h2]QuickMod features[/h2]
In addition to these new building props, this update also adds some new quickMod features!
You can now use multiple 3D models in your train mods, with multiple textures and material types.
You can use these new materials to create effects like transparency and emmision!

There is also now the option to finally change the coupler offset distance! (a much requested feature)

You can find more info about the new quickMod features in the Steam guide:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1789707835
There is also a new example quickMod "NZR red DX" (which uses these new quickMod features) which will be automatically downloaded with this update!
It's based on the classic New Zealand Rail "fruit salad" DX locos.



I hope you enjoy these new props, and since houses & buildings are such a major part of model railway building it made perfect sense to finally give them some attention!

have fun!

The Americans are going to love this update!
The very popular Double-stack freight car is now officially in the game.

This is the Compact Comp winners choice of freight wagon.
Also, let it be known that despite Ze Trackmeister winning first place in both the Color Comp and Compact Comp, he hasn't claimed the actual first prize either time! both times he has generously passed on the first place prize to the runner up, and opted to choose a prop instead.

Also a huge thank you to Long who built the original double-stack quickMod which was modified for this update!!

You can find the new double-stack wagon in the "freight 2" drawer along with a bunch of variations (2 containers, 1 container and empty):




[h3]
Randomized containers[/h3]
Just like the old NZ-style container wagons, these new double-stacks have randomized container colors.
The colors are randomized every time you clone the wagon, but i have added a new feature where if you hold SHIFT while cloning or placing the wagon, its randomized colors will stay the same. This feature applies to all the wagons that use randomized elements, including the old NZ container wagons.

[h3]Custom liveries[/h3]
These new double-stacks also feature custom liveries of course!
In fact you can already find some examples on the Steam workshop.



You can find the new livery template in the "Rolling Line -> modding -> templates" folder, or download it here:



The 2 container, 1 container and empty liveries all use the same template! The container parts of the livery are just ignored depending on what livery type you use.
e.g. if you make a single container livery, only the bottom-left container on the livery template is used, and the bottom-right is ignored.

[h3]New tunnel[/h3]
Since the double-stacks are very tall, I've also added a new taller style of tunnel to fit them! You can find this in the track "tools" drawer.





There are also a couple of other small things included:

• The text input limit (for naming workshop items, saves etc) has been removed.
  
• The particles from the coffee cup prop have been fixed (they previously had a shader error)
  

I hope you enjoy the new wagons!
Next up is likely to be some new Brazil-themed buildings and urban props.
I'm also looking at releasing the Rolling Line soundtrack on steam (for free of course) using Steams new game soundtrack features.

Enjoy!