Update log
Full Simutrans update
The complete published notes, normalized for clean reading and source attribution.
Extracted changes
- Gameplay
- UI and audio
Welcome to Simutrans Extra! I have been pretty quiet so far this year as I needed a break after the Anniversary events of last year, but a lot of things have been happening in the Simutrans world meanwhile. It's time to review them!
But first, let's talk about the elephant in the room.
When there will be a new Simutrans release?
We couldn't make a Simutrans release last year, the reason behind this being the war in Ukraine. Another negative effect of the war is that Ukrainian developer Pelya was drafted for the military. Pelya is not directly related to the Simutrans project, but he maintained a set of scripts that enabled games like Simutrans and OpenTTD (between others) to be compiled on Android.
Unfortunately, the build for Android stopped working and to fix it one would have needed to fix Pelya's scripts. But no one in the team knew how to do so, so the release was delayed until we could release for all supported platforms at once.
Seeing that the war was not going to end anytime soon, I stepped in some months ago to do something about this. I developed a new build system for Simutrans on Android completely from scratch. It took quite a lot of work, but the end result is a far simpler build and, more importantly, one I know how to fix in case it stops working!
Wars are bad. But you know what's good? UI improvements! A few of them are currently under development, so you can expect a new release when we are done with them. Let's see which they are!
Font anti-aliasing is coming to Simutrans!
Thanks to the work made by developers Hajo and Dwachs, font anti-alising is nearly ready for Simutrans. While you can currently set any TrueType font in Simutrans 123, they look quite a bit ugly without anti-aliasing.
Introducing anti-aliasing will finally make these fonts look good at any size (although the UI still needs to be redesigned to adjust to font sizes, specially very large ones). We will also take this opportunity to move away from bdf fonts and change Simutrans' default font, probably to Noto Sans font.
A screenshot showing how Simutrans looks with Noto Sans and anti-aliasing.
Main menu
What was initially going to be an addition of a"Play Tutorial" button in the initial banner has evolved into a redesign for the entire banner, adding a few more options and now working as a "main menu" to which you come back when you want to start a game.
The new main menu. Final version may change.
Consequently, the options windows and other windows will be simplified and adapted to the new flow.
The options windows. Final version may change.
Improved Station labels and markers
When legendary Hajo came back earlier this year, he focused on improving various part of the UI (which Simutrans is indeed in need of improving). One of his most exciting ideas was a new appareance for station labels and markers which could be defined by themes.
Just look at those, they look fantastic!
Hajo has unfortunately not been active since the start of this year - but you can bet I will do my best to finish this and include it in the next Simutrans version.
Lost and found musicians
You may remember that one of the Anniversary events of the last year was a post showcasing the music of Simutrans, where we asked for help to identify
Source