Incline Train Fever - OpenTTD/CS's Locomotion style game. Majestic incline.

[Perkel]

Train Fever
Developer: Urban Games
Steam: http://store.steampowered.com/app/304730/

Trailer:




Game is amazing so far. Played in like 2 days straight. My opinion so far:

Pros:

- This is real deal for OpenTTD/TTD/Locomotion fans
literally out of nowhere ! I found it via some obscure youtuber when i searched for some locomotion mods. I heard nothing about it earlier and almost no site raported on this. Same with usual OpenTTD/locomotion generally tycoon places. Even their forum has like handful of posts.

- Proper citizent AI.
They actually are traveling. People are no longer commodity that is released from train at nearest station. Different people have different goals so for example few will drop at city A some at city B instead of like in OpenTTD, TTD or Locomotion at first station. Which means that creating lines have meaning.

- Secondly People are not commodity.
I said that already in above pro but this is whole other thing. People are actually people ! Which means that dude will walk from his home to bus station/train station that will lead him to his work/commerce/leisure. They will also like in real life use multiple sources of travel. So for example dude can use first bus then go on train and then use tram.
They also "move" so they change jobs, where they live and so on.

- UI Heavily inspired by Locomotion UI design
So far it's better than OpenTTD or Locomotion UI. It has ton of good options like removing all buses/trams/trains from selected line and selling them instantly on arrival at depot. Color coding for lines and so on. For many people this may be little bit weird i mention this but for me it is crucial for tycoon game. Good UI is what you are working with for XXX amount of hours and if it is bad as OpenTTD UI it can lessen fun from playing game. Locomotion had great UI at that time but this seems to strike properly what UI should look like. It is readable, quick and you don't spend shit ton amount of time to figure out what is what.

- Game has actuall gameplay that is something more than sandbox for most of the time.
Both OpenTTD and Locomotion have problem in sense that after hour or two you simply can't loose money because earning it is very easy. Here on hard mode i need really to think how to plan my network because everything cost a lot of money. Trains are literally money pits if you don't plan ahead and as years fly by newer trains are available and they cost a lot more to run ! And what is more awesome old cheap ones are removed from buy option after set time so you could end up in dead end scenario where you run out of loan option and can't even buy train or bus (which also quickly increases costs). At Hard i really struggle to get money from my lines. New stuff is always oh fuck moment when you need to seriously think if this new stuff will be more profitable to invest in as oposite to run old stuff for few more years. Unlike like other games here you can't just remove buildings from city for 100$. For example early in game removing house with 8 occupants cost like 800k where you start with 1,2mln loan and you can get max 8 mln loan. And that is just one house.

- Fantastic music. I was suprised in such unknown game i will get my good music fix. Tracklist isn't that robust but all track are excellent.

- Good graphic, excellent sound design

Cons:

- Signal system currently is lacking. IT has signals you can plop but you can't do currently more robust designs like in loco or OpenTTD
- Railway system is also lacking in complexity but i don't know if it is design specific or simply because they didn't do it yet. I mean you can't do for example 3-4 different turns from one track. Or cross railway with other railway or various station designs like in OTTD. I think this is intended though. I always didn't like how in Open TTD for example trains could turn at 90defree angles and so on. Same as i never actually see in real life two railways crossing. IT is always from my experience one above/under other. I state this as con because i simply don't know. But if it is actually intended then i would even consider it pro instead of con.
- creating railway can be sometimes cumber-stone. I mean for most of time it works good but sometimes for some reason it can't lay track or can't connect two tracks. Mind you this is not really that common. Most of the time like 95% of times everything work like intended
- Cities don't grow that much. They start at 200-300 people and grow to only like 1000-1500.
- no waypoint system. When you create line game creates line. Sometimes game can make shitty line so you need to lay new one and hope it will make path different or try to fiddle with your signals. This can be troublesome in later part of game where you have whole train network where quickest way sometimes may be the worst (queues) I think it is something that devs will fix quickly as they already have foundations for waypoint system (signal system).

Game for me is ideal OpenTTD/Locomotion clone that has its own strengths and few but notable cons. Considering devs seems to be active and want to improve game they probably remove in near future those cons.


So far i am addicted and i recomend it for all OpenTTD/locomotion addicts. With few additions this may be the game that will topple both of them. From my point of view proper signals and waypoint system would already make this game at level of OTTD.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

i heard this is for 64bit only

 

[Burning Bridges]

Steam says Windows XP, unless you are reading only TPB comments.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

it's steam's word against many others u_u also the many others' are free.

 

[Raapys]

OpenGL context creation failed.

^___^

 

[Perkel]

Holy shit. I mentioned already that people transport is several times better than OTTD or Locomotion and i fucking mean it. I have gone back for a while to OTTD and i can't fucking believe that people are just ware and they don't fucking care where they are going. Have next stop in 200m ? fuck it i will drop bus there. 3000km ? fuck it i don't care.

Also idea about consistency being much more important than checking every now on then for full load is also much better than OTTD.

I essence it is much more important to run your trains/busses consistency instead of for example getting one long ass train and load all wood for like 10minutes as production either way will move products in their own way if you won't get stuff and they won't send product to your station.

 

[titus]

Holy shit. I mentioned already that people transport is several times better than OTTD or Locomotion and i fucking mean it. I have gone back for a while to OTTD and i can't fucking believe that people are just ware and they don't fucking care where they are going. Have next stop in 200m ? fuck it i will drop bus there. 3000km ? fuck it i don't care.

What about the economy?

 

[Perkel]

In what sense ?
balance or if this works ?

From balance standpoint i already said that this game is much better than OTTD or Loco. Like i said playing on hard really makes you think about what you do and it is easy to overinvest or make bad decisions made on presumption of high returns if i will create this line that will cost me unknown amount of money and unknown amount of time to actually start this line for unknown amount of years to be profitable.

I mean for example in this game most of lines you create take time to "mature". It easily takes 2 years to even profit from one line and the longer line is the more time it needs to "mature".

For example small 5 bus stops line in small city. 4x20k busses which go 15km/h (motherfucking horses !) and each of them take 5kyearly for maitance +% depending how old it is. For first year you are in red as no one uses those lines. Then people start to shuffle a bit in city and they start to use line. You make your first proper yearly profit. Barely but profit. In 4-5 years your line makes 25-30k yearly.

So to run new line from start i need 80k for initial busses, around 2years of maintenance costs for 4 busses which is additional 40k from which you can deduct ~10k from initial small earning. That gives us total of 110k just to run one small buss line and to profit from it at 25-30k yearly that point for next 13 years when you will need to retire old busses and buy new ones. 13 years * 30k = 390k total profit from line over 15 years when initial investement was 110k. But at point of switching from old to new you will have matured line so next 15 years should make ~450k considering amount of people using it will stay the same (and busses). Usually lines grow as more people are in city so you profit more over years.

That is simple fast early buss line.

Trains are entirely different things. Cheapest train runs burns around 150k a year + each squad also have maitance cost. So let's round it down to 200k a year from one train. You make line between two cities which cost depending on topography from 100-200k to 1-2mln and since distance between cities is rather big for slow early trains you will get like 2 visits in each city every year. So actually train line can mature not in 2 or 3 years but sometimes in 6-10 years and unlike OTTD or Loco you need to connect it with your buss network in city as those 25-30k making lines will be your primary traveling system to those trains. So our line for over 5 to 10 years burns easily around 150k a year which gives us grand total of 1mln to 2mln in just track + maitance cost to run. Trains are expensive it is easy to burn 500-1mln to buy one train.

At 8mln max loan rate (low % though) you see why this game economy in therms of balance is much better than OTTD or Loco. Mind you that i play on HARD.

First trains cost cheap to run (which is still costly !) but later trains are like holy shit costly to run. Idea is that you want to use trains to actually move stuff at longer distances and unlike OTTD or Loco they should be used actually when it matters and not everywhere. Especially in hill areas where just setting up railways can quickly burn up your whole budget.


As of "if this work".

It works. people are actually using means of trasportation. Dude start by waliing to bus station, takes a bus to other buss station from where he can take bus to train stations, then he takes train to another city, then he uses trams to get to other part of city from which he takes express to other city which is not connected by railaways but long range fast busses (due to distance or high cost of creating line).

Compare that to Open TTD where people are commodity and they are dropped at nearest station regardless if people want it or not. So in OTTD you need to actually not create realistic networks of interconnected lines because each time bus would take some people it would release them few meters further for really shitty money.

 

[Perkel]

Also as i mentioned specialization.

Some busses and trains have radically different specs and cost of running. So for example one train can have twice the running cost yearly than other train but this train due to it's power would do much better than other train in hilly area.

Same with busses.
First bus you have is 20k horse carriage taking 5 people, runs 15km/h and has 5k running cost
next one is 60k steam engine carriage that takes 6 people, runs 25km/h and has like 16k yearly cost.

horse carriage you use for city lines and this steam carriage for express lines between cities. If you would use it for city line it would never be profitable and by using it as express you are making really good money.

 

[titus]

In what sense ?
balance or if this works ?

If it works, mostly. I was wondering if it has an economy model. Does supply and demand exist? Do towns grow? Is anything happening on the map that you're not doing.
Or am I looking at a different type of game. I enjoyed Railroad Tycoon, for example.

 

[Perkel]

Yes they grow over time even if you are not doing anything.

Idea is that people and stuff move even without you. Just much slower and sometimes some chains of productions can't connect without you. If you on other hand do stuff towns, industries grow much faster.

For example industry can't grow unless they will send xx amount of stuff. Since towns grow more slowly than industries you need to connect for example one industry to several cities to make it grow quick.
It's not that advanced. It is just standard OTTD/TTD/Loco stuff.

For people transport this look much different. Towns can't grow as fast without connecting cities to other cities. Creating chain of transportation for several cities is much more profitable than creating link between only two cities.
If you create chain hub near one city then that city will grow a lot.

So for example you are creating chain of buss lines in cities and express lines between cities using busses and when there is great distance between this and other city you create train connection. So people would be able to move freely between several cities in connected network.

 

[Thane Solus]

this looks good, thanks for the tip.

 

[Drax]

35 bucks?
Fuck that, too expensive for my poorfag wallet and it ain't a shinny virtual spaceship.

 

[Thane Solus]

35 bucks?
Fuck that, too expensive for my poorfag wallet and it ain't a shinny virtual spaceship.

Better wait, while it brings some of TTD vibe, its still unfinished and needs more work, but its promising.

No proper info about anything is present in the game, fortunately they are some good guides around, but not enough. No competition, no proper train signals, not enough diversity on industry, you start in 1850 and wait years and years to get something interesting to play with. TTD is still superior by far, but its promising, could be good in a few good months.

 

[Hitoshura]

Looks interesting!

I have no experience with Locomotion but quite a lot with OpenTTD. There's also simutrans which is also cool:
http://www.simutrans.com/en/
http://www.simutrans.com/en/

Yeah, passengers and mail transport in OpenTTD is not very well implemented. There's a "cargo destination" patch for OpenTTD floating around that could help here, maybe nowadays it's even integrated within the main game, I don't know. With this patch/option, all cargo types will want to go to a specific destination so it should make more sense. I didn't try it yet so I don't know if it's a really good feature in reality or not. The feature is also present in simutrans.

 

[Stokowski]

Needs proper signalling if I am to recreate my continent-crushing rail networks of total awesomeness from the days of TTDPatch.

Still, an indication of after years of rubbish transport sims.

 

[Thane Solus]

Game Guide and extra info:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=307389079

and extra info: http://trainfeverguide.26miledrive.com/

 

[Thane Solus]

So i played with some good hours (6-10) and then moved back to OpenTTD. The game has potential but was released as an alpha due to the pressure of the investors(rumor), and im not even sure they will patch it properly. For the same reason it costs so much when it shouldn't cost more than 19.99$, but i guess they have to recover 500k which is huge amount judging by the results.

 

[Stokowski]

Yeah, possibly a quick cash-in seeing as the next version of A-Train (supposedly a really good one) is due very soon.

 

[Perkel]

UPDATE:
It's shaping up nicely.

Better simulation, better usability, better Train Fever
Posted on December 16, 2014
We are very happy that today another major game update has been released.

Traffic simulation has been heavily improved with the newest version. Most important, cars now take into account the current traffic speed (and traffic jams) in advance. Therefore, people can now drive around traffic jams (if possible) or may decide to use player-created lines instead. In addition, towns no longer allow that players bulldoze their main connection streets (works for new games). These changes lead to a more realistic passenger simulation and to a more interesting game experience.

Some car drivers may get tired of being stuck in traffic jams and switch to the player’s bus line.

As always, we have been listening to the community and with this update we present two of the top requested features: Automatic vehicle replacement and realistic vehicle loading speed. Players can now define a vehicle (per line) which is used to replace existing vehicles when they reach their life spans. Therefore, large amounts of vehicles can now be managed more easily. Vehicle loading speed is now dependent on the number of vehicle doors. This way, especially modern commuter trains load and unload significantly faster.

Modern commuter trains have many large doors; therefore loading speed is quite high.

Usability in general has been significantly improved. Track and street builder tools are now more easy to use. We have not only fixed a number of small bugs, but we have also improved the user interface of these essential tools. For instance, obstacles which collide with your constructions plans are now highlighted in red color, and better error messages are displayed if a problem occurs.

Thanks to better error reporting track construction is more convenient now.

Also, we have added links to the player-created Steam guides in the main menu and welcome window. The learning curve for beginners is now more flat and more advanced players can easily find walkthroughs or background information.

Many more small improvements (e.g. animated depot doors) have been realized. Overall, we believe that the current update is a major step forward and Train Fever is significantly better now.

Please find the complete release notes here.

You can be sure that more updates and improvements will be released in future. Thanks for your continuing interest in the game and best wishes!

 

[Perkel]

Since release they added new vehicles, wagons, the ability to use waypoints for lines, new animations, railroad crossings, new translations and now finally the long awaited auto replacement function for old vehicles, which makes managing everything easier.

 

[Duke2010]

Never seen this before, looks really interesting. I watched the in game video on their site, it looks really easy to place track and stops. Its £20 on Steam now, I will give this game a go.

 

[Perkel]

whoever said that OpenTTD now has proper passanger handling can suck a dick. Just tried latest version and passanger as per usual are released on nearest station.

 

[Nutmeg]

Perkel,

Turn on cargodist in the options.

 

[Perkel]

eh... thanks.

I wonder why it isn't default feature...
Does it work inside cities or only cities vs cities ?

In train fever for example cities have different parts where each does different thing: housing area, industry, leisure and so on. So people move inside city acording to where things are and this is how you plan lines.

Also is there some line creation tool ? I always had this problem with OTTD that i had to micromanage busses instead of creating line and from line menu choosing that line and choosing what bus and where those cars go.

Ok i am dumb where can i switch it on ? I have currently 1.5 version.