Hello everyone,
and a belated happy new year! We hope that all of you had a wonderful start to 2024 and are looking forward to everything that is ahead of us, as it currently promises to become a truly exciting year – especially for Railroads Online.
Today, we want to look at what’s next for the game, which updates you can already get very excited about, introduce changes to our update strategy, and outline a few more changes in our priorities.
Let’s dive right in!
Coming soon: The Winter Update
We took our time to establish some wonderful winter festivities for the current season – but in the end, we think it was worth the wait!
In February, we will release The Winter Update, introducing a brand-new map that is based on areas in the state of Alaska with both huge snowy mountains and calming grass plains. While the mountains will create a large and magnificent natural border, the rest of the map will feature a bunch of other unique pieces like lakes, waterfalls and rivers. As if the beauty of the snow weren’t enough already, you can also discover polar lights once the sun sets and the world pitches into darkness, creating an unprecedented backdrop for your next ride.
That’s not all, however: A new industry chain awaits you, and it’s just as shiny as this entire update! The Gold Industry Chain will require the attention of all railroaders. No need to rush things, you’ll have plenty of time to get familiar with the material! Enjoy the gold rush but be careful not to catch the gold fever.
BTW, we’re also shipping cargo in a new set of rolling stock and a brand-new locomotive with The Winter Update which can handle the snowy tracks through the mountains with ease. More details will follow very soon!
What’s next?
If you’re following our official Trello Roadmap (which you totally should!), you might have seen a few of
our upcoming updates listed already. These updates will all ship within the next few months and focus on numerous areas where we’ve received a lot of feedback, indicating the need for both general but also quality-of-life improvements. We want to take the opportunity to quickly summarize them in more detail:
- The Map Update: In very close cooperation with our co-development team at Black Sheep Studio, we will overhaul the entire way the 2D map works. It will feature an overhauled HUD, greatly improved readability and visibility, comfort tools like a zoom option, and easy-to-understand icons. In addition, there will finally be a mini map so that you won’t have to open the full map every time you just want to know where you currently are, making life as a rail worker so much easier!
- The UI Update: This update will be released alongside The Map Update as they just fit so well together. The UI artists at Black Sheep are overhauling the entire UI, from the main menu to singular buttons, creating a completely new experience. The UI will appear less technical and more stylized, therefore improving readability and visibility. We’ll share the first footage as soon as possible!
- The Spline Update: The spline system is an ongoing topic that requires additional improvements. We plan to upgrade it, making it easier to create splines and align facilities by enabling them to conveniently snap to splines and rails. Plus, we’ll make the spline system much more understandable: Their placing behavior will be simplified and explained in-game in a more coherent fashion, while also displaying easy-to-grasp error messages and feedback should something not work out. We’re also making re-railing much easier, yay!
We'll reveal even more details about each update the closer we get to them!
Multiplayer Improvements
One of the most frequently mentioned areas in need of improvement is the entire online component, and we’ve heard your feedback about that. Our team and the great people at Black Sheep have put a lot of work into improving it greatly and minimizing pain points as much as possible.
Over the course of all the next updates, starting with The Winter Update, we’ll therefore gradually introduce several multiplayer improvements. Our internal tests are very promising, indicating the elimination of issues like popcorning for example. We also want to generally reduce desync issues and minimize stuttering, but as mentioned, it’s a process that will take some time.
Even more great things are planned!
From new props and buildings, over to new quality-of-life features like an undo button and a greater experience for new players, a lot of other things are planned for this year. We also plan to introduce another new map, new rolling stock, overhauled loading screens, and much, much more. Something that will follow later this year will be the introduction of a Player Rights Management System, allowing for server hosts to have greater control about what other players can do and what they can’t.
That’s not all, however. Our team is working on so many other things in parallel which we can’t reveal quite yet (too early atm!), but the sooner we get there, the more we can finally spill.
Changes to our update release strategy
One last thing: We took your feedback to heart and have decided to change our strategy for releasing updates.
Right now, it appears to be fairly random if we put an update into the beta branch prior to its release or not. Despite extensive testing efforts prior to each and every release, releasing an update to a huge playerbase with different hardware and software environments always comes with risks. Issues could pop up which we couldn’t possibly have anticipated.
Based on all your feedback, we'll make the beta branch now the first destination for every new update. Once an update is released, it will first be available on the public beta branch – and that will start with The Winter Update in February. Once we are sure that the beta build is stable, it will be moved to the default branch.
And that's it for today! Have a good time in the valley and never stop shaping the world of Railroads Online.
Your Railroads Online Team
