Stations v3: persistent stations with explicit user editing
The original design idea of stations dates back to five years, since the first pre-EA prototypes. Although stations have evolved in important ways, their basic building mechanics have remained the same. There's some aspects to these mechanics which are undesirable and were making game design evolution impossible, so 1.15 introduces a new concept of stations based on explicit user control, rather than the implicit effects of overlapping tracks.
In short: in 1.15 stations are a collection of track segments explicitly selected by the player. In 1.14 the concept of "if the platform footprint touches, it is in the same station" was a core game rule, implemented and enforced in the most lower levels of the game logic. In 1.15 this rule is now an specific feature of the station creation tool in the track editor. Platform tracks can now freely overlap each other without being part of the same station. It is also not necessary for them to touch to be considered part of the same station. In essence the platform-station relationship is now under full control of the player.
Stations can now exist independent of platforms. In fact, stations with 0 platforms are allowed to exist. And deleting tracks will never delete stations. Deleting a station will now require a explicit player action, respecting the player work.
Tracks can be manually assigned to stations to convert them into a platform. This is streamlined with a dropdown to directly pick nearby stations, so there’s no need to go hunting for icons or nodes on the the map. In a similar fashion, you can also remove the association to a station (the old demote) or create a new station from a track (the old promote). There are bulk editing versions of these tools, so you don't need to manually assign tracks one by one.
Platform extension buildings have been removed. There’s no need anymore for any track to touch any other track, you can just directly edit which tracks belong to a station, and this link will persist until is deleted.
Walk link buildings have been removed. The new station editor allows to create walk links by selecting nearby stations in a list.
In 1.15 the only time you’ll see platform footprints is when you use the station platform tool. These footprints now have zero gameplay relevance, and only exist as a guide to select a station for appending a platform to it. Click inside a footprint and it extends the station with a new platform, click outside and it creates a new station. The end result is that using this tool is very similar to the previous design, but the only time the footprints are relevant is during that first step in this specific tool, and nowhere else.
Station editor
As mentioned earlier, in 1.15 stations have become persisting objects. This will enable new design and gameplay features, but for now the most visible one is a new top level editor in the left toolbar. The station editing options formerly located in the track editor are now located in the station editor. This means the track editor is focused on buildable physical elements, like tracks and declaring these tracks as platforms of some station. And the station editor focuses on more abstract concepts, like population radius, tags and walk links. A few of the most basic station editing options, like naming, will also remain accessible in the track editor.
Big rewrite of the track editor internals
In order to support the new multiplayer system in 1.15, most of the track editor internals needed to be scrapped and rewritten. In particular all the code relating to track modification and creation relied on the fact player changes were immediately applied to the game database. This is not the case anymore in 1.15. Now player changes are only applied to the database when they are confirmed by the player by finalizing the editing action, like by releasing the mouse when moving some tracks, or clicking a second time when creating tracks. All the intermediate states before these actions are now implemented by the track editor, using a new predictive editing system which keeps the main game database untouched. This improves reliability and performance, both in single and multi player. Despite these deep changes track editor tools look and behave almost the same.
Multiplayer is disabled until later in the beta
There's been many changes under the hood in this version. This means the first builds of the beta are likely to be buggy. In addition to these bugs, multiplayer will also add its own share, due to the fact it's been completely redesigned, as explained in the October post. So in order to make sure I am chasing the right kinds of bugs, I first want the game to become reasonably bug free in single player, before I tackle multi player fixes. For this reason multiplayer is disabled in the first beta build(s).
For a more detailed overview of the 1.15 changes, check out the October and November devblogs:
https://carloscarrasco.com/nimby-rails-october-2024/
https://carloscarrasco.com/nimby-rails-november-2024/