First Impressions… suggested improvements (long post alert!)

[RickD]

So I thought I’d leave some feedback on here as so many others have done.
 Firstly I want to congratulate the devs on potentially making something amazing that could last for years, especially with mod packs etc… for a 3 man team you guys have done a fantastic job, please keep it up to make this fantastic game even better. The detail on the trains is incredible

 I gave the game a good 6 hours of gameplay last night and noted down some things that I think could use an improvement, some of them may already have been noted but I’ll list them anyway. I’ve split them into game play and graphics / aesthetic sugggestions;

 Gameplay

•    Introduce inflation into the game, both in revenue and costs. Things should cost the same in 1850 as they do in 1950

·         Give people names instead of numbers

·         Zoom to mouse cursor rather than center of screen

·         Fix switches, the way they function right now is so clunky and disorganised. For example in the screenshot below, I just could not get the track to come out of the depot and snap parallel to the line when the cursor. It would not join the line either

·     Allow replacement of vehicles from vehicle window. An idea of how to do this would be to select the item you want to upgrade, then select what to replace it with from a pop up menu, then it automatically goes to the depot, replaces, and returns to service. In the case of trains allow all cars to be replaced at once, or just the engine, select cars. Possibly have the option of removing cars)

·         Have the option of buying cars in a depot and them assigning them to a train, this would call the train into the depot, add the cars and send it on its way

·         Make objects in depots draggable rather than having to click on the arrows to move them around. Also with the move / sell icons, make them stay in one place rather than realigning with every item you move / sell

·         When sending a train to the depot, receive a notification when it arrives there

·         Edge scrolling while dragging road / track

·         Speed limits for dirt tracks / roads

·         Road vehicles wait at track crossings

·         Vehicle preview window should not open automatically, but should be an option. Having a visual preview of 10 vehicles you have just built makes the game laggy

·         Depot should be able to hold wagons and not become a train until you add an engine

·         More information on how payments gets calculated

·         An option to allow trains to crash if you don’t plan signals correctly

·         Track building really needs an overhaul. Having to build each section before moving on to the next really doesn’t work. You should be able to plan out the whole line using click as a waypoint, then build at once when you are done. This would prevent so many holes / ridges in the terrain from building to a certain point then demolishing after realising you are unable to continue

·         Ability to select a number of vehicles in a depot and assign them to a line, rather than all of them

·         Industries are built randomly, existing industries close if they are not serviced. New towns founded occasionaly

·         In View Lines Window have heading clickable to arrange by that column

·         In View Lines window lines should be ordered 1,2,3,4, not 1,11,12,13…. 2,21,22

·         Spacing doesn’t seem to work correctly, it looks like there can only be a maximum space between vehicles rather than them being spaced over the entirety of their line. This is possibly only noticeable over longer lines (can provide a savegame as an example of this if necessary)

·         Passengers should unload and load simultaneously

 
 Aesthetics

·         Trains go all the way into depots instead of stopping and disappearing

·         Drivers for open fronted vehicles

·         Level crossing sounds

·         Camera Panning to be locked to direction of train instead of facing in on direction. You should be able to rotate the camera to view the train, then click to center it on the forward direction again

·         I personally the ‘Aww yeah’ really annoying, I don’t know why it just sounds cheesy

·         Notification should be black & White before certain date

·         Goods to be displaying in weight volume and not simple units, adds more realism

·         Allow station to be built on a gradient rather than cutting out landscape so harshly

·         Dual track station with platform in the middle

·         Dirt Road crossing looks terrible 

·         Player contrasted bridges don’t render when zoomed out past a certain level

 

·         There seems to be border around the edge of the screen beyond which trains aren’t rendered, look really cheap

·         Train doors should only open on platform side 

·         Goods wagon doors don’t open when loading / unloading

·         Instead of highlighting vehicles / stations / depots when hovering over them, have the mouse cursor change instead. I think it ruins the beautiful views when everything selectable gets highlighted in white. Again this could be an option for those who prefer it the current way

Sorry for the huge post, just throwing ideas for improvements out there along with everyone else. Once again I’m really impressed with this game and think it can only get better 😀

Rick

[Bansheedragon]

You should not apologize for providing feedback, this is an excellent post and good feedback.

I would like to add some things of my own to this.

Allow station to be built on a gradient rather than cutting out landscape so harshly

Extend this to rail tracks as well, if there is a hill the tracks have to pass they dig a deep trench in the ground rather than follow the gradient.

And sometimes they then suddenly go out of the ground from such a trench and build an elevated section before finally going level with the ground.

Then there is the map scrolling with the mouse.

If any of the UI elements gets in the way when trying to scroll the map using the mouse, it will not scroll the map.

This is especially frustrating when trying to scroll to the right as most of that side of the screen has the menus for rail and road construction and a few otehr thigns.

[RickD]

I think the trench digging is by design as in a real situation railways cannot go above a very shallow gradient unless they are with assisted traction (cables / tooth hauled). The issue you are having with cutting deep and then going elevated could be because you are trying to build large sections at once, the game tries to level out the track between your start and finish point the best it can, so it will go deep into a hill and then elevate above a drop. It would be a good idea to have an option for it snap to the terrain rather than build level, but I think the max gradient for tracks is quite realistic and so it should only snap as far as it can before becoming too steep (hope that makes sense).

Try building smaller sections and you should find it sticks to the terrain much better

[gax]

+ 1 for the OP.  And trees, i want to see much more trees.

[MinDBlanK]

Excellent post, nice observations and articulated great.

A lot of what you mention are things I notice but fail to communicate quite so eloquently!

 

[leew]

Something I would really like to see is when you select the bulldozer, the cursor changes to a bulldozer cursor.  I have accidentally bulldozed things including my main station and a bridge which took my ages to build correctly when I had forgotten I had the bulldozer selected as it is not very obvious you are in bulldozer mode.  Also talking about bulldozing things, it would be very nice if when you bulldoze a track or a bridge which has not yet been been used by a train, you get the money back which you paid for it.  Alternatively some way of planning out a line before actually building it would be very welcome.  Something else which would be very welcome is an easy way to remove signals as it’s easy to place them incorrectly on the wrong side of the track.  In Chris Sawyer’s Locomotion which I have played for thousands of hours one can remove signals by right clicking them which is much quicker than having to go and select the bulldozer, remove the signal then re-select the signal building mode.

[Henkie]

First of all, great work on the release. I haven’t have any crash yet and I am having fun. But with everything, there is always room for improvement 🙂 I want to add:

* GUI:

• List of all events so I can read them back. Don’t want to pause the game every time I go to the toilet 🙂
• More filtering and sorting in information windows
• An information window about industries and where they get their goods from and sell their goods to
• Auto removal of obstructing objects when I press “accept” to build

* Gameplay:

• More different types of goods. For example mail would be easy to introduce
• Towns should produce goods also
• People who work at industries
• Houses in rural areas
• Industries should try to connect themselves. Right now I can force myself to be more efficient just by removing some roads
• Boats!
• Option to turn off signals
• Special buildings within towns like schools and museums

* Trafic

• Fix/improve train pathing. If I create a multi-line station and combine all incoming rails into one the train will only use one line at the station ignoring the other free lines at the station.
• When I create a line and I assign multiple vehicles from a depot to that line I like to add an interval to prevent all vehicles in a cluster.
• Option to set a minimal time between two vehicles in one line. The second vehicle will wait at a depot to keep its set distance between the first vehicle.
• Vehicles moving through town should slow down in town to abide to speed limits which exist in the real world 🙂

Thats it for now 🙂

 

• This reply was modified 9 years, 7 months ago by Henkie.

[mineral]

Hi

I havent read through all the suggestions yet, but I consider this thread useful for the devs. Heres a few suggestions/questions:

-GAMEPLAY more information: number of passengers/year, on average

-GAMEPLAY being able to plan larger lines, section by section: the actual system allows you to only “preview” one part at a time, due to to all sorts of limitations ( terrain limitations, collisions…). since its a simulation and thus important how you build tracks, there should be an option to plan longer tracks, step by step

-logic (possible bug): building new bus lines (after deleting old ones) in towns in late-game dont generate many passengers at all?

-logic: bus connections become very powerful in late-game, thus making trains less productive. this may be intended, yet theres a few problems to it. 1. It s called Train fever. 2. The (sometimes very unrealistic, long lasting) traffic jams should count for the travel time, thus making the train more attractive. It also seems that deleting a road connection to another town doesnt have any implication on the rail demand. Is this intended in order to prevent people from exploits?

[plyst1]

Mineral you are correct about Buses. After the 1920’s i actually deleted all my trains and stuck with trucks and Trams. They were cheaper about 40 km/h slower but easier to run and able to put more on a line. Trains would be SO much better if i didnt have to have em stop to only got one platform when the other two are open. Its a pain having 2 lines stop for another line, although ive gotten around this by have each line manually enter the station on a different track then joining the lines and continuing on their merry way. As for suggestions goes i have only one and it is as follows:

The ability to build and demolish factories, except it needs to be at an excessive cost that scales as the time periods progress to make it viable to build yet also detrimental. I can also see how this could be overpowered by deleting or building new production facilities to make more and more cash. All i can do is throw the suggestion out there.

[mineral]

Also concerning bulldozing: bus stations disappear when switching to the bulldozer, which makes it annoying to delete them

[mackintosh]

WAYPOINTS and the ability to assign platforms on a per line basis!! This should have been in the game as of release. It boggles the mind that it isn’t there in a game that has trains. I cannot stress this enough and my bewilderment just grows with each passing minute I spend playing. It’s literally astonishing how this was omitted and is now only a vague promise that it’s supposedly being worked on though I haven’t seen any proof that it is.

You can spend hours pouring over track design, create an intricate web of intra track connectivity and have it all wasted because the game arbitrarily decides to send your low-speed local line through the mainline platform that you’ve reserved for something else you plan on doing there in the future. Why? Because four letter word followed by three letter word that’s why. I hate games that force me to be gamey and take away my freedom of design. There is a term for that – not fun. And not fun games end up in the bin.

[RickD]

Not sure if the mods have seen this over the weekend (apologies if you have). Giving it a quick bump for Monday morning

[pantner]

RickD, that is one of the best posts I’ve seen relating to Train Fever. Very nicely done.

I agree with most, if not all your points and while I am starting to love the game, changing those would make the game much more enjoyable 🙂

I really hope the Devs read though it.

[RickD]

Thanks Pantner, I hope so too.

I was an avid fan of Transport Tycoon and OTTD and have been quite disappointed with the lack of similar games, nothing else seems to have been quite up to the standard of those even though the original TT is around 20 years old now. The level of modding you could do in OTTD was incredible and I really think TF has the potential to be just as good if not better. I definitely don’t mind taking the time to point out what I think the devs could make improvments

[pantner]

TBH, never played Transport Tycoon and spent about 5 mins in OTTD.

Played RRT1-3 and Sid M’s Railroads quite a bit (especially RRT3!)

Though, I do agree with you, TF could be amazing with some relatively simple tweaks and additions…

[Author]

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