A new beta is now available for anyone who would like an early look at the next update and is willing to try a potentially buggy version.
Accessing a beta on Steam:
- Right click on Tracks in your Steam games list and click Properties
- Go to the Betas tab on the left and choose the public_beta option from the dropdown menu (you don't need to enter a code)
- Steam should start downloading an update, and Tracks should have a [public_beta] tag in the games list
If you find any issues please report them on the forums or discord.
You can see a full list of changes below:
For this update I decided to focus all of my time on code, doing things I've needed to do for *years* so no new decorations today, but hopefully you'll enjoy this update all the same for the many new features and improvements that have been made!
- Autosave & Quicksave
Your building progress can now be automatically saved as you play. Autosaves don't overwrite your manually created saves, instead there are three rotating slots dedicated to it. You can choose how frequently it happens in the options menu, or disable it if you prefer.
Additionally, you can now press a key (F5 by default) to trigger a save.
- Large world optimisation
Several low level aspects of the game's code have been upgraded to improve the experience for players building gigantic worlds with a large number of decorations:
(Comparison numbers from the world below (by TGC_Cris) with 82,000 decorations on my PC)
- Greatly improved loading times for large saves ( 28 seconds -> 5 seconds )
- Saving large files is much faster ( 9 seconds -> 0.4 seconds )
- RAM usage has been slashed ( 3.5GB -> 1.1GB )
- Eliminated hitches that happened when decorations were removed in a large world
- Greatly improved loading times for large saves ( 28 seconds -> 5 seconds )
- Toybox improvements
- Layout There are now two options for how decorations are laid out:
- Category tabs There's now an optional window on the left of the toybox with buttons to jump to each category, usable with either layout.
- Label toggle If you prefer to find decorations by looking for the icon rather than text, you can now hide the name completely to increase the size of the picture.
- Rewritten controller navigation Moving between options with a controller should now be more consistent and smoother
"Rows" is what you're used to, one category per row with decorations stretching left to right.
"Grid" removes sideways scrolling and makes all the decorations in one category visible at once. You can scroll up and down to move to other categories.
- Passenger orientation
Passengers can now be rotated to face a particular direction.
The old random direction is still the default, though now you can see which way they'll be facing before you place them. Just press R to rotate them like any object and the random rotation will stop.
- Breaks & Boosters
There is a new counter-part decoration to the Booster called "Breaks" which rapidly slow down the train as it passes.
Please note the way boosters work behind the scenes has been changed. I tried to match the old behaviour as best as I could but if you notice any issues, things which are no longer possible but used to be, please let me know!
- Other improvements
- Highlighting is much more accurate for a range of decorations; I'm slowly making my way through them all, if there are any you find particularly difficult to work with let me know
- Added a crosshair on screen to help when doing things far from the camera, and increased the maximum interaction distance
- Separate Small/Medium/Tall Painted House options replace the Random House decoration
- Fixed Wooden Trains with 100% condition still having a bit of paint chipping
- Fixed an issue where a corrupt file would make the Toybox appear blank
- New file loading screen and various other improvements to the UI
- Added Constant Grid as a rebindable key in the Controls menu
- Passengers who can't be deleted (e.g. because they're walking / on a train) no longer get highlighted when hovered
- Grooms now have an assortment of ties and can be recoloured
- Fixed an active Fireworks (Toggle) continuing to play a sound after it has been removed
- Fixed a small erroneous square on the Motel
- Highlighting is much more accurate for a range of decorations; I'm slowly making my way through them all, if there are any you find particularly difficult to work with let me know
Thank you!
