We’re here with more information about Simulator, the upcoming major update to Derail Valley. This post is not so much a progress report, but rather oriented toward clarifying a few things about the update and making a few small announcements. Be warned - it's a bit lengthy.
For the start, a quick summary of the previous two months - frankly, not particularly exciting ones. We've made a countless amount of bug fixes, cleanups and all kinds of wrapping up all across the project. We’ve transitioned from nearing the finishing phase to actually being deep in it. We’ve also expanded the team by a valuable member, to help us finish sooner (more on that below). Probably the most interesting to you - we’re weeks away from starting posting a lot more media about the update.
Boarding the 2023 hype train
In the previous post we said we could see a possible release sometime in the first half of 2023. So far that time frame remains viable, with the launch in Q2 being the most likely.
Starting January 9th and until release, we’re going to be making two media posts each working day on our social media. Each post is going to include a screenshot or a few-seconds short video highlighting a particular game’s feature, a notable piece of content or an artistic shot.
We will be making these posts on Discord, Twitter, YouTube (posts/shorts), Reddit, Facebook and the newly opened Instagram and TikTok accounts - so make sure to give us a follow on your preferred platforms!
You can open images in new tab for higher resolution.
Our list of things to post about has close to 200 items. With artistic shots added to the mix, even though we’re talking posting twice a day, that makes it up to half a year worth of content to post - of which 95% will show something that’s new to Simulator, or improved in it. Since we intend to release the update sooner than that, at some point we will probably start making more than two posts a day.
The posts will initially show the basic things like shots of different types of landscapes, road vehicles, weather and similar, but over the months they will progress to showing more of the new UX, the new train simulation features, locomotives and more. Basically, the closer to the release the more revealing the content.
Frequently asked questions
We’ve been getting a lot of the same questions over the months, not rarely from players who are frustrated and highly concerned for Simulator taking so long. While all of these questions were answered in previous news posts already, please allow me to address the concerns in this format and hopefully remove any ambiguities:
Why would you show us two posts a day instead of all of it at once?
We’re still many months away from the update being ready for launch. For that day to be successful (and frankly, we really need it to) we need the peak of community interest to be then, and not many months prior.
That said, we appreciate our fans and, with the individual small pieces of content being posted sooner, want to provide you with something to look forward to every day, while not letting the cat out of the bag prematurely.
Why does it take so long to finish the update anyway?
A lot of the game was basically remade from scratch. The code that makes trains do anything is all new. A lot of the graphics rendering features are all new. The way the game loads/reloads sessions is all new. The user interfaces are all knew. On top of it there are many, many more features that didn't exist before (there's a link to more details in a reply further below). It takes a lot of work to bring all these things together to a coherent whole, as bug free as possible. This is a huge update, and once we reveal all that's new it will start to make more sense.
Why did you remake so much of it?
There was a lot of necessary corner cutting we've done in the past when we had less resources. For the game to progress, and the many new features to be added, we had to drastically improve some things. For the first time ever, we were in a position to not rush things and do them properly. It took longer than it was originally planned, but we saw that as a good investment for the future of Derail Valley.
Couldn't you have split the update into smaller individual parts?
Not in an efficient way. To avoid downtime, it's necessary that people in the team start and finish their projects at different times. Since projects on Simulator have many dependencies amongst each other, despite being done in parallel, it's impossible to time them to all be finished at a certain time, unless we're strictly pushing for a release.
And doing that is wasteful. Cutting it into multiple releases would have caused a lot of depending projects and team focus to be disrupted. In the long run, this would have drastically postponed the update from reaching the state it's in now, it would have devaluated its publishing potential and left a bunch of design "scar tissue" that we'd then need to spend significant time on mitigating. In the context of this particular update, the gain from the higher release frequency would have been net negative.
This is not to say that small quick updates should never be done. We've done 40+ of them when it made sense, but sometimes it's more efficient to work continually on major updates that take a long time to finish.
If the Simulator update is ready for capturing media, why don’t you just open the beta?
Apart from desire to focus community attention on the eventual release date itself, as mentioned above, there are other reasons too. For example, our beta team is already carefully selected in a way that works best for us and the update, and they’ve been doing a great job for years.
There’s so much work on our plate that managing a large group of people hunting for bugs that we mostly already know about would be a massive, unhelpful distraction. Without many UX features in place (such as the tutorial, which needs to be done near the end of development), a lot of people wouldn’t get the right idea on how exactly to use or do certain things, and this would lead to more confusion than usefulness. We don’t want people having conflicting information and experiences on the release date.
Simply put, running an open beta would not be productive right now and would further complicate and delay the release. The very moment Simulator is ready for a hypothetical open beta, it will in fact be released to everyone.
What if your testers are insufficient and I would catch something they didn’t?
The majority of bugs and UX improvements are actually handled internally, before even reaching the testers. None of those are the bottleneck - development speed is. When it comes to other suggestions and feedback, our testers are veteran players of Derail Valley, knowledgeable about trains, and for example their input a year ago was crucial in the update’s improvements to brake and powertrain simulation accuracy. Right now in the finishing stages, however, the activity is more focused on bug hunting and having more of it would not be helpful.
That said, we do want to expand the beta team when the update is ready for translation. This will provide us with fresh perspectives and experiences on varying hardware, so that we can make adjustments as needed. The day this will start has proven difficult to pinpoint however, because translations require the tutorial to be done, which itself needs pretty much every other feature to be finalized. Although it’s tough to say when, we’re getting there.
With that, I’d also like to remind everyone of our list of translator candidates per language. If you’d like to help translate Simulator to your language and eventually get beta access, please let us know on our Discord server. We’ll inform you how to apply when we’re ready to start.
This is Early Access. Why am I not given your latest version to test it right now?
Buying a game in Early Access gives players the opportunity to try it, give feedback and support development before it is potentially finished. However, this does not mean that involvement of players at every step of the development is productive.
Now, I absolutely understand that many of you have been waiting for this update for a very long time. We didn’t initially plan for it to take this long, and for that I genuinely apologize. What matters is that we’ve endured through all of the hurdles so far, have been working on the update at our full capacity all this time, and are getting it ready for release.
What if you’re intentionally stringing us along, delaying the update indefinitely?
That wouldn't work for anyone involved. Here’s why:
Even if it were to never receive another update again, the currently available version of Derail Valley is a stable, unique experience with over 50 hours of gameplay, priced less than what it’s worth (because of the long-term early supporter discount). We would gain nothing “upselling” the existing game by lying about an imaginary update.
Simulator is the most costly project we’ve ever worked on, more so than the rest of the game before it. Yet, it’s a free update for all the existing players. With its release we will increase the price of Derail Valley for new buyers, but for this all to pay off, the risk and challenge is entirely on us to make the update attract enough new players to buy the game - now at the increased price, three years after the original release.
Every day that we’re not releasing Simulator, we’re also not increasing the game’s price. This is at our own loss, owning up for the self-caused delay. And, mind you, the delay has happened only because with the changes made we want to make the project more cost effective in the future.
The players can only gain here. Every loss is on us. I see absolutely no way this could have been handled any more fair for the players than it has been, and especially compared to some of the competing products. There’s always going to be someone unhappy about it and that’s unavoidable.
Finally, if anyone’s wondering, the Simulator screenshots we’re posting are raw captures from actual well-performing test builds, free of image manipulations.
You say Q2 2023. How do we know that you won’t delay the update again?
It's still an estimate, not a definitive release date. We are adamant on finishing, and can’t foresee any reasons for further postponements, however there's no guarantee. It’s in our interest more than anyone’s to release the update as soon as possible, but we think making sure it's stable and attractive at launch is more important than being early.
What to expect (and not expect) in the update
Will there be multiplayer in Simulator? Or ever?
No. Multiplayer was never a planned feature. We wanted to test the possibility of adding it at some point, but there are way too many things on our plate for us to get to it. If we ever do multiplayer, it will be in a separate product.
Is the map getting expanded in Simulator?
No. Apart from minor prop additions and bug fixes, there are no changes to the map, tracks or industries coming in Simulator. We plan on working on track and industry improvements immediately after launch, depending on its success, however the map size won’t change. We do, however, intend to have one or more new maps as DLC in the future.
Are jobs getting improved in Simulator? Are we getting any new cargo types?
No. Same as the answer above, we have many plans in regards to improving jobs and cargo in the base game, but the work on that will only start after Simulator, depending on its success.
What about AI trains? Passengers?
No. Precursor for them is the map/track improvement mentioned above. We’re still a few years away from AI-driven trains and passengers, if things go well.
Will there be Steam Workshop?
Probably not yet in Simulator, but if all goes well, the plan is to have it added later, as soon as the rest of the train mod infrastructure is deemed stable.
So then, what is coming in Simulator?
You can see the exact list of features coming in Simulator listed in one of our previous posts, split into three lists. We will highlight these in more detail over the next year:
ENVIRONMENT
TRAIN SIMULATION
USER EXPERIENCE
What’s the status of mod support in Simulator?
A big part of Simulator is the all new powertrain simulation for steam and diesel vehicles. The new code was made with train mod support in mind, so that modders can make new locomotives, conceptually similar to those included in the vanilla game, more easily, practically without programming.
While this considerably increases the speed at which the new locomotives can be created, it’s still not made very accessible to modders. We want to give that some shape in the next few months, but we aren’t sure yet to what extent it will be finished and documented for the Simulator release. If all goes well, we will be rapidly improving these systems immediately after launch.
With that I want to point out that modding trains into Derail Valley is still going to be rather difficult (the game itself is rather detailed), but easier than before. For mods that aren’t trains, there’s no planned support and they will continue to be developed the same way as before.
Zeibach joins the dev team!
In our eternal battle to reduce the time it takes to finish Simulator, we’ve expanded our team by a new programmer - none other than the DV modding rockstar, Zeibach!
You may know him as the author of many of the most popular Derail Valley mods, such as Zeibach’s Realism Overhaul. As one of our long-time Discord community members and a day one Simulator beta tester, a few weeks ago he became part of the Altfuture team. In the following period he will be taking care of what’s left of the work on train simulation and train mod support. These won’t be some groundbreaking improvements just yet, but they drastically help offload our team and will shorten the time to release. Over the years Zeibach and us have both found that we strive for the same goals and vision behind Derail Valley, so instead of doing things double, joining forces made perfect sense for everyone.
Before you say that we should've done this years ago, I just want to make it clear that it wasn’t coming up with the idea that was the hard part, but actually making it happen. Getting where we are today was made possible only by the enormous effort from the people on our team and the support from our players, and none of that should be taken for granted.
Having Zeibach join Altfuture marks a historical moment, because this is the first time our team has reached 10 members since its humble beginnings, almost exactly a decade ago. However, it’s worth noting that not everyone on the team is a developer, and of those who are, not everyone is available 24/7. We are no AAA with infinite resources that could make all the perfect moves. This project is still a very difficult, risky endeavor with no guarantees, despite how easy it may all look from the outside. I hope everyone can understand the human side of the journey, and appreciate that, while we have surely made some mistakes along the way, we are still going.
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With that I’d like to thank everyone for your support. We’ll enter the new year with more hard work and a bunch of new screenshots and short videos coming your way. Remember to stay up to date with us and discover Simulator on a daily basis by following us on: Discord, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Reddit, Facebook and TikTok.
Until then, all of us at Altfuture wish you a merry Christmas and happy holidays!
-Slobodan
