Wagon gravity! v5.33

As the last update post announced, multiplayer is officially in development!

But that doesn't mean that all updates stop for months until that's done, I do still have lots of features I want to work on before releasing multiplayer, and it's good to have some variety while I spend the majority of my time working on multiplayer programming.

So here's a very fun feature that I've wanted to add for ages:

Freight wagons now have gravity and can roll down sloped tracks!

Basically, if a wagon is on a sloped track and is not connected to any locomotives it will freely roll downhill and then slowly come to a stop on flat ground. Locomotives act as 'anchors' and will stop any connected wagons from rolling downhill. You can also now control brakes on individual freight wagons. If a wagons brakes are enabled then it will stop it from rolling downhill and will also block any other connected wagons from rolling too.

You can point at a wagon and press B to toggle brakes, or change the setting in the wagon options popup menu.

Settings for momentum

You can also adjust how quickly rolling wagons speed up and slow down, or even disable gravity entirely. To help with compatibility with older maps, any wagons that are already on slopes when loading an older save will not be affected by gravity until you interact with them.

Hump yards & AI triggers

These new gravity features can be used alongside AI trigger signs (like decoupling) to make automated hump yards!

There is also now a new setting added for AI trigger signs which controls whether they affect locomotives or wagons:

Bonus feature: pixel art generator!

Since I've been working on a lot of technical stuff recently, I wanted to do a very quick and easy feature just for fun. So you can now create pixel art automatically using the 'spray' feature.

Simply replace the "spray.png" image in the folder:

C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Steam\\steamapps\\common\\Rolling Line\\Modding\\spray.png

As long as the image is less than 100x100 pixels you can paint it directly into the game as pixel art:

(And yes I've been playing a lot of Deltarune recently)

You can switch between the normal spray function (which is just an image texture) and the new pixel art feature using these settings in the "pause menu -> misc" menu:

The pixel art is made out of normal in-game cube props and each cube is painted to the correct color for the image. You can use the bulk move tool to shift the new props around your map too:

Load screen text now scales with resolution

The loading screen text & logo now scales with screen size, and you can further adjust the scale factor using the UI scale setting in the "PC options -> interface" menu.

In other multiplayer news:

Progress on multiplayer has been going great! I've been posting lots of news on the official Discord server and lots of features are in the works. Especially things like animations and interaction. You can play different "emotes" from a list of animations, and when modding is added you will be able to include your own animations alongside a custom 3D player model!

Also the basics of character customization are already in progress!

Very exciting stuff! I'll keep posting progress alongside these normal updates.

...And as things move along I'll eventually even be doing beta testing!

New Patreon video

I've also made a new video discussing the behind-the-scenes debug info about how the wagon movement system works, and how the new gravity feature fits into this. You can watch that video now here on the Rolling Line patreon:

Wagon movement physics - devlog

And thank you to all my Patreon supporters!

Matt, Ábris Pataki, NESecretWeapon, JohnR, ItzAerozic, Matthew Johnson, Microcosmologist, Blake Prevett, TrainTiny, Thomas Merolla, Lutz, Don Willis, Jayton Hawkins, Helga Nordgren, Leto Gloas, TheAmazingRyry, Outertoaster, Nathan Perez, TrainMann, Railraider, Garst, Richard Prior, Joblogh, Detroit_, CAMOGUY54321, Ben Burch, Gustavo Sanchez, Michelle chan, Jack Fruh, Jonathan Ginsburg, Lynk_Wyland, SmokeStream, KathalLasagna, Rivet, HuskyDynamics, Trackmeister

You can join the Patreon to help support me to keep making free updates!