Build 97

Build 97 is entitled "Farm animals, stock car, VR mouse mode, major bug fixes & more!" This build introduced the stock car, a short version of the tank car, and many quality-of-life improvements.

This build starts the Foundation: Part 4 era.

Changes

This changelog has been transcribed from the Steam update announcement.

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 [email protected] 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