Railroader 2024.6.6 is now available on the Experimental branch! This release brings a bunch of bugfixes, but also some map changes we think you'll enjoy.
We plan for this to be the last feature release for the 2024.6 experimental branch, and work toward releasing AE Waypoint Mode and Timetables on the main branch. There will likely be a few followup bugfix releases, but we will save new features and significant changes to 2025.1.
On to what's new!
Map Updates
We're pleased to have finally added a wye at Sylva! For a long time now we've wanted to add some sort of means of turning trains, and this has certainly been a popular request from the community. Historically, the Tuckasegee & Southeastern Railway had an interchange with the Southern adjacent to Sylva Paperboard, so we've drawn on that design and added a leg to form a wye. We also added a new (historical) customer off of the wye: Sylva Building Supply.
A new customer has erected their elevator and silo in Andrews: Tatham Grain & Seed Co. Also with a historical basis, this industry takes its rightful place just east of the Andrews station. As such the Andrews signal milestone staging track has been moved toward the station. If you have milestone cars there you will need to move them so the signal crews can find them.
Sometimes map changes break the game's ability to restore the positions of cars on the changed tracks in saves. We've improved detection of related issues in this release and you should see the Lost & Found window if any cars need to be re-placed.
Finally for the map we've added new buildings at various locations: Alarka Copper Co., Nantahala Power & Light, and Union Lumber Co. There's also a new (curvable) crossing pad.
Speaking of model updates: the T-22 ten-wheeler has been updated! We have updates under way for several other engines - look for them in future updates.
Auto Engineer Waypoint Mode
We've made a number of refinements to AE Waypoint Mode:
- In ABS the AE will now throw switches within interlockings, rather than creep into the plant. (RR-666)
- No longer throws switches while its max speed is set to zero. (RR-660)
- No longer tries to clear points it is already clear of.
There are still several known issues that we're working on and plan to address in future updates. The AE will sometimes:
- Roll up to clear CTC switches very slowly if the switch is not set for the route it wants to take. (RR-697)
- Display incorrect notices such as "Switch Against" when reaching a waypoint. (RR-607)
- Fail to couple to another cut of cars, particularly when it is already very close to the cut. (RR-618)
- Appear to be stuck with status "Couple" when it cannot move to clear switch points due to uncoupled cars on the other end, even if points are already lined. (RR-642)
Auto Engineer Changes
There have also been some refinements to the Auto Engineer in general: it now correctly treats intermediate signals as "Stop and Proceed". We've also reduced the stop distance before stop signals to 15m.
Also, we've removed the AE Orders tab in the locomotive Inspector window. It did not support AE Waypoint mode and we want to focus our effort on making a great AE orders UI in the HUD. Although the Inspector Orders UI had its uses, at this time we don't think it is realistic to keep both in feature parity.
Timetables
We released timetables in December with version 2024.6.3 and the response has been much stronger than we anticipated! It's been clear to us that enhancements in two areas in particular are necessary: passenger movement and a more robust timetable display.
Managing destinations on coaches can be tedious, so we initially made passengers board coaches on timetable trains if they thought they could get to their destination via that train. The problem with this approach was that it made it impossible to perform finer-grained management of your coaches.
With 2024.6.6, passengers will only board coaches that are checked for their destination. (This is consistent with the behavior of non-timetable trains.) To help ease checking destinations however, we've enhanced the "Copy from Timetable" button to include potential transfer destinations, _and_ we've added a new feature for timetable trains: Auto Destination.
When "Auto Dest" is enabled on a coach, the coach's checked passenger stops will be automatically updated whenever it is stopped at a passenger station. This essentially makes it possible to never have to manage passenger stops manually. When turning a train you need only update the timetable symbol and guide it to its first stop.
We look forward to hearing about your experiences using timetables with these changes!
Additional timetable updates:
- Changed train sort order to be by departure time within class, rather than train name within class. (RR-673)
- AE Road mode engineer now posts notice upon completing schedule. (RR-675)
- Fixed case where transferring passengers would disperse prior to the arrival of their transfer. (RR-695)
- Fixed coaches not departing when timetable schedule runs past midnight. Fixed incorrect display of times past midnight. (RR-669)
- Improved text layout to allow for longer train names in timetable. Added "Read Down" and "Read Up" labels. (RR-661, RR-647)
- Added "Clear Timetable" to editor tools menu. (RR-685)
Everything Else
Whew, that was a lot. We have a few more enhancements and fixes to mention though:
- Car Inspector Operations tab Status field now shows expected waybill payment, including timely bonus and damage fine. Tooltip shows full breakdown.
- Adjusted "High" video quality level settings to improve texture quality (forced anisotropic) as well as shadow cascades (2 to 3).
- Fixed regression introduced in 2024.6.5 which caused CTC blocks to show as occupied when they are not. (RR-674)
- Increased maximum length of CTC marker text from 16 to 48 characters. (RR-680)
- Changed oil point click area to be more focused on the outer axle/gearing area.
- Teleporting to the mouse pointer now results in first person camera pointing in expected direction.
- Fixed car on grade not rolling after releasing handbrake.
- Fixed window sizes not correctly saved/restored when using UI scaling. (RR-696)
- Fixed list/detail panels (Milestones tab content) not maintaining consistent list width. (RR-657)
- Fixed camera zooming while mouse is over dropdown window or other UI. (RR-691)
- Fixed car inspector Operations panel not updating to reflect train crew and timetable symbol updates. (RR-689)
- Internal: Deprecated MapMask component; added RectangleMapMask and CircleMapMask.
Thank you for reading, for your support, and for playing Railroader!