While I am writing this blog article, the rest of the team is hardworking to have the new version 1.2 ready for you. I expect it'll take a week to move it to the stable branch. In the meantime, you can test it on the 🧪 Unstable branch. Try it for free, but on your own responsibility ;)!
But first, I'd like to take the time to announce the winners of our timetable map contest! I thank all participants (creators as well as voters) and congratulate the winners!
- Inside the Coachyard, by Eduran
- Oss Central, by Typerim
- The Grand Station, by Toby
Be sure to check out the winning "Inside the Coachyard" map and give it a try. I am sure you'll enjoy it as I did! Or just check Mr. Hellish playing it. And btw. I am a host in his show there:
1.2 - the Contracts Update
Initially, we wanted to focus on one category and make the new content update around that category. But later on, we've included much more things into the update, so we somehow left that idea behind. On top of that, the new version features the updated tutorial mentioned in the previous post. And we plan to expand it with future updates even more. I'll tell you about that plan in one of the forthcoming blog posts.
Contracts Managers
The most significant and most notable feature is the Contract Managers. These new upgrades in the endless mode help you automate the workflow of the contracts management. We find choosing the proper contracts (and declining the others) a core part of the gameplay. But later in the game, you may find yourself in need of a specific contract. And we know that waiting is a little troublesome. Fortunately, with the help of new upgrades, you have the option to configure your expectation. You set up the conditions which contract you'd like to see. And the contracts managers will do the hard job of declining the contracts you don't want for you!
On top of that, we also increase the number of offered contracts you can have at once. In the beginning, there's a limit of three offered contracts. But you can increase that number to up to ten offered contracts at once with proper upgrades. There's also an upgrade for boosting the speed of how often the new contracts are generated.
Endless Cycles
Next to the contracts managers, we are introducing the cycles in the endless maps. As you may know, the recurrent contracts repeat every hour. And we now call this one hour a cycle. And when the cycle ends, we calculate and show you a score. Are you better or worse than the previous cycle? There is no better use of score at the moment, but we still find it interesting! And with it, we bring you a nice and shiny overview of your finance in the last few cycles.
The score is as simple as turnover from contracts for the last hour. We prototyped a few formulas, and we've chosen the simplest one.
Faster Switches
A new upgrade allows trains to go much faster on switches when not in a straight direction. We hope this will enable you to optimize the traffic even more to your liking. Speaking of this category of upgrades, I am still unsure whether to include a new "what's straight direction" configuration on every switch. That would bring even more possibilities with traffic optimization. Let me know your points on this topic in the discussion.
Screenshot sizes
Finally, we have decreased the sizes of screenshots drastically, so your saves won't take so much space. The screenshotting process is more streamlined, so there's no UI flickering anymore. I am sorry we haven't done this earlier :).
The Development Team
The great news in the end! Our development team has grown bigger. Initially, it was only Michal and me, but Roel and Zaher joined us at the beginning of September and are already fully helping us with the game! Those on Discord perhaps met them there; they are an incredible help to the game development.
And thanks to them, we are bringing this update just around a month after the previous one! This frequency would be crazy, but we'll try something like an update once in two months. But we don't promise!
Up Next?
There will be a follow-up article about the new sound design, we are putting into the Rail Route, starting with the 1.2 update!
Happy Dispatching!
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Changed depots in staging branch