Upcoming huge update version 0.9 t450 feature list
Hey Guys,
Thank you for all your continued support for Train Station Simulator. As we are approaching the first year anniversary of the early access release of Train Station Simulator we thought it is high time to give a few more details on the upcoming features we have been hard working on in the past months.
Train Station Simulator 0.9 version t450 will bring you TEN amazing new features and also a surprise number ELEVENTH EXTRA AMAZING FEATURE! Keep scrolling for all the details!
1. Re-coding
2. Custom Timetables
3. Custom Train length and type
4. Train / Passengers and Station disasters
5. Ticket gates - postponed to a later version
6. New type of passengers
7. Five new train designs
8. New language localization: Brazilian (Portuguese)
9. Two new facilities
10. Train cleaner units, track maintenance service members
***THE MEGA-GIGA BIG PLANNED EXTRA!!***
11. Train interiors - might not arrive to 0.9 update still in alpha*
1. Re-coding
Due to some technical difficulties we decided to re-code from ground the complete game. It means that most of bases will be crated again but we will use existing parts of the code to avoid interruption of your existing creations. AI will be modified in some places so passengers and staff members will get more clever by time.
2. Custom Timetables
In 0.9 version we plan to enable the custom timetable system. I means you will have a complete control on arrival and departures of the trains with the standard minimum 3 hours limit to stay at the station per train but you will be able to have all train at once to have rush hour maximums or mid day empty tracks. Moreover we leave the basic timetable in place but there will be a separate menu to enable custom timetable.
3. Custom Train length and type
We also plan to enable a new cool features so within a few game parameter limits you will be able to set the train carriage number and even the train types. However some limitations stays in place for example you cannot have a modern ICE looking train in the very early years. Moreover we leave the basic timetable in place but there will be a separate menu to enable custom train lengths and type.
4. Train and station disasters
0.9 will contain a few more extremely interesting features such as the train disasters... A derailed train? A passengers on the track? Or just a tree on the rails? Who know what other amazing disasters can happen in a station's life :)
5. Ticket gates - later version
Well... ticket gates is a huge request from our great fans. At the moment the ticket gate system is not working properly and it creates more stress and madness in the station than advantages. It really needs more work to work properly. (We know that we are saying this for sometime now but believe us: it is not yet ready to be released! :) )
6. New passengers
We will add a few more passenger types: smoking violators and distracted passengers.
7. Five new train designs
A few new trains are coming to Train Station Simulator 0.9. Each era will get one new train type so 5
8. New language localization: Brazilian (Portuguese)
We will enable a new text Localization: Brazilian - Portuguese
9. Two new facilities
In version 0.9 playgrounds and parks are coming as new recreational zones.
10. Train cleaner units, track maintenance service members
New staff members will also included in this update. Now version 0.9 there will be some extra duty: players need to keep trains clean as well inside.
***THE MEGA-GIGA BIG PLANNED EXTRA!!***
11. Train interiors - might not arrive to 0.9 update still in alpha*
We plan to enable an amazing new feature you all will LOVE. When hovering over trains you will be able to see INSIDE the interiors of all your passenger train carriages including all chairs and small tables and you will be able to see when a train is getting full of passengers!
*Be warned that this features is highly in development so we cannot guarantee that this will be available in the next update fully. But working on it to make you all happy!! :)
All in all, the past few months was a bit quite without small updates so we plan to release the larger 0.9 huge update in the coming months!
Keep us updated with all your kind comments and suggestions and we still love to see all your creations in the screenshot section!
We had a wonderful week to relax so now we are back to development of Train Station Simulator!
We are working on some train accident and unexpected events for your station's life that will arrive in future updates.
Moreover there is a very complex timetable management system in development. With the new system you will be able to set each dep/arr time of your timetable also the number of carriges and type of your engines. But this timetable system needs a lot of work to work properly.
Also we plan to enable an option to be able to add new trains to your game more easily so you can have unique trains in your game!
Lots of more to come soon! :)
Thank you guys for all the great screenshots and comments!
Short Vacation until 29th August
Hey Guys,
This has been a very busy year. So far so good! We need a little charging up as a few days of holiday so until 29th of August we will have no access to the forums.
During this time we would like to ask our fans and community supporters to help new players if they have issues or questions. We will be back online in a week of time and new updates and new features continue to come!
Thank you guys for all your support during these days!
The TSS Team :)
Screenshot of this week
Hey Guys,
We have seen so many great screenshots recently from you but let us show a nice composition with all the great details in it.
Thank you! Check it out, rate it and share you comments!
UPDATE t436 LIVE NOW (Beta and Public BRANCH)
Hey Guys,
We have sorted out a few bugs so a quick patch has been uploaded today and it is LIVE NOW.
QUICK FIX
- there is a fix for an appearing "DOOR" message that has been left in the game from a special debug mode. Sorry for this guys!
Moreover we have added a test MAC build I'd love to see some Mac users with feedback!
Thank you guys!
What's behind Train Station Simulator: an insight of making isometric indie games
Hey Guys,
We thought it was high time to show you a few tricks we use during game development that might give you some answers on some facts and concerns about the behavior and cause of different things in Train Station Simulator.
1. An isometric world:
Most of you know that TSS is an isometric game that is the illusion of 3D of a two dimensional world. Basically we can say that the game takes place on a checked paper with open (GREEN) and forbidden (RED) squares the whole time in 2D. You as a player of the game only sees everything happening in a different projection in isometric 3D.
Corridors and tiled areas are open spaces but objects, trains and walls are forbidden (partially) places. As an example let's see how an area of a toilette and some tiled areas look like in the 2D Train Station Simulator engine and in the game:
Enabling another layer will show passengers as blue boxes actively moving around. The white less-than // greater than sign indicates the direction the object is moving towards. Some other numbers indicates certain objects as well in your station like 115 for an interactive monitor or 117 for ticketing machines:
2. Code: "Dead" Backgrounds, "Zombie" mixed elements and "Alive" objects
Most elements in Train Station Simulator are background or active object elements or many elements are both.
As an example flooring are completely background elements, benches are mixed, background and object elements and passengers are objects only. Let me explain this a little more deeply.
During game development we always pay attention to the speed of FPS (Frames the game runs Per Second) a game can run on maximum. Lots of factor has a huge effect on this (code itself, engine used for development, graphical elements at once on the screen and/or in memory, quality of coding and lots of other factors...).
We use some easy techniques to reduce memory and CPU usage. The biggest advantage is the 2D vs. isometric trick I talked in the first point. The other major possibility is using different elements for different purposes as "dead" background elements will not eat up much memory or CPU but "alive" object will:
A. Background only elements: (Dead) Most flooring, walls, doors, tracks, platforms are "static" elements and are not moving or changing very often. I call them "dead" as these are not moving but sometimes other elements can interact with them (eg.: passengers damage more likely cheap floor and less likely expensive floor).
B. Mixed, Background and Object elements (Zombie) Most of the interiors to be placed (eg.: benches, machines etc.) are mixed elements. These one have their own rules and functions (eg.: a ticket machine can give a ticket to the passenger or a passenger can use the toilette) so basically we can say that these elements have their own interaction with active objects. These elements cannot interact with each other only with "alive" objects.
C. Object elements (Alive) Passengers, vandals, staff members, vehicles and trains are active objects in Train Station Simulator. These pieces can interact with A and B types and they can interact with each other as well. For example a passenger can blemish the flooring background only elements, also passengers can sit on a mixed bench element but they feel pretty angry when seeing a vandal passenger destroying machines or missing their train as it leaves the station.
So by understanding the main elements of TSS now you can have a much cleaner picture why there is a limit in the number of passengers (250 right now) or why the map is not much larger. There are other great tricks used in other games where object elements (C) are only active in the view of the game but in TSS it would not be possible as in real world simulation games even if you do not see your passengers they have to continue their behaviors (they are getting more and more tired or hungry and have to catch their trains).
3. The underpass problem: why not possible to move the underpass entrance/exits away from platforms each side or only one side
So past week there were some discussions on the new underpass feature. We planned on request to move the entrance/exit of the underpasses off the platforms but as you might now understand more deeply the mechanism of Train Station Simulator it will easy to understand the cause.
To understand the problem let me introduce a few issues. Train Station Simulator was not designed to be a multi-floored game scene. The "open" // "forbidden" cell system enable "alive objects" to explore around open cells and avoid forbidden cells. The problem is with crossings and the fact that there are no multiple layer levels of that system so it would be difficult to define being on ground level or underground level (Actually we have tried that too but did not work as expected).
So the next image will show how the underpass works: actually if you place an underpass between tracks it will open a corridor for "forbidden" cells so passengers can cross. The illusion that they "disappear" is only a graphical effect to make it more real and train tracks are forbidden cells as trains use different paths for their movements than passengers.
The image shows that it is possible to reach from A-B-C-D each point to each other. But moving the underpass entrance/exit each side one cell off the platform would have resulted situation that may caused series blockage that can be seen on the next image:
In this case "B" would have never been accessed from position "A" as the underpass invisible corridor would block the ground access on the platform.
Well yeah... We know we could have come up with a solution for that but there were no easy solution for this. We could have created another floor database of coordinates but that would have limited the expanding of passenger number so we had to decide which direction to follow.
Well this example clearly shows that adding new features needs lots of attention and enormous time to develop!
Hope you guys enjoyed this short insight of the mechanism of Train Station Simulator. We may create posts like this in the future as well and please continue posting comments and feel free asking questions in the future as well.
Thank you guys!
Patch - Build t435 - LIVE NOW [PUBLIC AND BETA BRANCH]
Hey Guys,
Finally we could have overcome an issue with updating so finally we have released the Build t435 update.
This is a major update containing lots of bug fixes and new features so it may contain some bugs for the first release:
NEW FEATURES
1. Underpasses between platforms
2. Audio Localization: French
3. Graffiti Artists
4. Station Evacuation Button
5. Basic In-game tutorial
6. More transportation: parking lots, disabled person parking
7. More types of passengers: disabled passengers
8. Mobile phone Charging kiosk
9. Settings / Display - Force FULL HD Windowed mode
1. Underpasses between platforms:
Finally we have enabled this highly requested feature so passengers can now cross longer tracks and platforms so no need to go around. This way you guys will be able to build much different station layouts so your passengers will be able to cross easily under tracks if they need to go to a toilette or any other facility nearby.
There was a discussion in one of the update comment sessions about the entrance of these underpasses. We have tested to move the stair entrances off the platforms but that caused some more complicated issues. We will create this week a detailed blog post of the "Insight of developing Train Station Simulator" and you will understand from that post why it was not possible to move the entrances off the platforms.
You can simple demolish the underpasses with the 2x5 demolish tool.
2. Audio Localization: French
Finally we have updated the audio functions for our French users.
3. Graffiti (Artists)
Gratified trains are finally here. Graffiti was is included in a simple way for now in Train Station Simulator. For this first version graffitis are appear on trains sometimes if there are too many vandals present in you station. In future version we may include more animation where you will be able see graffiti artists painting on trains.
4. Station Evacuation Button
We have enabled the Evacuation button on the right of the main down menu. You can evacuate your station any time and an alarm will sound and all your passengers will try to get to the closest emergency door and/or exit.
Right now unexpected threatens will not happen like bomb in a bag or flooding or any other situation but in the future we plan many many unexpected events that will effect your stations life.
If you click the Evacuation button again the alarm is stopped and everything turns back to normal.
5. Basic In-game tutorial
We have enabled a short tutorial with basic tips on how to build your very first train station and how to setup your timetables and schedules. This is more useful for very newbie users and was a highly requested feature for long time.
Right now the tutorial is English only.
6. More transportation: parking lots, disabled person parking
We have enabled some more parking for cars and a disabled only parking spot.
7. More types of passengers: disabled passengers
If you would like to see more disabled passengers in your station you need to place a disabled parking.
8. Mobile phone Charging kiosk
Mobile phone Charging Kiosk is an eye candy so you make your station more colorful with facilities like this. Available in 2000 and 2010 all game modes.
9. Settings / Force FULL HD Windowed mode
In the settings/display you can use the FullHD Windowed mode that will set 1920x1080 window your game field that was requested as a quick fix for several monitor layouts (as the window size is generated from the screen resolution).
You may have noticed that some planned features have been left out from this update (disasters, tram lines). These features were moved back on the list to enable certain more important quick fixes.
Thank you for your help guys, hope to get more fun soon to Train Station Simulator!!
UPDATE t435
Hey Guys,
Let us show you a few screenshots of the upcoming new features from T435 update coming soon!
Disabled Passengers:
Underpass between platforms:
Station evacuation button in Emergencies:
Disabled Parking Spots:
More screenshots are coming soon and hopefully we can upload this latest update with some patches very soon to you! :)
Thank you guys!
Patch - Build t435 - COMING SOON
Hey Guys,
We were a bit quiet in April with the latest upcoming patches and updates.
Right now we are experiencing some technical issues when trying to finalize the latest build and that is why t435 was not out in April. However, if we finally solve that issue TEN amazing new features are arriving to your Train Station Simulator!
NEW FEATURES COMING in t435 update
1. Underpasses between platforms
2. Audio Localization: French
3. Graffiti Artists
4. Station Evacuation Button
5. Basic In-game tutorial
6. More transportation: parking lots, tram lines, disabled person parking
7. More types of passengers: disabled passengers
8. Mobile phone Charging kiosk
9. Station accidents: passengers on the rails,
10. Station accidents: trees on the rails
There are a few more features that is under final testing and development but still needs a lot coding to function fully. One of these is the highly featured and requested "Ticket Gates" function. This needs some more testing so not sure in which version we can enable it.
Also "More cargo: mail and small bag services" and a Mac test version is coming sooner or later.
Check out Station of this Week as well and rate it if you like this masterpiece! I love it!
Train Station Of The Week
Thank you for this amazing train station that was created by our great community member "tango". Check out the freshly created screenshot of the station and please vote on it if you like it!
Share your newly created stations in update t430 where you have 50% more objects and lots of great new objects and features!
We are working for you continuously bringing lots of new fun to Train Station Simulator!
