Better performance, more robustness and a bunch of improvements

We are happy that today build 5746 was released.

The game update brings a significant performance boost (especially in the late game), fixes most of the remaining bugs and improves the game at various places. In other words, the train runs faster, safer and offers additional services!

speed_trainTwo of the improvements: Better performance and individual line colors.

Not only the game runs at a higher frame rate now, there is also less stuttering (e.g. at the end of each month) and the first view is faster now (i.e. when exploring the terrain and towns for the first time). Furthermore, sorting of large user interface lists (e.g. the vehicle and station lists) does no longer slow down the game, and loading of save games takes less time.

We are confident that with this update most of the remaining bugs are history. Most important, thanks to the help of various players, we have fixed a bug which caused some save games to not load anymore. With this update, all save games should correctly load again.

A bunch of improvements complete this update. In particular, players can now set an individual color for each line and the save game dialog was re-worked (all save games are shown, replace warning is displayed and double click is working). Also, we have added an option to control the style of the vehicle lifetime notifications (text or 3d in the main menu interface settings), because many player have requested this option.

Please find the complete release notes here.

We have followed many discussions about the future of Train Fever. Some players even suspected that Train Fever is dead and won’t be improved anymore. Let us clarify here that there will be additional game updates for sure. However let us also state that a part of our resources is needed for planning and preparing the future of Urban Games.

With a next update, we want to focus on new features. Probably the most requested feature is better track construction including X-crossings. You can be sure that we do everything to realize this request.

Thanks for your continuing interest in Train Fever and best wishes!

45 thoughts on “Better performance, more robustness and a bunch of improvements

  1. Excellent, thanks! But please, post more often even if there is not much to say. Two months is too long to wait… especially because I have visited the site pretty much every day 🙂

  2. Super news!
    I don’t know what it is about this game, but I always find myself coming back for more.

  3. I have been one of your harshest critics but if what you say is true, then thank you. I haven’t played for a couple of months as I got too frustrated with it but am looking forward to seeing if this patch has helped. I’d also like to agree with Galwran, you need to be more active with the forums, both here and on Steam. This is why many, including myself, assumed you had given up on the game. It only takes a few mins to post every couple of weeks on your own forum, even if you don’t say much, we will know you’re still alive!

  4. Great updates as always, and as minor as it may seem, thanks for opening up the number-of-towns/industries option! This will be about the first option so far that can actually change the flow of how a game plays out.

    For other people – you go into /res/config/base_config.lua and at the bottom, alter:
    areaPerTown = 10.0,
    areaPerIndustry = 2.0
    – I tried 32.0 and 8.0, which gives roughly 8 towns and 32 industries on a large map.

    I still say you need to focus on more diverse map generation, as the absolute #1 priority. As good as crossing tracks would be, they won’t make the game any more interesting. They won’t change the fact that every game so far feels the same as every other.

    For the sake of continued interest in the game, please work on map generation!

    • The map creation is one of the most necessary points that need upgrade. Full support of the OP’s lines. 🙂

  5. Thanks for the update guys, especially the option to have fewer town/industries on he map. As far as i’m concerned, you nailed it with that one !

  6. I am pleased to know about the patch, though I am not able to play because of large earthquake in Nepal and its terrifying aftershocks, which made me leave Nepal temporarily ):.
    I want to point out that 2 features are really important: better track upgrade function and Replace now function. I wish U guys all the best for the future of Urban Games.
    Thanks for the patch

  7. This is great. Thank you. Its long long time I saw a developer giving so much post release improvement and updates. 🙂

  8. Oh, cannot play after this update. It crashes everytime when loading is 100% :-/

    C2D 2,4GHz, 8GB RAM, Radeon HD3650. It works before.

    Thanks, Piklis

  9. Thanks for the updates! Will it help if we paid you more money? Because we’re totally willing to send more dough your way. 🙂

  10. @Dan – in regards to the changing # of industries and cities, which was 8 and which was 32?

    Referring to this:

    game.config.world = {
    areaPerTown = 10.0,
    areaPerIndustry = 2.0
    }

    A better question, perhaps to the devs: what do those numbers represent?

    • Ah yes, should have specified.

      The meaning is pretty literal. 1 town or industry for each x amount of map space. A large map is 16x16km – 256 square kilometers.

      A value of 10.0 will give you ~25-26 towns (256/10), and a value of 2 will give you ~128 industries (256/2).

      So a value of 32 will give you ~8 towns (256/32), and a value of 8 will give you ~32 industries (256/8)

      I get the impression it may be less but never more – presumably during map generation, it’ll attempt to place x number of towns, and skip each town if the site it picks is too steep or some such criteria, so I’d guess that those numbers would form an upper limit rather than an exact number.

  11. Really disappointed… edge of screen scrolling still not fixed. You can’t scroll diagonally with this function in any direction. When will this be fixed? I thought this would have been implemented by now? Will wait for the next update hoping. Can’t play this game like this… too frustrating!

    • If you have the Steam version installed, it should update automatically when you launch the game. I’m not sure if this is the case with the non-Steam version.

      BTW in the bottom-right of the title-screen, it will tell you the build-number.

  12. I haven’n played this game for a long while because the usa map lacks a sandbox (cheat ) mode.

    • In the new-game dialog, select ‘advanced’, and you should see two rectangles underneath ‘Available Mods’ and ‘Active Mods’ (if you’re playing a vanilla game, ‘Active Mods’ will be empty). In the ‘Available Mods’ rectangle, select the “No costs” entry, and then press the arrows pointing to the other box. “No costs” should now move to the ‘Active Mods’ box.

  13. Been patiently waiting for an update. Have to go to work now but know how I will spend the evening tonight!

    Thanks guys, keep up the good work.

  14. great performance now but cant’ play anymore, game crashes every end of month (build 5751)
    what can i do?

  15. Now the game runs perfectly smooth, even with 200+ Lines an huge cities. Thanks!

  16. Today we have released another game update.?????????

    ***where can I get this mysterious update patch 5746 from? It is not on your website nor on GOG my download site.

    Also, I would like to support your website, unfortunately (for Urban Games) I do not have a PayPal account, I do not want one so unless you provide additional methods I shall spend my money on drugs, sex and rock n’ roll.

    Heute haben wir ein anderes Spiel Update veröffentlicht. ?????????

    *** wo kann ich diese mysteriöse Update-Patch 5746 her? Es ist nicht auf Ihrer Webseite noch auf GOG meinem Download-Site.

    Außerdem würde Ich mag zu unterstützen Ihre Website leider (für Stadt Spiele) Ich habe kein PayPal-Konto, das will ich nicht eine so sei denn, Sie zusätzliche Methoden zur Verfügung stellen werde ich mein Geld auf Drogen, Sex und Rock n ‘Roll zu verbringen.

    • I have the Steam version installed, and it updated automatically when I launched the game.

      Ich habe das Steamversion installiert, und es hat automatisch geupdatet wenn ich das Spiel gelaunciert hat.

  17. Well, in first place, thank you for the new update.

    I like Train Fever. More than 170 hours already in it from release. And yet, after all updates, there are things in game that create a hidden feeling of annoyance. I think this may be a main reason of user responses like ‘Bad game!’. I would like to help developers, so here is my suggestion: developers should add some of the following ‘anti-annoyance fixes’ to each patch they have already planned (I hope, most of them are relatively ease to code, but will greatly improve gameplay experience):

    -all toggle buttons should NOT annoyingly jump but must stay in same place on screen whether they are switched on or off (attach filtering buttons in ‘Lines’ window to the left side, fix this annoyance in the menus on the right side of the screen, so it is about changing a non-standard UI behavior to common standards);

    -implement events logging (a player should not have an annoying feeling like he can miss something if he leaves PC for a while);

    -add new notifications: the availability of a new stuff (electricity, high speed tracks, new roads, new signals etc.) as well as prediction of unavailability of an old stuff – save a player from an annoying feeling of being uninformed;

    -allow player to select existing text for replacing with a new text he is about to type in (in other words: implement a standard text editing behavior in every editable text field in your game);

    -2D in-game world map with icons for industries – an easy way to plan routes without an annoying lots of scrolling;

    -update the map creator so new maps will differ more from each other (implement lakes of different sizes etc).

    I’m sorry to say that, but if you ignore these and similar issues, you will keep receiving a negative response from new players.

    Good job so far. Thank you for Train Fever, Urban Games.
    Best wishes from Oleksandr

    PS
    I have posted this suggestion also on Steam Forums from my account: http://steamcommunity.com/app/304730/discussions/0/616187204164029822/#c617336568083261279

    • I agree with this. If a 2D in-game world map (a ‘mini-map’) is implemented, this will enable us to see the whole world at a glance without having to zoom out all the way (which is not possible, and even if it were, the GPU would slow to a crawl). The basic mini-map would be completely static and just show where the town-centres and industries and water are (this does not change). Optionally, town buildings (changes with growth/demolition), height (colour each pixel according to height) (changes with terraforming and construction), infrastructure (changes with construction) can be shown. As long as the rotation is limited to 90 degree angles and the zoom is fixed, the mini-map should not take up much CPU/GPU time.

  18. I have just bought this game on steam. It is not possible to play this game. Black screen with flockers of terrain. I haven’t found any way how to report this bug, so I am writing this here. I have Windows 7 and ATI 6950 with newest drivers.

  19. Arround 1950 it still crashes every 15 minutes or so.

    Since I Pause and Edit a lot (which sometimes takes more that 15 minutes) I “autosave” manually by pressing the [Save] button and save under a file with one letter (“Q” of quick). In the prev games this manual auto save costs me 3 clicks. Now it costs another click more.

    I sounds like nothing, but it is very anoying I even HAVE to use this manual “autosave” feature, since the game should not crash that much and the real autosafe feature should save every 5 real minutes, not every game year.

  20. Could we get the patch for the “non-steam” version as well, please?

  21. Can anyone help me? The game everytime crash, when start progressbar reach 100%. No error message, just shut down.

    Itt is my favourite game, and I don’t know, why last updates dont work.

  22. You guys are so into graph improvement, but, and I believe many of visitors will agree with me, perhaps it would be much better to add upgradable stations, land level display, improve economy, add a campaign, etc/

    OMG, why cant you look at RR Tycoon 3 and maybe you learn how to do a GREAT game.

  23. Hi Guys,

    Unfortunately it got worse for me. Anyone else? Instead of the screen is getting stuck once a year, mine is stuck every end of the month. The rest are great updates, and I love this game, so I hope there is a solution for this problem.

    I do get it in later stages and it happens when you see the costs above the vehicles. Maybe they could be taken away. I am really only interested in the revenues.

    Thanks for all the good updates this far!

  24. when x crossings are integrated in the game i will try the game again.

  25. I have the same problem, unfortunately, end of the month it increased and the more years it will be worse so it is

  26. When are the x crossing coming?
    It was the most frustrating part in this game for me..
    I will try this game again, if it is released.. so much potential…

  27. Please let us know on what are you working.

    A little update on what are you working and an approximate date for the next patch would be nice.
    I would it call a little entertainment for the community.
    Personaly i would prefer something like weekly news.

    For example:

    Hey Folks,

    we are working on … and we hope to release this in first week in july.
    By the way look on the great mods of …

    Greetings Sodien

    • I very much agree, just post anything, when you have more than a month ( going on a month and a half ) between posts… That is why people are wondering about the health of the game/ development.

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