Build 97 - Farm animals, stock car, VR mouse mode, major bug fixes & more!

Domestic animals & new cars

To start off, we've added livestock, which can be found at the Farm industry. The animals are lively, moving around, making noises, and just generally contributing to the countryside atmosphere. Some of the smaller critters may even be seen crossing the tracks, but not to worry – they are immune to trains.

Along with the animals, we've added new types of cars and cargo to the game. The stock car type, pictured above, is now used to transport animals, which are visible inside and can even be heard reacting to physics forces and their health level. Another new vehicle is the short variant of the tank car, pictured below, used for milk transport.

Boxcars have been repurposed, now carrying new cargo types such as eggs, fruits and vegetables, but also wool and cotton, which now go to the Goods Factory. Hoppers too have been given a new cargo type – the sunflower seeds.

The cats' world domination has reached Derail Valley too, so naturally, you can now find strays in every city in the game. Unfortunately, you can't pick them up and carry around, although admittedly that would be very cool.

The systems developed to include these animals are the first step towards the implementation of passengers, pedestrians and wildlife to the game in the future.

Improved terrain lighting

There's now a new graphics setting called Terrain Lighting. If set to High it will notably improve the terrain shadowing with better accuracy and ambient occlusion, and it's not even significantly taxing on performance. If you still need the lighting to be the same as before, however, put the setting to Low.

VR "mouse mode"

We've added the equivalent of nonVR's mouse mode to VR. This is an accessibility feature, allowing players to aim at train controls with their hand and operate them remotely, without needing to physically reach for them. It's a substantial new way to play the game.

There is also a new difficulty setting called VR Remote Driving, which needs to be enabled for this feature to work. By default it is enabled in Comfort and Standard presets, but not in Realistic or existing custom ones.

In the future we plan to bring external camera and remote sign reading to VR too, along with the Driving UI, but that's not ready for this build yet. However, as a temporary measure, VR players do have access to the Weather Editor already, accessible via a button at the top-right corner of the inventory window.

More highlights!

The update also includes support for the new Quest 3 headset, vastly improved tutorial experience, as well as major bug fixes, such as disappearing money fix, DH4 tunnel item collision fix, objects in peripheral vision no longer disappearing on VR headsets with high FOV, and many, many more, as listed in the changelog below.

For players who have lost their in-game money due to a bug – please send us your save so we can fix it, allowing you to continue your session. You can do this either by emailing us to support@altfuture.gg or DM-ing @Manja on our Discord. The message should include:

• Your save file attached. (select your save in-game, then click the folder icon to get to it) - Amount of money you wish to have returned. (add up for the cost of lost items too)

Altfuture update – Behind the scenes

Since build 96 we were also able to focus on things other than strictly Derail Valley development, many of which were long due. Some of those involved:

• Creating a new kind of project management software, which drastically optimized our workflow. - Updating a lot of our code and management infrastructure. - Thoroughly planning out activities for the next year (more on that below). - Working on the Soundtrack remaster (roughly 75% done, currently). - Many other business activities that weren't in the spotlight. - Taking time to rest and recover.

We'd like to thank you all for your continual support and making it possible for us to take actions with Derail Valley with the long-term approach!

Entering the Foundation Part 4 era

With today's update we've entered the new era of Derail Valley development, the so called FP4, as per our roadmap . Rather than go for a single major update in the future, we have decided to introduce new industries, cargo types and cars in small batches, over the next year or so. There are currently 6 phases planned for this and today's farm update marks completion of the first!

The upcoming period is going to get quite exciting in terms of new content getting added, however note that the focus will be on the new industries, cars and cargo, but not yet on railway network updates or the industrial ecosystem gameplay. Those will come at the end of FP4, and will be announced much later.

Many more things are being in development already. Stay tuned!

Those were the most important bits, but there are many more fixes and improvements in this build. Please see the full changelog below. Next, we will also work on improving the translations of the newly added/modified text in the game along with our translation team.

Changelog:

Stability

• Fixed rare bug where money, jobs and items could disappear in Realistic difficulty

  • If you were affected, please contact us - we can fix your save. Steps:

  • Email us at support@altfuture.gg with your save file attached

  • Tell us how much money you’d like added

  • Add up for the cost of lost items too, so you can repurchase them

  • We’ll bring back money to your save file and send it back to you

• Fixed bug with items in trains hitting tunnel entrances and thus sometimes getting lost

  • Mainly DH4 was affected by pure luck, the issue was deep in general code

• Fixed possibility of loading screen getting stuck if music ends before it finishes

• Fixed loading screen freezing if “Pause minimized” is on and the game is out of focus

• Fixed failing to import a save file if it has empty space in its filename

• Fixed continue screen offering to continue the last career session after it’s been deleted

• Potentially fixed AudioPluginOculusSpatializer.dll causing crash on load on old CPUs

• Potentially fixed sessionData.json getting corrupted, with improved safeguarding

Industries & Cargo

• Added new cargo types, originating in Farm

  • Eggs, milk, local fruits, vegetables and sunflower seeds now go to Food Factory

  • Cotton and Wool now go to Goods Factory

• Added domestic animals

  • Various farm animals can now be found at the Farm industry

  • Cats can be found in every town

  • The animals move around and make sounds during the day

  • The small animals may cross the tracks sometimes and are immune to trains

• Farm animals cargo is now visible inside stock cars

  • They audibly react to physics forces and health level

  • They lose health when underwater

• Revised HAZMAT license tier ruleset

  • 1st tier now allows flammable, asphyxiating and oxidizing cargo

  • 2nd tier now allows explosive, corrosive and toxic cargo

  • 3rd tier allows radioactive and biohazardous cargo, as before

• Allowed different HAZMAT tiers to be combined into single orders

• Fixed leaking flammable cargo not pooling the flammable liquid when burning

• Rebalanced mass, price and damage sensitivity of many cargo types

• Added new wooden fence type and mud pits to Farm

VR

• Added “mouse mode” behavior equivalent to VR

  • Allows operating aimed levers and buttons remotely by holding Grip+Trigger

    • On HTC Vive controllers hold Trigger+TouchpadUp

  • Susceptible to the new “VR Remote Driving” difficulty setting (off in Realistic)

• Added Weather Editor to VR

  • To toggle it click the cloud icon button in inventory header

  • Susceptible to the old “Weather Editor” difficulty setting

• Fixed peripheral objects disappearing in the right eye on high FOV headsets (SteamVR)

• Fixed sunshafts effect in VR sometimes showing as a vertical lines glitch

• Simplified item storing; short-press stores item immediately without opening inventory

• Fixed various issues with crouching in VR not working well

• Improved calibration on all controller types for aim and hand alignment consistency

• Fixed shakiness when aiming and holding large items (fix applies to SteamVR only)

• Fixed carabiner slots being turned on by default (applies to new users only)

Graphics

• Added new terrain shadow rendering system

  • It’s controlled by the new Terrain Lighting graphics setting. When set to High:

  • Terrain is lit more realistically when sun is at a shallow angle

  • Terrain has shadows even at a very high distance

  • Water surface receives terrain shadows

  • Sunset and sunrise shadows are smoother, more natural looking

  • There’s ambient occlusion, giving more depth to the air

• Fixed reflections being glitched, as of B96

• Fixed train headlights not having glare in daylight

Train Simulation

• Added stock car

  • This is an old wooden cage car, used to transport livestock

  • It can be found in Farm and Food Factory, and comes in three colors

• Added short tank car

  • This car is similar to the regular tanker, but shortened

  • It is currently used only for milk transport

  • It can be found in Farm and Food Factory, and has milk livery

• Improvements to diesel vehicles

  • Fixed dynamic brake being able to get stuck when doing a DE6 + Slug combo

  • Improved DE6 engine bay looks when player is off-vehicle and the door is open

  • Fixed DH4 oil gauge warning lamp turning on too late

  • Fixed DH4 sand level lamp not blinking and sounding an alarm when very low

  • Fixed DM3 window having rain tilted opposite from air drag

• Improvements to steam vehicles

  • Reduced S282’s abnormally high resistance to collision damage

  • Fixed misaligned valve gear with the S282A’s body

  • Fixed lubricator consumption getting multiplied twice by res. consumption setting

  • Improved VR interaction with some S060 and S282 locomotive controls

  • Made S282A cutoff position indicator lines white for improved visibility

• Improved item and player collision precision on all vehicles

• Made manually spawned vehicles have handbrake applied instead of cylinder pressure

• Made fire from TMs cause fire damage to vehicles

• Fixed wheels not turning on exploded locos

• Fixed cab indicator lights not being visibly damaged on exploded locos

• Fixed handcars having brakes be permanently applied in sandbox mode

• Fixed caboose brake gauge not being calibrated well

• Fixed the “auto-headlights” feature affecting unmanned vehicles

• Fixed locomotive remote inverting headlight orientation if vehicle is in reverse

• Fixed some headlight textures being mirrored on a few locomotives

• Fixed brake cylinder release handle not working on autorack car, when used in VR

• Increased volume of the DM3 compression brake sound

• Simulation groundwork improvements:

  • Rewrote resource consump. propagation code (improved loco modularity)

  • Improved modularity for breaker configuration on locomotives

  • Rewrote how emission fees are calculated for steam engines (cleaner code)

Economy

• Upped the fee tolerance to $100k at the upper limit (was $50k)

• Fixed tender fees unable to be paid in a certain rare situation

• Halved bonus time limit for shunting (was overly generous)

Misc

• Tweaked rain to be a bit less common

• Fixed SW turntable causing unexpected derailments if not nudged

• Fixed issues with zooming and unzooming while in mouse mode

• Weather editor settings are now getting saved

• Fixed weather editor sliders for cloudiness and fog having wrong initial value

• Fixed tutorial messages not working well in CJK languages

• Fixed controls behaving weirdly when mouse-held on moving vehicles

• Fixed being unable to walk through tunnel entrances in some situations

• Fixed EOT Lanterns being able to become unretrievable and permanently lost

• Fixed military base, player house and a few smaller props being white, as of B96

• Made Within Reach controls have lower vertical range than horizontal (no roof driving)

• Fixed external camera getting stuck on world boundaries

• Fixed external camera not adhering to rain quality setting change

• Fixed keyboard controls not working for some switches, breakers, etc. as of B96

• Fixed prompt “Save changes to original [asset]?” doing opposite from chosen action

• Fixed different users not being able to have different settings

• Mouseovering items in inventory now shows their names and descriptions

• Improved descriptions for all items, including cassettes

• Fixed inventory buttons not having tooltips on mouseover

• Fixed inventory hotbar being too large on ultrawide monitors

• Fixed concrete steam coal tower model not fitting the coal particles position

• Fixed being taken to wrong bed when going to sleep, in certain situations

• Career manager license screen in sandbox mode is now listed as “unavailable”

• Career shop items in sandbox mode are now listed as “unavailable” instead of “sold out”

• Fixed the moon being tilted 90 degrees

• Fixed the VR “Item Holding” setting missing a tooltip

• Fixed held item sway not adhering to changes in mouse sensitivity

• Fixed fog level changing in the mornings despite weather being set to a fixed value

• Fixed some items still being collideable with other objects while held

• Fixed language setting not getting saved when playing via GeForce NOW

• Added backup save creation in case of another money loss incident in Realistic difficulty

• Improved logging in case of potential new issues with saves or sessions

• Made license items regenerate if missing from save file

• Made minor cosmetic improvements to tutorial depot (ceiling light, better glass texture…)

• Updated translations to various languages

• More minor fixes

Tutorials

• Fixed many career tutorial issues

  • Various improvements to the flow, steps, details, text, reliability and UI

  • Prevented use of some leftover features before it’s their turn in tutorial

  • Replaced the hopper with a gondola, as the handbrake is more accessible in VR

  • Added teaching steps about a few more things that were missed

• Reworked locomotive tutorials

  • Locomotive tutorials are now split into 2 stages, “control showcase” and “driving”

  • Each stage asks you if it’s okay to begin before starting

  • There’s more improvements to come

• Improved tutorial note UI layout, now including action icons

• Fixed the manual missing the contextual “See Also:” links in UI

• Fixed locomotive tutorial button missing from pause menu since B96

That's all for this update – See you soon with another!

-Your DV Team