Improved game version and mod specification released

Today we have released a new game version which contains several improvements and bug fixes. In addition, there is good news for all mod developers: A specification for the newly introduced mod system was made available here.

Most important, the new game version contains three vanilla mods which let you remove the street main connection feature, play the game in a sandbox mode or disable that vehicles run out of availability. The community has repeatedly requested these options, and here they are!

vanilla_modsMods from left to right: No main connections, No costs and Vehicles: No end year.

Also, the community requested configurable town and street names. Players can now specify which kind of town names to generate. This also means that the USA DLC now features American town and street names, independently of the actual game language set.

Several bug fixes, performance improvements, new features and mod system enhancements complete this update.

Please find the complete release notes here.

This said, let us point out that the game will also be updated in future and you can be sure that we will continue to listen to community requests.

38 thoughts on “Improved game version and mod specification released

  1. Thanks.
    I wish you all the best for later patches. I really wish the game to improve further.
    I thought you would add replace now function to vehicles in this patch

  2. Thanks guys! Great to see you are still hard at work making TrainFever better and better. Today I find myself just having a lot of fun running realistic looking trains (with lots of cars) and not worrying about the money.

    I have added the American road crossing mod (which you guys really should incorporate – wig wags, flashing lights with gates, etc.), and would like to suggest that American style wayside train signals should be part of the DLC.

    One other thing that would be really cool is if you could get the trains to blow their whistles for the grade crossings! That would be awesome.

  3. Added debug mode (enable in the settings file, ALTGR+L: display lanes, ALTGR-G: disable GUI)??
    I do not understand that I have to do.
    Thank You

  4. Thanks!
    Next I would really like to have rail over rail crossings.

    It would also be nice to have a city size setting in the start of the game so that there could be a few cities with 1000-2000 population even in the beginning. This is especially important if you start in 1950 and cities haven’t grown yet.

    • Also, these large cities should be sparsely located and there should be fewer industries so that every game map isn’t so symmetrical. Instead you would have to build longer networks.

  5. Will probably give the US town names a go, even though I live in the UK, I find the town names a bit wrong, they’re well known train station names, not city/town names, so doesn’t seem right to me.
    Thanks for your continued updates, this is how great games are made!

  6. Error with Build 5552 (March 26)
    I can’t start the game! when I start or load the game,it always say” this file contains malformed UTF-8 byte sequences. That’s probably because it was saved with a different encoding. Please convert it to UTF-8 using your favorite text”
    and the game shutdown by itself.

  7. Me, too. After the last update my game crashes even if i start a new game 🙁

  8. I think everyone has problems with build 5552… I can only play a new game if I play american without mods. Old games do not work, european gives also errors… (I have to say I play on a macbook pro, but this did not gave any problems before…)

  9. I put all the required files in utf-8 and now I is working well also rescues that I already had!

  10. Great update! Now the only thing I am personally missing when starting up a new map is city/industry density (I would really like to play on large map with few cities, running trains long distances and towns relying on my supply of goods instead of “natural” income). Also, “Replace Now” or just “Update to latest model” button in vehicle replacement screen would be awesome (using the 25% lifespan milestone doesn´t work everytime as I would need it to).

  11. UTF-8 wtf ???

    so u guys release uncritical updates to produce critical bugs to this ‘mod friendly game’ without spending a few days of testing before, even though u have a great community at hand with dozens of modders who would love to test for free ???

    please add the following line to your cv:

    Er war stets bemüht … und bei allen Kollegen sehr beliebt …

    got it?

  12. Great…most of the mods are not longer working here due to the forced UTF-8 check….
    Why did you guys add this forced check? I’m supposed now to go through all of my (more than 300) mods one by one and convert them all to UTF-8? Please make this a little bit more flexible…

  13. We are very sorry for the inconvenience caused.

    Very soon we will release another patch which fixes these problems. All mods and save games will then be working again.

    Unfortunately we were forced to add the UTF-8 restriction because mod files which were not encoded in UTF-8 caused other problems (actually the restriction fixes the most frequent and the second most frequent Train Fever crash!). It’s the only clean and safe way to make sure that in future all mods work fine on all systems and with all languages.

    Only mods which are not encoded in UTF-8 AND which contain special characters (like German umlauts) are/were affected. Anyway, with the next patch (today) we will we will add a heuristic which automatically converts the affected mods to UTF-8.

  14. Hello. It would also be nice that in the screen of the voices FINANCIAL COMPANY COST OF CONSTRUCTION, NEW VEHICLES, COSTS, KEEPING THE ESTATE, INTEREST LOAN VEHICLES SOLD and are marked in red and make a sum, while REVENUE green.

  15. Hi,
    Thanks for this update and for the hard work. But do we know when will the gog version been updated ?

    • I think that game is too long for mp. Multiplayer shouldn’t be introduced without save&load option (like Settlers VII was…).

      Don’t say that sp is no fun, lots of fun in singleplayer mode too!

  16. There is still bug with train speed in curves. If I have straight rails and than 80km/h curve, than the trains are braking too much. The faster train it is, the more it brakes, sometimes to 50km/h or so. It also brakes late and the trains are braking still even when they are out of the curve. Especialy high speed ones. I had 180km/h train, 150km/h curve and the train was braking to 90km/h!!!

  17. I like last patches very much. There is only one thing that I do not understand. Why I can not unlock year 1900/1950/2000 when playing with mods. It is not a big achievement just wait until 1900, 1950 and 2000 year comes, and playing mods or not does not change anything in this matter, am I right? Shouldn’t this achievement be available with mods turned on?

    Now, since I am playing only with mods, I have to launch new game without mods, set speed 4x and wait some ?minutes/hours until year 1900/1950/2000 comes…

  18. At last the long awaited update that removes the main connection feature. I feel like a kid re-united with his stolen bicycle . Thanks for giving me my train set back! 🙂

  19. I still maintain that the one major improvement the game needs at this point is *some* way to vary the map generation. More content, or improved modding tools to allow more content all amounts to very little when every single map basically looks and plays the same as every other one.

    Maps need alterable dimensions, more use of water – ideally coastlines, and in the event that an updated map generation script is too much work, we need a heightmap importer.

    Other updates are great to see, but I’ve really not seen a patch since release that’s really added anything truly substantial to the game experience, and that’s including the recent DLC pack. The maps need more variation! The game *is* the map you play on… this needs attention!

    • RE: “Maps need alterable dimensions, more use of water – ideally coastlines”

      It would be really cool if you could come up with containerports where goods and raw materials could be shipped in and out to distant lands. Also doublestack container trains would be awesome too.

      I agree that the existing maps are boring and repetitive.

      • My idea of having coastlines really was simply to give some distinct form to the landscape to make it interesting in and of itself.

        That said, having ports would be one element in addressing the other issue I feel is contributing to the generic-tract-of-land feel of the maps. The industries are spread mostly evenly and aren’t tied to any specific conditions. I think if there was some kind of mapping that limited raw resource industries only to areas of the map that “contained” that resource, and maybe limited secondary industries to other conditions, like proximity to workforce or water supply or such… it would make cargo hauling a lot more of an interesting challenge.

  20. DEVS.

    A great addition would be some marking out tools for planning. I’m thinking along the lines of Silent Hunter Wolves of the Pacific. Just a superficial overlay for curves, lines, measurement of walking times in minutes, terrain markers, that sort of thing.

    Also I mentioned earlier that I was happy to see the main connection mod and now that I have started playing again, WOW, you guys are really getting things together. I’ve noticed a lot of little things like the camera not going through hills and stuff and you’ve really put a dent in the performance issues. Well done guys, you deserve a bit of praise foe these latest efforts.

  21. Its been quite a long time, and I think most people are wondering but haven’t asked… Any word on whats new, if anything? I hope that the developers have not gotten discouraged by some of the negativity on the forums and here. I know it would go a really long way for the community if the developers could make a post here just to update us on their progress, even if that progress is slow going… I know that one of the major criticisms has been the “untestedness” of the last few releases, so maybe you are just trying to make sure its right, at least that is my hope. My fear is that the developers have given up and Train Fever is dead. I still love the game and see so much potential, please tell me I am wrong… ?

  22. Earlier today, we answered similar questions in the Steam forums. For completeness, we post the same answer here:

    The game is definitely not dead, both from a development perspective and (of course) also from a modding perspective.

    For sure there will be more updates and patches for Train Fever. In a next step, we very soon release a major performance and bug fix update. The update also includes a bunch of small improvements.

    After that we plan to release additional updates. Among other things, we want to improve track construction, and if everything goes well we will be able to release the widely requested X-crossings.

    Because we are busy with planning the future of Urban Games, we unfortunately didn’t find enough time to develop updates and post news in the last weeks. For sure the communication will be improved in the future.

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