Hi everyone!

This message is a quick one. If you would be so kind, we'd greatly appreciate if you could take a moment and vote Derail Valley for the "Labor of love" award this year!



Today is more than 6 years since we started work on Derail Valley, and almost 3 years since it was launched in Early Access. A tremendous amount of work has been done throughout the years, and the biggest changes are yet to be revealed with the release of Simulator, the next major update coming later next year, that we're working on very hard.

If you’re curious about progress on Simulator, and have read the previous news posts (this one and this one), note that we will have another progress write up in about a month. Bug fixing and project cleanups have been the major activity so far, but there’s also some new exciting tidbits to be revealed!

Thank you so much!

-Your DV team

Hi everyone!

It's about three months since our last news post, and we wanted to give you some new information on the update progress and show you a couple of screenshots.


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The work on Simulator has been going well, as usual. Finally, as we near the end, we begin to see what aspects of the update can be called done, or at least what it will take to finish them. So, we'll talk a bit about that in this post.

I’ll start with perhaps the biggest goal we’ve reached this year -- putting it all together to a coherent whole. While we've been adding and testing new features internally on a daily basis, for nearly a year the game was not in a shape where much of it was presentable. We were finally able to change that a few months ago, and have been building on top of it since. In that period, our closed beta team was kind and eager to jump in and help us thoroughly test the update and find plenty of quirks that needed fixing.

We’ve been updating the beta almost every week since. It was pleasing to see no major issues being discovered, and feedback mostly revolved around small improvements that we either had in the plans already, or that are relatively quick to do. However, it’s worth noting that a LOT of small improvements had to be made, and many still await their turn.



We're showing more screenshots today because, finally, visual aspects of the game such as day and night cycle, fog, rain, window droplets, lightnings, lighting, reflections and others are pretty much done and more or less represent the finished product. Along with them come the necessary adaptations for VR and settings for low-end hardware. While creating all these features we were adamant on keeping the performance good, and it does play well on the PCs we and the testers have tried it on. However, we are yet to do thorough testing on low-end machines and VR when everything else is complete too, so whether there's additional work to be done on this remains to be seen.

In regards to visible objects, we finished the several new items that are coming with the update, as well as over 25 road vehicles you can see parked around. The new water implementation is done, and the improved HAZMAT and derailing effects are being worked on right now, to be done in a few days.



Another very important thing that we seem to be weeks from finishing is the structural design, both in code and UX sense, of how the game is dealing with multiple user profiles, sessions, saves, scenarios and difficulty presets. Unfortunately it's not something fun or visible that we can showcase outside of the finished product, but it took a lot of time to do, admittedly many more months than originally anticipated. The whole scope of that work wasn't really possible to be known in advance, until we dug deeper into the matter.

Now that it's almost done, the rework really seems to have transformed the game's usability. For example, starting a sandbox run at a particular location with a particular train, just to try out something quick, without having to ruin your ongoing career session, is a major convenience. So is being able to go back to the last autosave when a cat unexpectedly jumps in your lap, causing the entire oil well industry to blow up. We've all been there.

On that note, the design of new graphical user interfaces, as well as localization systems are all in place too, with relatively minor work to be done as we get closer to starting accepting translations. More on that in a few months.



We’ve finished all the diesel locomotives and added them to the game, along with their behaviors, sounds, textures and other aspects. This includes DE2, DE6, DM3 and DH4. Implementation of old locomotives had to be fully redone, mind you, to accommodate for the new train simulation code. Most of their graphical assets received an update (or a revamp) too. The steamers S060 and S282 currently have their models finished, but remain to be added to the game in terms of simulation.

The new train simulation code is a behemoth that took us about two years to write from scratch. There’s a LOT of work put into it, mostly future-proofing the game for new locomotive additions. This is something that's not particularly visible, but is very important in the long run.

With that said, a lot of work still remains to be done on train simulation in regards to mod support. Originally we wanted to keep this for after the update, but we see now how that could slow us down in the future. There are important decisions to be made, and we’re currently working on finding ways to reduce the necessary work to a minimum possible timeframe. At this point it looks to be in the 2-5 months ballpark, and remains to be seen.



Another important aspect of Simulator that wasn’t really properly announced in the past, but was added subsequently and is for the most part finished, is the all new external camera driving UI. I won’t go into details of how this works just yet, but being able to drive the trains from an outside view with intuitive camera controls and contextual UI elements makes it a whole new experience for the nonVR players.

Driving in first person view has been improved too, with the ability to freeze the camera and use your mouse cursor to operate the levers and buttons. The game now offers a really nice balance of using both camera views and many controls methods, depending on your mood and the activity at hand. There are also proper tools in place for easy camera and scene setup, for taking videos or screenshots like the ones shown here. You’ll hear more about all of these features in the future.

With that I should also mention that the game is now powered by a robust difficulty parametrization system, which took a while to implement and lets you setup the game in a whole range from being a “noob-friendly relaxing arcade” to “hardcore realistic simulator”, with individual parameters on what’s allowed and what isn’t -- such as for example the external camera usage. Going forward, we want to continue expanding the game in both directions simultaneously, expecting the most players to find fun somewhere in between. This is why the game will ship with three difficulty presets, but you’ll also be able to make your own.



On the VR side we've replaced controllers with proper hands that naturally adapt their grasp to levers and buttons in their vicinity, adding so much to the immersion. The game also features a whole new inventory experience, consolidated between VR and nonVR -- but more on that later. Of the larger things remaining to be done, apart from the leftovers of train mod support and steam simulation, there’s the environment sounds system and reworked tutorial. Then, of course, there are a myriad of small things remaining, as well as translations, marketing material and other necessary logistics. It may not sound like a lot, but it is still an overwhelming amount of work left.

So, with that, we can see Simulator possibly getting released in the first half of next year. Our aim is the first quarter, but the eventual date may be later and it cannot be foretold yet. Whether the update will be ready in three, five or more months from now remains to be seen. However, as we get closer to the release it'll be easier to reveal more details, so we'll keep making these progress news posts at approximately every three months. Hopefully there won't be many more until the release date is in sight.

As we’ve mentioned previously a couple of times, with the release of Simulator the price of Derail Valley will be increased for new buyers. The new price will be $39,99, slightly more than previously announced. We're making this increase to help support our efforts. We think the new price will be rather fair given the recent developments not only in our game, but also the world and the train sim market itself.

I hope you enjoyed this update and as always, thanks for your patience! We're getting there!

-Slobodan

Hi everyone,

Many of you are curious about how it’s going with our next major update, Simulator, so this post is intended to bring you up to date.

In the past five months since the previous post, there's been a lot of progress made on the update. It is currently in the final stages, and we are putting a lot of effort to release it as soon as possible. That said, there's still plenty of work left to do. We think we're about 3-5 months away from the release. Please understand that this is an estimate based on the current status, and it still may change.

It's been a very productive and busy period, which brought us significant improvements to graphics, UX, train simulation and bug fixes. Our team, which grew from six to nine members last year, has further solidified its coordination and workflow in the meantime, and has been hard at work continuously.



What made it difficult to share our progress more openly and establish a reliable release date is that, as we were developing Simulator, we were also cleaning up the project on the fly, which is a rather unpredictable process. As we explained in the previous post, we took this direction now because we see it as the most valuable course of action in the long run.

That is still part of the reason why we don't share more screenshots and videos about the update - it'll all be displayed when it's done. Another, bigger reason, is that with the release of Simulator, the price of Derail Valley for new buyers will be increased to $35.99. We want to delay the update as long as necessary until we're sure that our game is undoubtedly worth that price. It is because of this, too, that we want to attract attention after the update is released, not before.

All that contributes to us being more quiet than usual in this period, but rest assured that the update is in continual full development. It already is the biggest project we've ever worked on. While some of the upcoming features have been announced before in broad terms, at this point we can list them in a bit more detail:




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All of the listed features and content are either done or nearing completion. They will be showcased in full detail in our In-Depth video series in days prior to the release.

At this point we’re past the major reworks too. For a few months already our daily work has been revolving around bringing everything together to a coherent whole. That alone is a challenge in terms of coordination, UX and performance and will take at least a few more months to finish and test properly. We also want to have enough time to dedicate to marketing, once it is all stable.

With that I'd like to remind everyone that we’re still a small team living off of the game’s sales and not a high-budget AAA studio that some are comparing us to. Our gateway to more resources and increased production is Simulator itself, which is why we are so careful to do it right, and to not overhype it before it is made publicly available.



During the development of Simulator we’ve also managed to work on things that are yet to come after the update, such as new industries and cities, new cargo types, new locomotives and cars, gameplay improvements and other, mainly of art and design nature. We'll probably have more information about those later next year, after Simulator.

If you're wondering about Simulator beta - please note that we already have a very helpful, carefully assembled closed beta team. It is small, but sufficient for our needs, and has already helped us shape this update, significantly. Our bottleneck has always been in production, not testing. We will, however, further expand the beta team as we get closer to the release with winners of the upcoming translation contest. We'll have more information about that later, as first we need to finalize the game texts/features in order to start the translating process.

As always, thanks so much for your support and patience over the years! We'll see you in a few months with more information.

-Slobodan

Hi everyone,

Making this news post doesn’t come easy, as undoubtedly some people will be upset, but I think being honest and transparent is the right way to go about it.

Over the past couple of months, during development of our next major update, Simulator, we saw an opportunity to improve upon various small things in the game, beyond the scope of what was originally planned. This includes things such as the expanded brake simulation, better inventory system, water physics, a massive game manual and many others, which weren’t initially considered for this update, but do shape the overall quality impression of the game.

We chose to do this now because doing these improvements on the fly, along with other changes necessitated by Simulator, showed to be much faster than coming back to them in the future. There’s also a high quality bar that we need to meet, and we can clearly see that community expectations for the update are higher today than when it was announced last year, especially with the large influx of new players as of late.

The scope expansion did bring the risk of not meeting the March release date, but ultimately, we did it to make Derail Valley a better game. At this point we can see that we won’t make it till March without rushing, and have decided to postpone the release instead.



Despite the postponement, development is progressing very well. The team is bigger and more productive than ever, and we’re already close to a feature freeze, with the added quality improvements. The reason for the postponement is simply - we are tight with time to tidy things up and don’t want to rush the finishing stage. Even after development is done, there are activities that need to fall into place, such as translating, creating press material and other. We want to have enough time to properly deal with everything, instead of rushing like we had to do with every former major release.

We know many of you would like us to release smaller updates more frequently, or at least write a monthly developer journal, to ease the wait and make it shown how much work is really being put in. Unfortunately, neither would help with getting things done faster. On the contrary, both would add significant friction to our decision making. Smaller updates aren’t feasible when doing core rewrites of the game, and developer journals lead to premature or too high expectations from the community. We’ve done both, so this is talking from experience.

We do however actively answer questions on our Discord, and with it being a more real-time based platform with less eyes pointed at any particular chat message, I do tend to reveal more information about our plans and ongoings there, rather than here on Steam and other social media. Ironically, our community member SmashedFinger just compiled some of the quotes from Discord into two lists, Unlocks and Future Plans, and they are actually quite a good overview of minor bits of information, for anyone interested.

With that said, for now, we can just ask for more patience. Derail Valley is in Early Access after all, and its development path is always evolving. We, too, are super eager to finally reveal Simulator - when it's done.



If you’re wondering about what’s coming in Simulator and after it, please see our previous post. When we're absolutely sure the update is ready to be further revealed, we will come out with new screenshots, a trailer and the definitive release date. It will take at least several more months to get to that point.

Those of you who may be interested in helping us community-translate Derail Valley from English to virtually any other language, and would have time to do so, please let us know on Discord, Steam forums or email (hello@altfuture.gg). Soon we’ll organize a translator contest, and the best candidate(s) per language will be given access to Simulator beta. Many candidates contacted us already, and we're looking forward to seeing various new languages come alive in Derail Valley! We will have more information about the translator contest soon.

At the end I'd like to thank you all for the understanding, support and feedback, over the years. It motivates us greatly to do more, and better.

-Slobodan

Hi everyone!

We’ve got some news about Simulator, the upcoming major update to Derail Valley! Though you may have seen me share details about the update’s new expected release date on Discord and Steam forums in prior months, I wanted us to first start the closed beta and make sure things work as anticipated, before making an official announcement.



It’s been a bit over a year that we’ve been working on Simulator. As the headline suggests, we recently started the closed beta with our most trusted community members. This comes after a few weeks of testing internally by the dev team. We’re making improvements with weekly iterations, and so far, the progress has been going great! No major issues came up during testing, and we don’t expect any in the following period either.

That said, we are moving the release slightly from the previous announcement, namely to around March of next year. We’re doing this for a couple of reasons, but mainly to accommodate a couple more features and content than initially planned, and to avoid the Christmas press saturation. It will be absolutely worth the wait.




Currently, we’re working on a lot of things simultaneously. Some of those things will be part of Simulator, and others will come later. We’ve previously announced exactly what is coming in the major update (along with the upcoming price increase), but to avoid any confusion, here’s the full listing:

Coming in Simulator:

• Day and Night Cycle
  
• Dynamic Weather
  
• Improved Diesel-Electric Simulation
  
• Improved Steam Simulation
  
• Revamped GUI
  
• User & Save Manager
  
• Sandbox Game Mode
  
• Localization
  
• Various smaller improvements, to be announced

In progress, but coming after Simulator:

• Simulation of other loco types (DH, DM, E)
  
• New Locomotives (S060, E6, DM1P, DE6 Slug...)
  
• Locomotive Mod Support
  
• New Cars & Cargo Types
  
• New Industries, Cities & Villages
  
• Revamped Railway Network (double-tracks, electrification, etc.)
  
• Improved Gameplay (better job system and more)

Many of the features from the latter list get requested frequently, so we want you to know they’re taken care of and being worked on -- however we’ll only be ready to reveal more information about them some time after the release of Simulator.




As we are now deeply focused on the future and getting Simulator ready for release, we’ve decided to skip the next small build and merge it into Simulator instead. When we get closer to the launch in a couple of months, we’ll have a new trailer, new screenshots, in-depth videos and overall more details about the massive update!

In other great news, after a long search, we’ve recently grown our team with two additional highly skilled programmers. Our work output is notably ramping up and we can’t wait to start churning out the exciting new features and content in 2022!

Until then, thank you for your patience and understanding! We wish you a great holiday season ahead!

-Slobodan

Hi everyone,

We've listened to all your feedback over the weekend, and have just fixed all the issues introduced in #92, regarding stability and vegetation.

Inventory order will no longer shuffle when you restart the game, items won't pop out of your hands or the Boombox, and belt orbs will work in VR now.



We've also done some minor fixes to vegetation, such as grass having too short render distance on the High setting, or it being too tall in yards. It was lowered just enough so that the rails are now clearly visible.

These were the issues with the vanilla game -- note that mods could cause their own issues.
Have fun playing!

-Your DV team

Hi everyone!

Recently we’ve announced our next major update, Derail Valley: Simulator. The feedback was phenomenal -- we’re close to 1000 likes on that post, almost three times the amount Overhauled had when it was announced. Thank you! This makes us incredibly excited for the future.

In the meantime, we’ve worked on an intermediate small update, #92. As always it’s got one prominent new feature, and this time -- it’s the all new vegetation!



Vegetation in Derail Valley has always been lacking in fidelity, so in our common fashion we decided to give it an overhaul. Not only does this greatly improve the look of scenery but it also adds a few additional types of flora and makes cliffs look more natural. Along with the beautiful plants themselves, vegetation settings were changed too.




While the new vegetation looks better, we were extra cautious not to impact performance negatively, and also to provide even higher levels of fidelity for those who have the hardware for it.

Formerly, the vegetation was meant to be fully compatible with VR, even at the highest quality settings. However, modern hardware can do so much more in regular non-VR PC gameplay. Thus, we’ve done some renaming. What used to be Ultra High is now simply High, retaining the same frame rate as Ultra once had, but offering more lushness and detail. This is what we recommend as the maximum setting for VR.



The new Very High and Ultra High settings, on the other hand, take things to the higher level of fidelity by taking full advantage of your GPU. We’ve confirmed with our beta testers that non-VR players of build #92 with GTX 1080 Ti and higher can max out all graphics settings and play at stable 60 FPS.

If you had your vegetation set to Very High or Ultra High in a former build, it will automatically be rolled one step back to compensate for the new higher fidelity. Players with low-end hardware will also benefit from this update, as vegetation set to Mega Low and Very Low levels will now render faster than it used to. In that sense the new vegetation now covers a broader spectrum of performance for all kinds of hardware, and we will tweak it further as needed.



Apart from revamping vegetation, we’ve also made some notable bug fixes and small improvements in this build. For example, we’ve added a new radio station - TruckersFM, we’ve improved the Boombox cassette file reading, we’ve fixed remaining cases where trains could get damaged unfairly, added a second row of cars to the job booklet for better clarity and made junctions highlight when aimed at -- to name a few. For the full listing, see the changelog below.



Finally, in case you missed it, we’ve recently updated the Community Unlocks with more details and information. Be sure to check it out!

That’s all for this update! As always, we’ll keep you posted as we get closer to another release. We’re most active on Discord, so make sure to join our server!

-Your DV Team

Hi everyone!

It’s been a long time since our last big news. Today we’re announcing our second major update, Derail Valley: Simulator, slated to come by the end of the year!



Back in October we hinted at some of our plans for the update. Today we want to share those plans with you in greater detail. For many months, we’ve been working on lots of big and essential features, with the primary goal of fortifying Derail Valley as a well rounded train simulator product. Without going too much into detail, these are the main changes you can expect in the update:




Simulation of the steam engine and diesel-electrics will be completely remade. With further emphasis on realism and details, as well as fully finished controls and manuals, the locomotives will be complete. There will be very few visual changes, and more in how the locos behave - with actual amperage, traction motors, cylinder cocks and other specifics simulated. We’ll go into more detail when the update is close to release. Driving trains in Derail Valley will remain accessible and fun, in our standard fashion, but will also be much closer to how the real trains work. Big thanks to the select few of our highly trusted and knowledgeable beta testers who have been selflessly helping us get this right!



While working on the sim revamp, we’re also laying the groundwork for adding more locomotive types to the game in the future, such as pure electrics and diesel-mechanicals. For Simulator, we’re creating the new simulation platform in such a way that no coding is required to create a new locomotive. While still complex to use, the new platform will greatly increase the output at which both us developers and eventually the modding community can churn out new locos to the game, of virtually any kind. The train mod support and the new loco types won’t be part of the Simulator update on release day, but they’re actively being worked on as part of the sim revamp as we speak.





As an addition to its beautiful natural landscapes, Derail Valley will receive seamless cycling of day and night, as well as dynamic weather conditions. This will include clear, cloudy, foggy and rainy conditions that will all spontaneously morph into one another, as you’d expect. The locomotives will, of course, feature wipers and proper headlights to accompany the addition, and the rain will affect traction quality.



While not set in stone yet, the frequency of the day and night cycle and weather changes will be probably set to a certain rate in Career mode (e.g. 24h in game will equate to 1h real time), and will be completely adjustable in Free Roam mode (more on that further below). Players will be able to interact with beds in order to sleep and pass the time. The concept of time passing be further incorporated into gameplay later on, although this remains to be seen.



Click here or gif above for higher quality video

Perhaps one of the most critical improvements in Simulator will be the complete GUI architecture revamp. Starting Derail Valley won’t throw you directly into gameplay anymore. Rather, a proper main menu that welcomes you first will finally be in place, where you’ll be able to select a user, load and save your progress, start a new game, and do other usual game actions that have been lacking in Derail Valley for so long. The reason this comes this late is that it is much harder to pull off than it may seem -- the game couldn’t be made restartable without some bigger changes that we’re working on, which is a prerequisite for lots of related features.

The new interface is made flexible in such a way that over time we can easily add new settings, such as the “skip tutorial” button when starting a new career game, and alike. The new GUI is also fully consolidated between PC and VR, which wasn’t the case previously, making it easier to maintain it on both platforms.



Click here or gif above for higher quality video

Welcomed by many players will be the new Free Roam mode. It will let you play without worrying about fees, licenses or earning money. You’ll be able to pick your own scenario parameters, such as starting location, destination, time of day, weather conditions and train, and just do whatever you want without consequences. Only the base locomotives of each kind will be available on fresh start in Free Roam. You’ll need to unlock the higher classes by buying the license for them in Career first, thus incentivizing the player to play the much more engaging Career mode. Of course, the players who insist on having everything unlocked right from the start will still have the option of asking someone for a save file with everything unlocked.

You’ll be able to design your own consists for use in scenarios, and share both consists and scenarios with other players. In Free Roam the jobs, trains and locomotives will still spawn in the world as they do in Career mode. You’ll be able to complete those jobs, but without any monetary rewards, nor penalties.




We’re making Derail Valley multilingual, which should increase the game’s reach in many countries around the world. Currently, we’re aiming for German, Russian, Dutch, Japanese, French and Serbian languages, and we’ll likely also include Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Chinese, Korean and Polish. If there’s demand for these or more languages, please let us know -- your input means a lot. We’ve been preparing all of the game’s string database, GUI and booklets for localization, and the only things that will remain universal (in latin script) will be the IDs of locos, tracks, locations, jobs and licenses.




We expect to have Derail Valley: Simulator ready for release sometime by the end of this year. This is not set in stone, however, as there’s still a bunch of work to be done and things could be pushed further. When we’re ready to fully reveal the update, we’ll do an In-Depth series going in detail about each of the new features, like we did with Overhauled.

Until then, we’re looking to release 2-4 small updates, similar in scope to builds #89-91, which too were worked on during the ongoing development of Simulator. The small updates will be focused mainly on bug fixes and small improvements, but with each also having a prominent new feature.


With the release of Simulator, we’ll increase the price of Derail Valley from $19.99 to $35.99. This increase has been long planned and announced, and despite staying in Early Access, we feel that at that point Derail Valley will be worth the new price. Of course the increase will not affect those who bought the game prior to the price increase.

Beyond Simulator, we plan to focus on adding a lot of new content to Derail Valley and making the late game gameplay more strategic and goal driven. That too is heavily under development, but we’ll probably discuss it more next year.

That’s all for this news update! Thank you all for your support, patience and understanding that these things take time! Despite not having released many updates lately, we’ve been busy as always working on Simulator, and our goal remains to make Derail Valley the best train simulator in the world. See you soon with the next small game update!

-Your DV Team

Hi everyone!

It’s been a couple of long months, but we’re back with a new update! This time, the snow has melted, and lovely music took its place! As always, Ivan accompanied this update with an awesome video:



Boombox comes with a variety of music cassettes that you can buy in shops, as well as the ability to play radio. It can be customized to play your favorite online streaming radio stations, as well as playlists of your local music files! We strongly recommend you to read the new readme.pdf file before playing with it, located in the game installation's root folder.

With the boombox came the need to precisely place items in nonVR, which is another addition in this build. Placing items is done using the key 'R' and the mouse wheel.



Having watched your videos and streams, we also acknowledged that rerailing should be made free at the early phase of the game, so we’ve made that change. Additionally, we’ve improved item belt orb slots in VR, booklet saving, fixed trains spawning in each other, and a lot more small things.

Finally, we’ve removed the snow as promised and it won’t be available at least until another Christmas. We know many of you would like us to keep it as an option, but technically that’s not possible right now. Maybe some other year in the future.



If you’ve been wondering about the status of the 2021 major update - it’s heavily in progress, but there’s still a LOT of work remaining to do before we can share anything. Until we have more information, we’ll have small updates coming out, such as today’s one.

We’re looking forward to hearing what you think about the new boombox and the rest of the changes! Have fun driving with your new companion!

P.S. While finishing up this update, we learned that the inventor of the cassette tape, Lou Ottens, had died yesterday at age 94. May this update be in his memory.

-DV Team

We have a very special update for you today! It's Christmas and snow fell upon the Valley. It will only stay like that for a limited time - about a month, - so make sure to make the best of it!



2020 was a strange year, yet also the best one for Derail Valley so far. With your support and the release of Overhauled, we've had a blast further strengthening our goals — to make Derail Valley both the best train simulator in the world, and one of the best VR games. We are continually working on amazing things, many of which are yet to come in the major update in 2021 and after it.

With today's update we wanted to give you all a massive thank you, and wrap up this dull year with something exciting. The snow doesn’t affect game mechanics as it is a purely aesthetic feature, but it does bring a whole new mood to the game. In order to keep the experience truly special, we will remove snow from the game in about a month, for at least until next Christmas. Make the best use of it in the following couple of weeks!



Apart from introducing snow, the update adds a few more new things, such as new trash bins, station office beacons, expert shovel (a new item to buy!), and various other fixes.



With this update we're closing the year, and can't wait to see what the next one will bring! Until then, from all of us here at Altfuture, Happy Holidays!

-Your DV Team