Merry (early) Christmas!

While it may be snowy for most of the world, over here in New Zealand it's mid-summer and the Pohutukawa flowers are in bloom.
I'm going to be away from work over Christmas, so this update is a little bit early.

This year the trains are getting a snow-cover effect which automatically happens when you have the weather set to snowy!
You can also manually add/remove snow to a locomotive using a snow painter.





You can find the new snowy painter in the "trains -> steam" drawer, alongside the snow plows (which was a previous year's Christmas update!)



All of the official locomotives and wagons (and liveries!) have snow skins, but since I am heading away from work tomorrow I've had to leave out the Big Boy & tender, which I didn't have time to complete.
I will sort out a snow model for the Big Boy after I get back to work after Christmas, sorry for any confusion it causes!

Snowy models in modding

As well as the official trains, you can add your own snowy model mesh for modded trains.

There are two new options in the train modding system (in the menu "Edit mod -> Effects"):
- Snow model (a 3D model which will be enabled when the train has snow cover)
- Plow offset (this is the same legacy value that QuickMods use to adjust the position offset of plow addons. This system is going to be upgraded in the future, but in the meantime the new modded system now has access to this value)

New weather preset: Blizzard

Since the other snowy weather presets were quite dark, I've added a new one which combines heavy snowfall with white fog and brighter lighting. You can still customize weather further by using the custom weather values (in the "pause menu -> weather -> custom weather values" menu), but having an easy preset is always useful!

Decoration props

The previous year's Christmas updates have been combined into one drawer (which you can find in the "Misc" category).





This includes a bunch of stuff like:
- Dynamic snow (which grows in snowy weather and melts in the sun, and can be plowed by trains)
- The Canadian Christmas train!
- Present props, and the random-box present which spawns a bunch of loot when you open it
- Snowglobe (from the snowglobe layout comp)
- Rotary plow train

And a new addition:
- the light-up neon decorations on the Christmas train & wagons are now usable as props



The Christmas-themed main menu is also back:

Interaction color options

A common issue with making snowy maps is that the white cursor and placement UI blend into the white environment!
This update adds customization options for both, so you can change the color of the pointer in the center of the screen (and you can also change its size).
And you can change the color of the "placement ghost" which is the transparent ghost version of a prop/train that shows up when you are placing it on the ground.

You can find these settings in the "pause menu -> PC options":



Here is an example of using a custom dark cursor/placement UI on snow:



There is also a setting there for enabling/disabling the whole UI.
You could always do this by pressing "i" (re-bindable in the controls menu) but it made sense to have it as an actual setting.

Turning this off will hide all UI, which means the cursor, belt equip slots, help text, etc.

Scale turnout levers on switchboards

A commonly requested feature is to allow for custom turnout lever sizes on the switchboards, since dense track can be very hard to control. You can now find an option for this in the switchboards popup menu (in the "board size options" menu).

Drawers clean-up

In addition to moving all of the Christmas stuff into one drawer, there has been a bit of other re-organizing in the drawers.
All of the other holiday events (Halloween and Easter) have been combined into their own drawers each.



The special Weka Pass buildings (like the long sheds and openable doors) have also been moved into the normal buildings drawers, instead of having their own one in the "misc" category:

Other features & fixes

• Fixed issue where track groups that contained non-connected track would be treated as "symmetrical" groups, even though they actually weren't. Fun fact: An AI helped write the programming that fixed this issue! The future is now.
  
• Fixed issue where using the transform edit mode to move a group of track would sometimes result in track connections inside the group not being set correctly.
  
• Fixed issue where trains would have their interaction blocked when in low-detail LOD range.
  
• Added some new entries in the credits for Trackmeister (designing the double-slip turnouts) and Shini (making the Wellington bus).
  
• Fixed issue where the sky brightness was not instantly set when loading a map (it would fade from dark if the previous map was at night)
  
• The backup log text file now auto-clears itself if it gets too large.
  
• The game now automatically deletes any empty folders left inside the saves directory (since a previous bug was resulting in save files leaving empty folders behind).
  
• Fixed issue with the Rotary plow impact audio playing even at large distances.
  
• Added a few of the newer easter eggs into the possible loot spawns for the Christmas present prop.
  

And that's all for now!
The new snowy models for trains combined with dynamic snow, plows and weather really make for a satisfying modelling experience when making winter scenes, so I highly recommend giving it a go!
Hopefully next year I'll be able to finally make a snow-themed official map myself for Christmas... we shall see!