After two weeks of hard work we are excited to release a major game update.

Most important, the update (build 4519) brings the long awaited performance boost. Navigation, rendering, simulation and line manager performance have been significantly improved. The game now runs more fluently and big lags are history. However, note that the first view still needs some processing time, but as soon as a region has been explored the game runs fast.

In addition to that, there is a large list of improvements and bug fixes. For instance, railway signals are now animated, the main menu shows a progress bar when loading a save game, and buildings now show detailed facades consistently when zoomed in. As always, many improvements have been motivated by community requests.

Please find the complete release notes here.

You may wonder what we do next. Still there is a large to-do list. One top priority issue is way points or at least line track selection at stations. Also, track construction should be more convenient. In addition there is a list of details like e.g. make cars waiting at railroad crossings. There will also be more performance optimization (especially for very large scenes) and finally, we also want to implement the widely requested vehicle auto replacement feature.

You can be sure that we continue to listen to the community and improve the game, and we are confident to present a next game update soon.

Thanks for your continuing interest in Train Fever!

Today, another game update was released (build 4414).

The update brings the long awaited high-speed track upgrade tool. Thus, standard tracks can now be converted to high speed tracks with a tool similar to track electrification.

In addition to the Dutch translation, the update contains several robustness improvements. Most important, save games are more reliable now.

In particular, a bug which caused corrupt save games on Mac OS X 10.7 and 10.8 was fixed. Also, textures and crash dumps are now handled in a better way and therefore, the game runs more stable.

Please find the complete release notes here.

Based on the discussions on Steam and on the website forums, still a large list of improvements is currently work in progress. One very important task is performance optimization which will most likely be included in the next game update.

Also let us mention that McAfee anti virus finally white listed Train Fever! Thanks to all players who reported the issue to McAfee as well. Still we don’t understand why McAfee needed almost four weeks for this step 😉 anyway the issue is now solved.

Since last week our team is back from Tokyo, and we are working on improving Train Fever with full workforce now.

At Tokyo Game Show, hundreds of (Asian) players and fans have visited our booth. It was an amazing experience to get in touch with players directly, and the game was received very well.

Prior to that, on September 14, we invited all modders to model one of the great Japanese Shinkansen trains. Just five days later, on September 19, two modders (PaTrond and OlaHaldor) delivered a 0 Series Shinkansen train.

We are very impressed that they achieved to create such a high quality train model in just 5 days! As a surprise gift, we decided to honor their great work with the Golden Cup for Excellence in Modding (a special Steam achievement which will be displayed in their Steam profiles after the next game update) and five games for free.

We also wanted to take this opportunity to let all modders know that we really appreciate all your efforts and that you can be sure that we expand modding support and possibilities in future.

Finally, let us (again) emphasize that you can expect more game patches and improvements soon.

Today, we have released another game update (build 4363).

First and most important, we have implemented save game compression. As a consequence, save games are about three times smaller now. This was one of the top community requests.

Second, freight train waggons now display the amount of freight loaded. In other words, the fill level of open freight waggons (coal, iron ore) is now visualized.

Third, we have translated the game into additional languages. The game can now also be played in French, Japanese and Chinese.

Please find the complete release notes here.

As a next step, we focus on performance improvements. We are aware that some players experience performance problems especially with medium and large maps. We are confident that we can deliver a major performance update soon.

Thanks for your continuing interest in Train Fever! You can be sure that more patches, improvements and also some new features will be released in the next weeks.

We’re glad to announce that another update was made available earlier today. The patch contains bug fixes, usability enhancements and resolves some Mac-specific issues.

Please note that development has recently not been running at full steam as part of the team is at Tokyo Game Show. However, you can be assured that the updates will keep coming.

The release notes can be found here.