Major update20 Jul 2026Scales & Gauges! v6.0The scales & gauges update is here! With this update you can now fully customize how large the track, trains, props and player character are in the world. So it will finally be possible to accurately model real-world model railway scales in the game, like HO, G, N, Z, etc. You can make tiny N scale layouts all the way to huge G scale garden railways: How does it work? Firstly, if you just want…
Every now and then it's great to do a "spring cleaning" kind of update, that includes lots of quality-of-life improvements and fixes a ton of small jobs I've had on my to-do list for ages. This update includes a lot of changes, so I'll go through them one-by-one: Edit colors directly on props/menus This is great quality-of-life improvement I've been meaning to add for ages! You can now open the…
Congrats to everyone who took part in the Mountains and Rivers map jam event! There were 85 entries and it was really hard to narrow down my favorites to just a few. As with all these map making events, I always play through every single entry and then pick some to give shout-outs to at the end. So without further ado, here are my favorite entries (in no specific order): And here's also a list…
As mentioned in the previous news posts, I'm currently working on a new official map set on the West Coast of New Zealand! For this update I'm going to release a preview chunk of the map which features a some rather unique terrain... fully explorable underground cave systems! (more on that later in this news post). Since building these caves also meant adding some new props (like stalactites an…
It's about time for another community map making event! This time It's themed around the brand new terrain system update. While the name is the "Mountains and rivers" jam, this can include all kinds of terrain, like deserts, valleys, oceans, beaches, canyons, etc. The only theme requirement is that you make use of the new dynamic in-game terrain sculpting tools. To submit you map, simply tick t…
Time really flies.. . Rolling Line is celebrating its 8th birthday today! That means 8 years since it's release back in 2018. As you might already know, I'm just one solo developer. I've been working on this game as a full time job for about 9 years and it's well and truly my pride and joy. It is both my income and my own creative outlet, and I wouldn't dream of having things any other way. I'v…
This update is a big one! While multiplayer was the biggest update for the game overall, this one is the biggest improvement to map making since Rolling Line's release. You can now make proper 3D smooth terrain in-game, entirely using in-game tools. In the past the way I made the official maps was to use external 3D software (in this case, Blender) to make a 3D model to use for terrain. I would…
For people that have been playing Rolling Line since the early days (almost 8 years ago!) an undo/redo feature will be like a dream come true. It's something that's been on my "nice to have" features to-do list, along with a hundred other things, and it feels great to finally add this incredibly highly requested feature into the game. Now that it's there, it will be one of those features that y…
To kick off 2026 I was looking for a new feature that was gameplay themed and gave people something new to do on their maps (and for multiplayer operations!). The freight loading system is still quite "work in progress" and one of my top to-do list items for a future update was to finally add support for more interesting freight loads. So you can now "fill" open freight wagons (like gondolas) w…
It's time for Christmas! This update wraps up the Multiplayer Map Jam and includes a bunch of shout-outs of my own personal favorite maps from the event. It's also a good time to enjoy a bunch of snowy themed maps and make use of the various winter themed features in the game! Previous year's Christmas updates added things like: · Dynamic snow cover on trains and wagons (if you set the weather…
Due to lots of requests to extend the end date of the Multiplayer Map Jam, I've decided to extend the event by an extra week with a new finish date of December 22nd! And along with the new end date, the final weekend of December 20th-21st is now going to be a dedicated multiplayer map sharing festival! This means that over the weekend is an especially perfect time to host a public server runnin…
I hope everyone's enjoying the multiplayer map jam event! There's already some great entries there. I'm doing a quick survey to see what people think of multiplayer so far, what kinds of bugs they are experiencing, and what kind of updates they want to see focused on in the future. Please fill out this form if you have the time, it's extremely helpful! Fill out the form here
With multiplayer officially released, it's time to really make the most of it! When you experience a map with multiple people it really changes how you view it, and lots of different design ideas suddenly become more important. So a map designed from the beginning to be played in multiplayer is quite different from one that isn't. So the goal of this map jam is simply to make maps themed around…
The release of multiplayer has been amazing! I'm loving seeing all the stuff that people are up to (like this screenshot above by Trainmann!), it really is a dream come true to finally see Rolling Line multiplayer in action. One of the top requested features right away was some form of public server browser, so people can easily make their multiplayer sessions joinable by anyone. So I made this…
The day has finally come! Rolling Line now has multiplayer. It's been the most highly requested feature since day one, and I've always dreamed of adding it. Working on multiplayer was always going to be a massive undertaking, but I'm so glad with how it's turned out! Multiplayer has been in private beta testing for a while now, and I'm hoping that all the major bugs have been spotted. But launc…
As multiplayer moves closer and closer to a full release, here's another feature which I've made as part of multiplayer that is already ready for release now! During multiplayer beta testing, it quickly became obvious that players needed a way to put basic labels on freight wagons to show things like cargo and where they are being transported to. Since I've always wanted to add a basic "waybill…
Hello everyone! Updates have slowed down recently and you can probably guess why, I'm heavily at work with multiplayer! There is currently a private beta for multiplayer with over 50+ people in it, and I'm even getting ready to release a public beta. There will be heaps more news about this in the coming weeks. The multiplayer private beta has been going great, and I'm so excited to get this re…
For anyone who doesn't already know, I'm a kiwi! (a proud resident of Aotearoa New Zealand). Back when I first released Rolling Line it was pretty much entirely NZ trains and locations, with the one exception of the Big Boy locomotive. The rest of the original locomotive roster of the DX, DSJ and Flyer are all trains from NZ. And of course the game's one and only map, the Top of the South (or t…
While I continue to work on multiplayer behind the scenes, there's still a bunch of features that I'm planning to add before multiplayer is done! One of those was a very highly requested feature: the option to control speed by exact amounts (instead of the speed steps currently in the game). You can now switch to an optional "smooth speed control" mode where you can set the exact speed value yo…
As the last update post announced, multiplayer is officially in development! But that doesn't mean that all updates stop for months until that's done, I do still have lots of features I want to work on before releasing multiplayer, and it's good to have some variety while I spend the majority of my time working on multiplayer programming. So here's a very fun feature that I've wanted to add for…
You probably never thought this day would come, but Rolling Line is officially going to be getting multiplayer! I've been working on developing multiplayer in the background and I'm finally at the stage of being able to show it off. A full release of multiplayer is still a long time away though, so don't get too excited just yet, but so far progress is going great and I'm really happy with how…
It might not be very glamorous or exciting, but optimization is a REALLY important part of game development and it's great to spend some time making improvements every now and then. This update is entirely focused on optimization, specifically around RAM (memory) usage and speeding up the map loading process! These changes especially improve loading large maps with a lot of track, and when test…
This update makes a really nice quality-of-life change that I've been meaning to add for ages. The game now has screenshots for loading screens (instead of just the grey background) and of course you can add your own too! Each of the main official maps has their own set of loading screen images, and you can even set your own custom images for your own maps, and include them when uploading to th…
Now that the huge Sierra Logging project is complete I can shift my focus on to new things! And one of Rolling Line's biggest weak points is the new player experience. This game has quite a complicated learning curve since the controls and mechanics are a bit different to what people would expect. I'm planing to dedicate some proper time to improving the new player experience and making the con…
The Sierra Logging map is officially here! After over a year's work and so many different updates and features that made this possible, I'm so glad to finally call this map finished and release it for everyone to see. This DLC is completely free and you can get it here on Steam: As talked about already in the previous news post , instead of being a paid DLC, I'm instead releasing this map for f…
After over a year and a half of work, the Sierra Logging map is finally about to be released! I've set the planned release date for May 26th, and you can view the DLC listing here: But here's the best part, this DLC is FREE! While the idea started off as a paid DLC, after putting so much effort into this map i truly want it to be available to everyone, without any paywall or barrier to access.…
What an amazing event! This might have been my all-time favorite set of maps from any competition in Rolling Lines history. The level of quality and effort is just crazy. Massive congrats to everyone who took part!! As with all these events, I play through every single map submitted, and these are a selection of some of my absolute favorites. Firstly, the three winners! Runner ups: And honorabl…
It's time for another layout building competition!! For those who have been around since the early days of Rolling Line you might remember the "Compact Comp" event... Guess what, that was over 5 years ago! (2019) The goal of the compact comp was to make a map within the limits of a really small table, and it was a real favorite of the events so far in the games history. So while I'm getting the…
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